Step four: What milk to buy?
So far, this has by far been the trickiest food item. Tricky because I didn’t know how clueless I was about the different types of milk, and tricky because we go through a gallon a week between just the two of us so I want to make sure it is healthy. The fact that we drink a lot of milk also means budget and convenience is a bit of a concern since we purchase it so often.
Let me start by saying I didn’t know anything about milk until fairly recently. We have always bought 1% milk from a regular grocery store. I started researching milk thinking that we needed to decide whether we wanted to upgrade to organic milk, or at least hormone-free milk. Turns out, there is a lot of hidden information about various milk choices, and our milk journey has taken a very unexpected turn.
First, let me share what I know about the various types of milk out there:
Regular milk
-Milk comes from grain-fed cows raised in dairy feedlots
-Milk is pasteurized (heated to 160+ degrees to kill bacteria)
-Milk is homogenized (blasted through a filter to alter the fat particles so that the cream no longer floats to the top)
-Health concerns: A grain-based diet for a cow decreases the milk’s nutritional value, traces of growth hormones and pesticides in milk, nutrients lost or damaged in pasteurization (article), potential risks associated with homogenization (article)
Hormone-free milk
-Milk comes from grain-fed cows raised in dairy feedlots
-Milk is pasteurized and homogenized
-Health concerns: same as regular milk, minus the growth hormones issue
Organic milk
-Milk comes from grain-fed cows raised in organic dairy feedlots
-Milk is ultra-pasteurized (heated to 285+ degrees to kill bacteria)
-Milk is homogenized
-Health concerns: similar to regular milk, minus the growth hormones and pesticides issues
-Interesting fact: Ultra-pasteurized milk is heated to a temperature that completely sterilizes the milk. This is like “throwing the baby out with the bath water” in the sense that all good bacteria (probiotics) are killed along with the bad, and the vitamin and mineral content are greatly compromised. The resulting milk has a shelf-life of 6-9 months, and it doesn't even have to be refrigerated. In fact, it is so dead that it is impossible to make cheese or yogurt from ultra-pasteurized milk!
Milk from grass-fed cows
-Milk comes from grass-fed cows raised on open pasture
-Some dairies pasteurize and homogenize the milk, some don’t
-Most grass-fed milk comes from small dairies that use organic practices
-Health benefits: Milk has a much higher nutritional value (article)
Raw milk from grass-fed cows
-Milk comes from grass-fed cows raised on open pasture
-Milk is not pasteurized and not homogenized
-Most grass-fed milk comes from small dairies that use organic practices
-Health benefits: Milk has a much higher nutritional value (raw milk article)
So, after a lot of research (in addition to the info above) about what are the best choices for milk, I came up with a rank of most ideal milk choice to least ideal. [Note: this is just my personal ranking based on what I’ve read.]
1. Organic raw milk from grass-fed cows (most grass-fed dairies are organic, even if they aren’t certified as such)
2. Low-temperature pasteurized milk from grass-fed cows, preferably organic and not homogenized
3. Any other type of milk from grass-fed cows
4. Organic milk that is not ultra-pasteurized (it does exist, if you look for it)
5. Hormone-free milk (like Braum’s!)
6. Organic milk
7. Regular milk
I made this list because although raw milk is our frontrunner health-wise, I wasn’t sure about cost or availability or taste, so I wanted to have some back-up options. Also, let me say that I know the concept of raw milk sounds weird. It sounded really weird to me too. But I thought it was worth a shot, and it turns out that we love it and it is a great choice for us right now.
Our unexpected journey to raw milk
It began with a lot of research online, as well as reading the books Real Food and The Untold Story of Milk (I highly recommend both, if you’re at all interested. You can borrow them from us.). We were sold on the health benefits, but kind of creeped out by the “straight from the udder” part. :)
We searched for local dairies that sold raw milk from grass-fed cows here. In Texas, raw milk must be purchased from the farm and isn’t available in stores. This is not the case in other states, like CA or PA. We visited the farms nearest to us (“near” in a relative sense... they were over an hour away) and were able to learn a lot more about raw milk and about their specific farm. Brad & Remy even went with us to one of them and were total skeptics and making fun of us on the drive there, and then wanting to go in with us if we decide to switch to raw milk by the time we were headed home.
