Pasteurization

Aajonus described Pasteur as a layperson who became fascinated with crystals, not a formally educated man in medicine or disease. Pasteur had a friend with a vineyard where fungus had damaged the crop during a season of heavy rain. The heat and moisture had ruptured the grape cells, allowing mold to spread. Pasteur found that heating the wine could arrest the mold and save the product for sale. The wine was sold to peasants, Aajonus said, because people with money refused to buy it, as it was clearly of degraded quality. The same method was then applied to beer, where Pasteur found he could kill the yeast that was causing certain unwanted changes.

The application of this method to milk came later and was driven by different forces entirely. Aajonus discussed a woman named Allison who in 1934 went to work for Knudsen's Dairy, described as a large dairy conglomerate. Knudsen's was among the first in that county to purchase pasteurization equipment. Because consumers at the time knew that raw dairy was more healthful and therefore refused to buy pasteurized milk, the company hired physicians and writers to compose and publish stories falsely claiming that raw milk was a disease carrier. Raw milk was blamed for the tuberculosis cases that were appearing during the Depression years, even though Aajonus stated that any competent physician knew the tuberculi from a bovine animal never passed through the mammary barrier and therefore could not appear in milk at all.

He also described an elderly man in Oklahoma, approximately 80 years old, whom Aajonus encountered while bicycling across the country in the 1970s. This man told Aajonus that when pasteurization first came in, Purina and General Foods conducted experiments from 1926 through 1938 or 1939 to test whether eliminating bacteria from food would reduce disease. Those experiments, the man said, proved the opposite. Aajonus cited this as real-world institutional evidence against the premise of pasteurization, conducted by the very industries that would go on to profit from it.

Aajonus was precise about the sequence of damage that heat inflicts on food, and pasteurization temperatures fall well within the range where that damage becomes severe and systematic.

Phosphorus begins to cauterize at 98 degrees Fahrenheit. He described cauterization as the same process by which clay is fired: the heat makes the substance solid, hard, and lifeless. Phosphorus is one of the body's major cleansing minerals, and its destruction begins at temperatures the body itself can exceed during fever. By 103 degrees, phosphorus is destroyed. This is one reason Aajonus specified that the Terramin clay he recommended was mined from a site where the thermal water never exceeded 98 degrees, making it one of the only external sources of uncauterized phosphorus.

Enzymes begin to be affected at 105 degrees Fahrenheit and are neutralized by 22 degrees above that, meaning by 127 degrees they are fully inactivated. At 118 degrees, vitamins begin to be altered into states where they cannot be properly utilized and begin to become toxic. By 123 degrees, no stable nutrients remain. At 141 degrees, which is the standard low-end pasteurization temperature, 50% of the calcium in milk is cauterized, meaning it is rendered into a form that is physically unassimilable. All vitamins are neutralized and cannot be properly assimilated. By 178 degrees, nothing alive or nutritionally functional remains.

Standard pasteurization occurs at 141 degrees Fahrenheit for approximately 20 seconds. Flash pasteurization, Aajonus noted, typically occurs at 171 degrees for one to two seconds. Ultra-pasteurization, which he described as increasingly common and which he considered far more dangerous than standard pasteurization, takes milk up to 212 degrees, the boiling point of water. At that temperature, he said, all calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium are cauterized and rendered useless. Ultra-pasteurized milk, he stated, has been tested and proved to cause approximately five different diseases, with diabetes and osteoporosis being two of the major ones.

He described what conventional commercial milk undergoes as going even beyond ultra-pasteurization. In the case of brands like Dean Foods sold in regular supermarkets, the milk is subjected to a process that removes all animal cells, all fat, all cream, and all animal protein, leaving a blue-colored liquid, to which non-digestible calcium rock (dolomite) is then added to restore white color and the appearance of calcium content. He noted that the body does not digest rock-form calcium; it requires calcium in the form of small, spongy-like structures to utilize it properly.

