David Chiu

It started with a trip to the Santa Monica farmers market on a Saturday morning. Heather and I walked through the stands of organic fresh fruits, nuts, vegetables and flowers and came upon a stand selling raw milk. What a coincidence since we had just been listening to a radio program on public radio about raw milk. This particular stand was setup by Organic Pastures - a company which specializes in raw organic dairy products. The guy at the stand was very friendly and offered us a taste of the raw milk. Now I have never been a huge fan of milk, but this milk tasted really good. The guy introduced us to all of the different products that they produce, the benefits of raw dairy and also explained how well their dairy cows are treated. We picked up some brochures from the table and did some more research on raw dairy products. The next weekend we returned and picked up a half gallon of milk which contained colostrum.

I remembered hearing about colostrum a few months ago in one of my Muscle and Fitness, or Men’s Fitness magazine. This form of milk is created biologically in mothers during the first few days after giving birth. Colostrum has huge nutritional benefits for babies and research is being done to see if adult supplementation of colostrum has benefits as well. Initial research has shown that supplementation of bovine (cow) colostrum can boost the immune system and also help with building lean muscle, but the results are not conclusive.

So Heather and I are now drinking raw milk, eating raw butter, and I am trying raw Kefir - a fermented milk product similar to drinkable yogurt which is also suppose to have a lot of nutritional benefits. What does it taste like? Yogurt mixed with champagne. Not bad. Just different.

Do I think raw dairy has miraculous benefits? No. But I do think there are definite benefits of raw organic dairy and adding it to my diet along with other dietary changes can have a huge effect on my health and vitality.