Episode Transcript
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Welcome to Nutrition For Mortals, the podcast that says life is too damn short to spend your time and attention worrying about your food choices.
So let's take a deep breath, and then join us, two registered dietitians and friends, as we explore the world of nutrition with a special focus on cultivating a healthy and peaceful relationship with food.
My name is Matt Priven, and I am joined as always by my co-host, and the best dietitian on planet Earth, Jen Baum.
Hey, Jen.
Hey, Matt.
And just a quick reminder, if you would like to support the show, we do have a Patreon, where we do an extra bonus episode every month.
A portion of our Patreon does go to support the Hunger Project, which is a wonderful organization.
And we are real live dietitians in private practice.
And so if you or anyone you know has ever thought about working with a dietitian, you can always feel free to reach out to us at oceansidenutrition.com Yes, you can.
Okay, Jen, what are we talking about today?
Matt, we are diving into the world of raw milk.
And it is a world that I have...
Really?
That's how we're starting.
That's how we're starting.
Hey, when you're leading an episode, I feel like I have very little to do other than show up.
So I just think, what ridiculous sound effects can I collect?
And this was an obvious one.
Well, well done.
I was not expecting that.
So, okay, yes, today we're going to be diving into the controversy around raw milk.
We are going to be talking about the health claims surrounding raw milk.
And, you know, what's so interesting, I have been kind of existing in the world of raw milk for the last month or so.
And raw milk has become, you know, much more than just this kind of perceived nutrition health food.
It really has become a symbol in a lot of ways for, you know, government regulation versus consumer choice.
It has become a political symbol.
And so we've got to kind of talk about that, in addition to talking about all of the nutrition claims that are being made about raw milk.
Ooh, I'm getting the sense already, this is a bigger topic than I thought it was going to be.
A symbol for government intervention.
Where are we going here?
I know, I know.
It's definitely going to get a little bit dark, but it actually speaks to some of the larger things that raw milk has really come to stand for.
You know, I think the way that we will structure this conversation today is, I want to go back and talk about the history of milk, the history of pasteurization in the US., particularly because, you know, what's so interesting to me is that some of the controversies that were happening in the 1800s, early 1900s around raw milk versus pasteurized milk are still some of the controversies we're seeing today.
And so I feel like the history is very instructive in a lot of ways, which is why I want to dig into it.
And then of course, like always, we will dive into the land of TikTok and Instagram and health claims and do a lot of debunking.
I can already tell how much time you spent in raw milk land with the way you're talking.
Oh my gosh.
I know so much about raw milk.
I know more than I want to know about raw milk.
History first, we're going back in time.
Yeah.
So I really want to start by going back to the early to mid 1800s in the US.
And if I can, I want to paint a picture of what was happening in the US at that time.
So this is a time where you had a lot of people moving from smaller towns to bigger cities, particularly because they wanted jobs, they were looking for work.
I mean, we're talking second half of the industrial revolution.
People need to feed their families, they want to try to find employment.
And so they are in large numbers moving from towns to cities to try to work and live their lives.
Yeah, makes sense.
Well, more people in cities, they got to eat, right?
So is this where the milk comes in?
That's exactly right.
So people are coming from smaller towns into cities.
You have increased demand for milk in cities because you have more people.
And as a consequence of this, there's this big shift in what happens with dairy herds and what that looks like.
So we go from kind of smaller niche dairy herds out in the country grazing on pastures to having, you know, we're talking like thousands of cattle living in very cramped conditions in cities.
Because we don't have refrigeration, right?
Like it's you can't put them in a cold truck and drive them into the city.
So they bring all the cows into the city center.
That's right.
So what does this look like, having thousands of cows in city centers?
You can probably imagine that having lots of cows living close together in urban cities in the 1800s didn't go very well.
So not only did this lead to, you know, pretty unsanitary conditions, it also led to something that is often called the Swill Milk Scandal.
Have you ever heard of this before, Matt?
No, the Swill Milk Scandal.
No, I have, from context clues, I'm getting a lot of ideas here, but no, tell me what this is.
Okay, so I'm actually going to give you the definition of Swill Milk.
Swill Milk is defined as the tainted result of miasmic dairy cows being fed the leftover mash from Manhattan and Brooklyn whisky distilleries in the mid 1800s.
Eugh, okay.
So essentially, you have whisky or alcohol distillers looking to profit from this old leftover grain.
And so how they decided to go about this was to purchase dairy cows, keep them in ultra cramped conditions right next to their distilleries, and then feed these cows the leftover grain from making alcohol as a way of trying to make money from then selling those cows milk.
That doesn't sound like the ideal food source for a cow is like, you know, barley that's been boiled for hours.
No, this is definitely not the ideal food source for a cow.
And so I'm actually going to have you read a quote from someone named Frederick Sten in an address he gave to the Chicago Literary Society in 1978.
And this actually is him describing what these distillery cows or these distillery dairies looked like.
This is going to be sad, isn't it?
It's going to be so sad.
Here we go.
Quote, city milk was almost entirely distillery milk.
These distilleries housed up to 2,000 head of cows.
Cow stalls rented for $5 a year.
The cost of mash, $2 a month labor paid in whiskey.
The slop, slop it certainly resembled, was conveyed from large elevated tanks into wooden sluices, leading to the cow stalls three feet wide.
