What is it with natural parenting advocates and lying?
Homebirth advocates recommend lying to your obstetrician about planning a homebirth.
Homebirth midwives advocate lying to their patients about what medications and procedures they administer during labor.
A lactation consultant advises lying to new mothers about her vaccination status.
Now Sarah Pope, the Health Home Economist recommends lying to your pediatrician about feeding your children raw milk.
Sarah, whose nutrition credentials include a BA in economics and a Master’s in government administration (from an Ivy League institution!) has this to say:
You see, it is very risky to ever tell your Pediatrician, or any doctor caring for your child for that matter, that you feed your child raw milk. Whether that child is a baby, toddler, or adolescent, the American Academy of Pediatrics is becoming more and more hostile toward raw milk by the day and you risk having the Pediatrician tattle to Social Services if you choose to feed your baby or child this wonderfully healthy, traditional food that has nourished humans for millenia [sic]…
Can you believe it? Your conventional Pediatrician would rather you feed your baby GMO frankenformula never proven safe for human consumption instead of a homemade, nourishing formula made with raw milk from pastured cows or goats.
According to Sarah:
Pediatricians should be given information about what you do in your home on a need to know basis only.
And apparently they don’t need to know when you are putting your children’s life in danger by feeding them disease laden natural products.
Here’s what those evil folks at the American Academy of Pediatrics had to say about raw milk:
… [C]onsumption of raw milk or milk products has been associated with a fivefold increase in toxoplasmosis among pregnant women; listeriosis associated with high rates of stillbirths, preterm delivery, and neonatal infections, such as sepsis and meningitis6; and E coli O157–associated diarrheal disease and hemolytic-uremic syndrome, primarily among young children. Between 17% and 33% of all cases of invasive disease attributable to Listeria monocytogenes in the United States occur among pregnant women, unborn fetuses, or newborn infants, a 13- to 17-fold increase compared with the general population. Complications include a 20% risk of spontaneous abortion or stillbirth, with two-thirds of infants developing neonatal infection, including pneumonia, sepsis, or meningitis.
Silly pediatricians. Toxoplasmosis, listeria and E. coli O157 are natural. Pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis are natural. What could be harmful about anything natural?
Who would know better than Sarah, a Nutrition Educator and Chapter Leader for the Weston A. Price Foundation, a foundation devoted to the teachings of a dentist from the 1800’s?
Sarah offers this helpful disclaimer:
The information on The Healthy Home Economist ™ is provided for informational purposes only. It is not intended to substitute for the advice provided by your doctor or other health care professional. You should not rely upon or follow the programs or techniques or use any of the products and services made available by or through the use of this website for decision making without obtaining the advice of a physician or other health care professional. The nutritional and other information on this website are not intended to be and do not constitute health care or medical advice.
So be sure to ask your pediatrician whether you should lie to him or her before you do.
And who would think that offering recipes for baby “formula” made with raw milk constitutes medical advice?
What could happen if you don’t lie to your pediatrician about feeding your child raw milk (beside the fact that your child could get violently ill, spend days in hideous pain with severe vomiting and diarrhea, and die)?
Consider the recent nightmare of Alorah Gellerson of Brooklin, Maine who made the mistake of telling a doctor about the homemade raw goat milk formula she proudly and carefully made for her healthy, happy, three-month old son Carson.
Social Services quickly same knocking at the door after the doctor reported Alorah and threatened to take Carson away and put him in foster care unless Alorah switched to store bought commercial formula.
Imagine that! Social Services wanted to take Carson away for no better reason that to spare him a painful illness, hospitalization and even death. The nerve of those people.
Why might pediatricians and Social Service personnel be conspiring to prevent you from feeding your children disease laden milk? Sarah doesn’t say.
Why might Sarah Pope, the Healthy Home Economist, be promoting raw milk, which could kill your child?
Sarah does say:
In order for me to support my blogging activities, I may receive monetary compensation or other types of remuneration for my endorsement, recommendation, testimonial and/or link to any products or services from this blog.
Surprise! Sarah links to the products needed to make raw milk “formula.” So she ends up with money if you feed your baby raw milk “formula.” You merely end up with a violently ill or dead child.
Right. I have a 14-minute video lined up to destroy in the second blog post. Maybe this will be fodder for entry #3. We’ll see.
Sarah Pope had these fancy charts on how it is actually the increase in hygine and cleaner conditions that we live in now which is the direct result of decline of measles, mumps, and polio. Well that logic has been throughougly debunked hasn’t it. Sonce, it is the rich, clean, hygine parts of the countries in the US that has seen an increase in the outbreak of these diseases.
Besides, what do these anti- vaxxers do when their kids have these diseases? Do they call the witchesor the priests? I believe that is what people who lived a natural lige usually did a few hundred years ago.
Look pharmaceutical companies are profit making machines. Yes, we should hold them to high standards. This includes activism to regulate them stronger, ensuring FDA is not bullied or worse lobbied into approving any medication at astronomical prices. This is what we should be focused on. Sarah Pope is the alter ego of pharmaceutical companies. She is building an empire on the back of wikipedia research. Besides, vaccines were not made in pharma labs they were invented by people who could not bear the suffering of human beings.
Lets lead a balanced life, lets not overconsume or over medicate. But to dismiss modern medication that has its roots in struggles of people who wanted to make better society is dangerous. It has daved lives, it will continue to save lives. Lets make sure it works for the good of human progress and not line up the pockets of greedy corporation.
Amy Tuteur and Sarah Pope both have in common the desire to help people; neither intends to promote ill-health or harm. I think that their views on raw-milk and promoting this as a wholesome food for kids is diametrically opposed, and that sadly both are somewhat stubborn in their approach to the subject. Sarah is a raw-milk advocate, and her personal experience with it as a healing source of nourishment is positive (albeit subjective). Sarah’s writing is always punchy and provocative, and I appreciate that in a world where we are increasingly encouraged to detach from traditions that have sustained us as a species for millennia before the mass-implementation of sterilization. I can also appreciate how someone such as Amy Tuteur, a medical doctor and gynecologist would want to warn people against the risks of those practices, for indeed “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”, and while many children – even those who have been diagnosed with severe lactose intolerance – do benefit from drinking raw milk, there are risk factors to be taken into consideration, and all mothers should know these risks before deciding upon feeding raw milk to their babies. I come from France, and we’re way healthier overall as a people, and quite frankly doctors would laugh if they were told that social services had rocked-up at some woman’s house to remove her child on account of having fed him raw milk. America is obsessed with super-sterilizing everything, and while this may be preventing some cases of food poisoning, it is also contributing to he growing rampancy of allergies and other such auto-immune disorders. I think it is super important to be well aware of the risks linked with consuming raw-milk products, but also not to be so afraid of them that we end up compromising our immune systems because we’re so afraid of ingesting “bad bacteria”. In France, women avoid raw-milk cheeses and raw fish during pregnancy, and then revert to eating those foods once they have given birth – simple, no fuss, no panic, no need to phone social services or call 911. All women want their babies to thrive – no woman feeds raw milk to their kid with the intention of giving them food-poisoning, nor do they super-sterilize with the intention of enabling allergies to develop; the former has serious immediate consequences, the latter more chronic consequences… perhaps the truth lies somewhere in-between; lying to one’s pediatrician is never a good thing, but we have to agree that while sterilizing and the massive distribution of antibiotics have allowed people to overcome various infections, they are not necessarily the be-all end-all of health, and if a mom chooses to feed raw-milk to her child this does not necessarily make her a “bad mother”.
Have you taken a look at those “bad bacteria”? It’s not just run-of-the-mill food poisoning, like e. coli or salmonella, where you spend a few days on the john hoping your insides don’t become your outsides, it’s seriously messed up, scary shit: brucellosis and TB. I’m going to repeat that so you know it wasn’t just a typo: you can get tuberculosis from raw milk. It’s what finally settled the pasteurization debate in the first place back when it was invented.
When you have to resort to misrepresentation to support your position (as does Sarah Pope), perhaps you should re-evaluate it.
Thank you! I’m so tired extremists on either side. People need to chill out and realize that most likely somewhere in the middle is where you should be. Doctors aren’t the devil and neither are people who are interested in non-mainstream health and nutrition. Neither doctors, nor health bloggers should be preaching to people like their word is all there is to a given issue and that if someone says something different they are the enemy. Everything has two sides to it. Know your facts. If health bloggers and doctors took off their blinders and gave out information that covers more than their over-bearing opinions, then parents would be better informed and less likely to cling to one side or the other causing them to make close-minded and sometimes dangerous decisions. And don’t even get me started on how tired I am of both sides and their fear tactics….
Take your balance fallacy and stuff it. One side has massive studies, reams of data, and the scientific method. The other has intuition, ancient wisdom, and feelings. This isn’t like looking at a soft serve machine with chocolate and vanilla and realizing the proper answer is “swirled”. Only one option in this is valid.
Yes, because extremism and closed-mindedness has done great things throughout history. The “other side” isn’t all based on a few uneducated people making things up. There is also science there. Foods have better nutritional value (more vitamins etc.) before they are heated to boiling temperatures. That’s just the truth. So is raw milk better than pasteurized? In that way, science says yes. Foods that haven’t been heated to boiling also may be full of harmful bacteria. Drinking raw milk can be nutritionally beneficial. It can also cause disease if it is contaminated. I am not an expert. I’m not a farmer. But from what I understand, whether raw milk is safe or not has a lot to do with how it is handled, like most foods. Because of the increased susceptibility to bacteria during pregnancy, hell no I’m not gonna drink raw milk. And maybe the benefits are not worth the risks of giving it instead of formula. But to write it off entirely for all people is stupid. If you don’t want to risk it, don’t drink it. If other people do, then let them. Maybe raw eggs aren’t as likely to have dangerous bacteria as raw milk but it’s a similar situation and it doesn’t spark the fierce debates that raw milk does. So with all that in mind is it smart to be obsessively campaigning for something being good or bad or right or wrong? I really don’t think so. I think people should understand things and decide what they want to do for themselves instead of listening to people’s tunnel vision-fueled crusades one way or the other and being scared into calling something black or white. I personally choose to stay away from sides because they have been created by people like you, the author of this article, and the blogger who scares women into lying to their pediatricians. You all inject your opinions harshly and promote fear reactions over knowledge and autonomy.
Some do, some don’t. Some vegetables are actually more nutritious after being cooked, because raw, they are too dense and sturdy for our digestive tract to fully break them down, for example.
Further, pasteurization isn’t boiling. It’s done at 161 °F, a good 61° below boiling.
The FDA disagrees on both counts:
http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm079516.htm
There’s pretty much no safe way to handle it. It’s responsible for 79% of dairy-related outbreaks of food poisoning between 1998 and 2011, despite being less than 1% of milk sold:
http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html#related-outbreaks
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/jhub-drm032515.php
Except you are actively rejecting understanding in favor of lending an ear to demonstrably incorrect people.
I appreciate your reply. I read through your links. It does say that some of the nutritional value and enzymes are reduced. I consider that as to mean uncontaminated raw milk is a little more nutritionally beneficial than pasteurized. How much better I am not sure. I do see that one of the articles mentions why raw milk gets contaminated.
Cow feces coming into direct contact with the milk
Infection of the cow’s udder (mastitis)
Cow diseases (e.g., bovine tuberculosis)
Bacteria that live on the skin of cows
Environment (e.g., feces, dirt, processing equipment)
Insects, rodents, and other animal vectors
Humans, for example, by cross-contamination from soiled clothing and boots
I’m not a farmer as I said before so I am not sure how difficult it is to keep milk from becoming contaminated but it doesn’t seem like it would be that difficult at a reputable place. It also mentions that some farmers test their milk in a lab for bacteria. It also goes on to say:
Even negative tests do not guarantee that raw milk is safe to drink. People have become very sick from drinking raw milk that came from farms that regularly tested their milk for bacteria and whose owners were sure that their milk was safe.
There are no guarantees with any kind of testing. They didn’t give any statistics on that particular comment to lead me to believe that testing is problematically unreliable in this case so I’m going to say that it should be up to the individual whether they take the risk or not.
Maybe the extra nutrients don’t warrant even drinking raw milk from a reputable place that performs tests. However, I think that should be left up to the individual.
I am not rejecting understanding. I value the information I learned from your links. I can’t say whether raw milk is worthwhile but I don’t think it’s right to argue against it without mentioning that it does have more nutritional value however much it may be and that it can be handled in a way that makes it much likelier to be safe. If people understand the risks and ensure that their source employs good practices then I think they should go ahead and do what they want.
I have enough experience with cows to know that preventing cows from touching their udders with cow faeces is impossible. I visited my uncle’s farm when I was a girl and it was enough for realising that. Cows do not mind if they are sleeping in a clean place or not, they are very happy sleeping in their own faeces. unless you as a farmer spend 24h a day waiting for them to open their bowels and cleaning it, it is impossible to make sure their udders are clean. I would not drink something that has been in contact with cow’s faeces without any sterilizing procedure.
I did grow up on a farm, and I have milked plenty of cows in my day. Cows have an amusing propensity to shit while being milked. Even when you clean their teats with antiseptic solution before starting to milk, it’s not difficult to understand how bacteria could get into the milking machine. Cow shit is, as a rule, not firm. It gets everywhere. I don’t care how good your hygiene practices are. Pasteurization is the only way to ensure that milk is safe.
If a competent adult wants to be so stupid as to drink raw milk, more power to him or her, but it is absolutely insane to give raw milk to children. It can and does kill people.
I’ll tell you how hard it is to have uncontaminated cow milk: It’s flat out impossible.
the level of contamination will vary from day to day and the danger to humans will vary depending on the kind of bacteria. But unpasteurized cow milk will ALWAYS have bacteria in it.
Cows often have bacteria directly in their milk, even if they don’t have any clinical signs. There will always be at least 1 cow with asymptomatic mastitis in the herd, and all the milk it pooled in the same tank.
Then you have the udders, which are cleaned and disinfected, but that does not make them sterile.
Farmers wash their hands but they don’t scrub between each cow (and whenever you touch a cow, wherever you are touching it, I guarantee that you are touching cow feces)
So the udder and the farmer hands are going to contaminate the miking equipment (when it doesn’t flat out detach itself from the cow and fall in a pile of crap, or when the cow just decide to shit when you milk her.)
And then you have the pipes with the suction in the farm where you plug in the milking equipment: Cows will throw shit everywhere with their tail. The socket to plug the milking machine will almost always have fecal matter on it. And that’s when you don’t straight out suck in flies as you plug it it. I did so multiple time by accident. Those damn flies just go everywhere.
The minuscule difference in nutritious value in raw milk should not make any difference with any person with even a half balanced diet. If you need raw milk to prevent vitamin on mineral deficiency there is something seriously wrong with your diet.
So no, the ‘benefits’ of raw milk are not worth the risks
Lol thanks to all the people who replied about cows and the facts of dairy farming. It is good information. I understand having a low opinion of raw milk after what you’ve seen. That is definitely something to take into account when consuming raw milk.
Pasteurization slightly lowers the vitamin C content. However, just having the milk exposed to light lowers the vitamin C content. But if you are drinking milk for its vitamin C, you will drinking more than your daily calories worth to get it and then you’d be missing out on a whole host of vitamins and minerals in other foods that aren’t milk. You’d also be ODing on calcium.
I personally don’t care if competent adults who understand the dangers of drinking raw milk do it all day long. These aren’t adults. These are children who trust their parents are making good decisions when evidence is screaming they aren’t. Children are also more likely to die when they get contaminated raw milk.
And the cow is essentially handling your raw milk. Cows drag their udders through cow paddies. Cows have no concept of safe handling procedures. You can’t sterilize a cow’s udders. That would be beyond cruel and then you would have probably injured the cow so much you couldn’t get milk from it. That’s why we sterilize the milk.
