Choosing the "Right" Milk, Part 1

In the past few months my family's milk consumption has dropped significantly. My three year old simply prefers water to drink. My one year old has a hard time digesting milk (but does just fine with yogurt, cheese and ice cream). Our pediatrician recommends only 16 ounces (or two glasses) of milk per day (per kid, of course!) We have slowly whittled our way down to drinking a half-gallon of milk per week.

The shrinking of the milk drinking has led to two side benefits. First, my kids are eating a lot more food, particularly my three year old. Before I started watching her milk intake, she would down a glass of milk before a meal and then not be hungry enough to eat. This severely limited her intake of protein, fruits and veggies. Second, because I no longer buy gallons of milk each week, I am able to focus on the quality of milk we are drinking, which means I can afford to purchase organic milk.

As I have become a consumer of organic milk, I have begun to pay attention to the differences in milk. I have found that there are approximately five different types of milk available (not to be confused with the "varieties" of whole, 2%, 1%, no fat, etc): regular pasteurized homogenized; hormone free pasteurized homogenized; organic pasteurized homogenized; organic ultra pasteurized homogenized; and raw. I started doing some research on the above types of milk and will share what I found in part 2.