Raw Deal

Few nutritional topics are as polarizing as raw milk. Proponents of raw milk claim it is a powerful health-promoting food that can help heal damaged guts and impart powerful anabolic co-factors. Detractors see it as a potentially dangerous unregulated food product.  Journal Of Food Protection recently published the results of several microbial risk assessments on raw milk.

Researchers found that the incidence of contamination by such dangers as E. coli, Listeria, or Staphylococcus to be rare enough that raw milk qualifies as a low-risk food. The low-risk profile also applied to typically risk-prone groups such as pregnant women, children, and the elderly. It turns out that the public has a greater chance of contracting a food-borne illness from green leafy vegetables than from raw milk.