I understand that people are worried about children but parents do a lot worse than feed their kids something that may have bacteria in it. At least those parents have good intentions. Do you think social services should actually take the children away or maybe people who write about these things on either side should stop being sarcastic and arrogant and actually lay out the whole matter in a truthful and realistic way? Also I don’t think putting children in foster homes is going to be better than a well-meaning family. Beyond all that I’ve heard of foster parents I personally know a family that takes in kids for the money and the extra work and they are pretty sketchy people who live off the road system in the middle of nowhere essentially. That is where the government is willing to dump children… What I am advocating for is more factual knowledge. There would be less issues if everyone was more careful about what information they are slinging online and the manner in which they do it.
As they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
In the case Dr. Amy Tuteur was referring to, they threatened to take the child away if she didn’t make the switch to formula. This means this family had an opportunity to quit giving their child a potentially fatal substance and keep their child. If someone is willing to have their child taken away over a refusal to switch over to a safe product, then I don’t think they really wanted that kid too badly. So really, ultimately the parents are willing to have their children placed in the system that may very well involve some crappy foster families…just because they are stubborn.
Some people who physically abuse their children believe they are helping the kid. Blanket training comes to mind.
That is more reasonable than just taking the child but opens up a whole other debate of whether the government has the right to actually force parents to comply with certain things when it doesn’t involve child abuse. I know that people will debate that but knowingly and purposefully abusing your child is a lot different than feeding them something you believe to be safe and may very well be. I think that the best people can do is support and encourage websites and other media that spread unbiased truth in a non-arrogant or sarcastic way and call out the ones that don’t.
Feeding a child a substance that could contain deadly pathogens, isn’t regulated and doesn’t contain the appropriate macro- and micro-nutrients for an infant is abuse. When a pediatrician tells you it’s a bad idea and you continue to do it, you begin complicity engaging in abusive behavior. You could very well kill your child from too much or too little of a vitamin. In a 7 pound newborn, it sure doesn’t take much to screw it up. People who are willing to do that aren’t going to be convinced by a website that tiptoes around their feelings.
CPS also doesn’t just rip kids away from their parents. It’s just not how it works. They try their absolute best to keep the child with their biological parent. When that fails they try their absolute best to keep the child within the family. Foster care is a last resort.
If you start calling anything parents do that goes against what a health organization recommends abuse, then good luck living in that kind of society. Should mothers who choose not to breastfeed be considered abusive? Because I think we can all agree that the best thing to feed a baby is breastmilk unless the mother is a substance abuser or has a disease transmittable through breastmilk. And what about mothers who feed their kids nothing but mcdonalds and hotdogs and macaroni and cheese? Should they also be considered abusive. There are a lot bigger issues to worry about and if people start to overreact about everything a parent does that doesn’t align with recommendations then it’s going to take the spotlight off of more urgent issues. Ultimately, all I meant to say commenting on this article is that people need to look at things with a wider view and stop feeding the bloggers that go on crusades one way or the other. A lot of things aren’t as simple as good or bad and that’s ok. Spread unbiased information and at the end of the day let people do with it what they will.
Not feeding an INFANT appropriate food is, like, URGENT. Oh, who cares you killed them with an overdose of vitamin A or didn’t give them enough vitamin D? Or you gave them way too much protein that they either died or end up on dialysis? Infants are a lot more fragile than toddlers and other children. You can easily kill or cause a baby to suffer if you decide to dabble in making your own formula with bacteria-filled milk.
We can all scream about the extremes. I could say, “We could let people beat their children to death if we didn’t intervene.”
And no, I will absolutely NOT agree with you on breast milk being best just because of those two situations you mentioned. Breast milk isn’t best if it’s not available for one. Breast milk isn’t best if mother needs to take a medication that isn’t compatible with breastfeeding. It’s really not best if it causes mother mental anguish.
“Because I think we can all agree that the best thing to feed a baby is breastmilk unless the mother is a substance abuser or has a disease transmittable through breastmilk”
AH AHAHA HA HA! You clearly don’t know what audience you’re talking to right now. No, we absolutely do NOT all agree that breastmilk is best with only two tiny exceptions. Where’s Bofa? All other things being equal, breastmilk is very slightly best, but all other things are rarely equal.
Howzabout we make raw milk flat-out illegal again, and don’t prosecute parents buying it or remove their children (which NO ONE advocates!), but instead shut down raw dairy sellers and prevent people from selling unsafe foodstuffs?
Your false dichotomy (let people drink raw milk or remove children to foster care) is a nasty logical fallacy. Please don’t do that again.
That kind of thinking tends to be my go to approach to a lot of dangerous woo. You have the right to do to your own body all sorts of stupid things, but you have no right to sell dangerous or fraudulent products to other people.
Was the false dichotomy comment directed towards me? I don’t understand what you might be reading into what I said if it does.
It was. You said (and I am paraphrasing) we shouldn’t remove children from homes where they are being fed raw milk, therefore raw milk should be available. That is a false dichotomy because those aren’t our only two options; we can also just ban raw milk from being sold.
In the one particular case, which is just one case, the infant wasn’t being fed infant-appropriate food. Cow’s milk and goat’s milk simply aren’t an adequate nutritional source for a baby, raw or not, and given the availability of formula it is criminal neglect to deliberately malnourish your baby. It isn’t about raw milk, it’s about feeding the baby appropriately.
I didn’t discuss whether raw milk should be available or not. I haven’t gotten into that part of the issue. I just don’t think it’s warranted for social services to threaten families because of food choices even if it’s raw milk.
Well, at what point do food choices become an issue? Rotten food? Clearly dangerous food? Poisonous mushrooms, or food from rat-infested storerooms? Forcing a child to eat soap? To eat hot peppers? To drink toilet water? (Yes, those latter three are all real disciplinary techniques I have heard of) How about no food or not enough food, for that can be a choice as well?
Clearly food choices will sometimes tip over into abusive and dangerous. The question is where do we draw those lines, and what happens when they are crossed? You think raw milk isn’t past the line. That’s acceptable. I mostly agree with you, but in the case of an infant, I disagree entirely and think that feeding a baby with only raw milk is in fact criminally negligent. This isn’t an easy topic or one with easy, clear-cut answers.
I agree you have a point that the kind of things parents feed their children can be abusive. But as you said where the line is drawn is not clear. I have heard of using raw milk as a base and adding other ingredients to it to make it more nutritionally complete. I would question using raw milk with nothing else to round it out as well.
Why would you ever use raw milk as a base and add other random things? There simply isn’t a way to homebrew a safe and nutritionally complete formula, pm. It literally is not possible.
I question homebrew formula, period. I do more than question it. I find it to be blatantly negligent, and while I wouldn’t necessarily suggest that a baby be removed from a household over it, I would definitely expect CPS (or the equivalent) to intervene and be involved in the family to make sure the baby isn’t being malnourished and/or exposed to foods that can kill it. If money is an issue, because it can be, there are programs available to make sure formula can be bought (it’s explicitly part of WIC, for instance). That wasn’t the case for that one family, though. The money was there.
Really? You can’t imagine “food choices” being an issue for social services, ever?
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/north/2014/09/15/Couple-get-probation-for-endangering-adopted-children/stories/201409150154
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/11/nyregion/11starve.html?_r=0
No. When you mix a cherry pie and a cow pie, you don’t get a better pie. Pasteurizing milk makes it extremely safe. Not pasteurizing is dangerous. In this case, the data doesn’t support two sides equally well, or anything close to that.
Hello golden mean fallacy! Nice to see you again! What a small circular but still flat world.
While I wouldn’t refer to them as “the devil” I would say that people who encourage those who have potentially fatal but medical treatable conditions to reject medical treatment and eat salads instead are dangerous at best and pure evil at worst.
Oh false equivalency! Welcome to the party!
Actually everything has far more than two sides to it. Take the legalization of marijuana there are strickly against it, people who are okay with it for people with serious diseases like AIDS and cancer, people who are okay with it for those with less serious diseases, people who want it legal recreationally, and people who want it decriminalized but not legalized. Far more than 2 sides.
Yet you don’t provide any.
Yup because health bloggers are just as qualified to talk about health as doctors with they decades of schooling and years in treating patients. Just like one of my students can totally do my job cause he can google “like real real good.”
Are you a logic teacher? I took logic and it was pretty damn boring and really hasn’t improved my life. I did get an A though and promptly forgot just about everything because I wasn’t able to apply the information to much in real life. Can you please explain to me what these terms mean and why they are important? I am not trying to call myself an expert on any of these matters I have discussed. I am sure that the way I say things is imperfect, but please explain to me how saying:
While I wouldn’t refer to them as “the devil” I would say that people who encourage those who have potentially fatal but medical treatable conditions to reject medical treatment and eat salads instead are dangerous at best and pure evil at worst.
… is a good way of arguing. Again I forgot what I learned in logic, but exaggeration and referring to things that nobody ever did and using them in your argument can’t be correct.
I can’t believe someone going by the name “LibrarianSarah” is demanding that someone tell them what various terms mean, rather than simply, you know, LOOKING THEM UP.
I can’t believe someone is mocking another person for their post not aligning with their username instead of simply, you know, noticing that librarian Sarah is not the person who asked about terms. Lol have fun being rude and oblivious.
You’re right, I made a mistake. It’s hard to follow threads in Disqus sometimes. I’m glad it still got under the skin of the correct target even though I was totally off.
Though the irony is lacking, it’s still pretty funny that you can’t avail yourself of Dictionary.com to figure out what words mean.
Then the problem is with you, not with logic. Critical thinking skills are eminently useful in all walks of life.
Actually, there are lots of people out there who claim that a vegetarian/vegan raw food diet will do all sorts of things, from curing cancer to eliminating the need for medicine entirely. Sarah was not exaggerating in the least to use that as an example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belle_Gibson Just off the top of my head
Oh believe me I completely agree that critical thinking skills learned in college are applicable to real life I just didn’t learn those skills in logic. Simply “Eating a salad” is an exaggeration of what you just said. If someone is going to whip out logic terminology to criticize what someone else has said, then I expect them to be more well-spoken. It’s pretty clear that everyone here just wants to pick at everything I say because they don’t like that I don’t share their opinions. It’s just an illustration of the reasons I commented on this article in the first place. People just want to make everything into a war. I’m sorry I ever fed the frenzy because it really wasn’t worth it.
The human being is the only one taking care of other animal milk!
Or anyone here ever seen calf taking goat’s milk?
Has anyone here ever seen a cow wearing pants?
Has anyone here ever seen a frog surfing the internet?
It turns out that people do a lot of things animals don’t do.
Everything here is related to health, not the way of life, but tell me u ever seen a sapo with cancer? or a cow having heart attack?
Myocardial infarction secondary to a disseminated coagulopathy in a cow.
Noboru Machida
Y Aohagi
Y Yamaga
A Shimada
T Umemura
K Kagota
Department of Veterinary Medicine, Faculty of Agriculture, Tottori University, Japan.
The Cornell veterinarian 05/1991; 81(2):129-35.
Source: PubMed
ABSTRACT
A 3-year-old Holstein cow was presented with a history of high fever, jaundice and subsequent recumbency. The animal died 3 hours after arrival at our department; continuous electrocardiographic examination was performed during those last 3 hours. There were ventricular premature beats (VPBs) with high frequency and complex patterns (bigeminal, trigeminal, repetitive or early cycle VPBs) and paroxysms of ventricular tachycardia (VT). Serum CK-MB was markedly elevated. On histopathological examination, large areas of myocardial necrosis were found in the anterior aspects of the left ventricle. Large, partially organized thrombi occluded the intramural coronary arteries within and adjacent to the lesion. From the histopathological findings, it appeared that a disseminated coagulopathy caused the thromboembolism in the intramural coronary arteries, resulting in acute myocardial infarction (AMI). Various clinical findings, such as arrhythmias, were similar to those in man.” So yes, cows can have heart attacks. Wonder what insight our regular poster and dairy farming expert Mel could shed on this?
1991; we are in 2015, how many people infarct since this year?
How many people care if a cow infarcts, compared with how many people care if a human infarcts? Humans get more monitoring, because they have friends, family, jobs, etc.
Not sure what your argument is. You asked how often toads get cancer (quite a bit actually) and of anyone had heard of cows having heart attacks (they do have them). The age of the research doesn’t discredit the fact that they do happen, which was what your argument seemed to be about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImzpK0pTtq4
I’ve seen mice with cancer. Unlike humans, they didn’t get CT scans, chemo or radiation.
Moral of the story: People do many things differently than animals, and that’s ok.
I see multitudes of pets with cancer, every single living animal out there gets cancer… or just any other kind of diseases. They have both type 1 and 2 diabetes, thyroid problems, kidney problems, liver problems.
My own cockatiel recently died of terminal heart failure.
Hearth problems are common as well.
The only difference between us and animals is that we have doctors to diagnose us and treat us.
My hamster went blind from diabetes, and she ate an all raw vegan diet.
https://www.google.com/search?q=interspecies+nursing&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1916&bih=973&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwid4Y2n4czJAhVV5GMKHWFhBIoQ_AUICCgC
As another wise poster said in another old post, if we’re going to catalogue all the things humans do differently from other animals were going to be here a long time…
But infant formula is fine.
C’mon guys. You know that giving your child a healthy dose of ecoli, campylobacter, salmonella, or bovine TB is really the only way to make sure they build a natural immunity to these helpful bacteria. And if death is a side effect of preserving a child’s intestinal bacterial flora, well, that only proves that my natural parenting credentials are better than yours. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to hew a set of non-toxic building blocks from this hunk of organically grown cedar.
Babies should not have animal milk, raw or not. It has way too much protein and will damage their kidneys. Please do not give milk to any child under a year old!
I grew up on 1% milk, I was allergic to formula that was available then. My kidneys are totally fine. Please cite your evidence – my childhood is just anecdotal, but it is all I have right now
Scientific citation please.
Here is a link to the US National Library of Medicine’s article on the subject:http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline….
You can find the same advice on the American Academy of Pediatric’s, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’, and the World Health Organization’s websites.
Additionally, here is a nice review article from Paediatrics and Child Health if you can access it:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm…
Basically, the excess of protein and other nutrients in animal milk can cause a high renal solute load that the infant’s underdeveloped kidneys are unable to process completely. I’m sure that in the case of formula allergy, the dangers of the allergy outweighed the potential kidney damage. Hope this cleared up my original post.
Two broken links. Thanks.
Must not of copied correctly. The title of the first link “Cow’s Milk – Infants” on the Medline Plus website.
The second is “Whole cow’s milk in infancy” by Alexander KC Leung. It’s available on the http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov website. I trust that you know how to use Google, right?
Here is a link to the US National Library of Medicine’s article on the subject: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002448.htm.
You can find the same advice on the American Academy of Pediatric’s, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’, and the World Health Organization’s websites.
Additionally, here is a nice review article from Paediatrics and Child Health if you can access it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2791650/
Basically, the excess of protein and other nutrients in animal milk can cause a high renal solute load that the infant’s underdeveloped kidneys are unable to process completely. I’m sure that in the case of formula allergy, the dangers of the allergy outweighed the potential kidney damage. Hope this cleared up my original post.
Still… lying ist bad.
Thank you, Dr., for pointing out the sheer idiocy of this overinflated, uneducated woman. Her ego is so massive that simply reading 99% of her “educated instructive posts” is a lesson in narcissism. Heaven help those of us who go on her blog occasionally after a particularly outlandish post (like the one where she claimed drinking raw milk throughout one’s pregnancy and labor made one’s labor painless) to try and inject logic and science. The pack attacks viciously as well as their leader.
A masters in gov admin certainly trumps anyone who has a medical degree.
Think and do some research before you speak on a subject you know nothing about. While I do not have any children, I do have the book the actual recipe is in. It calls for you to warm your milk as you would with any other formula…killing off anything that’s going to kill your child. I drink raw milk. There was a time I thought it was stupid, I did the research. If its killing everyone off why isn’t it illegal?
Warming milk – or any other liquid – only accelerates the growth of bacteria, often profoundly. And if you heat it to the point of actually killing what’s growing in there, you no longer have raw milk: it’s pasteurized!
Raw milk DOES kill people and it IS illegal in many states. It is so seldom consumed that the numbers aren’t as high as they would otherwise be.