The cow consumed 32 gallons of slop and three pounds of hay.
Ulcers developed in the mouths of the cows.
Their tails fell off.
Tuberculosis of the glands, lungs, and intestines followed.
One Brooklyn distillery indicated that out of 1,811 cows, 230 died in 10 weeks.
Milk so obtained was pale blue, often turbid, and malodorous.
Oh, jeez, that's awful.
That's so sad.
I know.
It's so disgusting.
It is so sad.
And can you imagine pale blue smelly milk?
Milk was a bad choice.
This is the worst timing.
I'm sorry.
You're just going to keep inserting sound effects without my knowledge about this whole episode, aren't you?
We'll see.
We'll see.
Well, okay.
So yeah, this is absolutely horrible, disgusting milk being produced.
And this really was happening because it was such a lucrative time to be producing cow's milk.
I mean, first at this time, you had Americans who believed that cow's milk was a great substitute for breast milk.
And so milk was being given to infants all the time.
And you had just more demand for milk.
And so in many ways, this was kind of the perfect storm of increased demand and also more people wanting to wean babies and give those babies cow's milk.
So kind of the perfect environment for opportunistic businessmen to cut a lot of corners and treat cows really poorly.
Yeah, but I'm sorry to say it gets even worse because not only were these milk grifters keeping cows in terrible conditions, they were also adulterating the milk with so many different things.
And so I'm going to have you read one more quote.
This is a quote from an article in The Smithsonian that actually speaks to how milk grifters at the time were altering the composition of their swill milk.
Quote, in the 1800s, an analysis of milk in New Jersey found the quote, liquefying colonies of bacteria to be so numerous that the researchers simply abandoned the count.
But there were other factors besides risky strains of bacteria that made the 19th century milk untrustworthy.
The worst of these were the many tricks that dairymen used to increase their profits.
Far too often, dairy producers thinned milk with water, sometimes containing a little gelatin, and recolored the resulting bluish-gray liquid with dyes, chalk, or plaster dust.
They also faked the look of rich cream by using a yellowish layer of pureed calf brains.
As a historian of the Indiana Health Department wrote, quote, people could not be induced to eat brain sandwiches in a sufficient amount to use all the brains, and so a new market was devised.
Oh my god!
Of course people aren't going to eat calf brain sandwiches, and so they're using it to make milk look creamier?
Yeah, it is outrageous to read about all of the different things that these swill milk producers were putting into milk.
I mean, raw eggs, flour, like that quote just said, plaster dust.
I mean, anything that they could put into this milk to make it look more normal, they were doing.
And they would also paint these wagons that they would drive around that said, pure country milk.
And so they would actually kind of trick people into believing that the milk they were selling was coming from outside the city, when in actuality, it was this swill milk.
How do you just put plaster dust into milk?
That sounds like, just logically, that sounds like it's going to kill you.
Well, exactly.
I mean, you can imagine how many people were getting sick and dying.
New York City, particularly, was this kind of swill milk center.
And I read one estimate that around 8,000 babies were dying per year in New York City in the mid-1800s from swill milk.
So this milk was making so many people sick.
And so many people were dying as a consequence of drinking this milk.
Did they know it was the milk, or was it a big question like, what's going on?
No, nobody knew.
I mean, this is the other thing that's so interesting.
Nobody at the time, doctors couldn't figure out why so many infants were dying.
This is pre-germ theory of disease.
And so medicine was nowhere near as advanced as it is today.
And so at some point, they just gave up trying.
Doctors were just like, this is just kind of happening, and we don't know why, but maybe we'll figure it out, but maybe we won't.
Oh my gosh.
Did you happen to read about what was going on here in our home state?
Like, what was going on in Boston?
Oh, yeah, that's a great question.
So the swill milk scandal is really centered in New York.
But in Boston, there was a similar influx of people from the country into the city.
And so it used to be that cows actually grazed on the Boston Common.
There was a max herd size of 70 cows that were allowed to graze on the Boston Common.
But that then increased exponentially.
You had lots more cows, several thousand cows allowed in the city.
And so there were definitely issues with tainted or unsanitary milk happening in Boston too.
Oh, geez, that does not seem like enough space for thousands of cows.
No, no, not at all.
Okay, so we don't really know what's going on with people getting sick.
We just are now understanding how unsanitary the milk was.
And so that lack of understanding about what's going on, I mean, that's kind of times out with when we start to understand pathogenic bacteria for the first time, right?
Yeah, I mean, I think there are two other really important things that are happening right around this time, mid-1800s, that we have to talk about.
The first is the development or the invention of pasteurization.
And then the second is that this is the time when the germ theory of disease is discovered.
And so these are two really important, pivotal moments that are directly related to how milk is produced and consumed.
All right, yeah, so tell me about pasteurization and the origin there.
Yeah, so I think probably most people listening know about pasteurization.
And pasteurization was developed by Louis Pasteur, who was a French chemist.
And I mean, I will say Pasteur didn't really invent pasteurization.
Humans had known for a long time that when you heat treat foods, it makes them safer for longer.
But Pasteur was really the first person to provide an explanation for this phenomenon because he realized that spoilage was due to the chemical reactions initiated by living microbes or pathogens.
