Pediatricians, Brain Fats, Formula, and Raw Milk

To AGG:

The lack of information evident in your pediatrician’s emails are typical of the standard medical approach to “health care.” What is most typical, even predictable is

* the final goal of every argument being the sale of drugs and a lifetime of dependency on organized medicine.

You can’t really blame them: it’s how they’re trained. It’s all they know.

The reason they don’t cite sources is that they don’t know any. Ask them for sources, and they change the subject. It’s a reflex; it’s their training. [Mendelsohn 31] They are trained to believe that the medical degree makes them experts on every subject and able to speak with absolute authority, with no further studying after graduation. The danger here is, they don’t know their own literature — they rarely know what the real medical experts in their own field have published in legitimate medical journals. And that is what we will look at.

From the “patients” they expect one thing: compliance. Unquestioning loyalty and trust in the medical model. Challenge that at your peril.

WEAK, HELPLESS, AND INADEQUATE

Pediatricians are the most dangerous of all. Robert Mendelsohn, MD, an authority with impeccable credentials in medicine, had this to say about pediatricians in general:

[ (31) p 93, 105]

Obstetricians convince mothers that pregnancy is a serious medical condition, for which the mother herself is ill-equipped and inadequately prepared. Pediatricians continue this salesmanship of helplessness into the next phase: now infancy is a serious medical condition for which the mother herself is ill-equipped and inadequately prepared, etc.
Creating mothers as obedient consumers, in the image and likeness of the corporate mentality – that’s the game. How all this came about is beyond our present discussion but can be explored further in the chapter The Doors of Perception at www.thedoctorwithin.com and in Mendelsohn’s 2 books How To Raise a Healthy Child In Spite of Your Doctor and Confessions of a Medical Heretic. No parent should try to raise a child without a thorough reading of Mendelsohn’s 2 books.

Our present discussion will deal with some fundamental issues about

* raw milk

VACCINES

The vaccine topics are covered in The Sanctity of Human Blood. Even if vaccines did what they’re advertised to do, they should never be given before 2 years of age. A 4 month old infant simply has not had enough time to build defenses that can prevent the additives in vaccines from damaging the formative systems, especially

* the blood
* the digestive tract
* the brain
* the immune system

BUILDING THE BRAIN

These systems are struggling to organize themselves for the very first time into smooth-running programs that must last for a lifetime. [(1) Guyton p 426 ff, 565 ff, Colborn (2)] The way each system evolves is mostly unknown to medical science. Terms like “the wisdom of the body” or “genetics” or “nature” or “evolution” have been used to describe how the body knows exactly how to assemble and organize its new operating systems.
An excellent analogy is buying a brand new computer. Until you install an operating system, like Windows 10 or High Sierra, the screen is blank.

It takes a certain amount of time to install the operating system onto the hard drive. Only after the operating system is installed may other programs be loaded in.

So imagine that as you are going through the install process of Windows 7 in your brand new computer, you spill some battery acid onto the keyboard. Or perhaps some iron filings or silicon dust — some contaminant that gets into the brain of the computer at the exact time when you’re installing its very first operating system. What is likely to happen? Corruption of the hard drive. Which may cause incorrect loading and operation of any subsequent program you ever decide to add later on. Permanent defects which cannot be repaired.

This is exactly what is going on in the formative infant brain. The infant is born with about 70% of its brain cells. By age one, the infant brain will contain some 100 billion neurons, which must last a lifetime. [Schmidt p 104 (3)] So in the first year of life, at least 60% of the baby’s total energy is expended growing the brain. [(7) Farquaharson p 198] Nature prioritizes: if you want to survive, first get your brain and nervous system up and running. Make it past age one, then we’ll talk.

So in addition to adding that other 30% of brain cells in the first year, the brain is also developing its individual sections, each of which has its own specialty: hearing, memory, sight, intuition, apperception, balance, coordination, judgment, etc. [ (1) Guyton p 565] The sections of the brain form from the inside outward, like layers of an onion. Of critical importance is the formation of the connectors between the individual sections, which are called interneurons.

These sections of the brain must develop at certain precise weeks of age. And so must the interneuron connectors between the sections. Windows of opportunity. [2] For many of these tasks, the brain only gets one shot, one opportunity. Miss it, and the hard wiring will never be correct. The brain might figure out some secondary patch job later, but it will never operate the way it was supposed to.

STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

This fragile, unknown universe within the forming infant brain is exceedingly delicate. It is literally struggling its way into existence. If left to itself for the first two years, nature pulls most of us through. But here’s the problem. We’ve stopped leaving the brain to itself, in this most critical period. First with the additives in vaccines like aluminum, mercury, formaldehyde, phenol, radiator fluids – proven beyond controversy to be neurotoxic (nerve-destroying). [(16) Blaylock]

As these toxins are allowed to freely circulate in the blood environment of the brain, nerve cells are killed. Half-formed nerve cells stop forming. Connectors never get made. Worse, the damage is random, because every infant brain is unique, developing at its own pace, like flowers in a field. There is no predicting when the damage will show up. Maybe the child drops dead, or goes into shock, or turns autistic 2 weeks later, or can’t learn to read at age 5, or has “ADD” in adolescence, or Parkinson’s at 28, or any other neurologic disorder. Or maybe is simply a little dumber than his parents. Over and over and over.
No amount of medical propaganda can obscure these basic laws of human physiology.

MY KID WILL MAKE IT

I know, I know – you don’t think all this is a big risk. You think your child will be the one who makes it through OK… By 2004 USA, 1 child in 6 had a neurodevelopmental disorder! [17, Geier] The CDC itself estimates that only 10% of vaccine injuries ever get reported. And there have been over 200,000 serious adverse reactions to vaccines accounted for. [19] No pediatrician may talk about these statistics.

BREASTFEEDING VS FORMULA

The second way that the infant brain is frequently handicapped happens when less than optimum nutrition is offered to the child. Again, in the delicate formation of the normal brain, certain raw materials must be abundantly present.

Most informed doctors agree that by far the best way to make sure the infant gets optimum nutrition is breastfeeding. As long as the mother has a good diet herself, there is no food or formula known to man that can improve on mother’s milk during the first year of life. Starting with colostrum, with its natural antibiotics and irreplaceable immune building properties, and then proceeding to the normal milk, with the exact balance of long chain fatty acids, proteins, vitamins, enzymes, and minerals…

Mothers milk is the gold standard. To go from mother’s milk to formula is at the very least a huge drop in overall quality of nutrition, which all by itself significantly raises the chances of incomplete brain development. [(3) Schmidt p 107] Tons of studies back this up.

One of the top experts in EFAs is certainly Barry Sears, MD. From his website [23], we find this very enlightening comparison of breast milk vs. formula:

COMPARISON OF HUMAN MILK AND FORMULA

BREAST MILK

* Rich in brain-building omega 3s, namely DHA and AA
* Automatically adjusts to infant’s needs; levels decline as baby gets older
* Rich in cholesterol
* Nearly completely absorbed
* Contains fat-digesting enzyme, lipase
* More completely absorbed;
* Lactoferrin for intestinal health
* Lysozyme, an antimicrobial
* Rich in protein components
* Rich in growth factors
* Contains sleep-inducing proteins
* Rich in lactose
* Rich in living white blood cells, millions per feeding
* Rich in immunoglobulins
* Better absorbed minerals, especially zinc, and calcium
* Iron is 50 to 75 percent absorbed.
* Contains more selenium (an antioxidant)
* Rich in digestive enzymes, such as lipase and amylase
* Rich in many hormones: thyroid, prolactin, oxytocin, and others

FORMULA

Harder-to-digest casein curds
No DHA
Doesn’t adjust to infant’s needs
No cholesterol
Not completely absorbed
No lipase
Poorly absorbed,
No lactoferrin, or only a trace
No lysozyme
Deficient or low in proteins
Deficient in growth factors
Infants may be allergic to formula protein.
No live white blood cells – or any other cells. Dead food has less immunological benefit.
Few immunoglobulins and most are the wrong kind
Minerals poorly absorbed
Iron is 5 to 10 percent absorbed
Little selenium
Processing kills digestive enzymes
Processing kills hormones, which are not human to begin with

Digestive enzymes promote intestinal health. Hormones contribute to the overall biochemical balance and well-being of baby.
The superiority of mother’s milk over formula is not really controversial.
Fat is the most important nutrient in breastmilk. Insufficient cholesterol and DHA, vital for growing brains and bodies, may predispose a child to adult heart and central nervous system diseases.