If you did the research and concluded that raw milk was a good idea, it just shows that you aren’t very good at research.
But, you’re an adult with free will. This is about feeding a dangerous substance to BABIES.
Here are Sarah Pope’s instructions. NOTHING in these instructions warms the formula to the point where it would pasteurize the milk. http://www.westonaprice.org/beginner-videos/baby-formula-video-by-sarah-pope-2/
If you “warmed” the milk to the point where you “kill everything off” it would no longer be fit to give to a baby because it would be boiling hot. Also the milk would no longer be “raw.” Formula has already been pasteurized and that is why you can serve it warm. I suggest you take your own advice about speaking on subjects you know nothing about.
Warming milk doesn’t destroy bacteria. In fact, warming it can promote more bacteria to grow. You have to heat it up (I believe it needs to be somewhere around 130 degrees) to kill bacteria.
Oh, and guess what? Once you do it’s no longer raw. Geez.
edit: sorry Librarian. Meant to reply to Passerby, not you.
Thank you for this. Just read Sarah Pope’s blog… barf! She’s an idiot, a loud irresponsible idiot.
Someone should sue her for all the deaths she’s caused spreading her malicious misinformation.
I had no idea she was a Thing until I saw that TDS episode about her anti-vaccine stance. Now it seems I’m seeing her on The Internets at least as much as The Food Babe. Sigh.
Sarah Pope is spitting in the face of hundreds of years of research into public health and safety. What baffles me is that her pawns that subscribe to her blog are angry at the government for controlling them. Um hello, you are following an economics gov administration major. How blind can people get these days? It’s like they believe something because it’s printed in a bright color with an attractive font and clip art. I’m frikkin done. She’s a piece of work.
FWIW, I asked an infectious disease doc who taught our med school lecture on gram negative bacteria about this issue. He actually said it seems plausible to him that there might be health benefits from some of the heat-sensitive ingredients in raw milk, e.g. lactoferrins etc. HOWEVER, he said those benefits are not proven, and they may be slight, whereas the risks of bacterial contamination of raw milk are proven and established, and particularly in children, the chances of complications like meningitis and HUS possibly necessitating dialysis are higher, so the stakes are higher. In his mind, in the risk-benefit analysis, it’s clearly not a risk worth taking for an unproven benefit, particularly for pregnant women and children. He hopes that maybe we’ll find higher pressure, lower temp ways to kill bacteria in milk while preserving some of the other components, and we can get a better idea of whether there truly is a relevant and replicable benefit.
This to me seems entirely reasonable – and from a doc *gasp*! The Healthy Home Economist has always irked me because she is so incredibly smug and convinced that her utter lack of training and self-taught “knowledge” are somehow not only equivalent to proper training in the relevant subjects, but somehow trump it. There is a humility that I’ve developed given the breadth of knowledge I’m exposed to in medicine that self-proclaimed “expert” personalities just don’t seem to possess. Classic Dunning-Kreuger, I suppose. This is an increasingly common problem, especially in the internet world – the edification of the schmo on the street who googles a lot and sounds confident.
The information you have from the doctor is exactly what is espoused by pretty much all of the community. Proven risks, minimal benefits, if at all. What’s the issue?
Um, issue? No issue. I thought it was interesting that an ID doc thought that raw milk probably does have some benefits, though clearly as an ID expert, he also saw the risks clearly. He hoped for a middle ground, in finding alternate pasteurization methods. To me, his response seemed quite measured, and not the “oh docs just want money and don’t know anything about nutrition” gambit I was seeing parachute in here.
That’s not what you said. He also said they are a) not proven, and b) they might be slight.
Saying that there “might be benefits, but they are unproven and possibly small” is not profound in the least. It’s pretty much the mainstream view. And any potential benefits do not compare to the risks.
And “trying to find an alternative to pasteurization” is not a middle ground, it is absolutely mainstream. People are doing that all the time. High pressure or UV methods are always being investigated.
I said he found it plausible that the heat-sensitive ingredients in raw milk have benefits. In other words, he didn’t just shoot down the idea as baloney. Also, while maybe alternative methods are being investigated, I don’t think it had been mentioned here, and I thought it might be interesting to note that he suggested them specifically as a way to preserve healthful ingredients.
I’m kind of confused as to why you are shooting me down right now when I agree with you.
I’m not “shooting you down” just trying to understand why you think his perspective is “interesting”, considering that it is basically the mainstream view of raw milk.
But who does? This is why I am puzzled. The question is not and has never been whether there MIGHT be some small benefits (although none have actually been shown), it is the question of risk vs those benefits. And in the world of no proven benefits (which is conceded), then the idea of raw milk IS baloney, until actual benefits are shown.
Hmm. Well, maybe I found it interesting more in the context in which I spoke to him? He’d just given a long lecture about gram negatives and all these nasty complications like kidney failure, and I’d just happened to be debating with some raw milk advocates online about the evidence, and I guess I kind of expected him to be like “Are you crazy?? E coliiiiii” but instead he was more like, “Yes, I think raw milk probably does have healthy things in it that pasteurized doesn’t that might very well benefit our health” with the qualifying “but…” afterwards.
I also thought it was relevant because this post is about lying to your doctor (or nondisclosure, for the semantically picky), with an assumption that all doctors will have the negative reaction of “Are you crazy? That’s child abuse!” when actually, docs like this one are really quite level-headed about it even though they might still come down against it. I mean, I know YOU probably know that and think duh, Bofa, but do the parachuters know that?
For an adult who’s considering the question academically, sure, there’s room for a nuanced discussion. For someone who actually is or is considering feeding raw milk to a toddler, the answer is, it’s way too dangerous.
I see what you mean, but I’m not sure I agree, at least not in all cases. I mean, I think it’s a bit on par with the vaccination discussions, which I’ve seen modeled different ways by different docs. (Though I guess the message from the most recent studies on that is you can’t win no matter what you say.) There’s something to the idea that giving an inch of nuance to a person who will take a mile is counterproductive, and I get that. But I also think some people respond very well to a nuanced discussion, rather than just being told “uh-uh, no way, that’s crazy.” And I came across a lot of these healthy home economist type parents where I used to live, and I definitely got the sense they were looking for respectful discussions with their physicians about these topics. Haha, then again, some of them did give their kids raw milk, so I guess maybe nuance wasn’t the way to go!
Give it up Perpetual. He’s a nitpicking troll. A provocateur with a reading comprehension problem. Your original post was well thought out and written. I understood and agree with it whole heartedly.
They pasteurize human breast milk at milk banks, and it’s still beneficial. I’m more skeptical or raw milk health benefit claims because all the enzymes and stuff are for cows, anyway.
Dr. Tuteur, I have often wondered why the authorities are so afraid of raw milk, so it was interesting to read your article. Could it not be, though, that the sources of these particular samples were not good? After all, every factory is different and a number of innocuous foods have been found to be contaminated in one factory and not in another. Listeria and E. Coli tend to be found in animals that are badly kept, is this not so?
Furthermore, I do wonder about other causes to these stillbirths and spontaneous abortions. What of vaccinations, medications and general toxins found in the environment? Deaths by vaccines tend to be conveniently ignored or attributed to neglect on the parents’ side. I find this rather a hypocritical stance on the part of scientists.
Could you perhaps enlighten me a little further?
Great questions! Please doctor answer them , i also need to know from a valid and knowledgeable source.
If you have already decided the doctor is not a valid or knowledgeable source, why should she take the time to answer you? You’ve already written her off.
OUt of curiousity, what would be a valid and knowledgeable source? You don’t seem to care for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
are you even reading before answering? i don’t think so
No need to be rude, Lily dear.
Lilly meant she wants the answers from the doctor not from another commentor on this site.
Bad factories are one thing. But milk doesn’t come from a factory, it comes from cows. And cows can harbor dangerous bacteria, even small farms that treat their cows well. The dangerous strain of E. Coli probably first appeared on a factory farm, but it’s now spread to cows all over the world.
Why do you think pasteurization caught on so well in the first place? It’s because thousands of children died from contaminated milk every year, just like people used to die from bad water. In some parts of the world, they still do. In India, for example, many rural people buy their milk unprocessed, but everyone takes it home and boils it before using.
Don’t believe me? Read some history. Talk to someone from the poorer parts of the world. And use some basic common sense. Would you eat a raw hamburger, or raw chicken breast? Of course not. You know these can cause food poisoning.
How do we know Listeria causes miscarriages? Because the vast majority of Listeria cases end with a dead or very sick fetus, and such problems are very rare in the general population. In particular, first trimester miscarriages happen often, and the cause is usually unknown, but losses after 13 weeks are far less common, and a cause can usually be found.
so today we also have many deaths of children and dead fetuses? How many are we talking about? Does this happen to developed countries? Are they silencing those deaths? I am not talking about poor countries with poor hygiene ofcourse you know that right? Btw i think in a lot of countries they eat the meat uncooked, like a raw minced meat dish or rare! Are there also some deaths? where do you get your info from? i would like to see also. Sorry for so many questions but this issues give me some anxiety 😛
No, we don’t have widespread deaths of children from bad water and bad milk. Because our water comes out of the tap already purified, and almost no one drinks raw milk. That’s the whole point.
so if no one drinks raw milk what is the problem then? why is there even articles about raw milk? in europe they drink it as i read somewhere here? is this a lie? are there deaths there from the few drinkers? few deaths?
This thread is full of people who apparently drink raw milk. There aren’t many, I’d guess, but the people who do drink raw milk are extremely vocal about it, and they tout all sorts of nonsense in support of it.
are they writing in the thread and being dead at the same time?(jk 😛 ) or we need more people to drink raw milk to have some/few deaths?how does it work?and if there is such a small number drinking raw milk why does so many bother, why does the doctor bother? where is the threat?and if they are being so loud why is she afraid of the lies they tell?
You are being disingenuous, but I’ll play. This post is trying to counteract the raw milk propaganda put out by the ignorant HHE. It’s not “being afraid” (why do all you people think that if someone disagrees with you they are afraid of you?)–it’s trying to prevent people from giving a dangerous substance to their kids, all the while thinking it’s super healthy magical.
what can be disingenuous about questions? if you feel deceived than step aside please, i initially wanted answers from the doctor anyway!and remember if your answer does not come along with the source that you used to prove your point, i don’t think is valid no no! the doctor tought us that and you are not a good student! aaaahhhhh
Lily – do you believe drunk driving is dangerous?
According to the US DOT estimates, there are 27 000 miles driven drunk for every DUI. And there are twice as many DUIs as there are drunk driving car accidents. That means that for every drunk driving car accident, there are more than 50 000 miles of drunk driving that occurs without incident.
How can there be so much drunk driving that occurs without incident if drunk driving is dangerous?
i believe in the use of condom 🙂 but i don’t stand near the people i don’t want them to reproduce so as to stop it in the first place 🙂 do you?
Um, YOU are posting HERE. I don’t know from where you came, but you came to this website.
So I really don’t have a clue what you are talking about.
Moreover, I don’t have a clue what that has to do with my question about how drunk driving can be dangerous if there are lots of people who have driven drunk without incident.
it has all to do with raw milk no? how did i think of that?
So you won’t answer the question:
Is drunk driving dangerous? If yes, how do you reconcile that with your assertion that people drink raw milk and don’t die?
Oh wait, you don’t care if people die.
Forget it. You aren’t worth the time.
did you answer my question?
thank you for your time 🙂 it was a delight
I do believe he asked you a question first.
(I’m just over here watching your conversation from a distance)
he replied to my questions with his own question! i think, maybe i am mistaken ,i am also watching from a distance now while waiting for the doctor to answer 😛 also i am really impressed by how some people find that i have a bad behavior,what about the doctors responses… they are somewhat harsh! are they not admirers of that? i just like taking example of people with degrees,they have quality 😉 (sorry for the irrelevant comment on you)
I’ll have to agree with you on this I’ve read a few of her articles now and I don’t like the tone she uses over all.
* I believe in the use of a condom, but I don’t stand near the people I don’t want reproducing in order to stop them from doing so. Do you? *
I fixed your english. You’re welcome.
So… Sorry this is going to take me a moment to get over how stupid this comparison was.
You compared possible reproduction to DEATH of a person.
If you see someone drinking raw milk you say, “Hey, I don’t know if you’re aware, but raw milk has a lot of diseases linked to it, and it’s not recommended that you drink it.” In this case you are concerned of this persons well being.
But you don’t go up to a particularly stupid person you know and say, “I think your an idiot and I don’t want you ever having kids.” How does them having kids effect you, hurt or lead to the death of someone else? It DOESN’T. That would be you just being a high headed ass hole, thinking you should say who can reproduce and who can’t.
“if they are being so loud why is she afraid of the lies they tell?”
When folks are running around basically telling people to endanger their children for no reason at all, everyone should be afraid of that kind of lie.
Raw milk kills. Even in the USA, people who foolishly drink it get seriously ill every year. ‘Nuff said.
and why would they do it if someone said so? isn’t this the thing with stupid people? they will do whatever they are been told? aren’t you afraid of them besides the raw milk?are they getting sick and lying about it at the same time? can you save them from their own stupidity? is it true that you are the savior? and where are your proof about
“Raw milk kills. Even in the USA, people who foolishly drink it get seriously ill every year. ‘Nuff said.”is it really enough said? also why do they choose to listen to folks and not folks that are doctors? what is wrong with them? also once more can you save them? if not someone has to!
I do not understand this comment at all. I don’t even know whether you are agreeing or disagreeing with me.
I had considered drinking raw milk once before and I can assure you I am not stupid. I read more than one blog article about the benefits of raw milk and it did make it sound quite “magical”
But I never got around to going out and buying it.
Now some people will be a little dense and won’t research every aspect, which you really should do when considering using an alternative to something that effects your health.
Maybe this makes them stupid, but it almost sounds like you think they should die for their stupidity.
“Can you save them from their own stupidity?” Yes. If you take the time to spread awareness and educate.
i assure you also that i am a magician! you know what i mean by that! i don’t think anybody should die, i think that they could die because of their stupidity and yes that is what education does! how would you like to be educated by having your child taken away from you? do think that people raise children in a bad way but they don’t give them raw milk so they are healthy enough to handle it? what do you think about raw milk being sold in europe? do doctors exist in europe? is it a myth?
Huh?
How can you even ask such a stupid question?
It is BECAUSE they are loud that we need to confront their lies. Because if we don’t, there will be people who will think they are right.
Quiet ones don’t get heard.
I say it again, you clearly aren’t even thinking about what you are posting.
Oh, she’s thinking. She’s thinking she’s the smartest little snowflake in the place, and that she’s showing us all up with her Very Innocent Questions designed to make everyone else look stupid.
The problem is that you have to actually be smart for that to work. Just thinking you’re smart doesn’t cut it; it’s just another Dunning-Kruger example for us all to shake our heads over.
Because there are people participating in this discussion who are advocating that we should all be drinking raw milk. If they had their way, and we all started drinking raw milk, then there would be a lot more (senseless) deaths.
Seriously, do you even think before posting these comments?
why don’t you let natural selection do it’s thing? are you god by any chance? have you ever thought that if people never die we would be more overpopulated than we already are?
Because humans have the ability to overcome it.
Are you seriously advocating for letting weaker members of society die? That is abhorrent. You are a terrible, terrible person.
i am sorry to disappoint you sofa 🙁 i did not mean it…btw i think nature has been doing that without your permission i think! i hope not
It tries, but folks like me (and Dr Amy) try to fight it. Not because we think we are “god” but because we don’t want other members of society to die.
You, OTOH, apparently don’t care.
Quick question: I don’t think I am god, but suppose you were. Would you be happy killing off weak members of society? These are someone’s son or daughter or mother or sister or brother or uncle. You would be ok with just letting them die, even though you could prevent it?
