Question about pasteurizing milk

[keevelish]

We drink raw milk because it has intact proteins, enzymes and beneficial bacteria.  At least that's the reasoning.

But I was just thinking- if pasteurization denatures the proteins and destroys a lot of the other good stuff in the milk, doesn't cooking meat destroy most of the good stuff in it and denature the proteins? 

Does someone know if there is a difference? 

I know homoginization is a big no-no- that messes with the fat particles and oxidizes cholesterol.  But isn't pasteurization basically cooking?  And then we go and cook our meat- which we eat far more often than we drink raw milk.

I won't drink milk that's pasteurized and homoginized and I eat raw eggs every day. But is it breaking logic to go and cook all of the beef, chicken, fish that we eat all the time? LOL don't think I could do that....I like a rare steak but raw shrimp is just a tad too much and I licked raw liver....ew. Hehe.

[1love4ever]

Hmmm, never thought about it.  I dont know, I would think it would be different, and I am guessing that the makeup of the meat is much diff than that of milk.  Here is a video that I love about raw milk http://nourishedkitchen.com/mark-mcafee-raw-milk-interview/ 

I know your not supposed to eat burnt meat because something about it alters it and is cancer causing or something.  Not that I ever have eated burt meat, probably why I dont remember the reason not to do it.

But, we are not big meat eaters.  It is easy to go several days without meat for us, but we drink a lot of milk.  We certainly prefer raw and that is all DD drinks, but I get WIC so I also drink the organic stuff from the store since it is free and I cant afford to buy ALL of our milk which is like a half gallon a day or more, but I can afford to buy enough for DD to have all her milk raw and for DH and I to drink about 2 cups per day.

[keevelish]

Yeah, charred meat is definitely something we don't consume.  Usually roasted or stewed is what we do. And we eat a lot of eggs.

We don't drink much milk, we go through maybe 3/4 a gallon a week. So the price of raw, which is $3.80 a half gallon here isn't a big deal.

It just makes me wonder about how proteins are destroyed in pasteurization- and in cooking meat is at even higher heat for a much longer time. 

[porcupine73]

I just got Nourishing Traditions the other day, and it talks about "meats cooked at very high temperatures contain elevated amounts of carcinogens. Meat should be eaten raw, rare or braised in water or stock."

Eat Fat Lose Fat indicated meats to eaten raw could be frozen for at least 14 days to kill many pathogens.

I started eating raw beef liver, I actually like it raw after I had it that way a few times. Chicken liver not so much.

I think Nourishing Traditions (or maybe it was a different book..) said to eat fish raw it recommends soaking it in lime juice for a few hours beforehand to start breaking it down some. I believe this is called cerviche.

I just started with raw milk a few weeks ago. It runs around $7/gal here. It's so delicious. I've been making clabber, yogurt, kefir, and buttermilk and love them all.

[keevelish]

Which brings us to the affordability of grass-fed and pastured livestock.  *sigh*.  It's cheaper in the long-run but we simply can't drop $1300 on a half cow all at once. 

And feed-lot grain-fed meat really shouldn't be eaten raw.  Perhaps freezing kills some pathogens but I know a lot of bacteria and some parasites even form spores that are pretty resiliant. 

So unfortunate in our society that we have to do these complicated dances to feed our family in a healthy appropriate manner.

[1love4ever]

Originally Posted by keevelish 

Which brings us to the affordability of grass-fed and pastured livestock.  *sigh*.  It's cheaper in the long-run but we simply can't drop $1300 on a half cow all at once. 

And feed-lot grain-fed meat really shouldn't be eaten raw.  Perhaps freezing kills some pathogens but I know a lot of bacteria and some parasites even form spores that are pretty resiliant. 

So unfortunate in our society that we have to do these complicated dances to feed our family in a healthy appropriate manner.

I was just thinking about this thread today and was going to post something similar to this lol.  I was going to say that meat that is not pasture raised and especially that that is corn fed, can contain LOTS more dangerous bacteria including e.coli than an animal that is fed its natural diet.  Cows were never meant to eat corn, and when they do(as at the feedlots, where all store and restaurant bought meat comes from unless otherwise specified) it completely destroys their insides and causes their guts to produce huge amounts of dangerous bacteria that would normally be present in small, safe amounts.