We landed on a wonderful family-run Grade A dairy that milks about 50 cows that happily roam around on open pasture with a 100% grass diet. The dairy is not certified organic, but their practices go above and beyond what is considered organic according to the USDA. The owner told us about a milk co-op in our city that gets milk from his farm, so we got in touch with that group and joined. The group members take turns driving out to the dairy every-other week to buy the milk for everyone who placed an order, and we pick up our milk from whoever drove. It means we drive 10 minutes for our milk instead of over an hour, and we are only responsible for driving to the dairy ourselves a few times a year. We buy two gallons each time, and that lasts us the two weeks between milk runs.
We visited the dairy and had a great time chatting with the farmer and taking a look around. His cows are happy and healthy and they have over 300 acres, sectioned off into several pastures that he rotates them through so they have plenty of fresh grass every day. He only milks his cows once a day, and the each produce just a few gallons at a time. This was an added benefit, because I had read that the more milk you get from each cow, the less nutritious the milk is because the mama cow only has so many vitamins and minerals in her system that can be transferred into her milk, so industrial mass milking really waters down these nutrients. Basically, we feel really good about the quality of the milk we buy from this farm as well as how the cows are treated, and we really like getting to support a local family-run business.
A few miscellaneous notes about raw milk:
-Homogenization: The milk is not homogenized so the cream rises to the top (see above picture), and shaking the carton of milk for 2 seconds disperses it. When I heard that, I pictured thick cream that would cause the milk to be lumpy after it was shaken. Not the case at all. It must be only slightly denser than the milk itself, because it turns into regular-looking and regular-textured milk instantly.
-Taste: People say raw milk tastes much better. I like the taste of it better than regular milk, but the taste is not that noticeably different in my opinion. This was actually good news to me, because I really like the taste of regular milk and I was afraid raw milk would be a lot different and weird. Taste-wise, I thought it was more like switching brands than switching the type of milk.
-Safety: There is some bad press out there about the safety of raw milk, in terms of food-borne illness. It scared me at first, but when I looked into things further I discovered that the concern is with conventional milk (i.e. from industrial dairies with unhealthy cows and unsanitary practices) that is not pasteurized, rather than family-owned farm-fresh milk. Pathogens such as salmonella and e-coli are a result of poor sanitation, animal stress, and animal sickness. The farm we purchase our milk from has a very clean operation (we saw it ourselves) and the cows are extremely healthy. The milk is tested by the state on a monthly basis for pathogens and they have never had any. I don’t think the companies that produce regular grocery-store milk could say that. One safety benefit of raw milk is that all of the good bacteria are still in the milk and they naturally kill off any bad bacteria.
-Cost: Our raw milk costs $6/gallon. This is about the same price as organic milk, and I think the nutritional benefit is well-worth the hassle of the co-op. However, the cost is twice as much as our regular milk, and that hurts. I still believe the benefit is worth it, and we have chosen to afford it for now. That is not to say that at some point we will decide that we can’t afford it anymore, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.
-Whole milk: The milk is whole. I did some additional research about the health implications of reduced-fat vs. full-fat dairy products and we chose to mainly go with whole milk. Most of the nutrients in milk are found in the fat, and because our daily diet doesn’t consist of a lot of saturated fat, we feel like we can afford to drink the milk whole. But if we ever decide to switch back to low-fat milk, we can just pour some of the cream off the top of our raw milk. It is really easy to turn that cream into homemade butter, and we’d be left with whatever fat-content milk we want.
-Our back-up option: When we are out of town on a weekend and miss a milk pickup, we buy low-temp pasteurized milk that comes from an organic grass-fed dairy (which we also visited) that sells their products at a store that’s on Kolby’s way home from work. On occasion and in a pinch, we just buy regular milk.
-Lactose-intolerance: As a total side-note, many people who are lactose-intolerant can drink raw milk without a problem because it contains its full complement of enzymes and lactase-producing bacteria needed by our bodies to break down and assimilate the lactose. These helpful bacteria are killed in the pasteurization process.
So that’s our story so far. We’re very new to this, so maybe I’ll post a follow-up at some point with how things are going. Let me know if you have any questions--- I tried to give as much info as I could without making this post more unbearably long than it already is!
