i heart fiber

i think that fiber is really cool. when i was in undergrad, i thought that the chapter on fiber was so interesting. soluble versus insoluble...cleaning out your colon....
anywhoo, today i ate a few pieces of an apple and an orange. i don't know if it was the milk i drank this morning too, but i don't think my tummy was used to all the fiber....i still like fiber, and yes, i am a believer of all the cleansing properties of fiber.
that was a little TMI. so to add the little tidbit of food science into my blog. one of the questions that i might be asked is about the safety of raw milk.
here's my thoughts...
i would not drink it.
why not drink the safely pasteurized stuff instead of taking the chance of possible MO like C. jejuni or C. burnetti? Back in the days, raw milk caused a lot sickness (i think the statistic on this was like it caused 25% of the food-related illnesses). here's a list of current outbreaks:
http://www.k-state.edu/media/audio/podcastindex.html
and then this guy Louis Pasteur comes along and figures out that if you heat milk for a long enough time at a high enough temperature, you can kill the pathogenic bacteria as well as extend the shelf life of milk.

sure, some people choose to drink raw milk because they claim that it has a better flavor b/c the lack of heat processing, and it really can be safe. they want to go the all natural route. i don't know. i haven't done enough research on it, but is it worth the risk to put potential pathogens in your body? people like to gamble, so i guess you can't stop people from doing what they want to do.
my advice, if you're sickly, young, elderly, or immuno-compromised. stay away from the stuff. you're taking a great risk especially since your body can't fight off all the pathogens as well as a healthy person. and healthy people also have the chance of getting sick too, so don't do it unless you have to.