Got Raw Milk?

Now I can boast that the UW is not just about beer, but vitamins, too [“The Birth of Vitamin A,” Fall 2013]! However, writer Kate Prengaman fails to link [the story of] McCollum’s mother destroying vitamin C by boiling milk with modern-day pasteurization. The “quart of milk a day” that was so healthy one hundred years ago was undoubtedly raw milk! Heating milk also destroys beneficial bacteria and enzymes and makes much of the calcium insoluble. And isn’t it sad that the alcohol in beer hinders the absorption of its many B vitamins?

Jeffrey Skinner ’63
Northridge, California

Published in the Winter 2013 issue