BABY’S BRAIN: SURVIVAL OF THE FATTEST

The infant’s brain is made up mostly of fats — good fats like DHA and AA. Fats make up the structure of the nerve cells, the insulation between them, the connections, and the support structure. Without these critical fatty acids, there is no normal brain. With inadequate supplies of them, there is defective brain formation.
This discussion will limit itself to the most fundamental brain fats necessary for proper formation of the infant brain. It’s a very complex subject, and a great deal is actually pretty well established by research.
But before we can talk about brain fats, it’s important to say just a little bit about

FATS IN GENERAL

In the omnipresent Disneyland of Nutritional Disinformation that surrounds us, a primary topic of nutrition that is worth looking into is fats. Specifically, good fats.
With the endless efforts of everyday media to inculcate the look of the emaciated young MTV hooker as the epitome of female beauty, fats are the Devil. Fat is bad. Fats clog the heart and make us ordinary. Worse yet, fats equals fat. Fats cause cellulite and love handles and spare tires and make us accept substandard life partners. And low-paying jobs. And cars with dents in them.
So we have the Low Fat/ Non Fat obsession – low fat milk, nonfat salad dressing, butter, yogurt, cheese, breads, pasta, beer, coffee creamer, ice cream, meats, chips, etc. – you know the drill. Instills into our minds the unstated falsehood: that the problem with these foods was too much fat. Remove the fat – remove the problem. Now they’re perfect foods, right?

The irony with this campaign against fats is that the individual who eats only fat-free foods generally ends up as fat deficient. And therefore unhealthy. And often as not, overweight.
Before we run on in a fever, let’s back up to the beginning.
Human food comes in 3 main forms

carbohydrates

Three legs of the stool. Take away any one of them and the result is imbalance. Suboptimal nutrition. Organ dysfunction. Brainfog. Accelerated aging.
So we need fats. Every day. But they must be the right ones. And the right fats for human nutrition are certain fatty acids.
We’re not getting into all this here though, because we’re trying to limit this discussion to fats that are essential to the development of the baby’s brain. If you really want to continue the fat in general discussion, kindly go to the Good Fats chapter at thedoctorwithin.com

FATS IN THE INFANT BRAIN

Beginning with the fetal brain, certain long-chain fatty acids must be present in the mother’s diet and blood in order for the fetal brain to have the building blocks it needs. Long-chain just means many carbon atoms strung together. The reason all these fats are required is that the baby’s brain is almost all fat!

The two most important fatty acids for the brain are DHA and AA. Docosahexaenoic acid and Arachidonic acid. DHA is an omega-3 and AA is an omega-6. But again we’re not going into that here either.
The important thing to know is what these 2 essential fatty acids do:

DHA

AA
– develops brain cells

Those functions seem fairly important, wouldn’t you say? Up until one year of age there is no substitute for these 2 fatty acids. The infant’s brain approaches optimum development in direct proportion to the constant availability of DHA and AA. In her very thorough review of the medical literature on brain fats, Dr Margaret Lahey clearly links EFA deficiency in the infant with ADD, dyslexia, and autism, citing dozens of medical sources. [6] Again, this part of the discussion is beyond controversy.

A normal infant brain simply cannot be made without the fatty acid DHA. [8, Holman] If DHA supplies are inadequate, the body will substitute the closest other fatty acids it has, in order to survive. But the brain will not be normal.

An unborn child uses up the mother’s DHA so fast that clinical studies show a 35% loss of DHA in the pregnant woman, as compared to non-pregnant women. [8]
Once again, if the infant is breastfed for the first year, adequate DHA and AA are available, as long as the mother has an excellent diet. Trouble is, most mothers do not have a particularly excellent diet, as you may have noticed.

First rate studies carried out by Hornstra and Salvati [4, 5] show that most pregnant women are themselves deficient in DHA and AA, and therefore provide insufficient amounts of these essential fatty acids during the critical brain growth period in the last trimester. If the diet deficiency continues after childbirth, and why wouldn’t it, the infant is handicapped as far as the chances for optimum brain development. These issues are also well established scientifically. [8]

The importance of the woman’s diet then, both before and after childbirth, can hardly be over-emphasized.

