By Dr. Mercola
Based on their vehement warnings to the public, as well as
their raids on small farms, the US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and
the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) want you to believe that
raw milk is unsafe.
And if you listen to them, you would come away believing that
raw milk is a filthy, disease-causing beverage that is virtually
guaranteed to make you and your family sick…
Yet, this very same ingredient – raw milk – is used to make
some of the world’s finest cheeses, from the Italian Parmigiano
Reggiano to the famous French-made Camembert.
The traditional cheese-making process has been crafted over
centuries in many cases, and is truly an art form, with each
cheese carefully aged and ripened to develop a complex taste and
texture that mass-produced cheeses cannot replicate – thanks, in
large part, to their raw milk content.
Why Raw Milk Makes Cheese Better
Raw cheese has a richer and deeper flavor than cheese made
from pasteurized milk because heat destroys the enzymes and good
bacteria that add flavor to the cheese.
In fact, raw cheese has flavors derived from the pastureland
that nourished the animals producing the milk, much like wine is
said to draw its unique flavors from individual vineyards. As
The Edmonton Journal recently reported:1
“ … bacteria present in the raw milk creates a taste
profile for cheese that cannot be replicated
post-pasteurization.
‘It’s impossible to recreate what nature creates
first,’ says [Bobby] Gregoire, part of a Slow Food campaign
to educate the public about raw milk and its products. ‘If
you pasteurize the cheese, you lose the link to the land.
It’s impossible to have a terroir product if you pasteurize
it.’”
Unfortunately, 90 percent of standard grocery store cheeses
are made from the milk of
CAFO cows, which are grain-fed cows. Raw-milk
cheese is far more likely too come from grass-fed animals raised
on pasture, rather than grain-fed or soy-fed animals confined to
feedlot stalls. Raw grass-fed dairy products not only taste
better, they are also nutritionally superior:
- Cheese made from the milk of grass-fed cows has the
ideal omega-6 to omega-3 fat ratio of 2:1. By contrast, the
omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of grain-fed milk is heavily
weighted on the side of omega-6 fats (25:1), which are
already excessive in the standard American diet. Grass-fed
dairy combats inflammation in your body, whereas grain-fed
dairy contributes to it.
- Grass-fed cheese contains about five times the
beneficial conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) of grain-fed
cheese.
- Because raw cheese is not
pasteurized, natural enzymes in the milk are preserved,
increasing its nutritional punch.
- Grass-fed cheese is considerably higher in calcium,
magnesium, beta-carotene, and vitamins A, C, D and E.
- Organic grass-fed cheese is free of antibiotics and
growth hormones.
Are the FDA and Canada Going to Ban Raw-Milk Cheese?
For years, federal regulators have been threatening to ban
raw milk products, including raw cheese, due to what they claim
are increased safety risks. In Canada, where unpasteurized milk
is legal to sell, an E. coli outbreak linked to one raw milk
cheese has experts calling for tighter regulations.
But the E. coli source has yet to be firmly identified,
meaning it could be from fresh herbs used in the cheeses, tubing
at the factory where the cheese is made or any number of
sources, i.e. not necessarily the raw milk.
The Edmonton Journal continued:2
“In light of such a tragedy, it’s easy to panic, and
to view cheese made from unpasteurized milk — which is legal
to sell in Canada — with a jaundiced eye. Ban it! Bring on
irradiation! This sort of fear-based attitude is a mistake.
Food-borne pathogens exist. They are a fact of life —
always have been, always will be. But to blame, or move to
eliminate, an entire food culture, in existence for
thousands of years, stimulating both the palate and the
economy, would be an overreaction.”
Even a 2012 report from the FDA and Health Canada,3
which claimed that there is a 50- to 160-fold increase in the
risk of listeriosis from eating soft-ripened raw-milk cheese,
compared with cheese made from pasteurized milk, appears to be
greatly overblown. As one journalist reported:4
“The risk certainly sounds serious… until you read
closely the full 189-page report and learn that the
FDA-Health Canada conclusion about ‘a 50- to 160-fold
increase in the risk’ is based entirely on estimates and
mathematical predictions, rather than real-life data on
illnesses from the soft raw milk cheeses.
Even more remarkable, the actual real-life data
presented in the report of illnesses worldwide from
listeriosis in soft cheese over a 23-year period between
1986 and 2008 show not a single documented illness in the
U.S. from listeriosis due to tainted brie or camembert.”
Likewise, according to Grist,5
between 1973 and 1999 there’s not a single report of illness
from either raw or pasteurized cheeses. However, since the year
2000, illnesses have begun to appear from raw and pasteurized
cheese alike. Most outbreaks have been found to result from
post-production contamination and laxity in quality control, not
lack of pasteurization.
The truth is that raw cheese is not inherently dangerous,
provided high standards are followed in the cheese-making
process. Hard cheeses like cheddar dry out as they age, making
them relatively inhospitable to invading bacteria. The
FDA’s attack on raw cheese is not based on facts, but simply
is an extension of their long-standing hostility toward raw milk
in general.
Did You Know High-Quality Cheese Is Good for You?
Cheese is much maligned in America due to the
saturated fat/cholesterol myth. Does eating high-quality
cheese lead to obesity and heart disease? This is actually a
myth that stems from an outdated and seriously flawed
hypothesis, perpetuated by decades of wildly successful
marketing.
Numerous recent studies have confirmed saturated fat is NOT
associated with obesity or heart disease and is actually
associated with improved heart health. Most Americans today are
consuming inadequate saturated fat. In fact, the
Greeks, French and Germans eat much more cheese than Americans
but enjoy lower rates of hypertension and obesity.6
Of course, there is a
difference between natural cheese and processed “cheese foods.”
Natural cheese is a simple
fermented dairy product, made with nothing more than a few
basic ingredients — milk, starter culture, salt and an enzyme
called rennet. Processed cheese or “cheese food” is a different
story. These products are typically pasteurized and otherwise
adulterated with a variety of additives that detract from their
nutritional value. When prepared traditionally, as most raw-milk
cheeses are, cheese offers a wealth of good nutrition,
including:
- High-quality protein and amino acids
- High-quality saturated fats and omega-3 fats
- Vitamins and minerals, including calcium, zinc,
phosphorus, vitamins A, D, B2 (riboflavin) and B12
- Vitamin K2
-
CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), a powerful
cancer-fighter and metabolism booster
Which Cheeses Are Best?
This is the million-dollar question, isn’t it? And one that’s
virtually impossible to answer, as everyone’s palate is unique
when it comes to cheese. From a health standpoint, your best
option is cheese made from the raw milk of pasture-raised cows,
sheep and goats, as opposed to feedlot livestock fed grain and
soy. My top picks are Gouda, Brie, and Edam cheese, as these are
good sources of vitamin K2, but you also can’t go wrong with
high-quality cheddar, Swiss, Colby, Gruyere, and goat cheese.
Cheese is unique in that it offers a synergistic blend of
vitamins, minerals, amino acids and omega-3 fatty acids,
including the magic trio of
vitamin D3, vitamin
K2 and calcium. This nutrient triad is vitally important for
reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis,
so don’t be afraid to include high-quality cheese in your
regular diet. Also, don’t be afraid of raw cheese (as long as it
comes from a reputable cheesemaker), which beats ordinary cheese
in both taste and nutrition.
© Copyright 1997-2013 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.