Skeptic Project

Many months ago, I bought raw milk and cheese from a local farmer. Due to costs and health concerns, I quit buying. I continue to receive the farmer's newsletter. Here is what I received this morning:

"I love conspiracy theories. I don’t usually believe them, but they fascinate me, so I like to read about them.

Many people are convinced that there is a conspiracy against raw milk. When something as good and as wholesome and nourishing and healing as raw milk is so intensely fought against by such heavyweights as the FDA and the AMA and the CDC, certainly there has to be a conspiracy… a grand scheme orchestrated by Big Pharma, and Big Medical to keep this health-giving, life-supporting, immunity-building, living, whole food out of the hands of average Americans lest they partake thereof and never more need a drug or a physician.

I do believe that there is an agenda to hinder and discourage the sale and consumption of raw milk, but I think that to call it a conspiracy gives the opposition more credit than they deserve.

I think a better explanation is that the vast majority are simply locked into a myopic, don’t-think-outside-the-box-that-my-university-and-culture-have-dictated mindset. It is easier than we realize to fall into the trap of letting others do our thinking. And when they have thought for us, it is easier to accept and adopt their thoughts than to do the hard work ourselves. Once we have thought with the crowd long enough we adopt their thinking as our own and defend it as fiercely as our own prized possession. Permit me to use another analogy to explain.

Imagine that in our culture all garden produce is served cooked or canned…nothing raw. Tomato sauce and ketchup are common and accepted, but fresh, sliced tomatoes straight from the garden are unthinkable! Cooked and canned spinach and lettuce are limp and slimy but normal. Canned carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and sprouts don’t seem mushy and devitalized because it’s all we know. It’s well known and diligently taught that cooking all foods is the only safe, responsible, scientific, and civilized way. People used to eat raw foods, but that was before the age of civilization and science. Because, of course, as any simpleton now knows, raw foods may contain pathogens. Pasteur taught us that. It is an established fact that only the ‘flat earth crowd’ would ever contest.

But along come a few radical nutritionists who dare to do their own thinking. They dare to question the established dogma. They ask more questions than is good. They report that raw tomatoes taste wonderful on a hamburger and that raw uncooked lettuce along with raw radishes, spinach, carrots and sprouts all tossed to gather in a dish with a little blue cheese dressing is a real treat.

But of all audacious things, these raw foodies overstep themselves and begin to cite research which says that raw salads and vegetables are actually better for you, better for your health… and they really do believe it! And they feed their innocent children this way too!

Well, you get the point. If we were to start from this premise, this mind set, this cultural background, the position of the health departments and medical doctors across our nation would be predictable. We would be warned. There would be dire predictions. Every time there was any illness that could be linked to raw salads or vegetables, the media would light up, but they would not focus on how contamination occurred and how to prevent future contamination. Instead the talking heads would repeat as if from script that raw fruits and vegetables should not be eaten by anyone, anytime, and at any place. “It's like playing Russian roulette with your health” they would say.

And their arguments would seem convincing. People do get sick and die from fresh raw garden produce. Their vigorous, unyielding, nanny state efforts to protect us from our poor food choices and to stamp out this dangerous fad of eating raw garden salads would seem like a finely orchestrated conspiracy. But it would really just be many dependable individuals predictably thinking and acting as they have been trained… fearing to question, neglecting to think, afraid to ask “what if we are wrong?”… “what if they are right?”… “Is it possible that the net health effect of raw salads and fresh vegetables has a greater positive health effect than a negative?

Remember: Dr James Lind discovered the cure for scurvy in 1747…citrus fruit. Yet other doctors and educated men of the day laughed him to scorn. The very idea that something as terrible, mysterious and deadly as scurvy could be cured by diet! So the British sailors continued to die at a terrific rate for almost another 50 years. (more died from scurvy than from battle) It wasn’t till 1795, after the death of Dr. Lind, that the British navy finally included citrus fruit into the diet of their sailors… and scurvy promptly disappeared.

It took the British 50 years, but it wasn't a conspiracy. It was the inability to take the blinders off...or, even to know that blinders were on.

Think about it!"

One of the farmer's main arguments is that more people have died from spinach and peanut butter than raw milk in the last few years. Of course, much fewer people drink raw milk than consume spinach and peanut butter.

I think raw milk could be safer today thanks to modern technology. The real question: is it a better option than pasteurized milk? Many argue that the former tastes better, but that's never been the issue. What's more critical is whether it poses a health risk. Some raw milk advocates say that pasteurized milk has less nutrients, and the bacteria in raw milk is beneficial. I haven't found a study that shows pasteurized milk to have a significant decrease in nutritional value as compared to raw milk. I also haven't seen a study showing that we are worse off without the beneficial bacteria.

What do you think?

Raw hamburger??? As in raw meat?

I think she misunderstood the raw food diet was vegan.

If you want to spend the the time necessary to properly prepare raw meat, it can be healthy.

I don't think it's worth the effort considering the consequences of screwing up.

Ah, I was thinking about hunting and then immediately preparing the meat. I have no idea how healthy it is to eat raw meat that's been sitting in a truck / store.

Oh, by the way, on my plane back to Jersey last week, I sat next to a guy reading some Ayn Rand book. Are any of Ayn Rand books of value? I think it was Atlas Shrugged.

There's a whole movement of people who follow this caveman diet bullshit. As if cavemen were something to emulate.

lol, well I wouldnt confuse that with the popularised raw - vegan - food diet. I guess this is like the no planer version. Raw animal products is absolutely ridiculous!

If not for the evil FDA requiring that raw meat to be fairly safe to consume raw, then they'd throw up constantly and shit their guts out for going the way of Upton Sinclair.

People who oppose pasteurization also tend to be utter morons as well.

Just like OH NO, GAMMA IRRADIATION WILL MAKE OUR FOOD RADIOACTIVE, NEVER-MIND THE FACT THAT IT WOULD ALLOW US TO CONTINUE EATING LIKE SHIT FLINGING CAVEMEN.

Some of the pro-raw milk people like it simply because they want their "freedom" from the government telling them what they can and cannot do.

Well, he was wearing a St. Louis Cardinals hat, so I'm not surprised.

Remember all the fuss when microwave ovens came onto the market..

FX [ wonders if everyones too young to remember.. ]

> believes that if Americans ate raw/fresh foods then they wouldn't have to ever
> take medicine or see a physician

If that worked, where are the 200 year old folk on that diet..

If they just said, eating raw/fresh foods reduced your chances of getting ill I'd be in agreement with that.