FORMULA

We’ve only talked about the challenges to infant brain development that are due to the nursing mother’s diet, both before and after childbirth. But what happens if the mother stops breastfeeding before the child is 12 months old, for whatever reason, and switches to formula?

In his excellent text The Omega 3 Phenomenon, Donald Rudin, MD shows that switching from mothers milk to formula immediately reduces DHA to the baby by 30 times, even if the mother has a ‘good’ diet. [18]
Dr J. Farquharson, another world authority on brain fats, agrees:

The long term effects of DHA inadequacy on neuronal integrity … predispose to … neurodegenerative disease” [Schmidt, p 110]

IQ. There are dozens of scientific studies correlating higher child IQ with breastfeeding, [6 ] both in the US and in Europe. Many of these studies are found in Dr Lahey’s comprehensive look at fats and infant brain development.

Any doctor who tries to tell a mother that formula is just as good as mother’s milk is at best simply ignorant of the overwhelming majority of the scientific literature’s conclusions on the subject, and at worst just another drug rep. [31] Drug rep? I thought we were talking about formula here, not drugs. We were, but guess who the manufacturer of Enfamil, the most popular infant formula, is. Give up? Mead Johnson.

DRUG COMPANIES IN THE BABY FOOD BUSINESS

Mead-Johnson is a branch of Bristol Myers, one of the largest multinational pharmaceutical conglomerates on earth. [24] Annual US sales: $13 billion. All but the most naive may have figured out by this time that drug companies are not concerned as much with patients’ health as they are with profits for their stockholders. You might remember last year when Bristol Myers was busted by the FTC for illegally keeping its competitors’ drugs off the market. [9] You start reading details of this price war and you begin to ask yourself, are these really the type of people I want to take advice from when their product is supposedly my child’s sole source of nutrition for the first year of life?

WHAT’S REALLY IN FORMULA?

Let’s take a close look at Enfamil and see what’s really in it. From Mead Johnson’s own website, here is the ingredient list for Enfamil: [24]

Per 5 Fl Oz: Protein 2.5 g; Fat 5.1 g; Carbohydrate 11 g; Water 133 g; Linoleic Acid 860 mg; Vitamin A 300 IU; Vitamin D 60 IU; Vitamin E 2 IU; Vitamin K 8 mcg; Thiamin (Vitamin B1) 80 mcg; Riboflavin (Vitamin B2) 140 mcg; Vitamin B6 60 mcg; Vitamin B12 0.3 mcg; Niacin 1000 mcg; Folic Acid (Folacin) 16 mcg; Pantothenic Acid 500 mcg; Biotin 3 mcg; Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) 12 mg; Choline 12 mg; Inositol 6 mg; Calcium 78 mg; Phosphorus 53 mg; Magnesium 8 mg; Iron 1.8 mg; Zinc 1 mg; Manganese 15 mcg; Copper 75 mcg; Iodine 10 mcg; Selenium 2.8 mcg; Sodium 40 mg; Potassium 108 mg; Chloride 75 mg; Water; Nonfat Milk; Vegetable Oil (Palm Olein; Soy; Coconut; High Oleic Sunflower Oils); Lactose; Rice Starch; Maltodextrin; Mono- and Diglycerides; Soy Lecithin; Carrageenan; Less Than 1%: Vitamin A Palmitate; Vitamin D3; Vitamin E Acetate; Vitamin K1; Thiamin Hydrochloride; Vitamin B6 Hydrochloride; Niacinamide; Calcium Pantothenate; Choline Chloride; Ferrous Sulfate; Zinc Sulfate; Manganese Sulfate; Cupric Sulfate; Sodium Selenite; Taurine

Contacting Mead Johnson directly by telephone (812 429 5000) about ingredients, one is told by some very polite admin people that the most of the protein and carbohydrate in Enfamil comes from cow’s milk. And that it’s not just pasteurized, mind you, but ‘super-refined’ nonfat milk. Like this is supposed to convince you of Enfamil’s food value.

From the Enzymes chapter at thedoctorwithin.com [11] we learned how pasteurizing turned a perfectly good food that has been used by the healthiest humans for centuries [20] into a nonfood – a reactive allergen, linked to chronic allergies, colic, and asthma. The definition of pasteurization is heating the milk until the enzymes are destroyed. Without enzymes, milk cannot be broken down and used by the body.

