Why certified organic milk brands such as Horizon and Organic Valley are toxic despite glowing marketing claims, which falsely lead consumers to believe this type of milk is a healthier alternative to regular supermarket milk.
Fact: Organic milk companies such as Horizon and Organic Valley are pulling the wool over the eyes of consumers.
By marketing their ultrapasteurized (UHT) milk as certified USDA Organic, a willing consumer base buys it, thinking it is a better choice than regular pasteurized supermarket milk.
The sad truth is that ultrapasteurized (UHT) organic milk is just as unhealthy as regular, pasteurized store milk.
I’ve often thought if I HAD to choose between them, which milk would I select as being better: regular pasteurized supermarket milk or ultrapasteurized certified organic milk? That’s a toughie. Neither choice is optimal as there is no clear winner.
Both are highly processed milks, and both contribute to poor health and chronic illness in general.
Pasteurized vs Ultrapasteurized Milk
Let’s first consider regular supermarket milk.
The dairy cows producing this type of milk are injected with hormones and other drugs.
They consume unnatural, GMO, pesticide, and antibiotic-laced feed with no access to fresh air or green grass.
To add insult to injury, these abused animals stand on cement floors their entire lives. No surprise that they usually die within about 18 months. Incidentally, the true lifespan for a healthy dairy cow should approach 15 years.
Milk from confined cows NEEDS to be pasteurized. It is dirty, nasty stuff loaded with pus and pathogens because of the filth and chronic mastitis the cows endure.
Now let’s consider certified organic (UHT) milk. A consumer with only partial knowledge of how milk is processed is easily lured into buying this milk.
On the surface, it seems so much healthier.
After all, the cows don’t get any antibiotics, steroids, or hormones, right?
It’s certified USDA Organic. Doesn’t that mean something?
While the cows producing organic milk may not be subjected to the drugs and antibiotics used on conventional dairy operations, the milk coming from the Organic Industrial Complex is even more highly processed.
For example, ultrapasteurized (UHT) organic milk is subjected to the insanely high temperature of 275–302°F/ 135–150°C for 1–10 seconds (most commonly 2–5 seconds).
This is waaaay over the boiling point!
For reference, the boiling point of milk is 212.4–212.9°F/ 100.2–100.5°C.
Excessively high UHT processing, far above the boiling point, results in a destroyed product (it isn’t really even food anymore), but dairy corporations love it because it has a much extended shelf life compared to regular pasteurization.
The dirty little secret is that certified organic UHT milk can actually remain unrefrigerated for up to 6 months when packaged in aseptic cartons!
Yet, it is placed in the refrigerated section nonetheless because US consumers won’t readily buy cartons of milk from an unrefrigerated shelf. It goes against intuition and just doesn’t seem very natural, does it?
I don’t know about you, but I find this practice outrageous!
To show the disconnect, consider that Moms often buy individually sized aseptic packages of organically certified milk and put them in their children’s lunchboxes….with ice packs that aren’t even needed!
If they only knew that this milk is so dead that it doesn’t require refrigeration, then they might rethink their choice of beverage.
Auto-Immune Disorders
Why is ultrapasteurization so bad?
The high temperature (far above boiling point) necessary to ultrapasteurize organic milk greatly damages the fragile milk proteins. The same thing happens when sweetened condensed milk is manufactured too.
This violent industrial process results in a “food” that the body no longer recognizes when it is consumed.
The enzymes produced during digestion do not “fit together” like puzzle pieces with the milk proteins destroyed by UHT processing.
These undigested proteins then make their way into the bloodstream due to “leaky gut” syndrome, which nearly all Westerners suffer from to some degree.
At that point, the body identifies them as foreign proteins and mounts an immune response.
This translates into symptoms such as allergies, asthma, eczema, reflux, bloating, and other symptoms of autoimmunity.
People who drink this type of certified organic milk often think they have a “milk allergy”. In reality, they have an allergy to the processing, not the milk itself!
Ultrapasteurized milk is so completely sterilized that sometimes it is difficult to culture into homemade kefir or 24 hour yogurt.