The calcium destruction caused by pasteurization was a recurrent focus in Aajonus's discussions of dairy. He stated plainly that at normal pasteurization temperature of 141 degrees, 50% of the calcium is cauterized to a state where it is unassimilable under microscopic analysis. Cauterized calcium behaves like fired clay: it hardens into a form that cannot be metabolized, and instead of nourishing bone and tissue, it accumulates as a problem in the body.

Dairy companies, he explained, compensate for this by adding dolomite, a calcium rock, to their pasteurized milk vats to make the milk appear white and calcium-rich. But dolomite calcium is not a form the body can use. The body requires calcium in its natural spongy, bioavailable form. When calcium arrives in its cauterized or rock form instead, it cannot be integrated into bone, and the body still faces calcium deficiency. This is the mechanism by which Aajonus said pasteurized dairy causes osteoporosis rather than preventing it.

He described rebuilding his own jawbone over two years by drinking raw milk after dentists had found bone rot and wanted to extract his teeth. He said this would not have been possible with pasteurized milk, and that pasteurized milk had been documented to cause osteoporosis, bone spurs, and related structural problems.

He also cited the historical Berlin scurvy outbreak as direct evidence. In Berlin before 1901, infant scurvy was rare. In 1901, a large dairy established a pasteurization plant that raised all milk to approximately 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Within months, infantile scurvy appeared across the city from multiple sources. A physician named Neumann had recorded only 32 cases of scurvy from 1896 to 1900. In 1901 and 1902 alone, that number rose to 83 cases. An investigation identified pasteurization as the cause. When pasteurization was discontinued, the scurvy cases decreased as rapidly as they had increased.

Aajonus described the body as producing approximately sixty varieties of cholesterol. In a person who is optimally healthy, roughly one third of those cholesterols will be used for lubrication, one third for detoxification, and one third as fuel. In polluted and unhealthy bodies, up to 80% of the fats consumed may be needed for chelation, to bind with toxins, with little or none left for lubrication or fuel. This is why he consistently advocated eating large amounts of fat on the diet.

When dairy fat is pasteurized or cooked, it is destroyed as a living substance. It no longer has enzyme activity. When the body receives this damaged fat, it attempts to form it into chelation fat, but the chelation process fails because the fat is no longer functional. The body then tries to eliminate this non-functional material by incorporating it into mucus, building mucus to discharge what it cannot use.

This is the direct mechanism by which pasteurized dairy produces mucus in the body. The destroyed fats are treated by the body as waste requiring elimination through mucous membranes. Raw dairy does not produce this effect because the fat remains intact with its enzyme activity, and the body can process it for lubrication, detoxification, and fuel as intended.

Pasteurized proteins undergo a structural transformation that Aajonus described in visual terms. A raw protein molecule, like raw vitamin C, appears under a microscope as a soft, spongy ball. After the same protein is heated and processed, it changes into something like glass: large, spiky, with no structural relationship to the original form. These altered proteins are not only unable to perform their original biological functions; they become potentially harmful in the body.

The specific protein casein in milk illustrates this. In raw milk, casein exists in its natural configuration with its associated minerals and related compounds including vitamin D. When pasteurized or cooked, casein cauterizes into a glass-like substance that people cannot break down and digest. He stated that approximately 80% to 98% of people who are allergic to pasteurized dairy are not allergic to the casein in raw dairy. Only about 2% of those individuals remain allergic to raw dairy casein, and this is because they have accumulated cauterized casein in their bodies from years of consuming pasteurized products, and that accumulated form triggers a response even when encountering the raw version.

A central claim in Aajonus's framework is that bacteria are not enemies of the body but symbiotic constituents of it. He cited the microbiologist Bonnie Brassler's finding that the human body is at least 99% bacterial and only 1% human cells, and drew the conclusion that the bacteria in food feed the bacteria in the body, which effectively means that bacterial content in food is the primary nutrient being consumed.

When pasteurization kills bacteria in food, it removes the very substance that Aajonus considered the core of nutritional value. He stated explicitly: "the food is 99.5% bacteria. That is the main food that we're eating. The bacteria in food feeds the bacteria in our body, feeds us." By pasteurizing food, one eliminates almost all of that.

