Pastuarized milk Qs

[Yooper]

I would prefer to have raw milk for my family. Unfortunately there is none available in my area except goat milk. We have used goat milk for about 6 months but find that no one likes the taste. It is really goaty. I cannot even stand a small amount in baking. All I can think about is licking a goat. So I stopped our deliveries. So the "next best thing" available here is Oragnic Valley milk. We can very occasionally get a different brand that is also non-homogenized, but usually not. Anyway, we do not use very much milk at all. Mostly I use it to make kefir and yogurt and for very occasional baking. Maybe once is a very blue moon we will have it in chai. No one drinks it outright and we do not eat cereal or anything like that. I am wondering if it is OK to eat/drink the ultra-pastuarized stuff as long as it is cultured (yogurt and kefir). Does some of the damage of pastuarization "reversed". If you were in my position would you use home-cultured pastaurized milk or would you stop eating dairy?

Also, what is the difference between "vat pastaurized" and "ultra pastuarized"?

[toraji]

This is what we do in our house since we can't easily get raw dairy...

Get the Organic Valley non-homog and then boil it. Pasteurization twists the protein strands making them very hard to digest, but boiling makes them fully digestible. There is a long tradition of boiling milk, though I don't recall all the details right now. It's in the Garden of Eating Diet book.

You need a tall pot b/c when the milk boils, it foams up really big. Whisk quickly and blow on the foam to make it go down. Keep boiling the milk until it seems to stop foaming, about 5 minutes or so. Then let cool and culture into yogurt, kefir, whatever.

[Cassandra M.]

Also, what is the difference between "vat pastaurized" and "ultra pastuarized"?

Vat pasturized is quickly pasturized with a minimum temp, the best you can hope for aside from raw milk...ultra pasturized is VERY high heat pasturized, even worse than regular pasturization, and is to be avoided.

Not sure how culturing milk changes these processes though.

[Yooper]

Originally Posted by toraji

This is what we do in our house since we can't easily get raw dairy...

Get the Organic Valley non-homog and then boil it. Pasteurization twists the protein strands making them very hard to digest, but boiling makes them fully digestible. There is a long tradition of boiling milk, though I don't recall all the details right now. It's in the Garden of Eating Diet book.

You need a tall pot b/c when the milk boils, it foams up really big. Whisk quickly and blow on the foam to make it go down. Keep boiling the milk until it seems to stop foaming, about 5 minutes or so. Then let cool and culture into yogurt, kefir, whatever.

Isn't boiling it the same as what they do when they pastuarize it? Very interesting! What does it do to the taste? Do you ever use boiled milk that is not cultured? Like do you use boiled milk for baking? What about vat pastaurized milk? Would you boil that?

[toraji]

I would personally boil any milk that has been pasteurized, vat or not.

Here's the info from the Garden of Eating Diet book:
"Boiling completely sterilizes milk while reducing its protein to very easily digested peptides and amino acids, but it must be done in small batches (1 gallon or less) and quickly cooled...[b]oiled milk may be as beneficial as raw without the risk of bacterial infection. According to Dr. Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., a specialist in Ayurvedic medicine and author of Diet & Nutrition: A Holistic Approach...in India where people have used milk for thousands of years, it is always boiled first, in spite of the fact that cows are cared for personally. Dr. Ballentine also says that although the famous Swiss Bircher-Benner Clinic stresses a largely raw-foods diet, it nevertheless serves patients boiled milk products."

Boiled milk is perfectly fine for baked products, though I'm guessing that if you're going to cook the stuff anyways, you don't need to boil it first. But if you're going to drink it straight or culture it, I'd boil it first.

I can't say much for the taste, since I don't personally drink the stuff (DH and DD are the dairy-eaters in the family), but it smells just like when I would boil milk for hot chocolate/eggnog as a child. My memory is that it is slightly sweeter after being boiled (but I could be wrong about that).

[quietserena]

wouldn't boiling just re-pasteurize milk?

[toraji]

Originally Posted by quietserena

wouldn't boiling just re-pasteurize milk?

Pasteurization is an incomplete cooking of the proteins, which makes them very difficult to digest. Boiling breaks them down completely and makes them digestible (as is my understanding of it).

[toraji]

Forgot to add that pasteurization is either done at a very low temp for a while or at an ultra-high temp for a few seconds. Neither is the same as boiling.

[Ruthla]

I've heard that you can't culture ultra-pasturized dairy- it's a completely "dead" food and won't support the bacterial cultures.

The most NT way to go would be to forego the milk altogether if you don't use much of it. The most practical thing would be to buy what's available near you for the occasional dairy treat and not worry about it the rest of the time. I personally don't think that drinking ultra-pasturized dairy once in a while is going to hurt anybody, but it's not going to support optimal health either. Raw milk is a wholesome, good food, while ultra-pasturized milk is "junk food."

[Yooper]

Originally Posted by Ruthla

I've heard that you can't culture ultra-pasturized dairy- it's a completely "dead" food and won't support the bacterial cultures.

The most NT way to go would be to forego the milk altogether if you don't use much of it. The most practical thing would be to buy what's available near you for the occasional dairy treat and not worry about it the rest of the time. I personally don't think that drinking ultra-pasturized dairy once in a while is going to hurt anybody, but it's not going to support optimal health either. Raw milk is a wholesome, good food, while ultra-pasturized milk is "junk food."

