Kit Leffler

Butterscotch nibbles on clover and lush grass as her tail bats the season’s remaining flies. Her udder hangs low and full, with her teats reaching for the prairie like fingers trying to grasp a wave.

Wearing mud boots and a fall jacket, Sherie Noffke leads me closer to Butterscotch and the three other dairy cows that make up her and her husband’s small herd. I follow carefully. Tip-toeing between mud puddles and cow pies that dot the ground, we hop over electric fence after electric fence and faced the portion of pasture where the cows graze. Butterscotch looks up at me with innocent eyes covered in thick, cartoon-like eyelashes, seemingly unruffled, and again turns her head to the grass.

Butterscotch and her lady friends eat grass and clover and roam a fresh pasture every week. They receive no hormone injections or antibiotics, and the grains that supplement their diet are organic. They live a stress-free life and fatten as nature intended. In comparison to their counterparts at large dairies that are confined to cement-floored paddocks and feedlots, the Noffke’s foursome are lucky cows. The way Noffke tells it, these lucky cows make better milk.

Milk is one of the FDA’s most controversial foods. From organic to conventional, raw to pasteurized and fattening to healthy, the debate over milk is multifaceted. Scientists and nutritionists cannot agree on the safety of growth hormones used by many dairy farmers or the use of pesticides on cattle feed. The increase in attention to organic and pure foods has reintroduced raw milk into the mix as a potentially safe alternative to pasteurized milk. The safe and healthy concept received significant backing when a study by the University of Tennessee was released, casting doubt on the “too-much-dairy-makes-you-fat idea.” It claimed instead that dairy products aid in weight reduction. Milk has proved to be one heck of a dairy dilemma.

The good for us stuff

Practically from conception, we have been bombarded with the five food groups—whole grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy products and meat—and told that if we ate a certain number of servings of each group per day, we would provide our bodies with the essential nutrients to stay strong and fit. We need to drink milk by the glass, add feta to our salads and consume yogurt for snacks. We were to be a nation of healthy teeth and strong bones with beautiful actresses and dominant athletes leading the way with their glued-on milk mustaches.

This “Got Milk?” marketing ploy simply advertised to the public what many of us already knew: milk provides our body with essential nutrients. With components such as Vitamin D, calcium and Vitamin K, it’s no secret that milk aids in the development of strong bones. One serving of reduced-fat cow’s milk contains almost 30 percent of the daily value of calcium and a little more than 30 percent of the daily value of phosphate. These two minerals combine to form calcium phosphate, which provides for both the strength and structure of bones. A serving of milk also provides almost 50 percent of the daily value of Vitamin D, which keeps calcium in the blood and available for bones to use. With all of these vitamins and minerals, milk looks like a super-food, so why is there any debate at all? Nutrients in milk were never the problem.

Shooting up cows

One of the problems with milk’s image is the fear of hormones injected into dairy cows. Many conventional dairy farms use a cow growth hormone called rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), known commercially as Posilac. Farmers inject this hormone into the cows as often as twice a month to extend the heavy milk output period from eight to 10 weeks to16 to 20. This extended milking period allows each cow to produce more milk, but Dr. Samuel Epstein, a professor of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, states in his book “Got (Genetically Engineered) Milk?” that the hormone also increases the occurrence of mastitis in cows. Mastitis is the scientific name for inflammation of breast tissue, which in cows can lead to swollen, hard udders that when milked, will excrete pus from the infected tissue into the milk. Extensive mastitis cases require large doses of antibiotics.

Epstein also says that rBGH increases a cell-stimulating growth factor that is genetically identical to humans and may cause premature growth of breasts in children and possibly breast cancer in adults.

The growth factor to which Epstein is referring is called insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-1. Both human and cow’s milk contains some level of IGF-1 because milk is designed for the young and IGF-1 helps us in the growth process. Epstein says that the higher levels of IGF-1 in the blood could stimulate cancerous cells to grow. Melissa Hooper, nutritionist for the Midwest Dairy Association, disagrees and says that rBGH can’t affect humans because it is a bovine hormone that has been deemed safe by the FDA.

Kit Leffler

Ideas similar to Epstein’s are what keep the Noffke’s Pleasanton farm, Skyview, all natural. The Noffkes do not use growth hormones because Noffke has read about the link between the hormones and cancers in the reproductive organs and breast tissue. She also understands that science currently cannot back up these claims.

