What You Should Know About Raw Milk

It's extremely nutritious. It may be one of the most widely disregarded and falsely represented bits of dietary bliss today. It's not talked about very often in the mainstream media. Some might even say it's ignored altogether.
What is it?

Raw milk--that is, milk, directly from the cow's udder. No pasteurization, homogenization, tampering, treating, or anything, of any kind. Completely raw.

There is now a growing movement to make raw milk more widely available. At the moment, one can only buy it in a few states legally, often only by contacting a dairy farmer directly, and in many states that do allow it to be sold (Yes, it is illegal in most of the United States!), it has to be labeled for "pet consumption only", as the FDA and many health organizations besides do not deem raw milk a nutritious thing, interesting idea, or even safe.

So why are there so many people trying to make it more widespread?

Interesting that even though the government says it's unsafe, until the middle of last century, raw cow's milk was used as a medicine as well as a food, because it was so well known to be hearty and to help recovery from illness.

Our bodies use amino acids to build protein. Eight of these amino acids are essential, meaning that our bodies cannot synthesize the acids within the body, and they must be acquired from food or supplements.
The body uses 20-22 amino acids to build protein, depending on which researcher you ask or which dietary manual you consult.

Raw cow's milk contains 20 amino acids, including the essential ones. Many of the proteins are in the form of casein. Casein is a type of protein that is stable under heat and is easy to digest, making it any ideal protein for human consumption.

Raw cow's milk also contains a wide variety of bioactive compounds--enzymes, inhibitors, immunoglobulins, growth factors, and more. In other words, raw cow's milk has a lot going on in it.

It is because of these enzymes and other interesting things that even people with lactose intolerance can drink raw cow's milk without experiencing the discomforts normally associated with consuming lactose (the main carbohydrate in milk, a sugar). This is because raw milk contains lactase, the enzyme which lactose intolerant individuals do not produce.

Milk that has been pasteurized, homogenized, or otherwise processed does not contain lactase, and will not be well-tolerated by the lactose intolerant at all.

But, wait. There's more. Lactose, the sugar in milk, is accompanied by Lactobacilli; a bacteria, though it is a very good bacteria. Lactobacilli uses lactose to produce lactic acid. Lactic acid is responsible for the sour taste in sour cream, yogurt, and other fermented dairy products. Lactic acid is good when it is consumed from raw milk for a variety of reasons: Lactic acid helps inhibit the kinds of bacteria you do not want growing in your intestinal tract, and helps give more room to the kind of bacteria that you do want in your intestinal tract. Going further, lactic acid also increases the uptake of calcium, phosphorous, and iron--all excellent nutrients for you to have a better absorption rate of.

But consider the fats! Saturated fat is a "bad fat". Right? Not necessarily.

Saturated fat is vitally important component in maintaining your health. Saturated fat is used in the construction of cell walls, the production of important hormones (like testosterone, guys.), carries fat-soluble vitamins, pads our organs better than other fats, cause our stomach to secrete a hormone which gives us a sense of satisfaction, and more.

Raw milk may be one of the saving graces that can help bring this country back from the edge of the obesity epidemic (Oh, how I hate that phrase.), and rescue us from the impending fataclysm if things do not get better.