Raw Milk: Super Healthy or Super Dangerous?
Raw Milk: Super Healthy or Super Dangerous?
Is the latest raw milk revival a return to ancestral nutritional wisdom-or a recipe for disaster? Photo by Ilona Frey on Unsplash
Amidst the neverending food wars, an old debate has been freshly renewed- and it might just be spilling into your morning coffee. Raw milk, once mainly relegated to fringe farmers' markets, herd shares, buyers' clubs, and homesteader blogs, is now back in the mainstream spotlight.
According to the MAHA movement led by RFK Jr., celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow, libertarians touting consumer freedom, and legions of back-to-the-land wellness influencers on social media, pasteurization is out, and raw is in. But public health officials across the board are horrified and loudly sounding the alarm in no uncertain terms that drinking unpasteurized milk is an extremely dangerous trend that belongs squarely in the dustbin of history.
So is raw dairy indeed a righteous superfood, unfairly demonized by a risk-averse bureaucracy- or is it a nostalgic delusion with the potential to make people very, very sick? Frankly, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more divisive and politically loaded issue in the current food landscape. But, cutting through the noise to get to the bottom of the issue and answer, once and for all, the question of whether raw milk is healthy or dangerous, is precisely what this article aims to do.
But First: What Is Raw Milk?
Raw milk, simply put, is milk that hasn't been heat-treated. That means it hasn't been heated to the 63°C for 30 minutes (or hotter, for less time) necessary to kill nasty bugs like E. coli, Salmonella, and Listeria.
The process of pasteurization, invented in 1862 by its namesake Louis Pasteur, was initially developed for wine but quickly found its true calling in the dairy world. The process was brought West in the early 20th century, and for good reason: by 1938, milk accounted for 25% of all food-borne illnesses in the United States.
After widespread pasteurization, which became the norm across North America from the 1940s onward, that number dropped to under 1%. It's not hard to see why pasteurization has been hailed as one of human history's most significant public health victories.
In some places, such as Scotland, unpasteurized milk remains straight-up illegal. In many others, its sale is tightly limited or regulated. So why would anyone want to drink it?
The Case For Raw Milk
Believe it or not, advocates for raw milk are found across the political spectrum and have equally diverse arguments for drinking it. What binds them together is the notion that pasteurization doesn't just eliminate pathogens—it changes the final product in many ways.
They claim that raw milk:
- Tastes richer, creamier, more complex, and generally more delicious, with seasonal variation and subtle local nuances to boot.
- Retains a full spectrum of bioactive micronutrients like vitamin B1, B2, vitamin C, E, folate, and B12, not to mention healthy fats like CLA and omega 3s.
- Protects beneficial proteins, like lactoferrin and immunoglobulins, from being denatured by heat.
- Contains naturally occurring enzymes like lactase and lipases, aiding digestion of lactose and more. Anecdotally, its advocates often claim it's all-around easier on the tummy.
- Offers natural probiotic bacteria, and may stimulate beneficial human gut flora.
- Protects kids who drink it against health complications, including asthma, eczema, milk allergy, lactose intolerance, rhinitis, systemic inflammation, and respiratory infections.
One clear misconception about raw milk that's easy to debunk is the idea that there isn't any science to support its consumption: One large-scale European epidemiological study found that children who drank raw milk were 41% less likely to develop asthma and 49% less likely to develop hay fever.
Controlled trials on mice have found that raw milk-but not pasteurized milk-significantly dampened allergic response to egg protein and reduced dust mite-induced asthma-like symptoms. Other studies on mice and at least one small controlled study on humans have shown raw milk to be more tolerable and to suppress allergy symptoms. But these are just a handful of examples. Whether or not you find the science compelling, there is undoubtedly much of it.
And then there's the absolute risk argument. While raw milk may be more dangerous than pasteurized milk, the chances of getting sick from it are still minuscule—much lower than getting sick from seafood or even vegetables. In one analysis, the odds of being hospitalized from drinking raw milk were about 1 in 6 million—comparable to being struck by lightning.
Some have further argued that pasteurization was an "1800s solution to an 1800s problem. " While heat treatment may have been appropriate in the generally unsanitary environment of early agricultural industrialization, times have changed. We now know a lot more about how to manage microbes in dairy production to create healthy raw milk, the likes of which humans have consumed for almost all of our milk-drinking history.