And so he discovered that the reason heat treatment prevented spoilage was because it actually destroyed these harmful organisms.
Okay, so that kind of crosses over with this new germ theory of disease.
So people are starting to understand that microorganisms really help us explain a lot of illness, right?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, germ theory was at the time pretty new and novel.
And it actually went against other theories of how people got ill at the time.
And so I kind of think this is important to talk a little bit about because we're, I wish I could say we weren't going to get into germ theory denialism later in the episode, but we are going to do that, in fact.
And so it's important to understand that at this time, yes, you had Pasteur and other scientists who felt very confident that germs caused disease, but then you also had this other aspect of the scientific community who actually believed in something that is called terrain theory.
Have you heard of this before?
Yeah, I mean, I think I know what terrain theory is.
This was the idea that sort of illness manifested from within you if you were not strong enough to prevent that from happening, right?
So it wasn't that outside organisms come and invade.
It's more so like they're already within you and they get released if you're in poor health.
Is that right?
That's exactly right.
Yeah, the central idea here is that the body's quote-unquote terrain, not germs, is what creates disease.
And so there's a big narrative in here around if a person is not making good lifestyle choices and keeping their body robust and healthy, then they're going to become sick and their body is going to start producing pathogens.
So it's almost in some ways the exact opposite of germ theory.
Oh, I'm seeing the crossover now with the modern day.
This is giving me COVID flashbacks.
Yeah, exactly.
You can kind of see where we're headed.
And so you have in the 1800s, you have pasteurization, you have germ theory, both developed.
And I'm totally going to flip this around on you and ask you, Matt, how do you think that milk pasteurization was received in the 1800s, early 1900s?
Like generally received?
Like were people psyched about it?
Yeah.
Do you think people were all on board and so excited and embraced the technology?
Do you think there was controversy around this at all?
I guess if you tell the population that you should start heat treating this milk that they think is the ideal food for their babies, and adulterating potentially this food, I would say there's probably a lot of pushback from people who are worried about what that would do.
And so this is, my guess is that people were not initially on board with this.
Yeah, you are getting that exactly right.
I mean, the reception around pasteurization was mixed.
You definitely had a subset of people really get behind the technology because there seemed to be more and more evidence that pasteurization reduced bacteria and prevented spoilage and prevented illness.
But you also had groups at the time.
I mean, one group of individuals, this surprised me, was doctors.
Many physicians at the time opposed pasteurization because they thought it diminished the nutrient content of milk.
You also had dairy farmers who didn't want to purchase additional equipment.
They didn't want to put in the extra time and effort.
And then there were also individuals who thought that pasteurization was just kind of crazy false science, which would lead to other illnesses like rickets and scurvy.
And so, there was a lot of controversy around pasteurization at the time.
Geez.
I mean, these farmers in New York were already putting in so much extra effort to put in plaster of Paris and cow brains into the milk.
I mean, it's just, you know, it's just a different job.
You just switch it.
I love the idea of like doctors against pasteurization to like some doctors for Listeria committee.
That's exactly right.
Doctors for tuberculosis.
Well, I mean, and I guess the other thing too, to say is that people didn't like the government regulation or oversight.
There were definitely people at the time who didn't think that the government had any place in the food system in the oversight of, you know, how we ate or consumed our foods.
And so, you know, you remember at the top of this episode, I said that I really wanted to highlight some important ideas or controversies that we were seeing historically.
And, you know, we definitely saw at the time a distrust in science, a pushback against government oversight and regulation.
This idea that pasteurization is destroying this nutritionally perfect foods.
And these are going to be themes that we see again later in our conversation.
Oh, America, you got to love it, right?
We can't accept anything good.
I know.
I know.
I mean, I feel so bad for Pasteur.
I mean, here's this incredible technology, and it helped save so many lives, and it reduced infant mortality significantly.
And then people are like, now we hate it.
Well, milk is, I mean, if there's going to be any food that kind of cuts to the core of like our emotions, I understand it's milk.
I mean, you know, humans, mammals produce milk, and we're just kind of supplanting human breast milk with cows milk for infants.
And so, you know, if you're going to get up in arms about government intervention, I guess I understand that people are most protective over milk.
Yeah, I think that's really true.
I think it's a great point.
I think milk is also the first food all of us ever consume.
So it is just very important to us culturally.
And I think that is, in some ways, why there has been so many debates over this food.
And so it's, you know, when we look at this history, we start to see some of the underpinnings of what you're saying are sort of modern themes as well.
But if we kind of move to the present day, you know, why is raw milk making a comeback?
Like, what's going on now?
Yeah, I mean, I really wish that the way that the story panned out was that, you know, Louis Pasteur invents pasteurization.
We all agree on germ theory of disease.
We just pasteurize our milk and we're good to go.
But yeah, that's definitely not where we are.
I mean, you know, raw milk sales over the last few years have continued to go up significantly.
And, you know, as to why, the answer to that is really twofold.
I mean, as I have been reading and immersing myself in this topic, I think, you know, one of the reasons that raw milk has become more popular is because there are a ton of health and nutrition claims being made about raw milk.
But also it's because, as I mentioned at the top of the episode, raw milk has become this political and ideological symbol.
And so, you know, we'll talk about that a little bit later, but we're a nutrition podcast.
