The Untold Story of Milk
February 9th, 2007Oh man, I can’t wait to get this: The Untold Story of Milk: Green Pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Products by Ron Schmid.
Via: Amazon Reviewer:
Milk is bad for you. No mammal needs milk after being weaned. Raw milk is dirty, dangerous, and a major health hazard. Only pasteurized milk is clean and only ultra-pasteurized or irradiated milk is really safe. Pasteurization was created to make the milk supply safe. Raw milk has no greater health benefits than pasteurized milk. People want pasteurized milk, and prefer it over raw.
Supposedly educated people will tell you these things and be dead serious. Unfortunately, they are dead WRONG on every single point above, and the health of tens of millions suffer greatly for their ignorance or intentional deceit.
Ron Schmid is one of the most important proponents of traditional diets. His first book, Traditional Foods Are Your Best Medicine, is the best introduction to the nutritional research of Weston Price currently available. With this new book, he once again proves his voice is a beacon of intelligence and clarity in a sea of disinformation and corruption.
This book is a scholarly, well researched and documented look into the trials and tribulations of milk use in society. While its primary focus is on the raw milk issue and the scientific and political shenanigans surrounding the milk business, it also delves into the related issues of the history of milk use and traditional diets.
There is a great deal of information in this book. Schmid traces the history of milk use from the distant past to current times. He cites considerable research and published works regarding the healing power and nutritional value of milk from healthy animals. He examines in detail the use of the raw milk cure, milk in traditional diets, and the political/economic battles around milk production in this country during the last century. An immense amount of hard work went into the writing of this book, and it shows. (Good job, Ron.)
Schmid unmasks the unscientific propaganda in the raw milk debate and gives the clearest and most objective report to date on the real science and history of this issue. His analysis of the research is in-depth and thorough, and his presentation of the information is calm and balanced. This stands somewhat in contrast to the other major work on the issue, The Milk Book, by William Douglass, which contains some factual errors, suffers from many typos, and can come across as snide and derogatory when it is intended to be humorous. (It is still quite worth reading, however, and I recommend it as well.)
Schmid’s book is level-headed, comprehensive and powerful. He addresses all the issues of the raw milk debate in detail; disease, cleanliness, quality, politics, economics, nutrition, and health attributes. He adroitly dismantles the lies, propaganda, incompetence, and villany of the powers that seek to deny the American people one of the most potent health foods on the planet, and addresses the science and historical facts in an irrefutable manner. This is currently the definitive work on milk. It is difficult to believe that one could do a better job. It is an easy 5 stars.
There are many lies and urban myths about milk, and the real history of the milk industry is every bit as tawdry as most other histories of corporate interference in our lives. The scare tactics and other, considerably less ethical, manipulations of industry and of government agencies who are too often the bought dogs of industry, are shown to frequently be extreme distortions or outright lies. The behavior of some of the agencies and people described in the book is just about the strongest argument for capital punishment I have ever seen. (And I oppose capital punishment!) It amazes me that such people are allowed to walk the streets, much less wield such unchecked power over the health and lives of the citizens who trust them and pay their salaries. Bad dog. Bad, bad dog.
Every statement in the opening paragraph of this review has been proven false. Raw milk from clean, healthy, grass-fed cows is not only healthy, it has nutritional properties that could help alleviate many illnesses that currently plague our society. Even one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic used raw milk therapy to cure serious illness. (But you cannot patent milk. At least, not yet.)
It is vital in this day and age for people to take charge of their own health, and to do that they must have good information. If you want to know the facts about milk and the history of the milk industry in this country, get this book. It is a wonderful antidote to the urban myths and lies about milk that pervade our culture.
Related: Raw Milk and Lifting the Veil that has Been Pulled Over Our Eyes
Research Credit: Robert
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Thanks Kevin, I’ve always thought that raw milk was better for you and perfectly fine. As a teenager I used to work on a goat farm, and I drank a lot of raw goat milk at that time.
These so-called experts can sure mess with the mind so much that it becomes hard to remember which way is up.
For interested parties in Sydney and perhaps other cities in Australia: Some health food shops sell raw milk for ‘cosmetic purposes’. I think the brand is ‘Cleopatra’ something. Don’t know what it’s like on skin but it tastes fantastic.