Do you know what “letting natural selection do its thing” really means? It means letting people die even though they could be saved because you think that they’re “inferior” due to some illness. Is that really what you want? When you get sick will you simply go off quietly and die, preferably somewhere that the scavengers can eat your body, because nature is just doing “its thing” or will you demand medical care?
where did i say illness? if a stupid person wants to drink gasoline and dies isn’t this natural selection? tell me please! are you going to be by their side? do you want to take all the children of stupid mothers under your protection or just the ones that are being fed raw milk! and if someone is very week and cannot be saved even with medicine do you blame yourself for his/hers low immune system? what do you think? i am just wondering aren’t you? you must be smarter than me! please help me
Natural selection doesn’t care whether it’s your fault or not. If you say “just let them die–it’s natural selection” about people who drink gasoline then you also have to say it about people who get meningitis because they sat next to the wrong person on the bus.
and if someone is very we[a]k and cannot be saved even with medicine do you blame yourself for his/hers low immune system?
Depends. Was it my fault? Did I give them chemotherapy and not give them neupogen, for example? Or fail to find their HIV or cyclic neutropenia? Can I see any patterns in their progression from health to death that might allow me to interrupt the cycle for the next patient?
First, not everyone has 20/20 vision and using capital letters at the being of sentences will make your comment a lot easier for others to read. Second, as a person with bother physical and neurological disabilities, I am glad we no longer “let natural selection do it’s thing.” This is especially true considering the people most vulnerable to e-coli poisoning are young children.
If people don’t think their children have good odds of surviving, they’ll have more, not fewer.
No you sheeple tap water has teh flooridz
The first trimester miscarriage rate in the U.S. was (last time I checked) estimated at around 1 in 5. Some estimates put it as high as 1 in 3. No one is silencing that.
Yes, many people occasionally eat raw meat, and many more like their meat very rare. Eating raw meat is not without risk – it kills a few people in the U.S. every year, and pregnant women are strongly advised to only eat meat cooked.
where do you know all these things? i want the sources also please 🙂 links or something, like books?
Miscarriage rates:http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001488.htm
Raw meat – there’s a warning at the bottom of every restaurant menu, and my OB was pretty firm about it when I was pregnant. The CDC has very comprehensive information about food-borne illness – http://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/. They also have a specific page concerning raw milk – http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-index.html. They note that “Before the invention and acceptance of pasteurization, raw milk was a
common source of the bacteria that cause tuberculosis, diphtheria,
severe streptococcal infections, typhoid fever, and other foodborne
illnesses. These illnesses killed many people each year, especially
young children. “
thank you 🙂 you are very nice
Twenty minutes before this, you were shooting reflexive “you’re not bothering to read” at me.
I give careful and thoughtful answers because that’s what I do. I would hate for anyone to think it was some sort of attempt to get into your good graces.
I’m not nice. I think your behavior here has been provacative and unpleasant. Please go away.
If someone can’t even locate the shift key on a keyboard they have no business commenting on the reading skills of others. Personally, I think there’s a troll under this here bridge and it’s best to leave it alone until the next billy goat comes along.
eye-opening! i wish i had your skills on understanding things…and btw this is in no way helpful regarding the issue with raw milk and my questions about it! which are very much related!
your answer on my initial question was reflexive ,so i think my answer was very accurate…also this is not your home and i am asking questions related to the matter of raw milk! i wanted the doctor to answer,it does not matter if you like me or not! and why are you not nice? can you be nice?
This is, indeed, not my home. Nor is it yours.
You have behaved like a crude stranger here, wandering into an internet equivalent of a local pub, spitting on the bartender, your host, and than wondering why you’re snubbed by the regulars.
I gave you thoughtful answers – including the question you still haven’t answered – because it strikes me as a decent, human bottom line, but if you offered me a drink, I would decline it.
why don’t you read my first question where i ask the doctor to answer my questions, what makes you think i wanted your answers in the first place? not that i denied them i also read your links, but you are making me answer like that! also i did not see such comment of yours in the answers where the doctor is trashing some respectful people that commented….do you think they deserved it because they have no degree? do you think it was education provided in them?do you have a selective response attitude? i really liked your description of the bar and pub though 🙂 cute!
Yeah, lots of things that are OK for healthy adults are much more dangerous for pregnant women and unborn babies–flu, for example, or chicken pox.
Flu and chicken pox are ok for healthy non-pregnant adults? No. You are wrong, and you are ignorant.
“OK” is the wrong word, but yes, healthy school-aged children and adults USUALLY come through chicken pox and flu without hospitalization long-term problems. With pregnant women, that is not the case.
They’re unpleasant, but not particularly dangerous for healthy, young to middle-aged adults. The stakes always seem to be much higher for pregnant women and unborn babies.
My husband just went through chickenpox as a middle-aged adult–unpleasant and a waste of a week or two, but not life-threatening.
Oh, by the way–chicken pox vaccine–make sure your kids get it!
Most deaths from chicken pox did occur in adults. And H1N1 disproportionately kills young, healthy adults.
I thought chicken pox was one of the few diseases that is less dangerous for children than it is for adults. Wasn’t the idea behind all those “pox parties” back before the vaccine to have kids get the pox young when it’s less dangerous. Or were those parents just dicks? I got it in daycare so I’m not invested either way.
All bacterial illnesses are least severe in young adults, but a lot of viral illnesses are less severe in young children. For some diseases, the “safest” age is between about three and twelve. Chicken pox is usually nastier in adults, and it’s more likely to lead to serious complications.
So yes, before the vaccine was invented, it DID make sense to make sure your child caught it relatively young. A generation or two earlier, you wanted to make sure your daughter had rubella and your son mumps before puberty, and absolutely measles before 20. (Of course, now we have vaccines for all those things, which is a better system overall.)
Weirdly enough, there’s still one disease out there for which the “catch it early” applies: Mononucleosis. Most kids catch the virus while still in diapers and pull through it like a cold. The rest are subject to a much worse illness in adolescence. The reason it’s almost never seen after age 30 is that basically everyone is immune by then whether they’ve had a noticeable illness from it or not.
I like biology…
i had mono when i was 31. don’t know how i managed to avoid it when i was young, but wev. i ended up in the emergency room at 3 in the morning barely able to breathe. i’d been to my regular doctor twice at that point, and been prescribed 2 different abx for my “tonsillitis”.
took me a year to feel anything approaching normal.
“Or were those parents just dicks?” Yes.
“Oh, by the way–chicken pox vaccine–make sure your kids get it!”
100% agree! My mother was heavily into the woo when it came out, and refused to allow me to be vaccinated. I managed to avoid catching chicken pox as a kid, so I now need to go and get it done
Me too. During my childhood either the vaccine wasn’t recommended or available. So I’ll be getting the shingles shot. Just hope I nip it before it nips me.
“In India, for example, many rural people buy their milk unprocessed, but everyone takes it home and boils it before using.”
My husband was a kid in 1980s Poland, and he says they’d buy milk and then boil it there, too.
Not only are GNRs bad business and the risks too high for young children but we live in an antibiotic fallback society. We give broad spectrum antibiotics for colds roitinely. GNRs of the 1800s are not the same as they are today. You can’t ever simply say they did it that way back then what’s the difference. Well since Pasteur started a safer way of consuming dairy products, times have changed and bugs have definitely changed.
What does GNR stand for?
Keep in mind, though, antibiotic-resistant bacteria are not more virulent or harmful than regular bacteria, they’re just harder to cure with antibiotics.
Raw milk is, by its nature, not processed in factories. The relationship between the producer and the consumer, built on the fact that you generally have to go directly to the farm to process unprocessed and unpasteurized milk, is billed as one of the selling points. If, despite this (which is theoretically a precaution), pregnant women who consume raw milk are more then five times more likely to develop toxoplasmosis then women who do not do so, it seems reasonable to question the safety of raw milk.
I agree that the modern world is awash in pollutants, and that environmental cleanup is something we should all be striving for, but I am not less awash in those pollutants then my neighbor. If one of us comes down with a disease and the other does not, it makes sense to look at the differences between us, and see if any of them are relevant.
Toxoplasmosis is a disease that we can test for, and which we know the effects of. When someone becomes ill from toxoplasmosis miscarries, conducting a search for “vaccinations, medications, and general toxins found in the environment” is an exhausting and fruitless exercise – we won’t be able to rule those causes either out or in, because the miscarriage was probably caused by toxoplasmosis.
Look it isn’t like they are taking it straight from the udder and giving it to them. People have been doing it for centuries, and yes some people have perished due to mishandling. Its no different from any other food. Shit just sometimes happens! We stepped away from our roots as and gave into cheap food products, because we value money over health.
That makes no sense. Processing milk makes it *more* expensive, not less.
“Shit just happens sometimes” is a horrifyingly callous approach preventable deaths.
I’ve had my share of food poisoning, and while I know plenty of people who will keep on risking an assortment of disease vectors, I prefer not to.
At least the people who love oysters enough to take the occasional bout of poisoning from them don’t go around claiming to be better than the rest of us.
I find your phrase “shit sometimes happens” particularly apt here. That’s why we pasteurize. Fecal bacteria in milk sickens and can kill people. We pasteurize because we value health. Duh.
People die driving sober, so why bother having drunk driving laws.
That is exactly a consequence of your attitude.
Do you agree with laws against drunk driving? Because shit just sometimes happens.
The lady Sarah, never says to lie…so your whole basis of writing this article is invalid. You should be more careful what you accuse people of. Wasn’t expecting this kind of huge error by an ivy league graduate doctor…disappointing, to say the least
Context is everything.
If the raw milk proponents want to talk about “natural” it is deeply unnatural for adult humans to drink milk. Never mind the milk of a different species.
It is a practice some human cultures started a few thousand years ago (7500 years approx), but only after the deeply unnatural practice of domesticating herd animals.
I’d have more respect for the “all organic, all natural” crowd actually ate only foodstuffs untainted by human agriculture, and accessible to our ancestors before agriculture and seafaring.
Acorns, samphire, seaweed, sea buckthorn, wild caught game meats, freshwater fish, nettles, locusts, that sort of thing. Anything which has been farmed or cultivated has been modified by humans is no longer natural and should be avoided.
No?
Heck, drinking milk is one of the acts that made humans GMO. That lactase persistence gene wasn’t there in the proto-human hunter/gatherer.
Also, if you want to be properly natural, game should be caught in the traditional way: chase it until it drops dead from exhaustion and then eat it. Fire cooking optional.
Though, truth be known, this game was lost when the first chimp/human ancestor discovered that if she stuck a stick in a tree she could get tasty insects to crawl on it and eat them. Thus was the carrying capacity of the world for primates increased and we’ve been stuck with having to use technology to feed ourselves ever since.
Eh, chasing game is too much work. I prefer carrion and raw shellfish, maybe some fruit a few weeks out of the year. Then I go dig up some tubers and eat ’em raw… they’re kind of small and bitter, though.
Hmm…maybe if we make friends with those wolves they’ll help us with the catching game. Oh, oops.
Here in my area, I see roadkill pheasants on pretty much a daily basis from September to early March (they’re incredibly stupid, it seems, and they will run right out onto a busy road). It’s poaching if you run over one and pick it up yourself, but it is not poaching if you see somebody else hit it and then stop to pick it up. So I imagine a two-car team, working inconspicuously, could eat pretty well for at least half of the year just by driving to and from work and the grocery store.
(I did once see a pheasant run right into the wheels of a semi truck and get thrown onto the shoulder in a tangled heap of feathers, but I was too chicken–and too ignorant of how to dress fowl–to stop and pick it up. Aside from sanitary concerns and the high probability that the poor thing’s innards had formed a hideous bone-fragment-spiked stew inside it, of course.)
That is the trouble with roadkill, high risk of rupturing the abdominal cavity, which makes the meat unfit for human consumption in about 2.5 seconds. And yes, pheasants are literally too stupid to live. They are selectively bred to be fat, tasty, and fun to hunt. (Seriously, they are.)
I’d love to try hunting them, actually. There are a bunch of places within half an hour or so of me that run hunts in season, and I keep thinking one of these days I’ll give it a go. I’m a pretty good shot.
We often had a braces of pheasants hanging in our shed when I was a child.
My father’s clients and friends are the hunting, shooting, fishing type.
My mother was always less than impressed at being give freshly shot game that needed dressed and plucked and hung as a gift.
I only wish to catch a fish, so juicy sweet!
Im curious to know if the studies were done on grass-fed cows, opposed to the milk they get from the pharmaceutically altered cows that are commercially raised that see NO grass or anything else natural. HUGE DIFFERENCE…you are what you eat…. chemical laden cows milk or Natural grass eating cows milk
What exactly do you mean by “pharmaceutically altered”?
Are you aware that even grass fed cows don’t eat a diet of 100% forage? Do you know anything at all about dairy farming?
So you have cows? Because I do and you are wrong. Perhaps traditional dairy’s do give grains, and antibiotics regularly but many local farms do not.
What do you feed your cows on days when they can’t be in the pasture?
Coastal Hay, and fermented alfalfa.
Congratulations! You realize that alfalfa has been genetically modified by humans for millenia? And that by fermenting it, you’ve altered its “natural” state?
Not all fields of Alfalfa are GMO, but yes there is always a danger of cross contamination by bees, and wind. Yes there were better options historically for grass-fed cattle…but we do the best we can with what we have.
You do realize that selective breeding is genetic modification right? Unless you get your alpha from deep in the wild and said alpha has been untouched by man it has still been genetically modified. Hell your cows themselves are GMO’s since their existence is thanks to a millennia of selective breeding.
I don’t think they do and not to mention what about that radiation during the fifties? People act now like those are natural crops, so much more natural than GMO. I saw one that I know was made that way being talked about like Heirloom seeds.
You need to check your science, there is an enormous difference. Here is a layman explanation:
http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/genetic-engineering-vs-selective-breeding
“Mother Nature Network” real “scientific” source you have there.
Unless you want to argue that a wolf and my brothers Australian Shepard are genetically identical, you have to admit that selective breeding is a form of genetic modification. It modifies genes slowly over a longer period of time but it modifies genes all the same.
Wrong. The science is completely different. I posted that source because I thought you would have an easier time understanding the information. Are you sure you are a librarian, the info is there but you do have to look. I can’t be doing it all for you, sorry. If you’re good with eating corn that produces it’s own poison to make it’s #1 pest’s stomach explode, then go ahead. But, if you believe you can consume a product that makes it’s own toxin and not be affected you are wrong. Go ahead and take a chance if you want, I eat and grow organic and do not buy GMO products because I have done my own homework. If you think it’s a coincidence allergies and gastrointestinal problems have risen in step with the widespread takeover of GMO’s, you’re wrong there too. I guess time will tell. I’m not going to tell you what to eat. And I’m not going to spend time looking for sources to back up my statements because I could care less if you are convinced or have changed your position. It’s cool with me if you get chron’s, IBS, colitis, or even cancer, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.
“But, if you believe you can consume a product that makes it’s own toxin and not be affected you are wrong.”
Right. So, you’re giving up most fruits and veggies, then? Lots and lots of plants produce toxins, including ones we eat every day. Here’s a little summary of a few of them.
http://www.foodista.com/blog/2011/03/28/10-poisonous-foods#
Please do not say that these toxins are “natural” and those in GMO plants are “unnatural.” Botulism toxin is 100% natural. So is fugu, and the Australian sea snake. Chemical relatives of cyanide are found in a variety of plants. Whether something is natural has nothing to do with whether it is safe.
Then go ahead and eat it if you have no concerns.
“Full Reserach Article with COMPLETE SCIENTIFIC DOCUMENTATION at:” a website promoting “Non-invasive, natural healing from solar and lunar influences.”
Let me explain something to you. The Internet is way way too big for any single person to read it all, right? So we need shortcuts to decide what to read, and what’s a complete waste of time. Just based on a quick glance at the website that video linked to, the video is a complete waste of time. I don’t care what the author says, because he’s obviously crazy.
I’m not arguing with you about GMO foods any more. If you want to avoid them, it probably won’t do you any harm, other than making it harder to shop.
I’m trying to teach you something much more important: Critical reading.
When I was nine I ate a baked potato with some green on the skin (I didn’t know that wasn’t a good idea). I will never forget how horrible I felt, or how I finally just went to sleep and woke up an hour later in the actual process of throwing up all over my bed.