And so what I really want to do now is dig into the health and the nutrition claims surrounding raw milk.
Okay, yeah.
So what are some of these nutrition claims that are being thrown around now?
So I think that the best way to do this is to survey the landscape of social media, so to speak, because there has been a huge uptick in influencers and celebrities jumping on the raw milk bandwagon.
And so we're going to listen to a few clips just to get a sense of the claims being made around raw milk and just to evaluate the tone of raw milk advocates generally.
Can't legally say that raw milk is medicine, but it has been used as medicine for thousands of years.
And this is something that Big Pharma and Big Dairy don't want you to know.
Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, gave raw milk to his patients that suffered from tuberculosis, gout, and other common diseases.
Even one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic, Dr.
JR.
Crew, used an exclusive raw milk diet to treat thousands of patients in the early 1900s.
However, today, the media presents raw milk as one of the most dangerous foods for human consumption.
But the truth is, their milk has been used for thousands of years to nourish the body.
Wow, this guy's got the truth.
Yeah, yeah, he is going to tell us really how it is.
I mean, this is a theme that I saw a lot, this idea that the government doesn't want you to know how amazing raw milk is, or the government doesn't have your best interests in heart.
And yeah, this comes up again and again.
Dude, I think you can say raw milk is medicine.
No one's going to come after you.
You can say it all day long.
People say food is medicine constantly.
We made a whole episode about that.
You could say whatever you want.
You're not telling truth to power.
You're just yelling on the Internet.
Right.
All right.
Let's listen to another clip that speaks more to the health claims that are often made around raw milk.
There has been some studies over the years with regards to raw milk consumption.
And I just wanted to share with you some of the science finding that the problem with dairy, why some people might be sensitive to dairy, don't digest dairy as well, is not a lactase deficiency.
It's how the milk is being processed in an unnatural way that causes people to have an aberrant post-meal response to the milk.
So it turns out that raw milk, raw whole unpasteurized milk, has a lot more biotic peptides and nutrients and also bacteria that are considered favorable compared to ultra-pasteurized milk.
And this is important to recognize.
I think many people are scared of consuming raw milk.
Oh my gosh, if I consume this, I'm going to get Listeria.
What's going to happen?
Look, people have been consuming raw milk for a very, very long time.
And as this study actually found, raw milk consumption had a protective effect on asthma, on childhood asthma, as well as allergies.
So just a whole host of claims in that short clip, right?
We have pasteurization is changing the nutrient content of milk, which makes it less healthy.
We have pasteurization is destroying enzymes and probiotic bacteria.
People with lactose intolerance can actually tolerate raw milk.
And then there's this big claim that drinking raw milk actually reduces the risk of allergies and asthma in children.
Yeah, finally, we're getting some claims here.
So should we dig into it or do we have more clips to listen to?
Okay, I want to play before we go into the claims, I want to play one more clip.
And this one I want to play because it speaks to the celebrity influence of raw milk.
So you have a lot more big celebrities starting to tout the benefits of raw milk.
And that is definitely, I think, I mean, a small driver, but definitely a driver of why raw milk consumption is increasing.
So let's hear from a celebrity who has actually never made a cameo on the show so far.
And who is that?
That's Miss Gwyneth Paltrow.
Matt, how has she not been on the show?
That is a great question.
I got to tell you, I have a dealer for my milk.
Drink raw milk and people get so mad at me.
Raw cow milk.
What are your thoughts on that?
I drink raw cream in my coffee every morning.
Raw farm, raw farm dairy.
Our schools of thought that think that drinking raw milk is better because once you process it and everything, that's when the dairy becomes harder to tolerate.
I love it.
Can we get a goop raw milk?
Let's get a goop cow.
Oh, that's good.
I thought you were suggesting that I go like milk myself in the corner for you.
Okay, that's funny.
Yeah, I just, I can't express how much I don't want there to be a goop raw milk, though.
Yes.
What is raw farm dairy?
That's a company?
That's a company.
And can we put a pin in raw farm dairy because we are definitely going to come back to that company specifically?
Okay, can't wait.
Raw farm dairy has a pin in it.
Okay, so let's get into some claims.
Can we start with the one?
Because I think the most common one is raw milk contains enzymes that get killed when we pasteurize, and those enzymes are important for digestion.
So we will all digest milk more easily if we don't pasteurize.
Yeah, let's start there.
And so to answer the question, does pasteurization destroy enzymes?
The answer is yes, but the more important question is, does that matter?
And so, yes, there are some enzymes that are destroyed when milk is heated and pasteurized.
Particularly, there's an enzyme that's called lipoprotein lipase.
And so what happens is that raw milk advocates take this fact and they say, look, like enzymes are being destroyed, pasteurization is destroying these amazing enzymes that are helping you digest milk, and that's why you feel digestive discomfort when you drink pasteurized milk.
However, they are kind of ignoring the fact that lipoprotein lipase is not needed for us to digest milk because, guess what?
We secrete our own lipase from our pancreas that helps us break down fat.
And so, this idea that we can't digest pasteurized milk as well as raw milk because of the enzymatic destruction, it just doesn't hold water.
Yeah, that's a really good point, and especially true for adults who have a functioning pancreas.
For baby calves, though, it might be important, but that's kind of not what we're talking about.
