The Sunday Read: ‘Some Raw Truths About Raw Milk’
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What are the risks of drinking raw milk?
Hi, my name is Moises Velasquez-Manoff, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times Magazine. I'm a science writer, and I mostly cover health, medicine, and the environment. This week's Sunday Read is based on a recent magazine article of mine about raw milk. The first and most important takeaway of my piece is that raw milk can literally kill you. and that people should make sure they understand the risks before drinking it. And even if it doesn't kill you, it can make you extremely sick. We're talking about ending up in the ICU potentially with kidney failure because of a terrible E. coli strain, just as one example. I grew up in New Mexico where some people were drinking raw milk because it fit into their back-to-the-land philosophy or because they liked the way it tasted. But nowadays, raw milk is just as much a beverage for libertarian types, homeschoolers, people who are suspicious of the government telling them what to do, and health fanatics looking for quote-unquote superfoods.
On social media, you may have caught some of the magical claims about raw milk, like, I started drinking it and my eczema went away, or it cured my inflammatory problems. And those are some of the moderate claims. There's no science behind raw milk curing anything. And yet, actually, there have been studies that suggest there's a value in terms of prevention. I once researched and wrote about something called the farm effect. Scientists have observed that rural kids in Europe and the US who grew up on farms have a relatively low risk of allergies and asthma. They think that raw milk contributes to this protective effect. And they think this because people who don't live on farms, but who might get raw milk from a farm down the road, also have a lower risk of allergies and asthma. So how are we supposed to reconcile the possible health benefits of raw milk with the fact that it might also kill us? That's an important question.
And so what I really wanted to do for today's episode is drill down into the science behind everything that's being said. both the known good and the known bad, and all the potentials about raw milk. I wanted to do this because I think we should be able to have a nuanced conversation. Because if scientists and science journalists could clearly explain how dangerous raw milk can be, while still pointing out that yes, there may be certain health benefits, then maybe we can prevent people from going into the corners of the internet where the claims become outrageous and safety is overlooked, with potentially deadly consequences. So here's my article, read by Anthony Ray Perez. Our producer today is Tali Aboukassis, and our music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito. Thanks for listening.
Thousands of years ago, after domesticating cows and other ruminants, humans did something remarkable. They began to consume the milk from these animals. Scientists consider mammalian milk to confer a tremendous evolutionary advantage because it allows mothers to feed immature offspring with food well tailored to their needs. With the advent of daring, humans inserted themselves into this ancient relationship between ruminant mothers and their offspring, diverting this source of nutrition into their own bodies. By consuming the milk of ruminants, possibly after fermenting it, humans found a reliable way to nourish themselves with grass and other tough plant material that they themselves couldn't digest directly.
As a cultural adaptation, daring was so important, one scientist told me, that whoever invented it deserves to win a Nobel Prize posthumously. Every year. But living closely with animals and drinking their milk also presents risks, chief among them the increased likelihood that infections will jump from animals to people. Some of humanity's nastiest scourges, including smallpox and measles, probably originated in domesticated animals, In the 19th century, as industrialization spurred urbanization and mass migration, milk became a major vector of disease. As late as 1938, illnesses from milk still accounted for one quarter of all infectious diseases contracted from what people ate and drank that year.
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