In short, ultrapasteurized milk is dead, dead, DEAD.
There is no way that it can be considered healthy, even if it is labeled USDA organic and comes from grassfed cows.
I remember when my first child was nursing, I drank a lot of Organic Valley ultrapasteurized milk.
My baby spit up so badly during that time that there was some concern that he had a reflux disorder.
Remarkably (but not surprisingly), when I stopped drinking the Organic Valley milk, his reflux problem completely resolved. No treatment was required.
I have no doubt that if I had continued drinking this milk while nursing and he drank it as a toddler, that a likely “milk allergy” would be the result today.
Fortunately, I wised up in time to get off the industrialized poison otherwise known as certified organic milk!
Pick Your Poison
While a consumer may be reducing his/her exposure to antibiotic and pesticide residues by choosing Organic Valley milk, this is by no means a guarantee to less chemical exposure.
Processors of organic milk frequently boil the milk to the required 275–302°F/ 135–150°C after the milk is in the plastic or plastic-lined aseptic carton packaging.
Another method (just as toxic), is to fill the package or jug with sterilized hot milk that has not yet cooled down!
Either of these industrialized processes release high levels of endocrine-disrupting phthalates from the plastic or plastic lining into the milk!
Most everyone now knows never to heat food in a microwave with plastic wrap on top for this very reason.
It’s a shame more people aren’t aware of the tremendous endocrine-disrupting potential of drinking all forms of pasteurized milk, even certified organic that is falsely perceived as safer.
Never Buy Certified Organic Milk from the Store!
As you can see, it is an extremely hard decision to pick which milk is more unhealthy: regular pasteurized store milk or certified organic milk.
It is best not to have to make the decision at all!
Seek out fresh raw grassfed milk straight from the cow (or goat) from a farmer in your local area.
And, if you are fortunate enough to have a source for this truly healthy milk, don’t run out and buy a half-gallon of ultrapasteurized organic milk if you temporarily run out of the fresh-from-the-farm variety.
In those situations, it is best to simply go without.
The risks from consuming certified organic milk even on occasion are simply too enormous to ignore.
Another option is to make healthy milk substitutes like this recipe for coconut milk tonic or homemade sprouted oat milk until the next local dairy delivery.
More Information
101 Uses for Raw Soured Milk
Tips for Freezing Milk and other Dairy Products
A1 and A2 Milk: Do Cow Genetics Even Matter?
Not all Organic Valley milk is ultra-pasteurized. In our area, the half gallon cartons are, but the gallon bottles are pasteurized. It might be a good idea to check with the company to understand their distribution decisions and look carefully at the labeling before deciding not to drink their milk. We have started to incorporate raw milk from a local dairy into our household, but not all family members are willing to go that route and we rely on Organic Valley to fill in the gaps.
I can't even buy regular pasteurized milk at my local grocery store. Everything is ultrapasteurized. Luckily, I have a source for real milk and can avoid the whole grocery store milk issue!
You only mentioned Organic Valley and Horizon Organic milk… what about Stonyfield Organic milk?
And for that matter their yogurt, etc.?
ahem sister! great post! it drives me crazy when i see people buying horizon milk at target and think their getting something healthful. you can't trust your government with your health. you must research yourself… ALWAYS. as i heard once…. "uncle sam is not your uncle" 🙂
Cynthia, thanks so much for commenting! Yes, this ultrapasteurization thing is so infuriating and so many people have been caught in its web of deception. Hope you can use some of this info with your gang down south of the Bay!
Hi Lana, the healthfood stores in my area do not carry Stonyfield organic milk .. Horizon and Organic Valley have most of the market share for this type of product. If the Stonyfield organic milk is ultrapasteurized, then yes, avoid it like the plague. Their yogurt is ok .. not as good as what you would make yourself at home with fresh from the farm, grassfed milk but something ok to use in a pinch.
GREAT write-up Sarah!!
