The “raw milk” cheese eaten in the hut. The unpasteurized fruit juices. Eggs directly from the chicken coop. The mania of zero kilometer products goes crazy and often those who risk the most are children.
That cheese “A raw milk” Purchased in the hut by the breeder who seems so healthy, during the holidays in the Dolomites. The mushrooms collected by the cousin, who has always done it and has never happened nothing, or by street vendors in the improvised markets, which exhibit in the porcini cassettes the certifications (probably fake) of the mycological checks. And still the unplugated fruit juices, made with the apples collected during the “experiential” holiday, so nothing wrong can come from what is at a zero kilometer and contact with nature. Instead, that “nothing wrong” can mean the opposite: months in the hospital, neurological and renal damage even permanent, also death.
Natural does not mean safe
Natural, in fact, does not mean safe and behind this narrative are hidden concrete risks, which science knows well. Now also the parents of the 15 -month -old boy who, in August, has been hospitalized in very serious conditions in the Nephrology department of the Padua hospital are also known. After consuming a raw milk cheese in a Trentino dairy has developed Seu, uremic hemolatic syndrome, a pathology that leads to renal insufficiency and that was unleashed by the bacterium of Ascorichia coli present in the stomach of cows. Fortunately, the child has saved himself, but it is not always the case.
Previous cases
Since 2017, Piccolo Mattia, who was then 4 years old, has been in a vegetative state due to a raw milk dairy always consumed in Trentino, while Elia Damonte, 3 years old, died at Gaslini in Genoa last year after 51 days in resuscitation, for the same causes. “These are only the best known and emblematic cases,” says Riccardo Caccialanza, director of the Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition Department of the IRCCS Foundation San Matteo di Pavia Foundation. «With raw milk we adults also expose ourselves to many risks: gastroenteritis that can also be very serious, kidney failure and also meningitis and other neurological complications. We are not talking about theories span in the air with the aim of boycotting the producers at zero kilometer in the name of who knows what conspiracy: we are talking about bacteria that live in the stools of the animals, on their skin, on the hands of those who munch them, and easily migrate to milk. Because in the direct passage from the breast of the cow to the container there is no process that eliminates the pathogens. It is an absolutely useless risk ».
The false myths of the raw
The imaginative theories of raw and raw raw that praise the virtues of milk and juices consumed without boiling or pasteurization have no foundation. For example, one of the most widespread statements is that these drinks are more nutritious, precisely because they have not been heated: only that vitamins (such as B6, B12 and Riboflavin) are mostly thermo-stable, therefore they do not suffer from heat and pasteurization. “Then there are those who say that raw milk is more useful to prevent osteoporosis, which protects the immune system and does not develop allergies and intolerances,” continues hunting. “But apart from the fact that not to trigger an allergy is useless, if we then risk dying from an infection, they are all topics that do not hold: the serious scientific data do not confirm these alleged benefits. They are mode, not evidence ».
The numbers of the WHO
According to data from the World Health Organization, contaminated food causes 600 million cases of food diseases every year, with almost 450 thousand deaths. And while the data of Coldiretti and Campagna Amica say that in Italy almost 30 million people acquire (also) at zero kilometer in the peasant markets or directly from the small producers, it is good to remember that you do not die and you do not get sick just because you have drank this drink, but also for much more.
From raw meat to wild herbs
The testimonies that come from the first aid departments are clear: from the raw meat of the beloved tartare served directly in farmhouses and farmhouses during the stages of “participatory tourism”, so fashionable in recent years, brucellosis can also derive. Consequences? High fever, asthenia, up to meningitis and osteomyelites, not to mention that meat without controls guaranteed by the authorized slaughterhouse chain can lead to parasitosis such as tension and toxoplasmosis. From ricotta, butter and fresh cheeses, however, practically all types of enterobacteria can come, as well as listerosis: very complicated infection, because it is not sensitive to most of the most powerful antibiotics and can lead to meningitis by listeria.
And we are not here to list the critical issues of the eggs collected directly by the unconscious tourist right there, in the chicken coop, and raw “drinking” as it once did: just mention the very dangerous salmonella. Again: non -pasteurized fruit juices, typical of natural markets and perhaps served with anonymous unrealized bottles, can cause important problems, due to the passage of bacteria from the peels to the product. Also be wary of walks in the fields with self -styled botany experts who guide to discover edible herbs: if the mandragora ends in the basket, which looks like boraine, they are serious trouble. His alkaloids cause hallucinations, convulsions and respiratory failure: already William Shakespeare evoked it as a symbol of madness, a sign that the charm of the “natural” has always concealed lethal pitfalls.
Security first of all
Is it therefore worth risking insidious parasites, which then arrive in the bones, brain, muscles, kidneys, in practice everywhere, in the name of a return to nature and autoninity from the gastrointestinal system? Certainly not, even if, on closer inspection, sometimes it is our artificial and medicalized world that pushes us to these behaviors. “It is true that the food industry often exaggerates with preservatives, emulsifiers and additives they serve to produce more and keep longer”, concludes Caccialanza. «But the paradox is that we pass from one extreme to the other: for eleven months we embark on ultra-processed foods full of antibiotics and” whatever “and then, to feel authentic, during the holidays we go to a mountain hut to drink raw milk. And it’s a fashion that can cost very dear ».
Do not demonize small producers
It is therefore not a question of demonizing small producers, who rightly try to keep biodiversity and culture of the territory and are in any case subject to the rules imposed by law. The theme if anything is: who controls them, how, and above all, with what frequency? The problem is not “producing local”, but neglecting security: between the stable and the table there is science in the way, and it is good that it remains there, to remind us that authenticity without guarantees can turn into deception.