He also challenged the premise that pasteurization successfully eliminates bacterial risk. He pointed out that rod-shaped bacteria form spores (the Greek word for seed) at the first sign of heat, and when the milk cools again, the spore blooms and the bacteria re-emerges. He used this to question whether pasteurization even accomplishes its stated goal. He further noted that the microbiological tests used to validate pasteurization were conducted under conditions that do not reflect normal body chemistry. Bacteria placed in a petri dish with a non-physiological serum behave differently than bacteria in a living system, and the conclusions drawn from those tests were therefore invalid for predicting real-world health outcomes.

He described an experiment in which he placed human bacteria from the upper and lower gastrointestinal tract onto various food substrates: fruit cells, vegetable cells, animal cells, dairy cells, and meat cells. The bacteria showed strong affinity only for animal cells. On vegetable and fruit cells, even liquefied, the bacterial activity barely etched the surface, absorbing only minimal vitamins, enzymes, and minerals. The same bacteria placed in fresh raw milk would not attack or break down those cells, but placed in pasteurized milk, the breakdown proceeded. This, for Aajonus, demonstrated that bacteria respond to the health or integrity of the cells in the food. Healthy raw cells signal to bacteria that they are not waste material. Pasteurized cells are dead and damaged, and are treated by bacteria as waste to be processed.

He also described an incident of bacteria and pasteurized versus raw dairy from the perspective of food spoilage. Pasteurized dairy putrefies when it spoils, and the molds that form on spoiled pasteurized dairy produce what he called a veritoxin with effects similar to botulism. Raw dairy, by contrast, does not putrefy. Butter left to mold becomes blue cheese. Milk left to settle becomes cheese that gets progressively harder but never putrefies. He said that there is no bad mold on raw cheese, but that molds and bacteria feeding on cooked or pasteurized food are themselves mutant and diseased, producing more toxic byproducts. This is why, he argued, food poisoning cases arise from pasteurized dairy and cooked meats, not from raw foods.

Aajonus made the unqualified claim that there has never been an epidemic proven to be caused by raw milk, and that all milk-related epidemics were proven to have been caused by pasteurized milk. He supported this claim by citing a list of documented outbreaks attributed to pasteurized milk products:

A 1945 outbreak in the United States producing 1,492 cases for the year; a 1945 outbreak in Phoenix, Arizona with 300 cases; and several 1945 outbreaks in Great Bend, Kansas producing 468 cases of gastroenteritis and 9 deaths.

He also cited the work of multiple researchers to substantiate this position:

Dr. A.F. Hess demonstrated that pasteurized milk was an incomplete food and that many infants developed scurvy on a diet of pasteurized milk. The scurvy took months to develop and was often unrecognized. Infants were cured when raw milk was substituted. Hess reported that infant deaths from common diseases should have been attributed to the defective nature of pasteurized milk, not to the diseases themselves.

Dr. J.E. Crewe from the Mayo Foundation, writing in 1923, reported on the therapeutic uses of raw milk, stressing that the key factor was specifically the feeding of raw milk. Pasteurized milk could not produce the same therapeutic results.

Nizel of Tufts University reported that decayed teeth were four times more common in pasteurized-milk-fed babies compared to raw-milk-fed babies.

John Fowler, M.D. of Worcester, Massachusetts reported that raw milk therapy relieved muscle cramps in pregnancy.

Willem J. Van Wagtendork at Oregon State College proved that pasteurized dairy creates calcification and stiffness, demonstrating in guinea pigs that calcification of tissues could be relieved with raw cream but not with pasteurized cream.

Aajonus also cited the finding that grazing cows produced as much vitamin C as the entire citrus crop, and that most of it is lost as a result of pasteurization.

The mechanism he described for how pasteurized milk allows pathogens to proliferate is attributed to Dr. Lee's explanation: pathogens enter unhealthy cells. Pasteurization kills milk cells. Pathogens then multiply rapidly in those dead cells. When someone consumes a product full of such pathogens, the bacteria will proliferate further in a body already full of unhealthy cells.

