Eccentric health guru Gwyneth Paltrow pours it into her coffee every day so all her wonderful bacteria can get to work cleaning out her perfect insides.
Other liberal foodies also consume raw (or unpasteurized) milk, while half of Hollywood seems to have been captivated by the high-fat ketogenic diet, whose cheerleaders argue that unpasteurized cream is one of the best foods to lose weight.
“There are schools of thought that argue that drinking raw milk is better because once you process it and all that, that’s when dairy becomes harder to tolerate,” Gwynnie vaguely opined on a recent radio show.
Such praise, along with myriad social media ‘influencers’ praising him on TikTok, may help explain why there has been a 20 percent increase in demand for raw milk in the US over the last anus.
While its sale has been banned or restricted for decades for health reasons, in recent years it has benefited from a growing demand for organic products. Attracted by its health properties or simply its creamier taste, 4.4 percent of Americans try it each year, according to a 2019 study. However, experts say its current trend means the number has certainly increased significantly.
But now “natural” food fans and calorie-averse celebrities have an unlikely ally: American conservatives.
In the last year there has been a 20 percent increase in demand for raw milk in the United States.
They have adopted raw milk as the latest battleground in the endless culture wars with their political opponents. Americans, as they see it, have the God-given right not only to bear arms and speak freely, but also to pour whatever they want on their breakfast cereal, even if it comes straight from a cow’s udder.
The UK is also not immune to milk’s growing role in the political debate on this side of the Atlantic. This week it emerged that a taxpayer-funded quango will investigate connections between “milk and colonialism”. One of the experts involved has previously argued that milk is an imposition of “white supremacy” on other cultures because much of the rest of the world has high levels of lactose intolerance.
U.S. government and dairy industry officials have long opposed raw milk, arguing that it does not undergo the 70°C heat-treatment pasteurization process they say is necessary to kill microorganisms. They can make people seriously ill.
They can list a prohibitively long list of harmful bacteria that raw dairy may contain, including salmonella, E. coli, listeria, and cryptosporidium. These bugs and others can cause infections such as typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, miscarriages, and even death.
Raw milk fans who never go near a cow, critics say, may not be aware that the animals’ bellies and flanks are often covered in feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria that inevitably find their way into the milk. As one food safety expert said earlier this year, drinking raw milk is “like playing Russian roulette with your health.”
Unfortunately, such warnings sound like the “nanny state” oppression that tends to make Republicans reach for their constitutionally enshrined assault rifles.
Conservative commentators and media outlets are joining politicians to defend the merits of raw milk and the right of Americans to easily purchase it. A number of Republican states have voted to free farmers so they can start selling it. (It is not illegal to drink raw milk in the United States, but since New York became the first American city to make pasteurization mandatory in 1910, it has been very difficult to sell.)
Proponents claim that raw milk has more vitamins, minerals and healthy fats than pasteurized milk. They also argue that it is easier to digest and helps prevent conditions such as asthma, eczema, allergies and respiratory infections.
Some of the bacteria eliminated during the pasteurization process are actually beneficial, they insist. They often point out the health of Amish children (a group that seeks to live simply and distance themselves from many aspects of modern life) who are raised on unpasteurized dairy products. Studies have shown that these young people almost never suffer from asthma, dermatitis and allergies.
The same has been said about people who grow up on farms and can drink untreated milk from their livestock. Critics respond that there are almost certainly other reasons for this, such as their healthy outdoor lifestyle.
Among the devotees of raw milk is actress Gwyneth Paltrow.
Health guru Paltrow uses raw milk in her coffee every day
Health experts also scoff at claims that raw dairy products are somehow more natural in a world of highly processed foods and drinks. “Drinking raw milk is as ‘natural’ as drinking water contaminated with sewage,” says Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at New York University. ‘Pasteurization is no more “unnatural” than cooking, refrigerating or freezing food. “We do all these things to make food consumption safer.”
She and other experts point out that heating milk to pasteurize it does not alter its nutritional value. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the US government insist that raw milk does not provide health benefits, but it does have many potential dangers.
This has not in the least deterred the right, whose knee-jerk disdain for “experts,” the CDC, and any federal organization trying to curb American behavior boiled over during the social distancing of the pandemic.
“We find that new (political) officials are becoming more freedom-oriented and less trusting of government at all levels,” said Iowa state Sen. Jason Schultz, who pushed a bill to legalize the sale of raw milk there. (This represents a change of heart since, in 1980, Iowa jailed a dairy farmer for 30 days for selling.)
TikTok Raw Milk Influencers Have Driven Demand
Most states have long agreed to ban the sale of raw dairy products or, as in the United Kingdom, severely restrict sales to farms with special licenses that often can only sell them on-site or at a few outlets.
But in recent months, more and more red states, including Georgia, North Dakota, West Virginia and Iowa, have voted to end the illegal status of raw milk and allow farms to sell it.
A conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, sells T-shirts with the logo ‘Got Raw Milk?’, a play on the dominant dairy industry’s advertising slogan: ‘Got Milk?’. (However, he rather undermined the authority of his message by putting an image of a bull instead of a cow on the T-shirt.)
The latest state to take up the cause is Louisiana, where until now the sale of raw milk was illegal except in one establishment near Lafayette, where the farmer circumvented the ban by applying a system called “cowboarding.” The consumer buys a cow and pays the farmer to care for and milk it. So technically, the milk is not sold to them because it is their property.
In recent months, more and more Republican US states, including Georgia, North Dakota, West Virginia and Iowa, have voted to end the ban on raw milk.
The Louisiana Senate and House of Representatives have already passed their raw milk bill (some mooing as they did so) and now they just have to wait for the almost inevitable approval of the state’s conservative governor. Citing a rallying cry from the American Revolution, the bill’s Senate sponsor, Eric Lafleur, called it “Don’t tread on me” legislation.
In a stirring speech, he lashed out at his primary Democratic opponent, the appropriately named Senator John Milkovich, and his government “interfering in our daily lives and how we can produce milk.” He continued: ‘Can’t we trust a farmer to milk a cow and sell a few gallons to his neighbor? Come on guys, this is America! The biggest country in the world! Built on the backs of farmers across the country – dairy farmers built this country.’
But Republicans don’t get their way: Louisiana legislation will allow any store to sell raw milk as long as it carries a warning that it is “not for human consumption” and may contain “harmful bacteria.” But few people expect that to stop raw dairy fans from consuming them.
Not when the fundamental rights of citizens are at stake. As the president of the Louisiana State Senate wryly remarked when passing the raw milk bill this month, “Only in America.”