The Real Story of Homogenized Milk, Powdered Milk, Skim Milk and Oxidized Cholesterol

Milk has been through a lot in the past 100 years. First it was subjected to pasteurization, then homogenization, then oxidation. Will the -ations ever end?

The question for us milk drinkers is of course: when does a change cause a nutritional problem?

Some say that pasteurization already kills too many healthy enzymes; see more on the different kinds of milk pasteurization in yesterday’s post.

Related: Sweetened Condensed Milk

Is Homogenized Milk Dangerous?

I joined the crowd warning of the health dangers of homogenized milk when I talked dairy fats in the fall. This post is an important update to that one!

There’s a theory out there, propagated by Kurt Oster, that says that the process of breaking the fat globules into such small pieces that they remain suspended in the milk, homogenization, is a leading cause of arteriosclerosis and heart disease. I’ve even seen it listed as one of the top three causes of heart disease, along with trans fats and chlorinated water. 1

However, even Mary Enig, co-author of Nourishing Traditions and author of Eat Fat, Lose Fat disagrees with Oster’s findings. She says:

Translation: the fats damaged by homogenization can be passed through the walls of the digestive system directly into the circulatory system, where they “scratch” the artery walls, making a problem area to which cholesterol flocks (cholesterol is like the ambulance or mechanic in your circulatory system, repairing issues in the arteries). This forms plaque and causes heart disease, and it’s all because the fat globules got too small.

But.

He was wrong.

Mary Enig says so here, and I also spoke with a professor in the department of Food Science & Human Nutrition and Department of Animal Science at my favorite agricultural college, Michigan State University. Dr. John Partridge is a Dairy Food Extension Specialist, and he had this to say about concerns about oxidation of homogenized milk:

Dr. Partridge drinks homogenized store milk himself, although he said he has to take the jugs from the back to avoid the “light oxidized flavor that is prevalent in milk stored under direct fluorescent lighting.” This is not a man who drinks milk without consciousness.

Dr. Mary Enig finishes with this, although I’d like to see more foundation for her claims:

With all that under my belt, I’m much less afraid of homogenized milk than I used to be. I have some distrust in it, because it is quite a man-made process, so when I can stick to the natural, I will. I won’t, however, pay double price for unhomogenized milk unless there are other upgraded benefits from the store milk! (See this milk descriptions post for what all the terms on the jugs mean.)

Does Skim Milk Contain Powdered Dry Milk?

The Weston A. Price Foundation says, “All reduced-fat milks have dried skim milk added to give them body, although this ingredient is not usually on the labels.” I’ve seen this claim in multiple other places as well, but it’s incredibly outdated and plain wrong.

I’m the type of person who calls companies to ask questions (in case you haven’t already noticed that). When I realized that the claim of “industry standard” might be incorrect, I decided to call a few brands that sell milk to see what I could find out.

From Meijer:

From Bareman’s, a local Michigan dairy:

I would like to see the WAPF update their position on this issue, as their information clearly was correct decades ago but is sorely outdated.

Does Powdered Dry Milk Contain Oxidized Cholesterol?

The reason for the scare about powdered milk being added to skim and lowfat milk is this:

Here’s the hole in that argument: nonfat dry milk has little to no cholesterol to begin with, so consuming any “oxidized” cholesterol that may or may not be present there is probably no more hazardous to your health than eating an apple that is starting to brown (that process is oxidation, too).

Here is a a conversation with an animal science trained former farm gal on oxidized cholesterol with her convincing arguments.

I had been making my yogurt with store whole milk since coming around to the idea of full fat dairy. Once I decided there was no inherent problem drinking skim milk, other than the fact that it’s missing the fat, I began making my yogurt with skim milk and added cream from our grassfed raw milk. I figured that even if homogenization isn’t as bad as it’s being made out to be, I can still get the fat to be organic, which helps my family avoid most of the potential toxins and hormones, which tend to collect in the fat.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you a bit about how I came to the decision to drink raw milk.

1. Natural Cures “They” Don’t want you to Know About by Kevin Trudeau

Photo from Flickr.com

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