Let’s talk milk.
First the stuff you buy from the supermarket.
Conventional dairy cows are routinely fed grain, soy, fishmeal and DPM (dried poultry manure…..).
This makes them sick, as cows normally eat mostly GRASS.
So they are given antibiotics, because their resistance to disease is low.
The milk they produce then needs to be sterilised via a process called pasteurisation which heats the milk up to kill all the bacteria and floating around in the milk.
The next process is called homogenisation, in which they break up the fat evenly across the milk. What may seem like a harmless process, is in fact NOT.
Because both of these processes remove vital nutrients and vitamins from the milk, the manufacturers add back in Vitamin D2, which is a plant form of vitamin D.
This is a poorly absorbed form of Vitamin D when compared to the animal sources, D3.
The nutritional bottom line is that pasteurisation and homogenisation destroy nutrients and proteins, make healthy fats rancid, and cause free radicals to form in the body.
They denature milk by altering its chemical structure.
So to recap.
Low quality milk is pasturised, homogonised and the has synthetic vitamins added back in. If you are buying a low fat or skimmed version, the fat (and therefore your ability to absorb vitamin D) is removed.
RAW milk, on the other hand, is produced from cows who have been fed grass.
When you do this, the cows get sick less often, they produce a higher quality milk product and as a result, their milk doesn’t need to be pasturised.
This lack of pasturisation leaves the milk ‘alive’ with
- Benefical bacteria (think probiotics)
- Fat souluable nutrients that can be absorbed (Vitamins A,D,E,K)
- Has the lactASE enzyme which helps you digest the lactose sugar
- And has a perfect mix of your protein, carbohydrate and fat macronutrients.
For our little one, we choose RAW milk for these reasons, and wouldn’t touch supermarket milk with a barge pole. It is in my opinion, chalk water.
Do you let your kids drink milk?