It might taste great, but pasteurization was invented for a reason.
Over the past year, I’ve been involved in an illegal, underground, super-secret speakeasy. I smuggled contraband to my house, even distributed it among my friends. Nope, not meth: milk. Creamy, delicious, unpasteurized milk.
When I first tried raw milk, I found the taste odd, but soon I came to crave its distinctive flavor. Better yet, I was told it could cure my allergies and eczema. “People see amazing results when they give this stuff to their kids—they have ear infections and asthma and allergies, and with raw milk it goes away,” says Mark McAfee, CEO of Fresno, California-based Organic Pastures, the nation’s largest raw-milk dairy. McAfee pointed me to a peer-reviewed study suggesting a link between raw-milk consumption and diminished allergy rates—as the theory goes, raw milk contains proteins and compounds that somehow keep the immune system from overreacting to allergens.