Sarah,
This a great story to SCREAM from the mountaintops. Thank you for making it so clear. I always advise to avoid store milk if fresh, raw is not available. Now I can explain it so much better. Well written with facts and not too much emotion which I know is so hard to do.
Thanks again,
Cynthia in Sarasota
Hi Sarah! I am really enjoying your blog! What do you do if you run out of raw milk for your milk kefir grains? Would you ever use pasturized milk to keep them going until you can get more raw? I have access to a biweekly delivery of raw milk, but often we run out a few days before the next shipment. I often wonder if using store bought milk will compromise my kefir grains. What are your thoughts? Thanks so much! -Clare S.
I have sucessfully made Kefir many times from pasteurized milk- both the cheap stuff and the organic variety. All I used was the kefir grains and the so called “dead” milk. It tasted fabulous also. I assume the author has never actually attempted to make kefir from pasteurized milk to make the false statement.
The author was clearly talking about ULTRAPASTURIZED milk, not PASTURIZED milk. You are the one who should check your facts.
Being unable to obtain raw, organic milk in my area, I have cultured and am culturing yogurt and kefir on a daily basis using UHT Milk. It has been and is still providing consistently good results.
I’ve used Stonyfield organic whole-milk, which is UHT, to make kefir for 3 years. It makes great kefir. But my kefir grains do not themselves grow in size, as they used to when I lived elsewhere and bought non-UHT milk.
I don’t know for sure that UHT milk is causing my non-growing-grains issue, but it’s worth thinking about for kefir makers, esp. if you also have access to non-UHT milk.
-Sean
My kids are living proof that raw whole milk from grass fed cows is much better for you than the junk sold in stores. All my life I was told I had a milk allergy. Asthma and allergies run in my husband's family. I thought for sure my kids were doomed by genetics. I found out about raw milk when my boys were still babies so once they were weaned off breastmilk that is the only kind of milk they have ever had. No sign of asthma or ANY type of allergies even though it supposedly runs in the family. In fact they have never even had an ear infection. All of my brother's and sister's kids, on the other hand, who drink gallons of pasteurized milk because "milk does a body good" have constant problems with asthma, seasonal allergies, eczma, and ear infections.
I read your post to this article about raw grass fed milk in earnest. I was a healthy child & got asthma and allergies at 13 yrs old, I live in N.C. which doesn’t have raw milk, but I can drive an hour to get it in another state.
I was curious did your asthma and allergies improve when you started drinking the raw grass fed milk by chance? I just started my research so I don’t know if it could close up my Leaky Gut while I change everything to non-GMO Organic, veggies and grass fed beef and wild caught salmon and some fruits that I don’t react to. Thank you for any tip
You live in NC which has very high humidity, have you had your home checked for mold???
By drinking milk from grass-fed cows, your children have probably become immunized to the various grasses, flowers, pollen, and other sources of allergens that the cows have ingested. This is probably an analogous immunizing effect as that produced when people eat different types of honey, also produced from various pollens. The amount ingested when drinking the milk or eating the honey is low enough not to produce an allergic reaction but enough to produce immunization over time. So, yes, grass-fed milk is probably a very good thing, especially for growing children. They immunization will last, even if they choose to stop drinking milk as adults.
By the way, although homemade non-dairy milks (with only almonds, quinoa, etc. and water) are very good tasting and very good for you, commercial non-dairy milk have a panoply of other ingredients that ought to make us skeptical. Soy milk has other issues as well, but even almond, etc. commercial milks have carageenan, for example. If you look it up, you will see that it is something that is added as a thickener to make these milks more palatable to the average consumer. Although it is a natural ingredient, hat doesn’t mean it should be a regular part of our diet. Some people (like me) do not tolerate it in our GI system. It can either cause or aggravate IBS something fierce.
Carageenan was never a part of the human food supply, until commercial non-dairy milk producers began adding it to those products, and now many people ingest it everyday, without knowing it, thinking that they are doing something healthy. For those who believe that drinking ‘breast’ milk from other mammals is unnatural, I would ask if ingesting carageenan every day, sometimes in large doses, is what they recommend.