The Moo Man

Here is a nice picture of Kate, one of the twins and 13 years old. Unfortunately she’s off topic. Topic is…

It was interesting to read the extract pasted below which comes from the Wikipedia entry on milk. Okay, so they spell with every ‘isation’ with ‘ization’ but forgive them that. It articulates one of my own feelings after drinking raw milk for over a year; not so much that pasteurisation is bad but that maybe the real devil is in homogenisation. It seems to mess up the milk and our ability to digest it something rotten. I’ve also noticed that when I’m away and can’t get raw milk but can track down some non-homogenised, that that stuff is pretty good too. In my opinion it’s the homogenisation that has the single biggest effect on the taste and possibly our health.

What do you think? Here’s the Wikipedia extract:

Milk is often homogenized, a treatment which prevents a cream layer from separating out of the milk. The milk is pumped at high pressures through very narrow tubes, breaking up the fat globules through turbulence and cavitation.^[14] A greater number of smaller particles possess more total surface area than a smaller number of larger ones, and the original fat globule membranes cannot completely cover them. Casein micelles are attracted to the newly-exposed fat surfaces; nearly one-third of the micelles in the milk end up participating in this new membrane structure. The casein weighs down the globules and interferes with the clustering that accelerated separation. The exposed fat globules are briefly vulnerable to certain enzymes present in milk, which could break down the fats and produce rancid flavors. To prevent this, the enzymes are inactivated by pasteurizing the milk immediately before or during homogenization.

Homogenized milk tastes blander but feels creamier in the mouth than unhomogenized; it is whiter and more resistant to developing off flavors.^[4] Creamline, or cream-top, milk is unhomogenized; it may or may not have been pasteurized. Milk which has undergone high-pressure homogenization, sometimes labeled as “ultra-homogenized,” has a longer shelf life than milk which has undergone ordinary homogenization at lower pressures.^[15] Homogenized milk may be more digestible than unhomogenized milk.^[16]

Concerns exist about the health effects of consuming homogenized milk. Work by Kurt A. Oster, M.D. in the 1960s through the 1980s suggested a link between homogenized milk and arterosclerosis, due to damage to plasmalogen as a result of the release of bovine xanthine oxidase (BXO) from the milk fat globular membrane (MFGM) during homogenization. While Oster’s work has been widely criticized, it is apparent that homogenization introduces changes to the MFGM and exposures of its proteins, and the effects of these changes on food safety have not been thoroughly investigated.^[16]

Because the fat globules in the milk are reduced in size and encapsulated into liposomes, they pass through the stomach undigested. (The liposomes are protected from the digestive acids.) Because of the tiny size of the fat globules after the milk has been homogenized, the liposomes are then able to pass into the bloodstream through the walls of the intestines, where the damage occurs. The liposomes contain the partially destroyed BXO enzyme. XO is only found in the liver, unless a person drinks homogenized milk. Then it is found in the liposomes that enter the bloodstream, where it begins to attack plasmalogen. (Plasmalogen makes up 30% of the membrane system in human heart muscle cells.) XO can only either use the plasmalogen or destroy it, and in most autopsies of people who have died from heart and circulatory disease – plasmalogen is missing, arterial inner linings are eaten away, and mineral deposits covered in fat and cholesterol create a deadly plaque in the arteries. The addition of synthetic vitamin D in the milk actually enhances the activity of XO. ^[17]

Lifted from Wikipedia so many thanks to them.