Nonfat – like that’s an improvement. Idiots. One of the valuable ingredients of raw milk through the centuries has been the good fats, although not DHA or AA. I don’t even want to know what ‘super-refined’ means, but obviously it has to do with further fractionating and isolating some elements of milk and stabilizing them with preservatives. This is about as far from a natural, usable food as one can get. Manmade, lifeless, stabilized chemicals taken from foods achieve their main goal: long shelf life. But what about the child?

Now I guess we should be happy that they remembered to put some essential fatty acids into Enfamil, like Linoleic Acid. Linoleic acid is a true essential fatty acid, which means we must get it from our diet because the body can’t make it from other stuff. Linoleic acid is itself vital as a building block of other brain fats. [3] The problem is, linoleic acid comes from corn, safflower, and sunflower seeds. The ingredient list doesn’t list any of these. That means their linoleic acid is a manmade fraction, an isolate, a nonliving biochemical either created in the lab or extracted from a food, but no longer viable as a food. To pretend like manmade linoleic acid is identical to the naturally occurring form is supreme arrogance, and is upheld only by junk science studies conducted by the pharmaceutical industry itself.

Same with the vitamins. They list the fat-solubles, A, E, and D, as well as the other vitamins. Again, these are not food-bound living vitamins, but manmade fractions of living vitamins which are bottled up and stabilized (killed) so they can be used as vitamin additives. They even admit this isolation when they put ‘vitamin C’ in parentheses behind Ascorbic Acid. Vitamin additive is as much an oxymoron as rap music. Or police intelligence. For more on natural vs fake vitamins, see the chapter Ascorbic Acid Is Not Vitamin C, at www.thedoctorwithin.com

Similarly with the minerals. The Enfamil ingredient list separates the elemental, cheap mineral forms like calcium and phosphorus, from the good, absorbable forms, like Ferrous Sulfate and Zinc Sulfate. This shows an absence of one intelligence overseeing the total design of the formula, which is critical in supplements of any kind, and shows Enfamil for what it is: a disordered, random jumble of lifeless food isolates.

Except for the ever-toxic soybean oil [14], the vegetable oils listed are actually legit sources of important long chain fatty acids that are important for development of dozens of infant tissues. The problem is: rancidity. In order to be usable by humans, especially budding humans, oils must be in their purest and most pristine forms. Even though the oils in Enfamil may not be hydrogenated, they are still super-heated in order to stabilize them. The original forms are very fragile and are easily destroyed by heat, light, and food processing. Destroyed fats are called rancid. As such they have lost their nutrition value and may become altered fats. Or else trans fats, which interfere with cell life. Altered fats are toxic, not nutritive.

Soy and soy lecithin are particularly toxic, inert products as explained in The Magic Bean [14]. And not just because they come from genetically engineered unknowns which stop normal enzyme function in the child’s tract. Soy lecithin is a lifeless, reactive emulsifier added to most processed foods. The Swiss ban all imports containing soy lecithin because of its genetically questionable origin. [Lappe p 91]

Soy itself is a major inhibitor of both enzymes and zinc absorption. Zinc is absolutely critical to brain development. So even though it was nice of Bristol Myers to add zinc to Enfamil, the soy products ensure that the zinc will not be absorbed. Again, nobody’s driving the bus here.

Carrageenan is a red seaweed that is a new food additive in hundreds of products, from ice cream to soy milk to pudding. It is used a as a thickener. [10 ] The thinking behind adding it to an infant formula was also its EFA content, which supposedly would be useful in developing many systems of the body, including the brain. The problem that Mead Johnson is overlooking is that since 2001 there has been a ton of medical research linking carrageenan to stomach cancer [10] .

One medical doctor from the University of Iowa, J. Tobacman, M.D, shows at least 45 studies that all reached that same conclusion. Since 1982 carrageenan has been listed as a known carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. [21, 10] The point here is that even if there is a slight possibility or even a suspicion that this seaweed might be harmful to humans, it should be excluded from infant formula. But that’s not what we’re talking about here — we’re talking about a ton of research showing how it can cause stomach cancer. A legitimate company whose first concern was the health of the consumer would have pulled it without any instructions from the FDA. But since those instructions have never been issued, Mead Johnson continues to use this dangerous product in its most popular infant formula.
Why? It wouldn’t be cost effective to remove it from all those stockpiles!