If you think it’s a coincidence allergies and gastrointestinal problems have risen in step with the widespread takeover of GMO’s…
Except that they haven’t. According to up-to-date, allergic rhinitis increased in “Westernized” (their wording, not mine) countries from about the 1870s-the 1950s. True, asthma (officially) increased later, but the increase in asthma was well established by the 1960s. GMO in the sense of direct manipulation of DNA wasn’t even a thing in the 1870s-1950s. As in, we didn’t even know what DNA was during most of that time.
Allergic rhinitis is a runny nose, usually due to seasonal allergies. That’s not what we are talking about.
You may not be, but quite a number of people here have discussed allergic rhinitis and, particularly, asthma in terms of issues relating to GMO, raw milk, and environmental exposures.
What type of allergies are we talking about, then?
“Wrong. The science is completely different. I posted that source because
I thought you would have an easier time understanding the information.”
I know how genetic engineering works thanks. You missed my point twice so I don’t know why you feel the need to talk down to me. And I also know what a quack website looks like. Next time just link to mercola.com and save me some time.
“Are you sure you are a librarian,”
That’s what it says on my business card and office door.
“the info is there but you do have to look. I can’t be doing it all for you, sorry.”
Ah the old “find the information to prove my claims for me” canard. Hello again old friend.
“But, if you believe you can consume a product that makes it’s own toxin and not be affected you are wrong. ”
As CC Prof said a lot of “natural” foods make their own toxins.
“do not buy GMO products because I have done my own homework.”
I’m sure you have. Professors Dunning and Kruger would be proud.
“And I’m not going to spend time looking for sources to back up my statements ”
That’s obvious.
“It’s cool with me if you get chron’s, (sic) IBS, colitis, or even cancer, just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” What a lovely person you are, dear.
Luckily, I’m not a caterpillar, so it doesn’t make my stomach explode. You’d think we’d have seen some news stories about exploding stomachs by now.
“If you’re good with eating corn”
If you’re good with eating any corn at all, you’re happy with GMOs. Just ask Barbara McClintock…
Human beings have genetically modified crops and livestock for thousands of years. You’re missing the entire point. Your cows and your alfalfa have been created through human selective pressure on their genes.
I live in Ireland. Our cows eat grass and silage.
My SIL and her husband used to drink the raw milk from their herd…until they had kids.
Now they buy pasteurised milk like everyone else.
Attention raw milkers: you’re really behind the curve here. Raw cow’s milk is so 2013. The really natural folks are now drinking raw camel’s milk. Cheers!
Amish camel’s milk!
I want raw alpaca milk. Where do I buy that?
It’s right next to the raw yak milk at my local supermarket. Maybe you’re not looking hard enough?
I do hope that you’re using raw yak butter in your tea! It has so many health benefits.
Naturally! I mean if the Dalai Lama does it, right?
Actually, there’s an alpaca farm a couple miles from here — I can get right on that for you.
Amish camels don’t get autism! It’s a fact!
I’d lie a thousand more times too. Stay out of our business. Its your job to heal us IF we get sick, not prescribe craptons of bad advice, and WORSE stupid medications that make our children sicker. No thanks. YOU Make it so we have to lie so we can run our lives the way it was intended. You are intended to DO NO HARM. It was FINE FOR CENTURIES. Your medicines are there IN CASE something happens, not so you can be judge and jury for a natural way to live. Be a Doctor. That is all you are supposed to do.
Which part, exactly, was fine for centuries?
Apparently women dying in pregnancy and childbirth and not knowing if your child would survive past it’s first birthday.
I wish I could raise my children to about age 20 and then have them drop dead of diphtheria, personally.
Or die during a war not vouchsafed a hero’s death on the battle field, but of pneumonia from a measles infection as our poor dear captain Hamilton did in Gone With the Wind. In all seriousness I do believe WWII was the first war that the US lost more soldiers to the battlefield than infectious diseases.
Sullivan, Sullivan, Sullivan; twasn’t poor dear Ashley. Twas poor dear Charles Hamilton who died of measles. Sigh.
Haha, I know I changed it before you posted this. I was thinking about Scarlet which always leads me to think about her saying Ashley.
You’re forgiven! 🙂
Wait…how exactly are they meant to heal you when you get sick if you keep lying to them?
So, just to confuse the issue further…People with allergic rhinitis are less likely to get glioblastoma than those without allergies. If raw milk protects against allergies, then, unlike cell phones, it does increase the risk of brain tumors.
Reference.
Seeing that spring has finally come to New England (sort of) and the claritin I took this morning might have well been homeopathic for all the good it’s doing me, I might not mind that increase risk of brain tumors at the moment.
I sneeze and sympathize. It’s a pretty minor risk, though the relative risk is higher than the relative decrease in risk of allergies from drinking raw milk, even accepting the most optimistic studies at face value.
Wait, why all the parachuters on this post today?
ETA: Attention parachuters: http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/02/a-mom-and-a-dairymans-plea-dont-feed-children-raw-milk/
Apparently, sent by the Healthy Home Economist for our entertainment! So kind of her!
I don’t know whether to thank her for the diversion, or be disappointed that it took her so long to find out that SOB made fun of her.
Yeah, cause the skeptical OB is so in touch, eh? She hasn’t been licensed to practice since 2003. I’ve been here 2 days and the only people on here seem to be supporters of the same point. Hers. How is that a discussion? Is that what you are here for? Or are you here to insult those who think differently than you? I haven’t see you turn out any evidence to counter anything I have posted.
Actually we have. You either didn’t read it or weren’t able to understand it.
Actually you have what? Read your s*it before you hit post.
We have presented evidence. I just posted another one for you.
Actually, we have turned out evidence, is what Young CC Prof was saying; it was a reply to “I haven’t seen you turn out any evidence to counter anything I have posted.”
That was perfectly clear to those of us capable of following a written discussion.
Young CC Prof is not the one with reading comprehension problems here.
Doesn’t say if their cows were grass fed. That makes a difference.
So we should all live close enough to a dairy that has grass fed cows, fed an organic diet so we can buy very pricey raw milk that has a short shelf life – so we can be healthier?
If it cured cancer, diabetes, autism and ignorance then the price and risk might be worth it.
Raw milk does not mold, it ferments. you can leave it out for weeks and still consume it, it will be sour but you can still safely consume it.
For a given value of “safely”.
Actually the milk I buy from the local farmer is $3/gallon for cow (compared to $5 reg store milk) and $6/gal goat milk (compared to $17/gal store bought). Support local farmers and save money! I do actually pasteurize the goat milk for my baby’s homemade formula and for my dairy allergic toddler, but my husband and older kids drink raw cow milk. As a homeschooling mom, I’ve seen my boys react negatively to processed food and I want to be responsible and give them healthy food without artificial ingredients, chemicals or antibiotics. Thankfully my pediatrician has been supportive of our goat’s milk formula:)
But does it cure ignorance?
No, it does not make a difference. Please show me your evidence that it makes a difference. And all cows get silage, even ones that are pastured in good weather.
Nope
Livestock in feedlots are not raised in pastures. Here are some scientific references for you.
Added health benefits of products from pastured animals
De Vogel, J., Denise Jonker-Termont et al. (2005). “Green vegetables, red meat and colon cancer: chlorophyll prevents the cytotoxic and hyperproliferative effects of haem in rat colon.” Carcinogenesis.
Gorelik, S., M. Ligumsky, et al. (2008). “The Stomach as a ‘Bioreactor’: When Red Meat Meets Red Wine.” J Agric Food Chem.
Massiera, F; Barbry, P; Guesnet, P; Joly, A; Luquet, S; Brest,, CM; Mohsen-Kanson, T; Amri, E and G. Ailhaud. A Western-like fat diet is sufficient to induce a gradual enhancement in fat mass over generations. Journal of Lipid Research. August 2010. Volume 51, pages 2352-2361.
McAfee, A.J.; E M McSorley; et al. British Journal of Nutrition (2011) Red meat from animals offered a grass diet increases plasma and platelet N-3 PUFA in healthy consumers. Volume 105, pages 80-89
Mercier, Y., P. Gatellier, M. Renerre (2004). “Lipid and protein oxidation in vitro, and antioxidant potential in meat from Charolais cows finished on pasture or mixed diet.” Meat Science 66: 467-473.
Smit, Liesbeth A, Ana Baylin, and Hannia Campos. 2010. Conjugated linoleic acid in adipose tissue and risk of myocardial infarction. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Published ahead of print, May 12, 2010.
Waser, M., K. B. Michels, et al. (2007). “Inverse association of farm milk consumption with asthma and allergy in rural and suburban populations across Europe.” Clin Exp Allergy 37(5): 661-670. Read summary.
McAfee, A.J.; E M McSorley; G J Cuskelly; A M Fearon; B W Moss; J A M Beattie; J M W Wallace; M P Bonham; J J Strain British Journal of Nutrition (2011) Red meat from animals offered a grass diet increases plasma and platelet N-3 PUFA in healthy consumers. Volume 105, pages 80-89
Thanks for the bibliography salad, but if you haven’t read the full article (not just the abstract), you aren’t allowed to cite it.
Uggh, you people are too much! Carry on…I’m good. I’m so elated I’ve not managed to lengthen your lives with any worthless information.
It’s April Fools day, silly!
Stick to what you know, drugs, and keep to yourself about what you think you know about nutrition!!! God made real food = health and nutrition.
Raw milk isn’t just about nutrition. It is about bacteria that can make babies deathly ill. Would you stick a poopy finger in your baby’s mouth?
Yes, I would also slap it and piss on it. Then my baby would beat the shit out of your weak and worthless baby.
God made real food…don’t make me laugh, humans have been modifying crops for thousands of years. It’s been by gradual selective breeding, but it has made huge changes when compared to the natural forms.
What colour were carrots 400 years ago?
Talk to me about bananas (they’re clones you know).
Would a Mayan recognise corn varieties grown today?
Would an Egyptian recognise our wheat?
What about apples?
Would you like to compare a wild crabapple to a Pink Lady?
The ancient Irish lived on a diet of porridge, whiskey, beef broth, cow’s blood, wood sorrel and buttermilk. Neither healthy nor nutritionally
…neither healthy nor nutritionally complete.
Wild almonds! Go eat wild almonds! (No, guests, seriously, don’t do it, they contain LOTS of cyanide.)
But…but… laetrile cures cancer!!
I’m gonna sit down to some hot-buttered teosinte tonight! The kids love it! None of that GMO corn for them!
Dr. Kitty, you are lost and you might not be a Dr. since you cannot identified the difference between a gradual selective breeding, and genetically modify crops. Big difference, don’t you know Dr? go educated yourself, and don’t make me laugh with you silly post.
Where did I mention GMO?
Which part of “it has been by gradual selective breeding” do you have difficulty understanding.
Look, if I take a wolf and splice a single gene into it from a jellyfish and compare the resulting animal to a Chinese Crested Dog, which one is more like the original natural ancestral wild dog which humans first domesticated? It’s the GMO wolf.
All of our food crops are essentially the genetic equivalents of poodles, pugs and bulldogs-bred by humans for specific characteristics which do not occur frequently in nature, and just as unnatural as the most inbred dog at Crufts.
Jellywolf! There’s a new sci-fi series in there somewhere.
Or a delicious gummy sweet…
Um, that’s the whole point. There is no difference. Most GMO crops involve changes no weirder or more “unnatural” than those we can accomplish with selective breeding. Why use GMO technology? It’s cheaper. With a few months of work in a lab, you can do what would take 100 years and a thousand acres to pull off the old fashioned way.
In the 1950s we we bombarding seeds with radiation to get a lot of things you probably consume now. What would be a mechanistic difference between breeding genes in, radiating genes in, and splicing them in?
My 1 year old had asthma. Conventional “treatments” didn’t work. After a lot of research, I learned about raw milk. Fast forward a year later, he has been asthma AND allergy free since he started drinking it.
Anecdata isn’t scientific and you are lucky that he didn’t catch a nasty infection. I wouldn’t flip out if my 8 year old drank raw milk fresh from a dairy, but I sure as heck wouldn’t give it to my newborn!
I would flip out if my 8 year old drank raw milk. E coli found in raw milk has mutated; it’s a lot deadlier than it was 25 years ago.
I don’t know enough about raw milk to be scared then, apparently. But I’ll take your word for it and err on the side of caution.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/02/a-mom-and-a-dairymans-plea-dont-feed-children-raw-milk/
If you don’t know anything about it, then why are jumping her s*it with this little diatribe of yours above: “Raw milk isn’t just about nutrition. It is about bacteria that can make babies deathly ill. Would you stick a poopy finger in your baby’s mouth”?????????????
My 8 year old’s hands are disgusting and he eats with them. I wash my hands before touching the baby.
This is due to bacterial resistance, thanks to the massive amounts of antibiotics given to conventional cows that live in CAFO’s.
That doesn’t prevent the organic cows next door from catching it!
Virulence is not the same as antibiotic resistance. An infection might be resistant to every antibiotic on the block, but so mild most healthy people can fight it off without treatment (see HA-MRSA). Conversely, an infection can be very sensitive to antibiotics, but so severe that many patients suffer permanent harm or death before antibiotics kick in. (See bacterial meningitis.)
Why do you comment on things that you obviously are ignorant of?
This new strain is not limited to raw milk, geniuses. I guess you all better stop eating all produce now.
This is precisely why I don’t eat organic produce.
Also why my husband thoroughly cooks just about all veggies, just like his peasant ancestors who also used organic fertilizer.
Pasteurization fixes the problem in raw milk.
Most of you just repeat the same things, and don’t give it a second thought. You are about 35,000 times more likely to get sick from other foods than you are from raw milk. And statistically, you are more like to get injured driving to the farm to get your pastured milk, then you are from drinking raw it. http://www.realmilk.com/safety/those-pathogens-what-you-should-know/
Nobody is against milk from pastured cows. We’re against raw milk. Huge difference.
I read this initially as “pasturized cows” and was alarmed. I am totally against pasturizing whole cows. It just wouldn’t be nice.
I did, too. And pasteurizing whole cows isn’t nice. A well-boiled beef stew, on the other hand, is very nice.
Pasteurized cows, even. Bleh, spelling!
If you’re against it…here is a suggestion: DON’T BUY IT, AND DON’T DRINK IT! Problem solved.
Funny screen name. Did we come to you? No, you came to us. Perhaps you should take your own advice.
You know, a lot of young children outgrow asthma, especially boys. Those conventional treatments, such as inhaled steroids, which “didn’t work” probably helped him to outgrow it.
And would you care to provide a source for “35,000 times more likely?”
He got better within the very first few days of starting the milk. I buy my milk weekly, and there have been 2 cases during the busyness of the holidays that I did not pick up. Both times, his allergies flared up. My daughter and I have allergies that have been helped as well. http://www.westonaprice.org/press/government-data-proves-raw-milk-safe
http://www.realmilk.com/safety/those-pathogens-what-you-should-know/
“As for the specific public health impact of drinking raw milk, the Centers of Disease Control (CDC) estimates an annual average of more than eight hundred thousand (845,024) people in the U.S. have
domestically acquired diarrhea caused by food contaminated with Campylobacter spp.1 an annual average of 34 Campylobacter jejuni illnesses have been attributed to drinking raw milk.”
I thought that classic bit of intellectual dishonesty might be your source. It’s been passed around before, it’s still nonsense.
Seriously, do you not see what’s wrong with the math there? An ESTIMATE of total cases. Not the number of reported cases, an estimate which is about 100 times bigger than the number of officially reported cases. Now he’s comparing this huge estimate to the the number of reported cases that could be definitely linked to raw milk. (For many reported cases, the source cannot be found. If the patient doesn’t tell the doctor he drank raw milk, the source won’t be found.)
In short, it’s not just comparing apples and oranges, it’s comparing the apples in your hand to all the oranges that MIGHT be in Florida.
Really? How about we use common sense, then. We see outbreaks of food borne illness regularly, rather it be spinach or from beef, but the same is not true for raw milk. I sure don’t see anyone trying to ban either one of those.
We see outbreaks of food borne illness regularly, rather it be spinach or from beef, but the same is not true for raw milk.