This argument emphasizes finding reliable sources- you don't just drink raw milk; you buy it from someone you know and trust. You support a local farmer. You reclaim a real relationship with your food supply in a world where nutrition feels removed and impersonal. Just as farmers' markets create direct farm-to-consumer relationships, raw milk has the potential to support local economies and family farms while increasing consumer awareness of what they're eating and drinking and who it comes from.
The Case Against Raw Milk
To what seems to be the overwhelming majority of health authorities, raw milk has a clear risk with unclear rewards—and certainly, none that would outweigh the serious potential harm. The CDC, FDA, and Health Canada all agree raw milk can carry deadly pathogens—and it does regularly. This doesn't just include common contaminants like E. coli and salmonella but also viruses like Avian Flu and the potential for widespread communicable disease.
Again, this isn't hypothetical: between 1998 and 2018, raw milk consumption was linked to 202 outbreaks, 2,645 incidents of illness, and even 228 hospitalizations. A 2017 study in Emerging Infectious Diseases concluded that unpasteurized milk causes 840 times more illnesses and 45 times more hospitalizations than pasteurized milk.
Children are hit hardest. In Minnesota from 2001 to 2010, more than 20,500 people—17% of all raw milk consumers, contracted serious enteric infections, and 76% of patients under age five who consumed raw milk got it from a local family farm. Pregnant and immunocompromised people are also strongly advised to avoid raw milk.
And the nutritional hype? Critics say it's overstated. While pasteurization does reduce some heat-sensitive vitamins, the losses are minimal and easily compensated for in a balanced diet. Many vitamins (such as B2) are actually heat-stable, and experts generally agree that pasteurization doesn't remove many nutrients from milk at all.
While abundant epidemiological evidence suggests that children who grow up on farms have fewer allergies and respiratory infections in adulthood, it's impossible to know if raw milk is the reason since so many other confounding factors could also be implicated.
Claims about probiotics and enzymes are also questionable. Studies have shown that bacteria like bifidobacteria in raw milk—often praised by supporters as beneficial for the human gut—have no business being there and are generally indicators of fecal contamination.
It's a nice idea that legitimate operations run by caring farmers with passion, integrity, and attention to detail can properly manage happy grass-fed cows in idyllic settings. However, this may not be true: one American study showed that a third of raw milk samples from clinically healthy animals contained dangerous microbes.
A Middle Ground
No food is indeed risk-free, and even pasteurized milk has caused outbreaks-let alone other non-dairy foods like factory-farmed poultry. However, we accept certain risks in many areas of life based on context, habits, and the potential benefits we perceive. After all, if consumers are free to evaluate the benefits of cigarettes and alcohol for themselves, does it make statistical sense to forbid raw milk outright?
Nevertheless, where food is concerned, public health authorities, with a mandate for zero preventable deaths, will understandably always err on the side of caution. Raw milk drinkers, often guided by distrust of these institutions and a deep belief in ancestral nutrition, are just more comfortable with the risk-to-reward ratio they perceive.
There may be some ways to bridge the gap by making raw milk safer:
- Fermentation (e.g. into kefir or yogurt) may reduce pathogenic load and enhance benefits by increasing acidity and making the product less friendly to pathogens.
- Herd shares and direct farmer relationships allow transparency and accountability.
- Rigorous hygiene practices like udder cleaning, iodine teat dips, and immediate cooling could mitigate contamination.
- Testing and standards for bacterial content, storage conditions, and strict consumption timeframe could also help with safety and consistency.
The Bottom Line
There is no denying that the popularity of raw milk is increasing. But if it's ever to be embraced more broadly, it won't be through Facebook memes or anecdotal reports. It will be through data-backed, farm-level transparency, consistent quality control, and smart public policy that balances safety and autonomy.
Raw milk is a polarizing issue for a good reason: it's a complex, symbolic stand-in for deeper issues around nutrition, trust, autonomy, and tradition. It may be superior to pasteurized milk in several ways, from nutrition and flavour to farm relationships and conscious consumption. But epidemiologically, it does carry real risks.
For now, if you're going to drink it:
- Know your source well
- Demand transparency
- Refrigerate immediately
- Drink it as freshly as possible
- Consider safely fermenting it first
Otherwise, the safest bet remains high-quality, grass-fed, pasteurized milk-preferably of the A2 variety.
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