In all fairness, there is an upgraded version of Enfamil that contains algae and fungi which in their living state may be weak sources of DHA and AA. But that was before processing turns living bio units into inert fillers that look good on the label, but not so good in the blood. Still, it was a nice thought.

THEN HOW DO THEY SURVIVE FORMULA?

So if all this is true about Enfamil, why aren’t babies dying like flies from this dangerous formula? Why do some babies seem to thrive on it? Simple. The body is an amazing survival machine, enormously adaptable at doing the best it can with what it’s got. Fake, partial vitamins are better than no vitamins. Some of the formula’s minerals are actually good. Inferior fatty acids are better than no fatty acids. Processed carbohydrates are better than no carbohydrates. If there were truth in advertising, they might say this formula is the best we could do considering all the handicaps we had to work with, all the suppliers whose contracts we had to honor, and all the department heads who had to throw in their two cents worth.

Instead, the claim is this formula is the best possible nutrition for the infant, just as good as breastmilk, etc…

Pop quiz: Is Bristol Myers in the health business or the return on investment business? Before you believe somebody, consider where his paycheck comes from.

WHAT IF THE MOTHER CAN’T BREASTFEED?

If optimum brain and body development of the infant are the primary goal, there is no substitute for mothers milk. Only a fool or a formula salesman would pretend there is. Nature alone knows what nutrients a brand new baby needs, when and exactly how much. But if breastfeeding is not an option, for whatever reason, the baby will not perish as long as some nutrition is offered. Just understand that immediately we’re trading down.

PLAN B

With respect to brain development, our first concern here is to get DHA and AA to the infant in a usable, natural foodbound form. In their helpful nutritional text Nourishing Traditions, Fallon and Enig offer a practical solution which has stood the test of time. They provide recipes for 2 natural formulas which have been devised to come as close as possible to the known nutrients in mothers milk, especially the fatty acids. Here they are:

The Milk-Free Formula

* 3.5 cups homemade broth ( beef, chicken, or fish)
* 2 oz. chopped organic liver
* 5 Tblsp. lactose
* 1/4 cup whey
* 1 Tblsp coconut oil (unrefined)
* 1 tsp cod liver oil
* 1 tsp unrefined sunflower oil
Cook liver slowly in broth. Liquefy in a blender. When cool, stir in remaining ingredients. Store in glass container. To serve, put 6 oz. in glass bottle and warm slowly in pan of hot water. Never microwave.

The Milk Based Formula

* 1 tablet crushed vitamin C

Heat gelatin in water till dissolved. Place all ingredients in glass container and stir well. To serve, put 6 oz. in glass bottle and warm slowly in pan of hot water. Never microwave.
[Nourishing Traditions p 562]

Obviously these formulas are night and day apart from standard processed commercial formula. The chief contrast is that these formulas are prepared live by a live person from live foods under known conditions. In place of inert, super-refined, lifeless, fractionated, synthetic, enzyme-devoid lab creations, we substitute fresh living foods with all nutrients in a digestible, viable form. Commercial formulas come and go, but these old recipes are passed down from generation to generation largely unchanged. The baby will thrive on them. Hard to improve on nature; the hard part these days is to discover nature.

RAW MILK

Yes, yes I know. What about the raw milk? Won’t the child get bacteria? Or some disease? Isn’t it contaminated and dangerous?

Discovering the value of raw milk must be accompanied by discovering the history and science of propaganda in the US. As we demythologize our ideas of raw milk by finding out the facts, it’s impossible not to notice how these misconceptions were programmed into our consciousness in the first place. Again, this is the subject matter of the chapter titled The Doors of Perception on the website. [11]

The politics behind the promotion of the pasteurized milk industry in this country is beyond the scope of our discussion here. But here’s a hint: follow the money. Shocking revelation… As pasteurized dairy became bigger and bigger during the early 1900s, it was never big enough. They wanted it all. Raw milk was seen as a threat to their market and as such had to be demonized.

Raw milk has been a part human nutrition since the rise of animal husbandry back at the dawn of civilization. Centuries of practical methods for safely using and storing milk products have enabled dairy products to contribute to the overall nutrition picture of most cultures on earth. [20 – Price] It seems rather extreme to throw out all this valuable tradition just because of a few decades of Madison Avenue hype, paid for by the processed dairy giants.