The CDC begs to differ: “Forty-three
outbreaks resulted in product recalls.
The recalled foods were ground beef (eight outbreaks), sprouts (seven),
cheese and cheese-containing products (six), oysters (five), raw milk
(three), eggs (three), and salami (ground pepper), bison, sirloin steak,
unpasteurized apple cider, cookie dough, frozen mamey fruit, hazelnuts,
Romaine lettuce, ground turkey burger, tuna steak, and a frozen entrée
(one each)” From Surveillance for foodborne disease outbreaks 2009-10.
Judy said ban, not recall. Comprehension. I sure don’t see anyone trying to ban either one of those, meaning spinach and beef.
Yup, ground beef is a common source of food poisoning! 8 outbreaks! Raw milk was only 3!
However,
1) The average American eats ground beef once a week or more. Almost 30 pounds per person per year, and most people eat it at least occasionally. Most Americans never drink raw milk. Therefore, drinking recalled raw milk is far more likely than eating recalled ground beef.
2) We already know that eating raw ground beef is bad. Many restaurants now refuse to serve rare hamburger at all.
3) Most people who do drink raw milk buy it either directly from the farmer, or from very small distributors. This means that when outbreaks occur, they are less likely to draw the attention of the authorities.
4) Beef has E. Coli. Milk has E. Coli. See the connection?
You realize that realmilk.com is just a WAPF front? And that its purpose is to make you buy a bunch of nutritional supplements from WAPF?
Hmmm…Did you know that they don’t give a diagnosis of asthma until a child is at least two? Reactive airway is what they call it because it often resolves. Albuterol rarely works on children this age.
But please, tell us more…
I’ll put it plainly then, my son struggled to breathe. After having RSV he had bouts of very labored breathing. The doctors vague answers and treatments did nothing to help the situation, raw milk did.
Or he finally started to get better. Look, both of my kids had RSV as infants, and my not quite two year old is on a daily inhaler during the winter. His older brother just suddenly got over his breathing issues, and he might as well. There is no reason to think that raw milk had a damned thing to do with it.
At the time I didn’t know, but Tylenol is associated with a great increase risk for asthma because it lowers glutathione levels. But guess what? Milk helps to restore those levels and nitrosoglutathione dilates the bronchioles by stimulating the same receptors as albuterol. http://www.westonaprice.org/blogs/cmasterjohn/2012/03/31/with-the-wave-of-a-wand-raw-milk-wipes-away-the-wheeze-how-our-good-friend-glutathione-protects-against-asthma/
lolololol
Weston A Price was a eugenicist dentist who died over 60 years ago and whose work was discredited by science well before that.
I am worried that self diagnosing your children and treating them with dangerous substances for the fake diagnosis is some kind of as yet unidentified mental illness. It makes me nervous for the children of these people.
Smughausen by proxy.
Our middle girl had bronchiolitis at 18 months, and ended up with an inhaler for a bit. She outgrew it too, I just counted us among the lucky ones (asthma runs in my family).
My youngest had RSV at four months, and got nebulizer treatments for it. She occasionally had breathing issues after that for about two years–nothing serious, but we got her an albuterol inhaler and she did use it every so often in the winter if she sounded wheezy (as in, less than once a month).
She’s now nine, healthy as a horse, and hasn’t had an issue with her breathing in six years. Oddly, she has never even been in the same room with raw milk.
Yeah, my son was in the same boat. He had RSV at 3 months, had to have a 2 night hospital stay for it, and this past winter (he turned 2 in the middle of the winter), when he got a bad cold, would get reactive airways requiring an albuterol inhaler. Odds are he outgrows it within the next couple of years, independent of what we do.
Exactly what happened with my son.
RSV is an awful thing for a baby to catch, and I’m sorry. But I agree with Moto, it probably just resolved over time the way most RSV cases do.
So you misdiagnosed something and then treated with something not proven to work that is dangerous for babies? What kind of parents do things like that? Irresponsible!
Anti-intellectuals that don’t value a medical education (or any education period) think like that.
Or the reactive inflammation from the RSV infection wore off…
Little kids are sniffly and wheezy and have the snuffles. Inhaled beta agonists don’t really work because they don’t yet have the receptors.
Most of the time the airways get bigger, get less reactive and the snuffles and wheeze improve, if you’re patient.
My kid had severe eczema as a baby and it’s completely gone now at 5yo.
Because.. maybe because she started drinking banana smoothies? Or perhaps because she likes eating apples? Or maybe Granny’s cupcakes fixed it? Or maybe she grew out of it and we have less control over this stuff then you think.
The cupcakes. Definitely the cupcakes. Cupcakes cure everything, especially if made by grandmothers.
You, obviously, have not had MY cupcakes.
Why didn’t you try marijuana? My grandmother was prescribed it for asthma as a child and it simply did wonders for her!
My father had really bad asthma in the 1950s. He didn’t do much of anything for it than was the norm at that time and by age five it was gone.
I don’t really have a dog in the fight. My wife breast feeds our kids for a year and then we go to organic, whole, pasteurized milk. I don’t have an issue with disagreeing with raw milk; however, I do take issue with you demanding that all that differ from your opinion must be fools incapable of rational, intelligent thought. You keep asking commenters to provide studies and statistics, yet you have provided none yourself. The only demonstrated credential you have is a self-proclaimed understanding of microbiology.
I will be the first to tell you that I don’t understand microbiology. I am a supply chain expert for a global oil and gas company. To reach my career level, I was required to complete an education that was arguably as rigorous as any general practitioner of medicine. This doesn’t give me authority in clinical settings but should serve as evidence that I’m capable of research and educated, critical thinking. I trust our pediatrician implicitly; if I didn’t, I’d find a new one. So when it came to questions of vaccination and raw milk, we deferred to her judgment, but not without asking tough questions. She answered all of them and provided peer-reviewed studies for us to look into that argued BOTH sides. We came back a week later and discussed any further questions. Maybe pasteurization will ruin my children Maybe GMOs will ruin others. Perhaps raw milk will ruin others still. We do the best we can with the information available. A true scientist would advocate this approach. To me, your opinion is just as ignorant and invalid as the Healthy Home Economist. You provide no evidence to support your claims, yet you demand it from readers. Do you not see how backwards that is? The burden of proof is always on the person proclaiming to be an expert. I have never done a single lecture in which I spout off all of my opinions, with know evidentiary basis, and then demand that the audience accept my opinions. I may be right, but the authority of my comments is only implied to a certain extent. If I begin speaking about something that individuals have experienced in their supply chains and tell them that it was all fictitious, they shut down. The know it is real because they experienced it. At that point, I set out to establish why their experience was anomalous and shouldn’t be thought of as the norm. You do this with evidence.
Again, I am a supply chain professional, so I can’t and won’t speak to the microbiology of nutrition. However, I too am an expert in my field and an educator, and from that basis, I have authority to speak and tell you that, based only on what I’ve seen in this blog and comments, that you are ignorant and complacent in the knowledge gained while seeking your doctorate. Shoot, if I rested o. What I learned in my graduate studies, my company would have one of the least efficient supply chains in the Fortune 500. Consequently, we probably wouldn’t even make the list. If I thought I knew everything and that anybody lacking my degrees and certifications was too simple to add value to my endeavors, I wouldn’t be where I am today. And this is supply chain we’re talking about. How much more complex is our physical world, the human body, and the food we eat? So to think that your degree is the be all, end all is absolutely infantile. I hope, for the sake of the children you claim to defend, that parents ignore you and the Healthy Home Economist. You’re both paranoid quacks.
Right. Dr. Amy rests on her laurels. That’s why she reads and quotes so many technical journals, to make sure she doesn’t learn anything new that might contradict what she learned in school!
That may well be the case in other posts, but not in this one. Also, the ability for a person to read journals that validate their pre-held beliefs is not at all impressive. As there is significant division among nutritionists and health professionals on this matter, I have to assume she only reads that which offers confirmation of what she already believes. See, it’s one thing to sit around and bully the random internet user; it’s another thing entirely to mock those that have the same, or better, credentials. Either way is disrespectful and childish, but the latter is just plain foolish. This lady has no idea about the background and education of any person here, but she assumes she’s the most educated and intelligent person at the table. That is a dead giveaway that her ground is shaky, at best. So young cc Prof, you would do well to consider the person within whom you are throwing your lot. In the anonymity of the internet, it doesn’t much matter, but in real life it can ruin you. I may not know nutrition, but I do know the corporate world, and the wrong coat tails will drag you right into oblivion. The same is true in universities.
I am a supply chain expert for a global oil and gas company.
BP? (Sorry, that was rude. Let me try again.)
I’m one of your suppliers. Seriously. My family has a little, tiny oil well which we rent to a major company to extract the oil from. How would you feel about my demanding that you prove to me that a pipeline was a more efficient method of transporting oil than an open trench? Or asked “tough questions” like whether it was better to burn the oil for fuel or use it to patch holes in boats like our ancestors did was a better use. Because your questions are about as sensible. What exactly is bad about killing the bacteria in milk apart from it’s being “unnatural”?
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating for raw milk. I thought that was clear. I didn’t actually ask any questions about raw milk on this forum. I did ask our pediatrician. No, I don’t work for BP. Now, for your real question: if you were to ask me questions about open trench oil movement and patching holes in boats (which is the opposite side of the supply chain from me), I would first of all acknowledge that for quite some time, that was an effective use. Then I would use data gathered by experts on oil movement and uses and form an option off of that. What I wouldn’t do is tell you that the burden of proof was on you to show me why you should move and use your oil in a different way than I would. If I want you to change the way you live, the burden of proof is on me. Again, as I said in the very first few sentences, my family uses pasteurized milk. I would ask that you reread my original post, as you seem to have confused it with other comments here. My issue is not with pasteurized or raw milk; it is with self-proclaimed experts being condescending to people they don’t know and making very harsh and nonsensical judgments based solely on the fact that those people subscribe to European nutrition standards, rather than American.
Um, the European Union banned the international sale of raw milk. For safety reasons, although, under French pressure, they still allow the export of raw-milk cheese.
And, research has shown that the aging rules for raw-milk cheese are not really adequate to kill e coli. They were developed to prevent the spread of tuberculosis in raw milk, not today’s pathogens.
if you were to ask me questions about open trench oil movement and
patching holes in boats (which is the opposite side of the supply chain
from me), I would first of all acknowledge that for quite some time,
that was an effective use. Then I would use data gathered by experts on
oil movement and uses and form an option off of that.
‘K. Go for it. Why are we wasting oil on cars when we could be using it to patch boats? As I said, I really am a supplier, albeit not necessarily really for your company.
Actually, if you’re going to go through the trouble of taking my questions seriously, maybe I’ll ask a real one: Why are we wasting oil on low value processes like running internal combustion engines and heating buildings (both of which could be done by other means) rather than saving it for production of technical plastics, which really can’t? I’m considering asking them to cap the well and save the remaining oil for later use…
So no real answer to The Computer Ate My Nym’s question, maybe you could not understand his point, or maybe when you can not answer someones question, just use sarcasm and to make yourself think you have won this difference of opinion
Where are the peer-reviewed studies arguing “the other side” of raw milk and vaccination? The ones your pediatrician gave you to review? Links?
Salmonella and E. coli can’t survive in raw milk – only in the ultra-pasteurized, call-it-white-water-it’s-not-milk that you and your cronies recommend. PS Have you ever heard of Justina Pelletier? The pediatrician is no longer our friend, they are representatives of the state. Any parent who does ANYTHING different that what Big Brother advises NEEDS to lie about it, or risk having their children removed. This is what comes right after “social justice” folks. At first it’s all “we just want everything to be fair” but shortly afterwards it turns to “we know what’s best for you, so do it, or else.”
Um….
Here. Try this tinfoil hat, it might make the meme reception clearer.
Oh, thanks Anj. That’s tons better! Have you noticed you look a little…lizardy lately? Any chance you’ve been to Alpha Draconis?
Wow! I have seen a lot of people try make their own truths but they are usually not this diametrically opposed to reality.
There are tons of kids you can save from the long lines at McDonalds go save them, and leave us alone.
Yet another smug demonstrating that raw milk has as much to do with elitism as it does with any purported “health benefits.”
Really…goes to show you know nothing about it. Many of you have no idea the sacrifices and work that goes into sourcing raw milk, organic vegetables and pasture fed and finished meat. Or the entire life style change that is necessary. For me I am so passionate about it that we’ve moved to an area we can farm (for our own table). It was a huge financial commitment, not to mention the amount of work that is required daily. All we ask is for you and those who love to attack others to stay out of our business.
Proving my point.
Ok, got it I’m smug! Thanks I’ll try to do better.
Yes, yes, you are. You and your special snowflakes are so much better than the vast unwashed hoards at McDonalds. Your sacrificial, labour-intensive lifestyle and your “huge financial commitment” are demonstrably superior.
I would rather spend money and time on things that would really benefit my children like activities or classes.
Then do it, has anyone said you shouldn’t do that. Or that you are misinformed as to what is important. We all do the best we can with what we have.
And you are angry because I live differently than you? Confused as to why my lifestyle matters to you all.
You haven’t a clue as to how I live.
I don’t give a rat’s about your lifestyle. But your elitism is gross.
And for what? Nothing, really.
Although I do have to say, you have an interesting way of trying to counter the claim that it’s as much about elitism as anything else.
So because you work really hard to get your food and you are super duper passionate, your food is automatically safe? Got it. Every single person who works really hard to get their food never encounters pathogenic bacteria. I had no idea!
Interesting… So now I wonder… My large family of 9 who grew up on a dairy farm, drank tons of raw milk, ate butter and lots of cheese all made from raw milk. Not a single allergy, very healthy (I don’t recall any of us ever going to a Dr.) My hubbies family on the other hand has not been so lucky. They followed the FDA recommendations by drinking pasteurized everything, margarine not butter. Don’t leave anything to chance, be safe & follow the FDA. They suffer from every allergy under the sun. IDK anything, I’m just an uneducated farm girl doing what has proven to work for us. Maybe someday I’ll get sick. I don’t know about all of you but for now I love my medication free life!
1) The worst danger in raw milk is E. Coli, which is actually a new problem that didn’t exist before about 1970.
2) Anecdote.
3) There is some evidence that farm children have fewer allergies. It’s not diet, though, it’s soil exposure.
Congratulations. Just keep reminding yourself how you are so much better than those icky sick and disabled people. You don’t sound like an ass the parrots the just world hypothesis and blames the sick for their own illnesses at all.
I had friends in high school who drove drunk pretty much every weekend. They didn’t have a single problem.
In contrast, two girls I knew were driving sober and safe and were crushed by an out-of-control semi.
Guess that means that drunk driving is better than not.
Sorry about the girls you knew. Hope it wasn’t your friends driving the semi.
Nope, random driver, random location.
Two perfectly fine young people doing everything right dead.
Meanwhile, lots of classmates engaging in risky behavior perfectly fine.
What’s the lesson?
I’ll take “life sucks” for 500 Alex
The lesson… Live while you can, life is short. If you have to break the rules now & then, so be it. Do what you know to be your best. Oh and stay the hell away from victim personalities they always have some type of problem created by anybody but themselves.
lolololol!!
Keep rubbing that talisman De. You are not lucky, you are better than everyone else. The world is a just place and anyone who says otherwise are whiners with a victim mentality. Nothing bad will ever happen to you because you eat organic food.
The lesson is that life sucks. I’m sorry about your friends.
Unfortunately, that is not the only lesson. OTOH, life is charmed for all those friends who drove drunk and survived.
At least, they will act like it is. They are just doing everything right.
So you are say her family did not have any health issues from raw milk by chance? luck? Dumb and unfair comparison. Think about it…
Um, yes, he is saying that people who drink raw milk are taking a risk. Some get sick, and some, through luck, do not get sick.
Yes, that is exactly what I am saying.
