Hi, my name is Moises Velazquez-Manoff, and I'm a contributor to the New York Times

magazine. I'm a science writer, and I mostly cover health, medicine, and the environment.

This week's Sunday read is based on a recent magazine article of mine about raw milk.

The first and most important takeaway of my piece is that raw milk can literally kill you

and that people should make sure they understand the risks before drinking it.

And even if it doesn't kill you, it can make you extremely sick.

We're talking about ending up in the ICU potentially with kidney failure because of a terrible

E. coli strain, just as one example. I grew up in New Mexico where some people were drinking

raw milk because it fit into their

back to the land philosophy or because they liked the way it tasted.

But nowadays, raw milk is just as much a beverage for libertarian types, homeschoolers,

people who are suspicious of the government telling them what to do, and health fanatics looking

for quote unquote superfoods.

On social media, you may have caught some of the magical claims about raw milk.

Like, I started drinking it and my eczema went away, or it cured my inflammatory problems.

And those are some of the moderate claims.

There's no science behind raw milk curing anything.

And yet, actually, there have been studies that suggest there's a value in terms of prevention.

I once researched and wrote about something called the farm effect. Scientists have observed that

rural kids in Europe and the U.S., who grew up on farms, have a relatively low risk of allergies

and asthma. They think that raw milk contributes to this protective effect. And they think this

because people who don't live on farms, but who might get raw milk from a farm down the road, also have a lower risk of allergies and asthma.

...