And I just bought 1/2 a grass fed/finished cow(no hormones, antibiotcs, etc either), and it costed me just under $700 for the cow, processing, everything.  I ended up getting 191lbs of meat, after processing and everything.  That is what is in my freezer right now.  The only things I dont like is that the cows from this farm are wormed once about 9 months or so before they are butchered, and they have recieved a few vaccines, also quite awhile before butcher, but still I would obviously prefer nothing be done to them, but I am happy because its a pretty fair price:)

PP, maybe there is someone else in your area who raises grass fed beef that sells for cheaper?  I found a very small operation who only butchers a few cows per year.  He did tell me that his meat would be worth more out east, but that he sells it cheaper because of the area we live in, but you never know what you might find!

[porcupine73]

Some people split a whole or half with another family or several families. I realize that isn't always practicable though. Some farmers will sell 'sampler' boxes of say 40 lbs or so, or have some cuts in their own freezer they will sell. Of course the price per lb is usually higher that way though. I tried uswellness for the first time to get a few things for making broth, and their stuff is pretty good and shipped right to your door.

[savithny]

On heat-treating meat:

Some thoughts on cooking and human brain development:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/06/invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990810064914.htm

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/wrangham/wrangham_index.html

http://blogs.plos.org/neuroanthropology/2010/10/28/food-for-thought-cooking-in-human-evolution/

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=cooking-up-bigger-brains

(quotes)

So Wrangham did more research. He examined groups of modern hunter-gatherers all over the world and found that no human group currently eats all their food raw. Humans seem to be well adapted to eating cooked food: modern humans need a lot of high-quality calories (brain tissue requires 22 times the energy of skeletal muscle); tough, fibrous fruits and tubers cannot provide enough. Wrangham and his colleagues calculated that H. erectus (which was in H. sapiens’s size range) would have to eat roughly 12 pounds of raw plant food a day, or six pounds of raw plantsplus raw meat, to get enough calories to survive. Studies on modern women show that those on a raw vegetarian diet often miss their menstrual periods because of lack of energy. Adding high-energy raw meat does not help much, either—Wrangham found data showing that even at chimps’ chewing rate, which can deliver them 400 food calories per hour, H. erectus would have needed to chew raw meat for 5.7 to 6.2 hours a day to fulfill its daily energy needs. When it was not gathering food, it would literally be chewing that food for the rest of the day.

 

To prove that cooking actually does save energy, Wrangham partnered with Stephen Secor, a University of Alabama biologist who studies the evolutionary design of the digestive system. They found that the python—an animal model with easily studied gut responses—expends less effort breaking down cooked food than raw. Heat alters the physical structure of proteins and starches, thereby making enzymatic breakdown easier.

http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/CarmodyWrangham09cookingHumEv.pdf

http://bama.ua.edu/~ssecor/journalarticles/journalarticle42.pdf

The findings of this study indicate that cooking, by disrupting 

muscle structure, decreases the cost of gastric digestion. An 

added benefit of the softening effects of cooking is that less time 

and effort is expended on chewing (Lucas, 2004). For rats, it has 

been shown that the softening of their food (by increasing air 

content) reduces SDA and increases energy gain (Oka et al., 

2003). These combined benefits to oral and gastric digestion 

support the hypothesis that by cooking meat, humans experience 

an energy savings (Wrangham, 2006). The magnitude of such a 

savings has not yet been experimentally quantified. However for 

humans digesting a standard diet that includes cooked items, 

SDA is low (6–7% of ingested energy; Swindells, 1972; 

Ravussin et al., 1986; Maffeis et al., 2001) compared to that of 

fishes (12–20%; Beamish, 1974; Fu et al., 2006), amphibians 

(13–35%; Secor and Boehm, 2006; Secor et al., 2007), reptiles 

(12–33%; Secor and Diamond, 2000; McCue, 2006), birds (11– 

13%; Bech and Præsteng, 2004; Green et al., 2006), and other 

mammals (13–16%; Gallivan and Ronald, 1981; Costa and 

Kooyman, 1984) digesting raw intact food items.