I made a comment on the previous raw milk thread, based on my own studies of the same subject matter over the last several years, reflecting a POV identical to the reviewer of Schmid’s book.
The gist was/is: there is no clearer view available of the long-standing incest between industrial interests and the various alphabet agencies than the perspective offered via a huge laundry list of individual cases spanning the history of food regulation over the last century.
I’ll leave the gory details to Schmid’s book, as it deserves much greater sales numbers than it will likely ever achieve, and I don’t want to steal his thunder. If you’d like a taste and you’re a self-motivated research type, start with the back story of the Alta Dena dairy.
My farm-born and raised foreign wife has personal experience with that one, as she was a grocery store manager in southern California at the back end of the struggle.
Sadly, the regulators tactics [dirty tricks] haven’t changed one iota since then. In fact, it serves as a highly revealing clue as to where their true interests lay.
Nowadays, having pounded large farmers and dairy operations into a profitable industrial shape, they pursue the small holder and farmer seeking independence from the system, effectively declaring the foundations of many a traditional diet illegal. That’s just plain wrong on so many different levels it buggers the imagination.
By the way Kevin, we’re also going to acquire a copy of Schmid’s new book, being familiar with his work in the WAPF’s “Wise Traditions” journal over the last few years.
I’ve been holding off ordering a small but growing list of items (via Amazon) until I was able to ask you directly:
Does the Amazon referral cash program also work for items ordered via Amazon’s “other” sites?
(amazon.de, co.uk, et al.)
All I need to know is whether clicking through ‘.com’ to ‘.de’ and then ordering will still result in the same benefits for the Farmlet. If not, perhaps you have a referral number (or similar) to serve the same purpose?
Kevin
I really appreciate your views on this, but I’d like to add something to the fray: I think everyone should be aware of the needs of their own bodies. Not everyone can tolerate milk or milk products. I have suffered from several problems since childhood and finally culminated in high blood pressure in my late twenties. Young, thin, did’t drink, did’t smoke. No regular physician could figure it out. Of course, wanted to put me on meds which I refused. Spent years doing the natural thing with no results. Finally, three years ago I went to a naturopath who did blood work to test for food sensitivities and I cannot tolerate any grasses- no wheat, rice, cane sugar, molasses, etc. All my life-long problems completely disappeared after I stopped eating grass-related foods. A friend of ours had open-heart surgery and he says he just cannot tolerate meat. I think every body is different. My daughter loathes milk, she says from having to drink goat’s milk as a child 🙂 Nonetheless, I believe it’s not that everyone should drink milk to be healthy. It’s probably great for some people and not so great for others. The best thing is to stop believing the only way to health is to listen to the medical community or this diet is “it” or that even that an herb or vitamin can save you. Just stop and listen to your body and figure out what it needs or cannot tolerate.
I can think of better things to sip on than puss laced animal secretions.
Tamryn, I’m not sure exactly where your comment was aimed but I think one of the points behind this whole post is pus is not something you have to worry about when you’re drinking milk from happy, grass-fed cows that aren’t being pumped with growth hormones and antibiotics.
Kevin,
I have been meaning to ask you the exact same question as Doug above, re: amazon.co.jp.
Does the affiliate clickthrough credit you if I carry on and purchase through the .co.jp site?
If so, I will definitely make all my amazon purchases via cryptogon.
To all the folks posting thus far (except the troll) and especially ‘mtlouie’…
There are some crucial distinctions between milk as produced by nature in a healthy, happy state and the industrially sterilized product that is even basic pasteurized milk. Most folks who experience bowel leakage and lactose issues and so on are dealing with the repercussions of ingesting pasteurized — that is, dead and damaged — dairy products. Homogenization adds another entire layer of problems.
Living dairy from a responsible local farmer, in many different properly prepared states, offers a pantheon of benefits. Your daily eats will never have tasted better, let me assure you all from four years’ accumulated personal experience.
To anyone who is interested in learning the actual differences between milk produced by the likes of the young ladies of the Farmlet and that trucked around in large stainless steel tanker trailers, Ron Schmid’s new book here is JUST the place to get the whole subject in one big wallop.
To the spud-gunning troll named Tamryn; finish your reading homework, THEN formulate a coherent answer in essay or litany form. I’m sorry, but spelling WILL also be graded.