Raw, unsalted cheese functions in Aajonus's framework as one of the body's primary tools for drawing toxins out of the digestive tract. The cheese acts like a sponge or magnet, pulling toxins from the stomach lining, intestinal walls, and the three circulatory systems (blood, lymphatic, and nervous) as it passes through. These toxins adhere to the cheese and are carried out through the feces without being reabsorbed.

Pasteurized cheese cannot perform this function. Because pasteurization fractionates the molecules and cauterizes the structure, when pasteurized cheese absorbs toxins in the digestive tract, it does not hold them. Instead, it re-digests those poisons back into the body as it is broken down in the intestines and stomach. The cheese absorbs the toxins and then releases them back into the body during digestion.

He described an experiment in which both pasteurized and raw cheese were tested for this effect. Very little of the pasteurized cheese passed out of the body in feces compared to what was consumed. The raw cheese, by contrast, passed out at approximately 98% of the consumed amount, carrying concentrated toxins with it.

Salted cheese, even if technically raw in other respects, behaves similarly to pasteurized cheese because the salt breaks down the cheese's molecular structure the way cooking does, releasing the absorbed poisons to be reabsorbed into the body. He was explicit that to use cheese for intestinal detoxification, it must be both raw and unsalted. Pasteurized cheese, regardless of whether it is salted, will redigest poisons back into the system.

Someone once asked Aajonus whether adding a small amount of raw milk to a container of pasteurized milk would cause the live enzymes in the raw milk to continue acting on the pasteurized milk, as a way of accessing live milk when a preferred source like Organic Pastures was unavailable.

His response was direct: "Good thought, but the nutrients in pasteurized milk are already altered into toxins." There is no restoration possible. The damage done by pasteurization to the molecular structure of the milk is permanent. The live enzymes in raw milk cannot reverse the cauterization of minerals, the denaturation of proteins, or the destruction of vitamins that has already occurred in the pasteurized portion.

Aajonus used the fate of calves raised on pasteurized milk as a biological proof point for the argument that pasteurized dairy is life-threatening rather than life-supporting. He stated that calves fed exclusively on pasteurized milk typically die within five to six weeks after birth. A calf that survives five weeks is considered relatively fortunate. Farmers raising calves on pasteurized dairy must continuously supplement the animals with additional chemicals to keep them alive.

He contrasted this with calves raised on raw milk, which develop normally without chemical supplementation. The fact that the dairy industry and USDA were actively encouraging farmers to feed calves pasteurized milk was interpreted by Aajonus not as a public health measure but as a deliberate strategy to bankrupt small farmers by creating unhealthy, frequently dying animals, ultimately consolidating control of the food supply in large institutional hands.

Aajonus drew a distinction between standard pasteurization at 141 degrees for 20 seconds and the more extreme forms that had become standard by the time of his later workshops.

Flash pasteurization operates at approximately 171 degrees for one to two seconds. Ultra-pasteurization takes milk to 212 degrees Fahrenheit, the boiling point of water. At this temperature, he stated, all calcium, all phosphorus, all potassium, and all magnesium are fully cauterized and rendered unusable. The remaining liquid provides only a substrate for disease. He specified that ultra-pasteurized milk causes approximately five documented diseases, with diabetes and osteoporosis being the two most prominent.

He observed that the trend was toward more, not less, processing. Everything, he noted, was becoming ultra-pasteurized, meaning heated above the boiling point, including vegetable juices, fruit juices, and milk. The FDA required all packaged juices to be pasteurized following a single incident. He cited this as an example of policy without rational basis: one incident of suspected infection attributed to orange juice was used to justify mandatory pasteurization of all juice nationally, eliminating access to raw pre-packaged juice from health food stores and supermarkets entirely.

The casein allergy question illustrates the broader principle. Most people who believe they are allergic to milk are, in Aajonus's view, allergic specifically to the cauterized, glass-like form of casein that results from pasteurization. In raw milk, casein remains in its natural configuration, associated with its companion minerals and vitamin D, and functions as a complete nutrient complex. When cauterized, it becomes what Aajonus called a free radical, a glass-like substance that the body cannot digest or break down.

