With Raw Farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, Mark McAfee has capitalized on a once-fringe product that’s been thrust into the mainstream in recent years and backed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I’ve put a couple kids in the hospital, and they have been sick, but they recovered,” McAfee acknowledged before my visit. “But here’s the thing: I’m a pioneer. And I’m going against the grain here. I’m climbing a mountain they say you can’t climb.”

…

“We catch these things and divert the milk immediately,” McAfee said of the pathogens.

I assumed that after diverting batches, the farm discarded them.

Later that day, I learned otherwise.

“We have a red-flag system here, where if there’s anything that gets really out of whack, they can immediately tag the milk, and it doesn’t go to anything but cheese,” McAfee told me. “Because, you know, cheese is resistant to pathogens.”

Research has shown that raw cheese is not, in fact, resistant to pathogens; while aging can mitigate some risk, harmful bacteria can still survive the usual 60-day maturation process.

  • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
    4·
    3 hours ago

    It’s when the milk is homogenized, after the cream is separated that the fat chains are shattered and the gut absorbs the fats, instead of passing them through. You won’t get the shits from whole raw milk and as you get older and you can consume cream and butter and it doesn’t cause digestive problems.

    I think this is an old misunderstanding about homogenized milk. The fat chains aren’t “shattered”, the globules of fat are just dispersed into smaller droplets that become surrounded by casein so they don’t reform.

    This leads to faster and easier digestion because you have increased the surface area of the fats and the proteins from the solids. Now that doesn’t mean the fats in unhomogenized milk arent digested, it just takes longer. If the fats from unhomogenized milk would "pass through without eventually being absorbed, then things like butter wouldn’t be as bad for you as it is.

    The rest of it, that cooking depletes nutrient quality, it’s baloney. It’s the homogenization that causes more degradation of the milk quality than anything.

    Again, this is a long debated but incorrect understanding of homogenized milk. Homogenization is a simple mechanical process that does not diminish the nutritional value of milk. What it does do is speed up the digestion of milk, which may be why you felt fuller for longer when drinking unhomogenized milk when you were younger. It’s actually easier and quicker to digest, and the smaller fat particles actually make it easier for vitamin d to attach to it. The homogenization process also makes the proteins form softer curds in the stomach making it easier to digest.

    1950’s “skim milk” was considered unfit for human consumption because it had been stripped of most of the milkfats and solids. (which, honestly, the solids are gross to those who’ve not encountered them…)

    Skim milk isn’t created through the homogenization process, it’s done through a separate process called centrifugal separation.

    I spent some time on my uncle’s dairy farm up in ohio. A lot of what you are talking about was a pretty common understanding from some of the old hands about homogenization when I was younger.