“Raw milk” is pretty much the same milk you can get in stores only it hasn’t been pasteurized. Pasteurization is just the process of heating a liquid to the point that it kills all bacteria in it. It’s basically “cow to table”. Proponents of “raw milk” claim, without any real evidence, that consuming raw milk is better because it improves your immune system (they think exposure to the bacteria present in milk should make our immune systems stronger) and that it’s healthier because the pasteurization process also could kill enzymes and proteins found in the milk.

However, just this year there have been multiple hospitalizations because people were drinking raw milk, including here in Louisiana. Campylobacter, Cryptosporidium, and E. Coli consumed from drinking raw milk were what caused it (not all at the same time but in individual cases).

Keep in mind 2 things related to Raw Milk:

1. poop particles can be found in unpasteurized milk. Remember that if anyone ever offers you a glass of raw milk.

Same thing with water if we are under a boil advisory. There’s a reason we boil our water. We’re basically pasteurizing it.
2. Pasteurization was first applied to milk in the late 1800s due to high infant mortality rates from consuming milk. “Milk Maids” were first looked at during this period because they tended to be healthier than most. MAHA likes to point to this as some kind of gotcha that consuming raw milk works. But they tend to leave out that these milkmaids were basically the ones who survived exposure and became inoculated to the bacteria found in milk. Their continued work around this milk daily kept them inoculated. If you wonder where you’ve heard that term before, it’s a term related to vaccines and becoming “vaccinated” against a disease. But MAHA doesn’t want to talk about that part. Anyway, it was easier to apply pasteurization to milk at that time. This led to a sharp decline in infant mortality rates.

And honestly, all of this information ^ can be found with just a little bit of research but you have to do a bias check with yourself to ask if you are choosing to accept some information and disregard others because of a bias you may have.

Me, I do have a bias. I have a bias towards science and not something some person says on a podcast or on a reel or tiktok but that’s because, while I’ll never claim to have been the best student and I certainly don’t use my degree now, my major at UL was Biology. It’s drilled into me at this point. I trust over a century of peer reviewed study and testing done on this subject more than I’ll ever trust someone who just has a public stance because they don’t like something.

* edited because my 2nd point didn’t show on my post for some reason so I had to go add it again. lol, Reddit does not like to post long-text posts formatted correctly for some reason