He gave a figure of 80% to 98% of people who are diagnosed as allergic to dairy being actually reactive only to the pasteurized form, and thus capable of tolerating raw dairy. The remaining 2% remain genuinely reactive to dairy casein even in its raw form, because they have accumulated so much cauterized casein in their bodies over years of pasteurized dairy consumption that even the raw form triggers a defensive response.

One of the specific technical details Aajonus offered about pasteurization was the use of phosphorus to verify whether milk has been pasteurized. Because phosphorus begins to cauterize at 98 degrees and is visibly altered under a microscope, technicians can look at the density and appearance of the phosphorus molecule in a milk sample to determine whether it has been heated to pasteurization temperature. A sample that shows altered phosphorus has been heated to at least 141 degrees. This was the standard test.

He cited this fact in the context of the Terramin clay he recommended, noting that because the clay was mined from a thermal water bed where temperatures never exceeded 98 degrees, even the phosphorus in the clay was intact and uncauterized. This made it one of the very few external mineral sources, aside from fresh raw food, where uncauterized phosphorus could be obtained.

Aajonus described the body's response to cooked and pasteurized food as including a process called leukocytosis: the departure of most white blood cells from the bloodstream into the digestive tract when cooked food is consumed without accompanying raw food. He asked rhetorically why the body would send phagocytes, which exist to neutralize toxins in the blood, into the digestive tract, unless the food being processed there were toxic. This systemic immune mobilization occurs because cooking, including pasteurization, fractionates molecules and releases ions and bonds in unnatural ways, producing a smorgasbord of isolated chemical fragments rather than the organized, intact nutrient complexes present in raw food.

He said that cooking fractionates and isolates everything, and that pasteurized dairy in particular would absorb polytoxins in the body and then redistribute them. The fractionated structure of pasteurized dairy cannot hold toxins the way raw dairy can; instead, it absorbs them and releases them back into the body during digestion.

As a comparative point, Aajonus drew a parallel between pasteurized and unpasteurized vinegar to illustrate a broader principle. When a student described an unpasteurized vinegar becoming dramatically stronger and more intense over three days compared to pasteurized balsamic vinegar that changed little over the same period, Aajonus explained that pasteurized vinegar is dead and inactive. It cannot change because it has no enzyme activity. Unpasteurized vinegar is alive with enzymes and therefore continues to transform, becoming more active over time. This principle applies to all food: anything alive with enzymes is always active and changing, while pasteurized equivalents are static and biologically inert.

Aajonus addressed the question of human breast milk banks, noting that some women donate milk for infants. He stated that too many babies become very sick when fed pasteurized mother's milk, and that some die from it. The statement applies equally to cow's milk: even cow's milk, he said, is very reduced in nutrients when pasteurized. The same structural damage that occurs in cow's dairy occurs in human breast milk when pasteurized, and the consequences for infants, whose developing systems are entirely dependent on the complete, bioactive nutrition in milk, can be fatal.

Aajonus connected the expansion of pasteurization mandates to institutional financial interests rather than science. He described the support for Pasteur's germ theory and the subsequent promotion of pasteurization as a project of Rockefeller and Carnegie interests, who saw in it an opportunity to industrialize food processing and consolidate commercial control. The scientific basis was never demonstrated to his satisfaction. He argued that the germ theory, which underlies the logic of pasteurization (killing bacteria to prevent disease), was never proven and was directly contradicted by the evidence.

He noted that the cheese labeling practices in commercial food reflect a continuing pattern of deception on this point. Cheese sold in stores, including many imported European cheeses, may be labeled "raw" while having been heated to temperatures from 137 degrees up to just below the technical pasteurization threshold. He stated that in the United States, cheese can legally be called raw while having been heated to 157 degrees, which is not raw by any meaningful standard. He advised sourcing cheese only from Amish farmers and similar small producers who could verify genuine raw handling.

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