After learning the qualitative differences between proper fats versus false (literally enginereed) fats and the distinctions between live and sterilized, processed foods, another interesting topic is regional variation of the primitive diet.
This is precisely where Weston Price fits into the picture. His cranial and maxillary studies of several last-generation primitive populations prior to and even during their exposure to the processed diet are at a minimum revealing.
Regional adaption is as necessary with dietary and nutritional choices as with clothing. Inuits never domesticated a single cow. Micronesians don’t have easy access to seal blubber. And yet many primitive societies who worked out local sources of the proper human building blocks, from kefir to cod liver oil.
It makes me sad to ponder how much basic wisdom of life and living has been forgotten in such a short span of time. We the industrialized brats have been coddled into a conformity of convenience, into leaving behind SO many simple ways to survive in so few generations.
I’m not talking skinning bears. I’m talking good old DIY skill, talent and pride. Finding out what your own two hands are capable of then expanding from there. Escaping what can only be described as a scary over-dependence on the hydrocarbon economy for the most basic of needs.
It takes time and seeking and learning and all that sort of hyperbole, so better we ignore the pus-fixated negations of the ill-informed and each get friggin’ busy on our garden patch, no?
Doug
I’m not sure if you’re chastising or not, but you are completely wrong in your assessment. Yes, I realize you are talking about UN-pastuerized milk. Duh. My husband’s father grew up on a dairy farm and could not tolerate milk. Totally unpasteurized. Again, people should understand their bodies.
And, since I spent twenty years of my life milking goats, growing almost all the food that went into my family, canning, sewing, raising ducks, chickens, eggs, bottle feeding lambs, calves, building our own log house, etc. etc. I’m not speaking out of complete ignorance.
By the way, I’ve read Weston Price extensively. I don’t disagree with everything; neither do I agree. From my intuition of the subject, it’s no different from anyone else who is adament that they are completely right and everyone else is completely wrong. I appreciate that they are trying to get people away from factory produced food, but to make a sweeping statement that something is good for everyone is completely contradictory to any ancient medicine you can study. Herbalism, Chinese medicine, etc. A body needs different things at different times. Above all, in order for any health regimen to work, one must BELIEVE it is going to work. Mind-body medicine far outweighs someone giving a rote formula they believe is the answer. LISTEN TO YOUR BODY.
There are a few things that can be transmitted via raw milk from cows to humans. One of the nastier ones is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O157:H7
One important point is that very few of these colis are sufficient to infect a human.
Before the industrialization of milk production this was no big deal, as the milk from one infected cow only reached relatively few people. So now and then a few people here and there got sick from infected milk.
Now the milk from one infected cow is transported in huge containers and mixed with the milk of thousands of others before beeing sold to thousands of customers. That means we are talking about several thousand humans with bloody diarrhea – in the same region on the same day. For the milk industry it is absolutely sensible to pasteurize their products.
Not only do they destroy our milk to ‘protect’ us, they also inject us with mercury (Thimerosal) to ‘protect’ our children some more.
http://www.newstarget.com/011764.html
“Thimerosal is the preservative of choice for vaccine manufacturers. First introduced by Eli Lilly and Company in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the company began selling it as a preservative in vaccines in the 1940s. Thimerosal contains 49.6 percent mercury by weight and is metabolized or degraded into ethylmercury and thiosalicylate. Mercury, or more precisely, ethylmercury, is the principle agent that kills contaminants. Unfortunately, mercury also kills much more than that.”
Dennis said:
“For interested parties in Sydney and perhaps other cities in Australia: Some health food shops sell raw milk for ‘cosmetic purposes’. I think the brand is ‘Cleopatra’ something. Don’t know what it’s like on skin but it tastes fantastic.”
Here it is:
Cleopatra’s Bath Milk and Body Cream
Dairy Farmers: Trevor & Sheryl Mahaffey (07) 5486-5613
4 Webster Rd Goomboorian Via Gympie, Qld 4570
mahaffeyfamily@ hotmail.com
If you live in Melbourne, you can get it from Organic Wholefoods. There are 2 stores – one in Lygon Street Brunswick East, the other is in Smith Street Fitzroy. Think there’s one in Daylesford, too.