Raw Milk

My dad and granddad (whom I call Poppop) grew up drinking raw milk. My dad said he didn't even taste store-bought milk until he was in high school; he remembers it tasting "like water." My Poppop attributes his lack of getting sick to drinking raw milk. Reminiscent of that, I just read two letters to the Weston A. Price Foundation that they published on their website that I thought I'd post here.

Wonderful Campaign
What a wonderful campaign you've embarked upon! It's illegal to buy raw cow's milk here in Canada, as far as I know. I've spoken to farmers who tell me that they would lose their ability to sell milk at all. Farmers here have to sell their milk to the Dairy Board, who then regulates the price and sells it to the consumer. It's illegal to bypass the middle-man.

At any rate, my grandfather had a few simple rules when it came to food:
1. always eat food that remembers where it came from (the minute it visits a factory, food gets amnesia);
2. don't eat anything that won't spoil, and eat it before it does (Twinkies, frankly, frightened him, and he never ate a hot dog in his life);
3. there is a good reason why whole eggs, raw milk, fresh cream, butter, and fresh vegetables are called "wholesome" food. Don't eat man-made "food." And, as much as you can, grow your own.

When he had to have surgery at age 81, the surgeon came out and asked his kids, "There must be a mistake. They have your brother listed here as 81. That's 61, right? That's not a man in his eighties that I just operated on." My 59 year old aunt nearly split a gut laughing, saying "Well, that's my father you have in there." [reminded me of Mr. Tidwell, the lawn man!]

We always had raw milk as children, and none of us had allergies or ear infections. My children, and my siblings' children, have been fed what Grampy called "dead" milk, and they all have allergies, ear infections, etc. I certainly believe that there's a connection.

My dad was so determined that we have raw milk that he "rented" milk bottles from a nearby farmer. Just the bottles, mind you. The milk in them was a gift from the farmer. Totally illegal, but I'm very glad Dad took the chance. I was well into my teens before I had store-bought milk, and my parents say that all three of us turned our noses right up at it.

Good luck on your campaign. I hope you can spread this throughout the world. If people want to buy dead milk, good for them. I would certainly prefer to buy healthy wholesome food for myself and my children.

Mrs. Marie White Ottawa,
Ontario Canada

No More Whole Milk
I work for the child nutrition system in our local school district. The "powers that be" have decided to completely eliminate 2% milk from the menu, offering only 1% milk, nonfat chocolate milk (25 grams sugar) and skim milk. Whole milk is not even offered any more. [The Weston A. Price Foundation recommends drinking whole milk rather than skim and currently campaigns to make raw milk more accessible and/or legal throughout the U.S.]

My son has ADD and has a very difficult time maintaining his weight due to medication. He loves whole milk (at home) and will drink the 2% at school, but has tried 1% and will not drink it at all. He will choose chocolate milk instead, with all the sugar.

Since I also work in the cafeteria, serving kids in the elementary through middle school grades, and am responsible for stocking the milk boxes each day, I know from our milk count that we order seven times as much chocolate milk (700 cartons per day) as we do 1% milk (about 100 per day). When 2% milk was served instead of 1%, we used to order 200 cartons per day and ran out from time to time. Now that we serve mainly 1%, I get constant requests from the kids for the 2%. They do not want the 1% milk and are not "getting used to it" as everyone thinks they will, as evidenced by the drop in sales. Instead, our chocolate milk sales have climbed to about 800-850 per day, 900 on Fridays.

No one here will listen to reason. I also cook so I am familiar with recipes and fat content. If fat content is the real target, why are we selling fish sticks with 23 grams of fat? Pizza with 24 grams of fat? Vegetarian casserole with a whopping 46 grams of fat? Chicken nuggets with 18 grams of fat? Fish sandwich with 30 grams of fat? Cakes, pies and chocolate chip cookies by the hundreds (daily) that are absolutely loaded with fat? I simply cannot see the reasoning behind cutting a couple grams of fat from milk when we serve such high-fat foods along side it. Also, because the children are resisting 1% milk, they are turning to chocolate milk with so much sugar intake every breakfast and lunch.

I see a dangerous skew in vision on behalf of our Nutrition Department, but I cannot get a soul to listen to me. They keep pointing out the US guidelines by failing to reason this out themselves, or to recall how often the US guidelines are revised.

Sarah Klaus
Los Angeles, California

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That's just a little window into the things I like to read while I'm nursing. I guess I was thinking about how Miriam drinks raw milk. Unpasteurized, unhomogenized, unprocessed, untreated, unbottled. Just drinks it straight from the source. And thinking about how God designed our bodies to need milk when we're babies and how we can live solely on raw milk for several months. It's pretty amazing.