***Below are some excerpts from the book Real Food by Nina Planck.
Good things in milk
-Complete protein to build and repair tissues, including bones
-Vitamin A for healthy skin, eyes, bones, and teeth
-Vitamin D to aid calcium and phosphorus absorption and for bones and teeth
-Thiamin to help turn carbohydrates into energy and aid growth
-Niacin for growth and development, healthy nerves, and digestion
-Vitamin B6 to build body tissues, produce antibodies, and prevent heart disease
-Vitamin B12 for healthy red blood cells, nerves, and digestion; and to prevent heart disease
-Pantothenic acid to turn carbohydrates and fat into energy
-Folic acid to promote the formation of red blood cells and prevent birth defects and heart disease
-Calcium to make strong bones and teeth; also aids heart-beat, muscle, and nerve function
-Magnesium for strong bones and teeth
-Phosphorus for strong bones and teeth
-Zinc for tissue repair, growth, and fertility
Modern industrial milk and the milk we drank thousands of years ago—even the milk Americans drank fifty years ago—are different. Traditional milk comes from cows fed mostly on fresh grass and hay; it is raw and unhomogenized and free of synthetic growth hormones. Industrial milk comes from cows raised indoors and fed mostly on corn, grain, and soybean rotation, typically with a dose of synthetic hormones to boost milk production. Industrial milk is then pasteurized and homogenized.
Compared to industrial milk, dairy foods from grass-fed cows contain more omega-3 fats, more vitamin A, and more beta-carotene and other antioxidants. Butter and cream from grass-fed cows are a rare source of the unique and beneficial fat CLA. According to the Journal of Dairy Science, the CLA in grass-fed butterfat is 500 percent greater than the butterfat of cows eating a typical dairy ration, which usually contains grain, corn silage, and soybeans. CLA prevents heart disease, fights cancer, and builds lean muscle. CLA also aids weight loss in several ways: by decreasing the amount of fat stored after eating, increasing the rate at which fat cells are broken down, and reducing the number of fat cells.
What kind of milk should you buy? Traditional (raw) milk is ideal. Organic milk is better than standard industrial milk, but unfortunately, most commercial organic milk comes from cows fed grain, not fresh grass. Grass-fed milk is best, even if it is not organic.
Perhaps the greatest difference between traditional and modern milk is pasteurization, a form of heat sterilization. The push for pasteurization in the U.S. began in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. It was a response to an acute and growing public health crisis, in which infectious diseases like tuberculosis were spread by poor-quality milk. Urban dairies had sprung up to supply the growing populations in or near cities such as New York, Philadelphia, and Cincinnati. Owners put the dairies next to whiskey distilleries to feed the confined cows a cheap diet of spent mash called distillery slop. Conditions were unhygienic and unsanitary, and the contaminated milk caused fatal outbreaks of diseases. Yet even now, when this slop milk is long gone, pasteurization plays a vital role in the commercial dairy industry. In industrial milk production, the milk of thousands of cows from dozens of diaries is blended before being shipped to the bottling plant or cheese factory. Pasteurization (or heating the milk to kill bacteria) can prevent contaminated milk from one sick cow, unhygienic dairy worker, or dirty nozzle from tainting the clean milk of dozens of other dairies.
In practice, pasteurization can have an unsavory effect on hygiene in the dairy. It allows less scrupulous dairy farmers to be lax with cow health and milk handling because they count on pasteurization to destroy pathogens that may taint milk. However, milk may be contaminated at any point after pasteurization—in handling, transportation, storage, or cheese making—just as easily as before. Indeed, the majority of dairy-related food-poisoning cases are traced to pasteurized milk and cheese.
It’s no secret that traditional (raw) milk is more nutritious than pasteurized milk. Pasteurization destroys folic acid and vitamins A, B6, and C. In 1941, the U .S. government issued a report stating that “the cows of this country produce as much vitamin C as does the entire citrus crop, but most of it is lost as the result of pasteurization.” Pasteurization inactivates the enzymes required to absorb the nutrients in milk: lipase (to digest fats); lactase (to digest lactose); and phosphatase (to absorb calcium). Phosphatase explains why raw milk contains more available calcium. Pasteurization also creates oxidized cholesterol, alters milk proteins, and damages omega-3 fats.
Heat destroys or damages lactic acid bacteria in raw milk—the same beneficial bacteria in yogurt that aid digestion and immunity. When left alone in raw milk, the good bacteria kill off harmful bacteria which may taint milk during handling.