There's this distinction between milk for humans versus milk for cows.
That's right, and it's like we have to remember that our body, our pancreas, we actually secrete digestive enzymes that help us break down lots of different foods.
And so, yes, there are some enzymes destroyed when milk is pasteurized, but quite honestly, that really doesn't matter for humans in terms of how they're able to digest milk.
And arguably the most important enzyme for digesting lactose-containing milk is the lactase enzyme that we also produce in our small intestine.
Some people more than others, people with lactose intolerance, aren't producing enough of this lactase enzyme, but that's not really in milk to begin with in a meaningful quantity, right?
Like we're not talking about suddenly people with lactose intolerance are going to magically digest lactose-containing raw milk because they're just not producing that enzyme endogenously.
Yeah, and well, I think to try to answer this question, is raw milk more digestible for individuals who have lactose intolerance?
We first have to try to address the claim that raw milk has lots of probiotic beneficial bacteria in it.
And that's because raw milk advocates tend to claim that it's actually the probiotic bacteria in raw milk that are releasing lactase or creating lactase, and that's what makes it more digestible.
Okay, that's interesting, but does raw cow's milk contain a lot of probiotics?
No, it doesn't.
Okay, all right, I thought so.
I was like, it's not yogurt, it hasn't been cultured.
Okay, interesting.
Yeah, so I think we can safely say that there doesn't seem to be any difference in the digestibility between raw milk and pasteurized milk.
But I want to talk a little bit about whether or not pasteurization changes the nutritional content of milk.
Because again, this is another big claim that we're seeing, that we are destroying nature's perfect food and destroying all of the nutrients in milk with the pasteurization process.
Okay, can I try to talk this one out?
I just haven't spoken enough and I've had too much coffee.
Okay, yes, please, please talk this one out.
Think this one through.
Okay, so we're heat treating something.
You know, pasteurization, first of all, it's not boiling things to death, it's just holding it at a temperature to make it safe.
But even if it was boiling it, we're not going to change the macronutrient content.
So from a nutrition perspective, we still have the protein, the carbohydrates, and the fat in the milk.
And the minerals, the calcium in the milk, is not going to be destroyed through heat treatment.
It's still in there.
And so really we're talking about some B vitamins being degraded, probably maybe some other vitamins, some fat soluble vitamins, but probably in a pretty minor way, right?
I mean, am I on to it?
Yeah, you are right on track.
I mean, there are going to be slight decreases in the levels of vitamin B12, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin B2 after milk has been pasteurized.
But it's not like milk is a great source of all of these vitamins to begin with.
And yes, I mean, pasteurized milk might have less B2, but you know what else it also has less of?
Tuberculosis.
So I see that as a win.
Yeah, I do too.
Okay.
So nutritional content, not a huge concern, despite the worries of the late 19th century doctors.
So we're okay.
I mean, we're all pretty clear that we can get a lot of nutritional benefit from dairy if that's a food we choose to consume.
Well, and can I just tell you the other bullet point I have in my notes as a rejoinder to raw milk advocates, it is that we cook our food.
Like we can't forget that we cook our food and cooking also destroys nutrients in our food.
That's not necessarily a bad thing because we eat lots of different foods and there are many ways to get lots of vitamins and minerals.
This is another example of like don't make perfect the enemy of the good.
And cooking our food has been the answer in multiple episodes, like the lectin, phytate, antinutrient cohort that's like worrying us about eating, you know, all those foods that Dr. Gundry hates.
It's like, yeah, man, the answer is like, we cook our food that has that stuff, and then we don't have to worry so much.
And so maybe like chill out.
That's right.
Maybe like chill out.
I would love for just to be like our mantra during this episode.
It's like, just maybe chill out.
We can cook food, nutrients get destroyed.
But guess what?
That usually doesn't matter because most of us are eating lots of different foods that all contain adequate amounts of vitamins and minerals.
Yeah, and I'm probably skipping ahead, but I know you well enough to know that one of your hot takes here is if people are like really wanting access to raw milk, we should make a pathway for them to have the food that they want if they can acknowledge the risks, right?
And so we're not saying because of all this, ban raw milk from every corner of the earth, right?
Right.
No, I mean, absolutely not.
And we can talk about this a little bit more later.
But I think it's about understanding the risks, but also really kind of understanding whether or not all of these pretty grandiose health claims hold water or not.
Because one of the reasons that a lot of people are choosing to consume raw milk is because they believe and they have heard that there are all these health benefits.
And quite honestly, you know, so far as we've kind of gone through our checklist of health claims, not a lot of them really hold up.
What about asthma?
Tell me about asthma.
Yeah, that's a good question.
And so when it comes to the claim that children who drink raw milk have lower risk of developing asthma, allergies, atopy, there have been a couple observational studies that have been done.
One of the big ones that the raw milk community often cites is one called the Gabriela study.
This was a study done in rural parts of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
They looked at over 8,000 children, and the authors found that children who exclusively drank raw milk did seem to have a significantly lower risk of developing asthma and allergies.
But the problem, and what we always have to come back to, is that observational studies are great for hypothesis generation, but observational studies are not great for determining causation.
And so, while there may be a couple studies that show this kind of interesting association, you can't take anything definitive from that.