PASTEURIZATION

has only been around for the past 100 years. It is defined as heating the milk to the point where no enzymes can survive.
The first milk cows were brought to America by the English in the early 1600s. For decades thereafter the principles of English dairy farming served to provide the settlers with valuable natural untampered dairy products.

The problems began with the enormous demand for milk in the burgeoning urban areas of the 1800s. Improper sanitation at the dairies and lack of hygiene of the milkcows led to contaminated milk being sold as fresh. The result was occasional cases of diphtheria among children. Even in those completely unregulated often filthy dairy conditions, however, the number of cases of sickness and death that could be attributed solely to bad milk was limited. There were no full-scale epidemics of milk-borne diseases.

The answer to the ‘contamination’ issue was: just heat the milk to the point where bacteria from filthy milking practices would all be killed. Distract the issue from the milking environment to the milk itself. That way the filthy milking practices could persist, because supposedly they wouldn’t matter.

With profit as the prime objective, the focus of the early mass milk producers was not avoiding contaminated milk, but rather shelf life. They discovered that by superheating the milk, it wouldn’t sour. For a food to sour it has to have living enzymes. Superheating destroys the enzymes. Dead foods, like dead animals, don’t sour. They rot.

And that’s exactly the rationale that gave pasteurization its start in the US around 1895. In pasteurization, milk is heated to 145 degrees for 45 minutes. Enzymes, which are what makes milk a live food, are destroyed at 118 degrees [22 ]. This results in rendering the live, nutrient-rich natural food into a dead, mostly indigestible substance.

CALIFORNIA RAW MILK DAIRIES

Because of a very long history of political and economic events, there are at present only 3 dairies in the state that still produce raw milk. One of these is Claravale Farms, located in Watsonville CA. [27] It is run by Ron Garthwaite, who holds a Masters in genetics and biology. The author toured this dairy last year and personally interviewed Garthwaite. Here are a few of the incredible things I discovered from that interview, as well as the follow-up research.

DANGERS OF BACTERIAL CONTAMINATION

Raw milk dairies favor open containers and equipment instead of the closed system used by commercial dairies. Although it sounds like an open system would be riskier, in reality it is much cleaner and safer. This is primarily due to the ease of cleaning with the open system. Commercial dairies have miles of piping, containers, and silos that must be cleaned every day. The danger of contamination is much greater in the closed system because of all the opportunities for missed cleaning. Plus they can always use the excuse that cleaning isn’t that critical since we’re going to super-heat the milk anyway.

Ron showed how the raw milk system is very simple – how the milk is taken from the cow and put in spotless, covered containers immediately, then put into the refrigerator. The entire area where the cows were being milked was immaculately clean. Even the floor.

California state law, controlled by political influences, requires that every glass bottle of raw milk carry the warning that raw milk may contain disease-causing bacteria. But if such a danger really exists, then why does every Whole Foods market in the entire state sell out its entire supply of raw milk every 3 days? Do all these customers have a death wish? Garthwaite explains that raw milk dairies are allowed to have NO bad bacteria. Amazingly, pasteurized milk dairies which are often dirty and messy, are allowed some low levels of bacteria in their milk, but they are not required to carry the warning label. I guess this explains why it is that

“…raw milk does not pose a danger to your baby in spite of what numerous public health propagandists may assert. Raw milk contains enzymes and antibodies that make it less susceptible to bacterial contamination than pasteurized milk…All outbreaks of Salmonella in recent decades have occurred in pasteurized milk. ” [Fallon p 32, 559]

Remember that the next time someone tries to tell you that you can get Salmonella from raw milk.

INSPECTION

Certified raw milk dairies like Claravale and Organic Pastures are monitored by visits from the state inspector every 2 weeks. As a result, the milking room and all the equipment are kept spotless at all times.

Compare this with standard dairies of pasteurized milk, where inspector visits may be every few months. The rationale is that since the milk is being superheated by pasteurization, everyday cleanliness of the milking equipment and the dairy environment isn’t that critical because all the bugs are being killed by the heat.
In addition the state veterinarians come out to take blood samples from Ron’s cow’s at least every 6 months. They test for TB and a rare animal disease called brucellosis, even though humans cannot get brucellosis from milk.

