RAW MILK - IT DOES A BODY GOOD

The following is reprinted with the permission of Jeff Everson's Planet Muscle magazine, by

Randy Roach, historian and author: “Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors."
Believe it or not, once upon a time, back about 1950, when guys like Gironda, Reeves, Grimek, Ross and Tanny, promenaded and exercised at Muscle Beach, there were no anabolic steroids. Bodybuilding did not mean the greatest massive size, with the least body fat. Instead, it stood for a 100% healthy lifestyle, clean and fresh, and sometimes raw foods, clean fresh air, no drugs, booze or smokes, and plenty of exercise in the open and clean air and sunshine.In fact, starting well back over 100 years ago, both lifestyle and bodybuilding were actually unified under one umbrella term known as “Physical Culture”.

Now my point, over all those years, many of the physical culturists promoted the muscle and health effects of raw milk, including Joe Weider, in his 1981 book, “The Weider Approach to Bodybuilding”. So, it is with great irony (and sadness) that this decade’s-long right for California health advocates to choose farm fresh milk, is being terminated by CA. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, somewhat uncharacteristically this time, seems badly misinformed on the subject matter.

On October 8th of this year, Schwarzenegger signed anti-milk legislation, AB1735. This changes bacteria standards to include less than 10 coli forms per ml. of raw milk. When this law is activated early in 2008, it will basically clear the shelves of some 300 California stores, depriving thousands of customers of the milk of their choice!

The claims of raw milk as being dangerously unhealthy, borders on sheer fraud, as varying medical politicians, operating through both state and federal agencies, have been very successful in manifesting a germ phobic society, (Seinfeld Germaphobes), such that we have become a culture that literally fears its food. However, it was actually one of the medical orthodoxy’s own, Dr. Henry Coit, who forged the certified raw milk movement back in the 1890s because he understood the medicinal value of properly-raised cows, yielding pure, raw milk.

Technology has moved tremendously since the atrocities of the dirty distillery dairies that helped make the case for pasteurization, many years ago. The safety standards now where raw milk is processed are enormously high. Yet today, other industry doesn’t seem to care at all what they feed livestock or how it is raised; hell, destroy and over-farm the soil, fill it full of chemicals, stuff the cattle and hogs full of growth hormone and steroids, the cows will still produce milk. Why worry? Scientists can just genetically modify, irradiate (cold pasteurization), or chemically spray or boil, all milk!

Consumers of farm fresh milk are not stupid people. People who drink certified raw milk are not aimlessly lining up at dairy farms simply to acquire diarrhea. They represent hundreds of thousands of people across the United States and Canada who have researched this issue and find it more than worth the effort to seek the benefits of raw milk. Dr. Scott Connelly, the inventor of MET-Rx and Progenex, notes, “Raw milk contains higher undisturbed levels of many critical nutrients.”

It’s all another erosion of your free right to choose. Bodybuilders have always been nutrition-ally innovative, and we must protect that right. This is not just a stance to consume raw milk, but also to maintain a standard of clean, organic and biodynamic farming by knowledgeable farmers who know that healthy life begins in a healthy soil. These tillers of the land not only produce quality food for those who desire it, but also high quality source products that constitute a number of the supplements you utilize in your own protocols.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, 7 times Mr. Olympia, 5 times Mr. Universe, author of “The Education of a Bodybuilder” and “The Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding”, this is your golden opportunity to stand up and show the people of the Golden State and those who primarily built your status over the years, (bodybuilders who read M&F, went to the movies and Arnold Classic), just exactly who and what you truly stand for. Randy Roach, historian and author: “Muscle, Smoke and Mirrors."

Preface for members of the Fitness Community:

It is important for all factions of the fitness industry to be aware of what is happening in California presently regarding the right for citizens to acquire farm fresh milk due to legislation AB1735 signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

This issue extends much further than the forced pasteurization of all milk. Federal agencies are also entertaining thoughts of cold pasteurizing leafy, green vegetables. How do you cold pasteurize? Look it up! This influence also continues in the form of a constant push to ban many supplements which is happening world wide.

The fitness community is large and powerful and has successfully turned back such threats on previous occasions. This is about uniting and retaining our rights to choose the foods we consume for our health. A loss in California will have serious repercussions right across North America in terms of the quality of our food production.