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There are people who think that homogenized milk is bad for your health. The topic of concern is the homogenization step, where allegedly 'too small' fat micro-particles are created. And this is allegedly unnatural and harms your health.

Specific health risks that are mentioned by those people are for example:

  • those small fat particles negatively influence the digestion in general
  • they somehow negatively trigger growth hormones (e.g. increased growth)

Are there any sources to support or contradict such claims?

Edit: A notable anti-milk activist is Bodo Melik (cf. a german newspaper article about him, a german public radio article that has some details on the hormone stuff, a german blog article that mentions the homogenized stuff and references a elsevier paper by him, a review-paper by him - Milk is not just food but most likely a genetic transfection system activating mTORC1 signaling for postnatal growth). His viewpoints are picked up by quite a few internet sites.

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  • Welcome to skeptics.se. This is an interesting claim, but for it to be on topic for this site, you need to include a citation of a notable source putting forward this claim. In other words, who exactly are some of the people that think this, and does anyone pay attention to them? The idea is to focus on claims that have some prevalence.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Jul 27, 2015 at 20:56
  • @NateEldredge, added a few links, they are in german, though - his theses are picked up by some journalists (newspaper ones, and even by public radio/television people).
    – maxschlepzig
    Jul 27, 2015 at 21:21
  • Also added an english link.
    – maxschlepzig
    Jul 27, 2015 at 21:31
  • I didn't see anything in the Melik documents about homogenization, which is the claim at hand. (I am interpreting your claim as "homogenized milk is more unhealthy than non-homogenized". If you want to examine claims that milk is unhealthy more generally, then you should edit the question - but the more specific your claim is, the better chance we have of learning something about its truth.)
    – Nate Eldredge
    Jul 27, 2015 at 21:46
  • @NateEldredge, cf. the blog link I added 5 minutes ago.
    – maxschlepzig
    Jul 27, 2015 at 21:50

1 Answer 1

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The fat is changed by the process, but the proteins remain the same: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030297762350

Moreover, the process does create small concentrations that don't occur in milk that hasn't been through the process: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021979785711952

However, I haven't seen research suggesting there is any real health effects from the size of the fat particles.

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