COMMERCIAL DAIRY COWS VS. RAW MILK COWS

Commercial dairy cows are kept in small corrals or else in barns. In the barns they are always standing on cement. The barns may be crowded. Although some may be allowed to graze, the majority of commercial cows are fed mostly on hay, which is laced with growth hormones and antibiotics.

Commercial dairy cows generally only last 3 years, with lactation being artificially prolonged by hormones.

Raw milk dairy cows, by contrast, are fed a combination of hay and grain. This is because hay alone is not enough to produce good tasting milk of the best quality and simply doesn’t give the cow enough nutrition to produce high quality milk.

Ron’s cows get no hormones and their feed has no pesticides or GMOs. Commercial dairies: just the opposite.

Because of their superior diet and environment, raw milk dairy cows may last 8-12 years. Their lactation is prolonged naturally by bearing a calf each year.
Starting to pick up a pattern?

MILK: NATURAL VS. PROCESSED

Natural foods can be used by the body because they haven’t been altered. As such they can also go bad, like stale bread, or any food that is left to sit out too long. The point is that the best foods are the ones that CAN go bad; we want a food to be able to go bad. It’s just that we need to eat them before they go bad. This is the whole point of processing – this simple issue is what the whole controversy is about. Longer shelf life equals higher profits. Foods that can’t go bad have the longest shelf life. The problem is that the usable nutrients in food are exactly what must be removed in order to have prolonged shelf life.

And that’s what the science of food processing focuses on: learning better and better ways of taking the perishable nutrients out of foods so that they’ll last longer. But what happens when these devitalized Frankenfoods get into our bodies? They’re preserved – they’re resistant to being changed and broken down. But that’s what digestion is: breaking down the foods into usable components. Processed foods are digested poorly, if at all. They clog the digestive tract and make us fat. And cause chronic allergies as the body unsuccessfully tries to expel them.

For the record, the author has had raw milk once a week for several years. He never gets sick, no colds, no flu, no allergies, no headaches, no fatigue. Ever.

INTRO TO THE INTRO

We’ve barely scratched the surface here of available data about the massive disinformation campaign behind raw milk and why people have all these misconceptions. Just keep in mind that raw milk has been a valuable source of human nutrition for millennia, with no problems as long as common sense rules were observed. [20] Pasteurized milk on the other hand, is new on the scene, with less than a 100 year track record. And truckloads of data correlating pasteurized dairy with allergies, asthma, and chronic degenerative disease. [11]
If one is inclined to dig a little deeper, the next level down in that search would be:

* http://www.drrons.com/raw_milk.html

CONCLUSION

This is the briefest of overviews of legitimate literature which sheds some light on the confusing topics brought up by this pediatrician’s rash, commonplace, uneducated, intentionally intimidating and self-serving statements. She probably has an engaging personality and appears generally concerned, as they are trained to. But without knowledge that is grounded in defensible, evidenced-based science, the blind lead the blind. No advanced degrees are necessary to understand the fundamental issues raised here. Anyone who does the reading can arrive at the true picture that lies just below the propaganda. But that takes a little effort, and some work. A little less TV. And most won’t take the time.

Those who do place the present and future health of their child first and foremost, beyond the debate. And that is the parent’s first responsibility: protect the child from the world until it is able to fend for itself. Give the child every advantage to mature with optimum development of brain and body, with no toxic interference – from any quarter. And in this endeavor the best teacher, and ultimately the only teacher, is Nature herself.

References

1. Guyton, AC MD Textbook of Medical Physiology Saunders 1996.
2. Colborn, T, PhD Our Stolen Future Plume 1997.
3. Schmidt, M PhD Smart Fats North Atlantic 1997.
4. Hornstra, G., (2000). Essential fatty acids in mothers and their neonates. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 71, (Supplement). S1262-S1269.
5. Salvati, S., Attorri,L., Avellino, C., Di Biase, A., and Sanchez, M. (2000). Diet, lipids and brain development. Developmental Neuroscience, 22, 481-487.
6. Margaret Lahey LIPIDS: THEIR POSSIBLE ROLE IN DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS
Bamford-Lahey Children

Pediatricians, Brain Fats, Formula, and Raw Milk

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