Yeah, that's a really important point.
And I mean, right away, you start to think of potential confounders, like who was breastfed and who wasn't.
Yeah, and there's also this theory that kids who grow up on farms come into contact with a wider range of bacteria and allergens compared to children who live in cities.
And so, the other confounder could be that growing up on a farm and being exposed to multiple different allergens and different bacteria also creates a more robust immune system or somehow impacts development of allergies or eczema or asthma.
Okay, this is all super helpful information, so thank you.
And I know there was some other claims we should probably hit.
And, you know, that first clip we heard, the point was that humans have been consuming and using raw milk as a treatment for thousands of years.
So I just want to hear you respond to that idea that, you know, it has value because of its longevity in human history.
I think that my response to that would be twofold.
I mean, first, many cultures actually boil their milk before drinking it.
This is something that has been done for centuries.
So there was already a heat treatment step in place for many cultures.
But I mean, the other thing is, how would you know how many people are getting sick thousands of years ago?
You could have had people getting listeria, getting tuberculosis, getting E coli.
I mean, there'd be no way to quantify that.
So I think this argument, it falls into this category of, we need to eat like our ancestors and we need to get back to our roots, that kind of ignores all of the incredible helpful technology that we have now.
I mean, we have pasteurization now.
That's a great thing.
We don't necessarily have the ability to pasteurize all foods, but we know that pasteurization works.
And so just because we didn't do something, you know, a thousand years ago, doesn't mean it's not helpful now.
Yes, that's a good way to think about it.
I mean, the idea that one day in the 1800s, we sort of have this realization that there are microorganisms in our food that potentially can cause illness, it then calls into question every cause of death prior to that moment in all of history.
And so we just don't understand what was happening with raw milk, and potentially it could have been super harmful even for Hippocrates.
That's right.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And so, you know, I feel like that kind of ancestral claim or that, well, we did it throughout history and so it's got to be fine.
To me, again, it just doesn't hold up and it misses a ton of nuance.
Well, I guess that's true unless you have like a different worldview on illness entirely.
And I think you kind of teased that earlier.
So tell me about the deniers.
Yeah, I think this was the saddest, most depressing part of the raw milk world for me is that if you go deep enough, if you follow the rabbit hole down far enough, you definitely start to see claims that question the entire mechanism of how we get sick.
And so, you know, we talked earlier about germ theory versus terrain theory.
This is happening in the 1860s, 1870s.
And in the modern world of raw milk, you have people arguing this exact same thing, which was shocking to me.
I mean, actually, probably what I'm going to have you do is read a quote from a 2011 book by a journalist and a raw milk advocate named David Gumpert.
I actually read almost all of this book to really get a sense of raw milk advocates, their belief sets, small dairy farmers.
And again, I was shocked when I came across this quote that I will have you read right now.
Quote, the different interpretations of how we become ill and how pasteurization developed underscore the reality that we don't fully understand infectious disease.
In other words, much of what we're told about illness is based as much on theory as on a full understanding of the process.
So in reviewing the history, I came to understand that Pasteur was responsible for developing not only a theory to explain the world of health and disease that permeates our modern day view of how and why people become ill, but a very special theory.
His was a theory people could easily understand and relate to.
A theory in which there was an easily identifiable villain, the germs.
That is poor writing, my friend.
Listen, this was not a well-written book.
This book was kind of an extension of his blog and man, could you tell, it was hard to get through.
But you can see this illustrates this idea that we don't really even know how infectious disease works.
And maybe pathogens aren't necessarily causing disease.
And so after I read this book, I actually went on to David Gumpers' blog, which is called The Complete Patient.
And I saw this same sentiment repeated over and over.
So I'm going to read you one more quote from the blog.
It says, quote, health is about the strength of the immune system, not about bugs.
That is why pathogens do not make 99% of healthy people sick.
The bacteriophobia in this country is beyond stupid.
It is causing the sheep people in this country to eat sterilized foods and further depress their immune systems.
Pathogens can only be pathogens if the host is weak.
Doesn't anyone get that?
Oh, gosh.
All right.
This is...
How much of the show is people struggling to embrace complicated gray area with lack of scientific understanding?
Well, and also, this is a direct pipeline to you're not taking care of yourself.
And if you are only making the right health or nutrition or exercise choices, then you wouldn't be getting sick.
And this is why you don't have enough energy or feel well.
So it becomes this personal responsibility dogma around health that is incredibly callous and to me, really problematic.
Yeah, this was...
I hate to talk about it.
This is like the Aaron Rodgers interview about why he's not wearing a mask.
It's like this idea that if you are a temple of health and everything's perfect within your body, then you can avoid disease and you have nothing to worry about, and therefore we shouldn't protect anybody else.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And so that is the other pretty strong undercurrent to this debate.
That is nutrition and science adjacent, but that is also to me really concerning.
I got really worried reading all of this because I think if you fundamentally don't believe in germs or don't believe that pathogens make people ill, then it really becomes hard to have a scientific conversation.
Yeah, and I mean, there's some truth to the fact that we do need to challenge our immune system to make it stronger.
But there are certain things we do to walk this line where we're not losing the immunocompromised or the children of this world because we're not protecting ourselves enough.