What do you think of the boiled milk idea? Should I be boiling any raw milk I might be able to get my hands on? If I can get vat pastuarized milk, is that also "dead".

[estuary]

This is really interesting - I'd like to see The Garden of Eating's footnotes on this. I'd assumed that boiling was equal to pasteurizing as well...

My dh has travelled many times to western China/eastern Tibet for research and personal development. Recently my children had a chance to go with him. I've not had a chance to go and so I've relied on his accounts to learn more about the traditional diets of that region. People from nomadic or more traditional backgrounds have the most beautiful white, straight teeth (a la Weston Price) and wonderful bone structure... so of course I'm interested in what they eat. But when dh told me they always boil their milk, I thought, "gee, is this a result of notions of 'modernity' and how in the world does it fit with this notion of traditional foods/raw milk (as well as diet high in meat, including organ meats) contributing to such great dental health" - eventually, in the face of my incredulity, dh said simply that they "heat" the milk... but now I'm wondering.

Maybe in the next couple of years I'll have a chance to go and see for myself... but until then, this information turns on a few more lightbulbs...

also, they seem to rely heavily on white flour there... in addition to the traditionally prepared roasted barley meal.... (another topic, I guess)

[joliebebe]

Originally Posted by toraji

I would personally boil any milk that has been pasteurized, vat or not.

Here's the info from the Garden of Eating Diet book:
"Boiling completely sterilizes milk while reducing its protein to very easily digested peptides and amino acids, but it must be done in small batches (1 gallon or less) and quickly cooled...[b]oiled milk may be as beneficial as raw without the risk of bacterial infection. According to Dr. Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., a specialist in Ayurvedic medicine and author of Diet & Nutrition: A Holistic Approach...in India where people have used milk for thousands of years, it is always boiled first, in spite of the fact that cows are cared for personally. Dr. Ballentine also says that although the famous Swiss Bircher-Benner Clinic stresses a largely raw-foods diet, it nevertheless serves patients boiled milk products."

Toraji!!!! This is what Ive been wanting to hear!!!!! I have been studying Ayurveda for a long while now, and I have travelled alot in India. I couldnt understand why all the village peole would boil thier milk and not just drink it fresh. I also always equated boiling to pastuerization, yet these Indians have superb health and gleaming straight teeth and I kept thinking that it was INSPITE of the milk as it was boiled, but now I understand it was BECAUSE of the milk. Ahhh this has bothered me for so long, ever since I started following WAP, I know many who wouldnt let thier raw milk even near a stove, let alone heat it and I just couldnt reconcile the two points of view.
Thank you so much for clearing this up for me. Im no longer in a muddle about whether I was ruining my raw milk by boiling it.

[quietserena]

Originally Posted by Ruthla

I've heard that you can't culture ultra-pasturized dairy- it's a completely "dead" food and won't support the bacterial cultures.

I have made yogurt with ultra-pasteurized shelf-stable milk. Didn't seem to be a problem. :

[Yooper]

Ack! Now I am so confused

OK. So I might not even be able to culture ultra-pastaurized milk. If I can do it, is there any benefit over not having any dairy altogether? Or is even cultured dairy made from pastaurized milk bad enough to outweigh the benefits? We like our kefir around here, otherwise we would just skip it......

And "vat-pastaurized" milk is "better" maybe? Or maybe not? Anyone actually know?

And then we have the boiling question. I do not have "Garden of Eating" and my budget is pretty tight right now. What I am getting from this thread is that boiling might be the only way to go and it might even bring benefit back to pastaurized milk. OR it might be "pastuarizing" the milk and therefor not a good idea. Anyone have any links on this?

[quietserena]

Here are some hopefully helpful links from my research:
WAPF UHT page
http://www.westonaprice.org/motherli...rizedmilk.html
wikipedia page on pasteurization
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteurization (bad raw milk info on that one, imho, but it does explain pasteurization) different
types of pasteurization
http://www.anarac.com/pasteurization.htm
boiling point of milk
http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives...6563.Ch.r.html
toraji, I couldn't find any info on boiled milk being better for you. Actually, the WAPF page implies that the broken down proteins are bad, though those came to be through the UHT process. Can you give us more info?
I could also not find any info on culturing UHT milk. I have personally had no problems.
I've been having trouble with posts appearing as one long paragraph, if this happens to this post, I'll come back and try to repost all this stuff.

[AJP]

There's a blurb in NT about boiled milk, on the page with the baked custard recipe (p 545 in my edition). SF says "Some researchers believe that boiled or cooked milk is actually easier to digest than pasteurized milk. Cooking causes complex proteins to unfold so that peptide bonds become more accessible to digestive enzymes, whereas pasteurization merely denatures large proteins in such a way that they are harder to break down. However, long periods of heat treatment, as in canning and spray drying, result in cross-linking in the protein chain which greatly lowers digestibility. Both pasteurization and cooking destroy enzymes and lower vitamin availability. Puddings may be fine for an occasional treat but they are no substitute for clean, certified, whole, raw milk for growing children."