Fourth White Horse - Commercial Dairy

Raw milk from grass fed cows is good stuff. Years ago I thought milk, like salt, was simply bad for you. I avoided it because of my chronic sinus problems and found that I was a lot healthier for it.

Then, I read a great book called The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized by William Campbell Douglas. You can still find it on the internet. After reading this book I realized that milk could be good food when it's actually natural.

There are many ways this once wholesome food has been dramatically altered in our modern world. For starters, cows aren't fed on grass, they're fed artificial feed, hormones and antibiotics in big commercial dairies. These substances make their way into the milk and concentrate in the fat.

Then, the milk is cooked, which destroys much of its nutritional value. Cooking milk is actually used to cover for unsanitary conditions in modern dairies. It is entirely possible to produce very clean, disease-free milk in today's world.

In natural milk, the cream floats to the surface, but when milk is homogenized, the fat molecules are broken into smaller particles to make them stay in suspension. There is some evidence that this process causes oxidation of the fat, which contributes to heart disease.

Furthermore, the fat in commercial milk is where the fat-soluble pesticide residues, hormones and other pollutants ingested by the cows, accumulate. Organic milk avoids this concentration of chemicals in the fat, but organic milk, is usually ultra-pasteurized, which really destroys milk's nutritional value.

The bottom line is that finding quality dairy foods in today's world is hard. It's easy to locate the healthy substitutes four our first three white horses, but it's hard to find raw, organic milk.

When my kids were younger, we were fortunate enough at the time to have a raw milk dairy not too far from where we lived. We would buy raw milk, cheese, cream and other dairy foods, so my children were fortunate enough to have some of this wholesome food growing up. Unfortunately, this dairy has closed down.

There is a raw milk dairy about 50 miles from where I currently live. It is not organic, but I do travel over there once in a while to get some raw milk, raw milk cheese and other dairy products. I like to make raw milk kiefer, which is wonderful stuff for your digestive tract. All the local organic dairy products are ultra-pasteurized so I tend to avoid them. I use a small amount of soy milk, but this isn't a very natural food, either. The Beyond Organic company sells a wonderful fermented dairy product called Amasi, which is made from cows that are pastured.

When I go to the Whole Foods store in Las Vegas, I purchase the pasteurized organic dairy products available there. I buy organic, whole milk yoghurt (with cream on top) and organic raw milk cheeses as these fermented dairy products are easier to digest after they've been “cooked.”

Of course, not everyone has the metabolism to utilize milk properly (70% of the people in the world are lactose intolerant), but this is easily overcome by using beneficial bacteria to turn milk into yoghurt and cheese. By pre-digesting the milk, the bacteria make it easier to digest and less likely to cause allergic reactions.

Of course, there is another option—goats milk, which is closer to human milk than cows milk. I personally love cheese made from goats milk and you can even get goats milk yoghurt.

It's plain to see that these four white horses of the nutritional apocalypse are wide-spread in their health destroying influence. Still, it is possible to defeat them, not by avoiding them, but by deliberating concentrating on seeking out the natural products the body really needs. So, when you think nutrition, remember that white is usually evil and color is good.