And, you know, this black and white thinking of, oh, either you think of germs as the villain, or you think of germs as, you know, come on in and invade me so I become stronger.
It's like there's so much gray area that's being missed here.
I know, I know, I know.
And it really makes for a very, very polarized conversation, right?
You have scientific organizations on one side, and you have raw milk advocates on the other side, and really, really hard to find common ground.
If you don't believe in the germ theory of disease, or if you're really embracing some of these health claims that are being made.
Absolutely.
You know, it occurs to me that listeners might be thinking, oh, well, you're comparing the swill milk of Brooklyn to pasteurized milk.
But now in, you know, 2024, the year of our Lord, we have small farms that are trying to practice really great hygiene.
And so is drinking raw milk from a little family farm that's doing their best less safe than drinking pasteurized milk?
Can you speak to that?
Yeah, that's a great place to head next.
And I think that's a really excellent thing to point out, Matt, which is that we are definitely not comparing the raw milk of today to the swill milk of the 1800s.
I watched a lot of videos from, you know, made by small dairy farmers, and they were trying to demonstrate how, you know, clean their farms were and how sterile their practices were.
And so I think a lot of these small dairy farmers are trying really, really hard to make raw milk as safe as possible.
The problem is that there are just so many moments in the collection of raw milk or milk in general that can introduce bacteria into milk.
I mean, first of all, milk is an excellent growth medium for bacteria.
You have cows that are, I mean, you know, not to be too gross, that are defecating kind of inches away from where milk is being collected.
You have pathogens or bacteria on the animal's skin.
You have human beings who could have bacteria on their clothes, right, or on their hands.
And so I think a lot of these farmers are trying really hard to keep these practices as clean and sterile as possible.
It's just really hard to do with milk collection.
I actually watched, you know, some videos, I read some studies where they analyzed the bacteria content of raw milk versus pasteurized milk.
And the number of bacteria in raw milk is significantly more than pasteurized milk.
And by significant, I mean, the number of pathogens or potential pathogens in raw milk is thousands or tens of thousand times more than in pasteurized milk.
And so does that automatically mean you're going to get sick when you drink raw milk?
No.
But it does mean that you are more likely to get sick from raw milk versus pasteurized milk.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And so not everyone who drinks raw milk is going to get sick, but we're just creating the safety step with pasteurization.
Yeah, that's right.
And I mean, again, there are so many comebacks from raw milk advocates to this type of data.
You know, for example, they will say things like, well, you know, there are a hundred people who die in the US every year from eating oysters.
And only three people have died in the last decade from drinking raw milk.
And so raw milk isn't that dangerous or risky.
And, you know, to that, I would say, but we're not comparing raw milk to oysters.
We're comparing raw milk to pasteurized milk and evaluating the risk from that perspective.
I mean, of course, it's true that all foods have the potential to make us sick.
Spinach, veggies, you know, beef, chicken, eggs, lots of foods can cause foodborne illness.
But what we're really trying to evaluate or compare is raw milk versus pasteurized milk.
Yeah, and I mean, if you go to a busy restaurant in the Boston seaport, people consume about 3,000 oysters a minute.
And there's a very small population of people who are passionately chugging raw milk out there.
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, the other thing is that raw milk advocates will often say, well, but there are outbreaks from pasteurized milk too.
And has this happened?
Yes, there have been foodborne illness outbreaks from pasteurized milk.
But guess what?
That's often been when the pasteurization process has failed.
So the milk has actually not been heated to temp appropriately, meaning the milk then is just raw milk.
Okay.
So can we come back to the Gwyneth clip about raw farm dairy?
So what was going on there?
Can we take the pin out of that one?
Yeah, yeah.
Let's take the pin out of that.
And so with the increased interest in raw milk, and with more and more people drinking raw milk in the US, you have more foodborne illness outbreaks associated with raw milk.
So we just had, in February of this year, the largest foodborne illness outbreak associated with dairy that's happened in the last decade in the US.
A hundred and seventy-one people got sick from a salmonella outbreak, and remember when Gwyneth in that clip said, Oh yeah, raw farm dairy.
Well, this foodborne illness outbreak was at raw farm dairy.
Oh wow.
So is that company even in business anymore?
Oh yeah.
No, it's still in business.
Actually, this company has been the source of several pretty large foodborne illness outbreaks.
It is still in business, though it'll be interesting to see what happens after this most recent outbreak.
But no, I mean, we are seeing more and more outbreaks of illness associated with raw milk dairy, and that makes sense, right?
With more people producing it, more people consuming it, you're going to see more people getting sick from it.
And I know we don't have to go into the crazy legal system here, but I know that this is a weird food to try to get your hands on.
Can I just maybe ask you as an example, like in Massachusetts, can I go buy raw milk?
Yeah, you could.
It's very state specific.
It's quite honestly, the legal landscape of raw milk is kind of all over the place.
In Massachusetts, you are able to buy raw milk, not from a lot of different places.
Dairy farmers have to have specific licenses.
And so there would be maybe a handful of farms in Massachusetts where you could purchase raw dairy, but then there are other states where it's actually illegal to sell raw milk.
So very, very state specific.
Okay, so let's think about what are your high level takeaways, your hot takes now that you've told us the story and caught us up on the signs?
I think, you know, it's hard because typically on this show, I mean, people probably listening know I tend to be of the mind that I think people get to do whatever they want with food.