Worries about hormones are not the only reason farms like Noffke’s go organic. She compares eating and drinking in-organic products to stepping on nails. She says that occasionally stepping on a nail won’t hurt you too badly. Stepping on nails every day is a different story. Included in Noffke’s “nails” are pesticides and fertilizers. An organic farm can neither feed its cows grain that has been treated with pesticides nor medicate the cows with antibiotics. The pasture where the cows graze must be naturally fertilized, and the water source must be controllable. The final product is all natural and pure.

Straight from the udder?

Take the idea of natural and pure one step further and you’ll run smack into one of the newest milk crazes—or should I say oldest? Obviously, milk straight from the cow was consumed before the whole idea of pasteurization, but now some consumers are choosing raw milk over the pasteurized version because it is richer in vitamins and minerals and therefore possibly more healthful.

The problem for these raw milk guzzlers is that store-bought milk is sold in the pasteurized form. Pasteurization is a process that began in the late 19th century after people began to blame raw milk for tuberculosis. Louis Pasteur, a French chemist, came up with a process in which the milk was heated to between 145 and 150 degrees for half an hour and then chilled to less than 55 degrees to kill germs and prevent quick spoilage. The milk sold on the shelves of grocery stores and gas stations goes through a process called HTST (High Temperature/ Short Time) pasteurization in which the milk is heated to 161.5 degrees for at least 15 seconds.

The enzymes that pasteurization removes aid in the digestion of milk, creating lactose intolerance Noffke says. She says that if you were to feed pasteurized milk to a calf, it would die of malnutrition because of the missing nutrients that the pasteurization process has destroyed.

The sale of raw milk is outlawed in many states, but that doesn’t decrease consumer demand. Noffke says that she is up to her eyeballs in raw milk customers, but in Kansas, dairies that sell raw milk can only sell it on the farm. They are not allowed to transport the merchandise, and they cannot advertise beyond the farm. Drive-by customers only see a small, white sign lettered in black to alert them that Skyview sells milk.

The skinny on fat

Diet fads change from clinical study to clinical study. Years ago, dairy products were on the strict dieters “do not touch” list, but recent studies claim that calcium-rich dairy products actually aid in weight reduction. Hooper says that Dr. Michael Zemel, professor of nutrition at the University of Tennessee, discovered this correlation almost 14 years ago. He noticed that African-American men who consumed at least two servings of whole-fat dairy a day lost an average of 11 pounds during his yearlong study. These men did not reduce their calorie intake.

This led to Zemel’s more current research published in “Obesity Research” indicating that people on a reduced-calorie diet who eat three to four servings of dairy a day on a reduced-calorie diet lose weight in their abdominal region. In his study he divided the subjects into three categories: high dairy/high calcium, high calcium and low calcium. Zemel’s study found that subjects eating the high-dairy diet lost 70 percent more body weight and 64 percent more body fat than those individuals on the low-calcium diet.

Hooper says calcium plays a role in weight maintenance and reduced medical costs and that people can get their biggest source of calcium from dairy. The nutrients in milk are undeniable because dairy products are naturally nutrient rich.

The controversy lies in hormone-injections and weight loss.

Back on the farm

Whether everything Noffke says is based on scientific fact, the attitude at Skyview Farm is hard to resist. Lazy, well-fed cows walk aimlessly about the pasture. They are unstressed, free and healthy.

While heating curds and whey to make mozzarella cheese, Noffke opens her refrigerator and pulls out a white plate displaying pure butter the color of an egg yolk. She smiles and tells me that when cows are grass-fed, their butter turns bright yellow. She puts back the plate after I rejects her offer of a taste. Instead, she reaches for the raw milk and pours me a small glass. I feel nervous because of all the germs and bacteria I’ve read about that make their home in the liquid, but I take a sip and realize what I’ve been missing. It tastes fresh, cold and thick. Maybe it’s the idea of the cows’ freedom that does a subconscious dance on my tongue, but it tastes so much better than store-bought milk. I swirl it around, coating the glass like a good wine, and swallow the rest of the sample. Noffke looks at me, eagerly awaiting my reaction. “It is good,” I say, while I secretly pray that I would not become violently ill.

Days later, I’m fine and craving a glass of raw milk.