Luck, yes pure LUCK! Kind of like when you take meds and you don’t get sick and die from all the misdiagnosing, wrong prescription giving medical circus that calls this blog home. Now that is luck at it’s finest. That legal prescription concoction that is pumped into people is one of the largest killers in America and all we have to say for ourselves is “Opps! Better LUCK next time.” Let’s outlaw the sun because apparently some people have bad luck with dealing with that as well.
Because e coli have mutated and become deadlier in the past 25 years. This is not your grandfather’s bacteria.
Cows from factory farms that are fed GMO corn and pumped up with unnecessary antibiotics have this problem, not healthy, grass-fed cows.
Oh, campylobacter. I stupidly took a trip in my 5th month to bermuda with my 1 year old. The hotel was somewhat primitive and next to a small, organic dairy farm. We all got it, probably from contaminated water or food. Bloody poop and fever. My husband had the fever hit him as we were about to board the plane back home and could barely walk. Baby got dehydrated and needed medical treatment. By the time I got cultured, I was mostly better, but I got treated like I had dodged a bullet because it wasn’t the type of campylobacter that causes miscarriages.
Speaking of campylobacter…here’s an outbreak from one of those clean, grass-fed, non-GMO dairies that Judy’s been on about. http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/03/campylobacter-cases-from-pa-raw-milk-outbreak-reach-80/#.UztVEFw9WfE
There isn’t enough grass fed beef for everyone anyway, so go ahead and get the regs for you and yours.
Citation needed.
No a citation is not necessary, this is common knowledge. Jeesh, do some of your own homework, would ya?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/27/antibiotic-resistance-food-drug-companies_n_5042287.html?utm_hp_ref=green
That article has nothing to do with whether all-natural pastured organic cows can harbor deadly e coli.
Early exposure to dirt appears to decrease the risk of allergies and asthma. It was probably playing in the mud and occasionally eating it that decreased your risk of allergies, not the raw milk. Or genetics. Genetics count for a lot in immunology.
If you grew up on a farm, you probably had a lot of contact with all of the animals, including their germs, and, ahem, their fecal material. Some evidence exists to suggest that this has a protective effect, but it has to be sustained. Kids who live in the suburbs have not had this level of exposure, and are therefore at high risk of contracting illness from raw milk.
Here’s another little anecdote for you. My grandfather was a dairy farmer for 60+ years. My Dad and his siblings did not drink unpasteurized milk, nor did my grandfather once it became standard. Wonder why?
Here’s my anecdote. My husband grew up on a working dairy farm, owned by his family for three generations. His twin brother is asthmatic and suffers from fairly nasty seasonal allergies. He was hospitalized four times with pneumonia as a child. On the other hand, my husband doesn’t have asthma or allergies, and never had pneumonia.
Both boys drank raw milk and ate products made from raw milk. That was 30 years ago. Neither man would go near the stuff now. Times have changed and so has e coli.
Well, my family grew up in an affluent suburb and drank delivered pasteurized milk, though we always did eat real butter as do I now, and not a single allergy, very healthy (though we are normal well visit people). My husband grew up in my same neighborhood with the same dairy consuming habits and his family is the same. Really the allergy thing has more to do with living around animals. Though there is nothing wrong with drinking your own raw milk from your own farm.
I have a patient who grew up on a beef farm…who has developed an anaphylactic allergy to beef albumin.
Really.
We had a good laugh about the irony. He’s quite happy, it gives him a good reason to get out of inheriting the farm.
I’m pretty sure Sarah Pope doesn’t get a cut of what I pay my local farmer for nutrient-rich milk from his pastured cows. Furthermore, anyone who has searched for homemade baby formula recipes because they have enough common sense not to feed their baby the poison that comes in a can (from poisoned cows eating poisoned grain) will likely have come to her recipe after doing thorough research on safe alternatives when breastmilk isn’t available. If Sarah profits from good advice, what’s it to you? You profit from killing mothers and mutilating babies. At least she’s doing some good in the world!
Um, her baby formula recipe IS poisonous. It contains a toxic dose of vitamin A, and plenty of liver, which is the most toxic meat product.
“the most toxic meat product”….only if the animal is toxic in general.
All living organisms accumulate poisons, whether from diet or from the process of metabolism, and the greatest concentration is found in the liver, far above what’s found in meat or milk.
Go ahead, prove me wrong! Do your own research!
I don’t think you are wrong. But the AMOUNT of poisons can vary greatly, and liver also has a very beneficial nutrient profile to balance out that equation.
Beneficial nutrition? Sure, for most older children and adults. But it’s wrong for babies. (And pregnant women, the Vitamin A overdose can cause birth defects.)
Sarah Pope’s baby formula does not match the nutrient balance of breast milk. Commercial infant formula does. Any questions?
Yes. How many toxic ingredient can you find in store bought formula? A Slew of them.
Excellent rebuttal! Now name 2 toxic ingredients in infant formula. Explain what specific toxins they contain and in what quantities, and compare the dose in infant formula to the LD-50.
Aluminum!!!!!!!!!
Oh wait, that’s breast milk….
Dihydrogen monoxide is in all formula, it’s everywhere and the sheeple have no clue!
http://www.dhmo.org
No! Not DHMO! I’ve heard just a few ounces of pure DHMO can cause serious illness in infants!
DHMO kills more people every year than even raw milk.
It can, it’s so very dangerous. People just don’t understand how dangerous chemicals are!
Yes, but, if you’re Food Babe, you believe that DHMO’s crystalline structure is impacted by positive and negative emotions that people project onto it.
Allow me to purify your water by Facetiming it and saying nice things to it. Then your baby’s bottle will be totes safe.
Love the MSDS on that site. “Prolonged contact with skin will cause wrinkling.”
It’s almost as if…she has no training…and just made it up….
Liver is one of the healthiest meat ever, do your research.
For newborns?
Liver is only “healthy” to certain people and certain circumstances. And, for that matter, certain types of liver. Polar bear liver, for example, can be toxic or deadly due to high vitamin A content. One serving of beef liver contains 90% of the RDA of cholesterol. And 25% of the RDA of iron. Why do I consider that last one bad? Think about what happens if a person with hemochromatosis eats liver regularly.
It’s pretty easy for adult men in the first world to get excess iron even if they don’t have hemochromatosis. There’s some evidence that too much iron can contribute to cardiovascular disease.
OTOH, liver is full of vitamin B12. If you’ve got pernicious anemia and want to treat it the old fashioned way, take 1/2 pound of raw liver every day. Seriously. That used to be how PA was treated before ebil big pharma came up with purified B12.
Or we could discuss the Castle treatment for B12 deficiency, which is REALLY gross…
She doesn’t know what that is and she probably isn’t googling it.
No, home birth midwives are the ones profiting from killing and mutilating women and their babies, but thanks for playing!
Did you know that a woman excretes mercury in her breastmilk? If you’re going to bitch and moan about formula, don’t you think it’s fair to disclose that little gem as well.
To those who have parachuted in from Facebook, I suggest that you take a good look at the comments in the post that you have come from. What are they really, but ignorant people telling each other they are smarter than educated people?
That’s resentment, folks, not knowledge.
Experience is knowledge. Sorry but you have studied some of the wrong advice, teachings…
Says the flat earth skeptic.
Actually, Tawny, science tells us specifically that personal experience is NOT knowledge. But feel free to jettison science if you want. I prefer to follow its tenets.
What about cognitive bias?
http://www.improvediagnosis.org/?CognitiveError
Oh, oh, sorry. I did not know you could never learn anything from experiencing it. I must read books to make sure, I never knew DR’s could never ever be wrong about anything, never bias ….
I don’t study advice and teachings, I study evidence.
Dr. Tuteur, It is important all physicians realize there are changes coming to the practice of medicine. No longer will your profession be permitted to be ignorant on homeopathic remedies and alternatives. It is no longer acceptable for physicans to see 3 patients an hour and do continuing education only when boards are coming up – not that anything reomtely related to natural medicine, vitamins or god forbid nutrition would be on there. Us sheeple as you call us have pulled back the hideous curtain on western medicine. All one needs to do is follow the money, big pharma kills more people with properly prescribed medicine than anything us ‘natural ignorami’ do. Once your profession gets “inthe know” on how GMO’s are hormone disrupters, maybe you’ll have our ear again…who knows, it may be too late by then.
Invasion of the conspiracy theorists.. did you know that lavender and tea tree oil are very potent hormone disruptors? All natural. Did you know that homeopathy is quackery?
it’s only a conspiracy if there is no proof, and there is proof. there is also proof of trolls, but we don’t have to put up any source citations to know that is true.
Sorry Tiph, all the evidence says trolls DON’T exist. The 3 Billygoats Gruff is a work of fiction.
Homeopathic remedies are free? Sarah Pope doesn’t sell the products she recommends?
Let’s get real here: the blithering about Big Pharma and Big Medicine is a smokescreen for those who profit from Big Placebo. If you can’t see that, then you are astoundingly naive.
Just because vitamin companies make money from selling vitamins doesn’t mean they are evil, they don’t have patent protection like big pharma. pharma has rigged the system, and if you don’t realize that then you are the one who is naive my dear. the body can and does heal itself but physicans dole out the meds. i know you don’t think of yourself as a drug dealer, but you shold realize to many folks you are. we are not naive, or uninformed. in fact, i’m sure there are many things you could be learning right now instead of arguing with people who will never trust an MD who peddles legal drugs. we realize you’re not THE problem, but your attitude and allegiance to governemnt agencies (CDC, FDA) that are fraught with corrupt officials and scientists on the take, manipulating scientific evidence- it is beyond deplorable.
Then they are incompetent.
Do you know how much pharma fails? Only 5 out of 5000 drugs that get make it to “pre-clinical testing” (which means that they are promising enough to actually be tested to see if they have any biological activity) get into human trials. And only 1/5 drugs that get to human trials end up getting approved for use.
So despite being in a “rigged system”, pharma can only pull off a success rate of 1 in 5000? Something makes no sense.
Actually, the problem that pharma faces is that, the stuff they sell actually has to do some good AND can’t cause problems.
Yes, they get patent rights, but that applies to everyone who invents something new.
I’m trying to understand how the system is rigged to favor pharma, when it makes it nearly impossible for them to succeed. Meanwhile, anyone can sell vitamins, without even having to show that what they are selling contains any vitamins, much less that it does any good.
Follow the money. Pharma pays the FDA to rush approval. They reapply for patent protection under a new treatable condition and sell give them flawed/manipulated studies showing it worked for that. It’s BS. Look at all the drugs that have been pulled after b eing approved and on the shelf for many years. its all to re-cup money. they don’t care how many poeple dies from it. and neither do the docs who prescribed. it’s business as usual for all the players.
Take a peek at the cronism in the FDA and pharma: http://therefusers.com/refusers-newsroom/how-big-pharma-controls-the-fda/#.Uzsc6f6PLcs
So you think the FDA is taking bribes?
If so, why doesn’t the FDA take bribes to approve more drugs?
BTW, the most vocal lobby for rushing approval is not the drug companies, it is those who are sick and are trying to get relief.
Are those cancer patients part of the conspiracy?
I know the FDA is corrupt. Michael Taylor is the head, he used to work for Monsanto. Cancer patients? They grasp on to hope. Watch “Burzynski”…The cancer industry makes bllions. not millions, billions. they can’t afford to go out of the business of cancer. there are no cures, there won’t ever be, only management with drugs and surgeries and follow-ups.
Burzynksi is a quack that scams cancer patients out of their hard earned money. The fact that the FDA hasn’t shut him down yet shows how we are far to lax in the prosecution of con artists in this country. He should be in cuffs right now.
Burzynski now? The most evil scam artist in America? These people are so cute.
Did I ever say he was the curer of cancer? no, i did not. the film does point out how government interferes to protect big business.
I’ll admit to never having seen the film and so maybe I misunderstood your comment. If you’re saying that the film demonstrates how corruption and incompetence in the FDA kept them from prosecuting big businessman/conartist Burzynski and allowed him to continue to be a parasite on desperate and seriously ill people, I’ll agree with you. It’s an absolute scandal that the FDA hasn’t gone after Burzynski. Also that they continue to allow the sale of unproven and often toxic “natural” treatments. The “natural” medical movement’s killed a lot of people, directly or indirectly.
http://whatstheharm.net/
Not a single person ever has been cured by Burzynski’s crap. He is the worst sort of snake oil salesman, taking advantage of vulnerable people to make money without giving them anything back.
In contrast, Big Pharma has cured quite a number of people with cancer. In 1954 when Sadako Sasaki developed acute lymphoblastic leukemia, it was a death sentence, no question. In 2014 a 12 year old with ALL has a better than 90% chance of cure. Big Pharma did that, not natural foods, not raw milk, certainly not Burzynski. Big Pharma has issues. It’s greedy, inertia heavy, and unimaginative. But it gives something in return for taking your money. Unlike quacks like Burzynski.
Tiphany, have you ever heard of Pablo’s First Law of Internet Discussion? If not, let me tell you about it. It says, “In an internet discussion, assume someone knows more about it than you do.”
You really think that the posters contributing hear don’t know all about Stan Burzynski and his neoplatins version of chemotherapy?
BTW, I am trying to figure out your point – Burzynski’s problem with the FDA is that he hasn’t actually done any trials to report. He can’t get FDA approval because he has never actually finished any trials…that have been going on for more than 20 years.
OTOH, you want to talk about corrupt? This is the guy that charges hundreds of thousands of dollars for patients to participate in a drug trial!!!!
If a pharmaceutical company tried something like that, they’d be run out as the lowest of low. Forcing people to pay for something that, by definition, you have not shown to work (that’s why it is in trials) is the sleaziest practice imaginable. Taking advantage of desperate patients like that.
This really is a classic example of Pablo’s First Law.
Jeez, and I’m not even an expert in Burzynski by any means (in fact, it was when Orac went Burzynski crazy that I stopped reading RI – it was just too boring). Even so, I am still very familiar with his crap.
Watch Burzynski…please.
Oh the internet has laws on discussion? now you’ve made me laugh! thanks, i needed that. this was almost getting contentious. lol
It’s really good advice, because it helps advance the discussion, instead of having folks like you waste your time trying to educate people, and those people spending their time laughing at your ignorance.
ad hominem…
Saying someone is ignorant of a subject is not an insult. I do not think you know what the word means.
Laws in the sense of scientific laws. Like gravity, or thermodynamics. And yes, the internet has laws. I predict you will violate Godwin’s Law in 5. 4. 3. 2. 1…..
thanks for the lessons trix.
I’m beginning to wonder if you’re an example of Poe’s Law.
Cancer is a normal human condition of age. How do you cure the human condition? Cancer is not one disease it is 1000s. How can a miracle drug cure 1000s of diseases? Do you know, I have done a lot of work at and for Monsanto. You would be hard pressed to find anyone in the biotech field in my area who has not and would be even harder pressed to find anyone impressive. I have no financial interest in Monsanto, their products, or GMOs. I have never had to declare any conflicts of interest because of work there.
Oh my gosh! They pulled drugs just because they were shown to be dangerous! Clearly, the FDA is out to kill us all!
Also, the word is cronyism, not cronism.
I’m not one of your students. Go back to your community college podium if you need validation on your lexiconic abilities. You know what I meant.
On the Internet, no one knows who you are. All we know is what you write and how you write. If you make frequent spelling and grammar mistakes, people have less respect for your opinions. It might not be fair, but that’s how the world works.
I am not concerned, in the least, about my use of the English language in the written form. If you discount people’s opinions because of a missed letter, then you are looking to diminish the truth within the statement when you have no other leg upon which to stand.
Really, when it comes to big pharma people are looking at the wrong problem. In my opinion the biggest problem is that they spend an upwards of 80% of their R&D budget on trying to figure out how to repattent old drugs.
Vitamin Companies are just as big and powerful as Drug Companies. Have you ever heard of the Health and Education Act of 1994? It is basically when the supplement industry “rigged the system” so they don’t have to undergo the same amount of scrutiny as drug companies. For example, supplements are not regulated by the FDA because they are considered a “food product.” You can read all about it here:
http://www.quackwatch.org/02ConsumerProtection/kessler.html
and here
http://www.quackwatch.org/02ConsumerProtection/dshea.html
Homeopathic remedies are WATER. If a homeopathic remedy cures your sickness, you weren’t really sick in the first place. You are just another one of the worried well rubbing on any talisman that you think will prevent you from becoming one of those icky sick and disabled people.