They should feed themselves in whatever way feels good, and they should put foods into their bodies that feel good.
And so there's definitely this big part of me that thinks, well, you know, if an adult human wants to take the risk of purchasing milk from a farm that's raw and consuming it, that should be something that they get to do.
I think my problem, Matt, becomes when we start to see this increase in children being given raw milk, and as a consequence, more children getting ill and sick from drinking raw milk.
Yeah, that's a really good point.
We gotta protect kids from the potential risks here, but I agree with you.
I think that people should be able to access raw milk if they understand the risks.
It just sounds like a lot of people don't understand the risks.
And on the other side of it, they actually think that they're getting massive health improvements from avoiding pasteurization.
Well, and, I mean, to me, the raw milk debate epitomizes the dangerous pitfalls of relying solely on anecdotal evidence.
One of the best comparisons I heard somebody make was it was actually from a mother whose child got very sick from drinking raw milk.
And she said, you could drive around without a seatbelt for your whole life.
And if you never get into an accident, then you believe that it's really not that beneficial to wear a seatbelt or not.
And the same holds true for me when I think about the raw milk debate.
I mean, you could drink raw milk your whole life, and you have plenty of people on the internet talking about how they drink raw milk growing up, and they were just fine.
And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, you can be fine, but then you can also end up incredibly sick.
And so the pitfalls of anecdotal evidence really come into play for me in this debate.
Yeah, absolutely.
I like the analogy, and I think you could take it a step further.
And that person not wearing a seatbelt starts to make the case that they're a better driver because they don't have a seatbelt on, so they're able to protect themselves more acutely.
They're winding through traffic more safely than everybody else, and they got into an accident, and their injury just made them stronger.
And so people take this to crazy lengths to try to defend what they think is true.
That's right.
Yeah, that's right.
And like I mentioned earlier, raw milk has really become this symbol.
And so the other thing that is concerning to me within this debate is that there's a lot of pushback and mistrust against government bodies that are trying to keep our food safe, like the FDA.
There's a lot of pushback against the science and scientific organizations.
And so, you know, it's quite possible that if a raw milk advocate were listening even to this podcast episode, they wouldn't believe a word I said about the science because there's just this inherent mistrust of individuals in the scientific establishment.
And that trend is incredibly worrisome to me because you have a lot of super bright individuals, health care professionals, scientists, who really are working so hard to keep people safe and trying to give people the best possible information.
And so when all of that gets called into question, I mean, again, that's just very concerning to me.
Yeah.
And you said raw milk's become a bit of a symbol of, you know, the problems with government overstep or the legal system.
So is it an actual symbol?
Like, do you put some kind of visual representation of raw milk as like a bumper sticker or like a political t-shirt?
Yeah.
I definitely saw a lot of videos, commentary of people drinking raw milk and saying things like, ah, tastes like freedom.
Or I saw, there was this whole kind of debacle where raw milk has really become embraced by the far right, and they made a t-shirt that said, got raw milk?
But then they put a bull on the front of the t-shirt.
I think they kind of incorrectly or they didn't remember that bulls don't produce milk.
It's actually the female cows.
Yeah, so, I mean, there are lots of ways that raw milk has become very, very emblematic for, you know, this needing to preserve traditional food practices or, you know, protecting food sovereignty or getting the government out of our food.
It is very emblematic.
I wonder if it's fun to be so defensive all the time.
Probably not.
Yeah, yeah, I'm just curious as a world view, if that's like, if you wake up in the morning with like, I got a mission today.
I'm going to tell somebody about the dangers of pasteurization.
Maybe, maybe it's fun.
I don't think it's, it seems exhausting to me.
I mean, being on some of these blogs and in some of these like subreddits that I've been existing in, it just sounds exhausting.
And I guess the last thing I would say, probably my last hot take here is that you have lots of pro raw milk organizations, the Raw Milk Institute, the Weston A. Price Foundation, really making raw milk out to be this miracle food that is going to cure your child of asthma, and it will help your autoimmune condition.
And that's the other piece that I get very concerned about, and that bothers me.
And so yes, I want people to have autonomous choice in the foods they get to eat, but we should also be pushing back against and making it very clear that there is just not evidence or data to support the claims being made by a lot of these groups and a lot of these organizations.
Absolutely.
All right.
Okay.
So Matt, after all of this, after this whole conversation, my question to you is, would you drink raw milk?
Yes or no?
Ooh, yes, I would.
Yes, I would.
I would try it.
I would go into a little farm.
I would make friends with somebody.
I'd meet the cow if they have time for it.
And then I would try it.
Yeah.
Am I going to make it part of my routine?
Definitely not.
I don't want to take that risk on, but I'll survive a little listeria outbreak.
I'll be all right.
Jen, I don't wear seat belts.
And let me tell you why.
I love how I just literally gave you this seat belt analogy and you're like, I don't care.
I don't care.
Bring on the tuberculosis.
Bring it on.
I'm proud to be an American.
You have a cow share you're not telling me about, don't you?
Nutrition For Mortals is a production of Oceanside Nutrition, a real life nutrition counseling practice in beautiful Newburyport, Massachusetts, where we provide individual nutrition counseling, both in person and online via telehealth.
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