The Artist Eats An intersection of art, food, and culture.

The Artist Drinks: Raw Milk

Do you ever feel like a Superhero? I do...when I drink raw milk. It makes me feel like a great beast of a man; like the world is spinning by my grace alone. Raw milk (I probably should explain this) is milk which has not been pasteurized or homogenized. It is unprocessed and is basically going from the cow's udder to your mouth. Thankfully for the cow, there is a farmer and some refrigeration involved, but you get the idea. I have come to believe in the the deliciously restorative powers of raw milk. It may be just a placebo effect, but when I drink raw milk I feel like Wolverine - rippling muscles and a devil-may-care attitude.

When milk is pasteurized, the active enzymes and bacteria are killed, effectively "sanitizing" the milk. This is all well and good for standardization, but it fails to account for the fact that our bodies have a symbiotic relationship with the naturally occurring organisms living in the milk. For example, the enzyme lactase, which is killed during pasteurization, is instrumental in digesting the sugar lactose (Milk being chalk full of lactose). Lactase is naturally occuring in children, but as we grow up and are weaned from our mothers, we stop producing the enzyme. It is at this point which people develop lactose intolerance. I thought that I was lactose intolerant for years until I started drinking raw milk. Now I eat lactose like a bear eats honey.

Raw milk is amazingly delicious. You can almost taste the grass that the cow is pastured on, and the flavor definitely fluctuates as the seasons change. It is certainly not the static taste of store bought milk. Unfortunately all of the unique flavor is destroyed when the milk is pasteurized.

I guess that I should mention that raw milk is illegal in a bunch of states (check out the debate as to why here), but if you can find it, I really recommend that you give it a shot. I don't believe that the health concerns are warranted if you take the time to know the farmer who is milking the cows. Oh, yeah - if it gives you dysentery, I'm going to pretend like I don't know you.