Last night, I received an email newsletter from our dairy, the infamous Organic Pastures. I adore our dairy. We have visited it, and can assure you that you have never seen happy cows until you have seen the herd at McAfee’s dairy basking in the California sun. It is a wonderful place from which we are happy to purchase our milk.
Last night’s newsletter asserted something that I really thought was inaccurate. Here is the situation: Whole Foods {the grocery chain} has decided to discontinue their sales of raw dairy products. Our dairy had shelf-space at Whole Foods, so obviously this is an issue for them. You see, the newsletter declared their sorrow at this move by Whole Foods because, in their words:
We are very disappointed in this decision and believe that it is a move away from “whole food” being sold at Whole Foods. We all know that raw milk is a whole food, whereas pasteurized and ultra pasteurized milk are partial foods.
Well, to be honest, I was shocked by this. My belief has always been that it was homogenization, which fragments fat particles, that created a type of milk which was not a “whole” food. But my {limited} understanding was that pasteurization apart from homogenization simply took a living whole food and turned it into a dead whole food. Not optimal, but no different from what happens when I soak my pancake batter in homemade raw buttermilk and then proceed to fry the batter. This results in pancakes which are “whole”–meaning they consist of unfragmented ingredients.
Follow me?
So I thought that pasteurization was akin to what happens when I cook my dairy-filled pancakes, and I was intending to write a post on how wrong I thought the raw milk folks were to try and draw a dividing line where there was none.
Turns out, I was the one in error.
Now, before I tell you what I learned, I want to make it clear that I don’t really care what sort of milk you have in your refrigerator, if you have any at all. What matters is that, whether you eat or drink, you do it all to the glory of God.
However, comma.
I do care about definitions and clarity, about maintaining the boundary of terms, and so on. I was convinced, when today began, that Organic Pastures had a too-narrow definition of whole foods.
So much for that.
After reading two extremely dull research papers on the topic of pasteurization, ultra-pastuerization, and homogenization {Processing Effects on Physicochemical Properties of Creams Formulated with Modified Milk Fat and Influence of Pasteurization on Milk Protein Breakdown in Cheddar Cheese During Aging}, I learned that the process of pasteurization–alone without ultra-pasteurizing and homogenizing–does in fact change the milk at a microbiological level. Among other effects, the various proteins are destroyed, flattened, or denatured.
If the definition of a whole food is that it is, at the microbiological level, intact, meaning that the proteins are whole, the fat is whole, the cholesterol is whole, and so on, then I suppose Organic Pastures is correct, after all, and raw milk is the only whole food milk.
Of course, in the process of cheese-making, the milk is also changed in structure. If you age cheese, the proteins begin to break down or change because cheesemaking is, at its core, a chemical process. Now, this happens quite naturally. I recently made homemade cream cheese from raw milk {the original “cottage” cheese} on my kitchen counter. It took less than a week {and requires no labor on my part save the effort of patience}, but the milk transformed from one thing {milk} into two others things {whey and soft cheese}. Could it not be said that cheese, therefore, is not a whole food?
This is why I think that we should never say that whole foods are the only foods which ought to be eaten. Cheese is a wonderful way to preserve summer’s nutrient-dense milk harvest for the winter months or for travel.
But back to the issue at hand.
I am going to have to agree with Mr. McAfee that raw milk is the only whole food milk, as much as I didn’t believe this, oh, about two hours ago. With that said, I’m not sure I that any chain store is going to be able to take the legal risks which go along with selling an unpasteurized product. Granted, I don’t think that raw products, especially products produced by dairies as meticulous as Organic Pastures, are exceptionaly risky in reality.
But that doesn’t matter.
When my husband was sick, doctors and the authorities at disease control kept pointing their fingers at two things: our raw milk, and our pet ducks {who were just ducklings at the time}. Every single time I tried to mention that I had my suspicions about some ground beef I had purchased at a local store, the conversation would come back to our habit of drinking raw milk. {I had the ducklings tested to rule them out.}
The fact is, because what we drink is unconventional, it was what drew attention when folks were searching for a source of infection. People really want to believe that if a person does everything just so and follows all the rules, then they will be safe. It wasn’t until over 50,000 pounds of conventional beef were recalled from our state that it was admitted that, yes, perhaps that was the culprit after all. {(And did I still have the bar code? Are you kidding me? Who keeps the packaging from their ground beef on the off-chance that it almost kills someone?}
Ahem.
I now buy my ground beef from Organic Pastures. I have become somewhat paranoid about conventional beef, and knowing that McAfee farms regularly tests their milk supply for the virus that almost took my husband gives me comfort. We know the danger of eating food.
However, Whole Foods has to think about this issue at the legal level, rather than the personal level at which our family makes its decisions. They have to know that when there is an outbreak of something, the finger will be pointed at raw milk and other unconventional products first. I know, because I experienced this firsthand.
So though some wish to vilify Whole Foods for their decision, I think it might be more helpful to just try and understand. At the end of the day, Whole Foods is not some sort of intimate connection to a local farmer. It is a business with a nutritional marketing angle, with a bottom line to serve and a business to legally protect. The situation is what it is.
In my personal opinion, co-ops like the ones I belong to are probably the future of buying unconventional foods, for the most part.
If buy it we must.
I, on the other hand, am still occasionally lobbying my husband for a pygmy dairy goat.
You know.
For the kids.
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