Are you listening, Dr Kitty, you lazy lout?! No more seeing 3 patients an hour! From now on, you’ll have to see at least 5. Beware the Hideous Curtain, for it shall make you quake in your boots. Or ballet flats. Whichever is comfier. The natural ignorami have spoken.
Hahhhahahah
I saw 32 patients in a little over 5 hours today.
My husband, a very healthy 67 year old, was raised on raw milk. My neighbors raise their kids on raw milk. I know many, many people in our small town who only drink raw milk. I haven’t heard about any of them becoming sick or having any of the other problems you link to the consumption of raw milk. In fact, they seem to be healthier than other families. Perhaps they are healthy not because of the raw milk, but because they feed their animals on organically grown grass and grain, and not herbicide-laden hay and GMO grain. As a mother who nursed, I know firsthand that what you eat goes directly into your milk and into your baby. No wonder so many of our digestive systems are Dairy Intolerant.
I have a healthy relative who smoked for the past 40 years. Does that prove smoking is safe? According to you it does.
It always floors me when people have no understanding that anecdotes can’t negate research statistics and that research statistics apply to the whole, not an individual.
Even more frustrating is how linking to this article now has me wasting my time investigating raw milk studies and why Europe evidently has vending machines… who knew? Curiosity got the best of me.
Scientific studies are more valid than anecdotes, of course. However, it is in the realm of what a scientific study ACTUALLY proves, as opposed to what it is PURPORTED to prove, that things tend to get a bit more interesting.
It always floors me when people have no comprehension of the scientific method and basic logic.
Hmmm, just take a look at how many people that have died from legal compared to raw milk.
One anecdote of a person who did something without harm proves nothing.
One anecdote of a person who suffered harm proves that a risk exists.
Actual studies quantify risk.
And curiosity got the best of you? I love it when that happens! I love it when people are inspired to confirm their beliefs and prove things.
-An actual statistician.
True, my grandmother smoked for a long time, not heavily though and lived to 97 years old. She went to the doctor regularly and was never even prescribed a single daily medicine in her life. I guess we should all start smoking 6-10 cigs a day for 80 years for good health.
Grandfather lived to be 100 and smoked, drank, and never exercised. He ate ice cream every day (not raw) toward the end of his life. He loved corn-fed beef. I guess we should follow his example.
Also, most of the world is lactose intolerant and it has nothing to do with raw milk or not. Asians, African descent, Indian…white people are really the only ones who drink milk at high rate. So I think lactose intolerance is more genetic than anything else.
Yes, I agree. Lactose intolerance is heavily dependent on ethnic origins, most adults of East Asian descent have it to one degree or another, and it’s much rarer in European populations.
Many of our digestive systems are dairy (lactose) intolerant because we’re descended from people who didn’t domesticate cows or drink milk on a regular basis. There’s a well described genetic polymorphism that results in continual up-regulation of lactase in adulthood and those of us who lack it (or, possibly, are heterozygous for it) are intolerant of lactose because of that. It has nothing to do with GMO, herbicide, or anything else except genetics.
Though I will say if someone developed a safe way to knock in genes I wouldn’t mind someone GMOing me to better lactase persistence.
Oh dude, there’s so many things I’d GMO about myself.
GMO can only do so much for your appearance – I’d need a hefty dose of CGI too…
My comment was regarding Dairy Intolerance, not lactose intolerance, which is different. And I am a descendant of dairy farmers from way back – Northern European heritage. And from my personal experience, I disagree with your assertion. If milk is from a cow that has eaten corn, GMO or not, I cannot eat it as I am allergic to corn, and I become very ill. When my local raw milk provider feeds his cow grain containing corn, (even if I don’t know he’s done that) I can tell by my body’s reaction. My point is, from my personal experience as a lactating mammal, what I eat comes through my milk. And that is why I choose only organic, grass-fed raw milk.
My comment was regarding Dairy Intolerance, not lactose intolerance, which is different.
Oh? What element in dairy is it that you’re talking about? Dairy is, in fact, an evil GMO food (cows are NOT natural critters) and there are a number of potential antigens in milk, but not sure which one you’re trying to analyze.
I’m not sure how much corn antigen can be left after digestion either. The point of digestion is to break down the proteins into other proteins, but it isn’t perfect. I’m willing to believe that you can tell the difference. Anyway, being forced to eat corn is pretty hellish for cows and I’d prefer farmers to go to grass only for ethical reasons. If that means fewer cows, more expensive meat and milk, so be it. (Though I should point out that I don’t eat beef for ethical/squick reasons and can’t tolerate much lactose so the only thing I get out of cows is cheese and the occasional leather shoe and therefore my assessment of how bad it would be if cow products were more expensive is suspect.)
You do know that corn allergies are extremely rare and usually of the pollen variety so I do not know what a rare form of an extremely rare allergy has to do with any of this.
That would be like me saying that salicylates are a huge problem because for some reason I have a very rare real (I have an antibody) allergy to some.
http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2014/02/a-mom-and-a-dairymans-plea-dont-feed-children-raw-milk/
Wow, who knew that lactation gives you the same training as a microbiologist?
I was commenting from my experience. I never claimed to have the same training as a microbiologist. Why would you say I had?
Because you claimed that because you nursed a baby you had special insight into anything relating to microbiology or food allergies. You don’t.
Lactose intolerance comes from the fact that humans only recently, in evolutionary history, developed the ability to digest it. So, lactose intolerance was the norm before evolutionary pressure changed that.
Never mind that many people with food intolerances and allergies haven’t been diagnosed by an Immunologist.
Real diagnosis involves some combination of gut biopsies, RAST tests, IgG screens and patch testing.
What many people with “intolerances” have done is either a self administerd exclusion diet with a subjective feeling of well-being on removing “suspect” foods (highly open to placebo effect) OR they have been diagnosed by a CAM Practictioner using something like Bio Resonance EAV.
http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/electro.html
Bio resonance EAV is a voltmeter and wishful thinking and is less than useless at diagnosing allergies.
In other words, many of the allergy and intolerance diagnoses are fake.
I have fructose malabsorption disorder that was confirmed. First they took blood, then they did 4 office visits worth of different breath tests, then they did a bunch of different breath tests for fructose. Later they actually did some sequencing too, but that was because the amount of fructose/glucose ratio that I could absorb was abnormally low and it kept giving me low blood sugar which is odd but turned out to be kind of unrelated. I thought they could also do lactose that way, am I wrong. Isn’t it just measuring the amount of hydrogen gas released by microbial species in the intestines due to sugar consumption?
You’re right, I forgot to add breath tests.
Welcome to all of the Google PhDs! Glad to know that you’ve all “done your research.” I hope that your children survive despite your idiotic beliefs.
The truly impressive thing about raw milk enthusiasts is that they are gullible sheeple, believing everything is a giant conspiracy and only they are smart enough to see through it.
You must feel very, very small and powerless to think that you are making a statement by risking the health and lives of your children feeding them contaminated milk.
The Amish exclusively drink raw milk, how often are they dying or getting sepsis or listeria?
Nope. Try again. Show me the part of the Ordnung that mandates raw milk consumption for the Amish, and your evidence that none of them experience listeria or campylobacter or e coli. Thnx
Oh, campylobacter. I stupidly took a trip in my 5th month to bermuda with my 1 year old. The hotel was somewhat primitive and next to a dairy farm. We all got it. Bloody poop and fever. My husband had the fever hit him as we were about to board the plane back home. Baby got dehydrated. By the time I got cultured, I was mostly better, but I got treated like I had dodged a bullet because it wasn’t the type of campylobacter that causes miscarriages.
Sounds like you are the perfect person to have a shitty vacation, literally.
I asked a question. Please read before attacking.
You loose when you resort to name calling, very professional, seem you have shrunk a bit. 🙂
Amy, I read your article after linking in from something someone shared on FB from the Home Economist you quote. I tend to read all things with a grain of salt and then look for the science and what makes sense. I have no thoughts or desire to investigate or use raw milk. I do wonder though about your approach to the subject as much as I wonder about the approach of the article to which you are responding. It’s all polarizing talk. And yes, I realize that one may be right and one may be wrong and these things are, in fact, polar opposites. However, if your purpose was to educate those who you feel are making poor decisions for their children due to bad information, I would think you may have chosen language that invited them in a respectful way to look at scientific evidence instead of just repeatedly making negative comments about the woman who provided what you felt was very poor advice.
Why do you think they are capable of evaluating scientific evidence? As far as I can tell, they are entirely evidence resistant.
Remember, these people are a pathetic fringe acting out their feelings of powerlessness by defying standards that are designed to keep them safe. It is a real life example of cutting off your nose to spite you face and then boasting proudly about the gaping wound.
So because one disagrees with your statements, they are incapable of scientific investigation, of research, of possibly being the one most vested in their health and that of their family? Careful, your intolerance and your god complex are showing…
No, the fact that you are incapable of doing scientific investigation has nothing to do with me. It has to do with your ignorance of miicrobiology , human physiology, and epidemiology.
The scientific method and basic reading comprehension skills are taught in grade school, and numerous studies, books, and opportunities for personal research are available to all who desire to educate themselves. The basic difference between the group of people like you, and the group of people like me, is not level of intelligence, but in willingness to see more than one possibility, to acknowledge that the abbreviation after one’s name does not automatically render one better than their fellow humans, and in persistence in finding the reason “why”. My family could not find that reason while soley under the care of doctors, who take less than ONE quarter of ONE year in medical school to study nutrition. When we looked to our food, and the synthetic chemicals contained within, while vital nutrition was stripped, both by soil depletion and processing, the answer came. My husband was congratulated by his neurologist for beating his migraines after 25 years and nearly ending on disability. He works full time, exercises, and has his life back. No more drugs, just awareness of what we eat. If you were to be presented with a breast fed year old infant weaning onto whole foods including raw milk from a certified to sell farmer, and a GMO, made in China, formula fed infant eating jared babyfood – the former being robust and healthy, and the latter struggling to gain weight – before you were told which was which, what assumptions would you make?
No, the basic difference between you and me is that I know microbiology and you don’t.
I see you are not capable of answering my question, or seeing that other doctors saw the results of a drastic change in diet and applauded such effort, but if your perceived superiority helps you sleep at night, then you are welcome to your little microcosm. The father of medicine himself stated: “Let thy food be thy medicine, and thy medicine be thy food.” I work with my doctors, and I listen to what they have to say, but I do not submit myself or the precious children given me to protect and nurture unquestioningly to their authority. Those who do are the true sheep. One should always question others motives for recommending a particular course of action.
Your doctor makes money off of pasteurization how?
Right. That’s why my formula-fed baby went from dangerously thin at birth to normal-weight and thriving in just two months.
And citing the bit about “doctors aren’t trained in nutrition,” nice touch. Doctors learn about every possible aspect of nutrition, from the basic biochemistry of what nutrients are to how they are used by different organs at different stages of life. It’s incorporated into many classes.
My example has less to do with formula itself, and more to do with dear doctor’s predjudice. If you would put reading comprehension to good use, and fully understand the question posed, you might not have feathers in need of smoothing. I asked her, if the case were that she were presented with 2 infants, one sickly and one healthy – and knew that one was breast fed, weaning onto whole foods including raw milk from a licensed seller and the other formula fed and eating jarred commercial foods, but not *which* one, what assumptions would she make about their diets? My husband and I were formula fed and lived in houses where both parents smoked like chimneys while feeding us commercial milk and a mix of whole foods and processed convenience foods. We survived to adulthood and were able to bear children. It doesn’t mean that the *best* choices were made – merely adequate ones. I desire better for my children. We choose not to smoke, drink, or put certain commercially available, but not beneficial, foods into our bodies. Also, a great many M.D.’s have admitted to us that nutrition is not something they integrate into their practice other than telling patients to lay off the booze and fast food. If further education of patients is needed, the patients are referred to nutritionists. Hmmm…
Okay, I provided a counterexample to your hypothetical example, and you respond by saying that I missed the point.
No one objects if you want to make your own baby food out of fresh fruits and veggies. In fact, I recommend it, it’s a lot cheaper than buying those silly little jars by the dozen, it is more nutritious, and it probably tastes far better!
I’m not sure how “raw milk is bad” = “any natural choice is bad.”
It couldn’t possibly be because it is not only milk that can be contaminated with harmful bacteria? Vegetables grow in the soil, and if purchased at a grocery could very likely be contaminated by soil borne organisms, e coli from any source including laborers working in unsanitary conditions, and pesticides, synthetic fertilizers and more that may not just be found in the peels. Commercial canning is not immune to the possibility of botulism, in addition to the fact that renders the food nearly useless and terrible in taste and texture in some cases, (nothing worse than canned peas.) Meats are constantly being recalled, often too late for consumers, no matter how many USDA agents stood there staring at it. Anything you put in your mouth and ingest is a risk, so why not allow for the possibility that a good many of us are hyper aware and well researched before we make that decision?
You did miss my point in my hypothetical example. You took umbrage about formula, rather than commenting on the actual point, which was about assumptions. I provided an example similar to yours from my own life, with additional choices made by our parents, and you ignored that as well. It isn’t about formula, or even raw milk so much, as it is about choices, freedom to make them, and predjudices motivating some of the people who want to claim authority and remove choices.
Um, I would cook just about any meat thoroughly before I fed it to a young child, wouldn’t you? And most veggies and many fruits are just too chewy to turn into baby food raw!
So, cooked meat, cooked veggies, cooked milk. It’s only logical.
And I’m not trying to remove your choices. I’m questioning the reliability of the sources upon which you base them.
Fallibility is a factor in any decision made, ever. I would hope you would not liken Dr.s and scientists to gods. Considering that so many disagree, and the number of studies done to prove or disprove any given thing, I would most certainly question the reliability of ANY source, including a source that was predisposed to the belief that only one way of treatment exists, that others are stupid merely for disagreement, and that a degree allows you to control others like sheep.
I don’t know any doctors or scientists who liken themselves to gods. It seems to only come from those who feel insecure about their education and want to cast those they feel intimidated by as prideful when the prideful one should look in the mirror. There is something called hubris, and it motivates people to do ill considered things. The more education you get, the more you know that you don’t know and you are less likely to trust any information that doesn’t come from a source which has not vetted by experts. Expert knowledge is real, and opinions aren’t worth jack in the face of it. This is something you should’ve learned in school.
There are a lot of contradictory studies out there. There are two things you can do about it:
1) Learn science. Not Google U, multiple university-level courses, starting from the basics on up to the interesting and relevant questions. Then learn statistics. Then read the full text of each of those studies for yourself. (Not an article about the study, not the abstract, the whole thing.) Then decide.
2) Accept the word of the large majority of experts in the field. If there is widespread disagreement between the experts (Not 99 doctors on one side and 1 doctor on the other, actual debate) ask your own doctor, or refer back to option 1.
Give me an example of the last time commercially canned baby food gave a baby botulism.
Go ahead, I’m waiting.
Of course they refer them, just as they refer patients to physiotherapists, occupational therapists etc; no one expects their GP to cover every skill that exists within the healthcare system. What kind of lame argument is that?!
Well, in your statement above, you cant say just because your baby thrived on formula is better than a baby thriving from raw milk.
Mrs. Stitt, what I see in your writing is a hefty dose of indignation that doctors feel like they know more than healthy home economists who don’t believe that contaminated goats milk can make a tiny baby deathly ill. Once you get past your pride, you’ll see that what the SOB is saying makes a lot of sense. Homemade formula sold to you by a woman who profits from selling the special ingredients is just dumb. If a formula company was selling poisonous stuff, they would get sued and parents would reap billions. If some lady on the internet indiectly poisons some dupe’s baby, the lady on the internet has nothing to worry about.
“…to acknowledge that the abbreviation after one’s name does not automatically render one better than their fellow humans…”
Someone’s taking this discussion a little too personally.