I think it's partly leftover dribble from the inane Gaia "theory" that was so strong in hippie circles. Everything natural (like bacteria in milk) is good, and you know, gut bacteria, yogurt, 's all good, right?

Combine that with "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" beliefs that they don't realize come from right wing nuts and you got a perfect diarrhea inducing cocktail that we all get to pay for with our taxes and our nerves.

My personal theory:

First off, raw milk does taste noticably different than pasteurized and homogenized milk you find at the store.

Pasteurization: heating the milk triggers the unfolding of proteins (Denaturation). This is what kills the bacteria but can also change the flavor of the milk.

Homogenization. This process breaks up the fat into smaller segments so they stay in solution in the milk. The result is a less creamy flavor.

People instinctually associate flavor with nutritional value. They think that better flavored food = better for you. This sort-of works in tomatoes and a few other fruit/vegetables. However taste perception is a complex blend of genetics, environmental conditions, and psychology. So the results are inherently unpredictable and completely unreliable.

The unpasteurized crowd all fall for the 'it tastes better so it must be better". They then make all sorts of excuses to justify their instinct. " Big corporate milk is evil!!" Blah blah blah.

There's a whole subset of idiots that believe that you need to expose yourself to harmful shit to have a strong immune system. (See: all the people licking toilets and crap during lockdown)

There's some credible science to it, in the way that, an immunization is literally putting "harmful" stuff in you to train your immune system. This is known science that I should be able to mostly hand wave around since most people already know this. Immunizations are usually focusing on a key indicator, eg, for COVID, it's the protein on the outside of the vital cell wall (all the spiky bits in the illustrations) or whatever.... I'm no scientist. For other viruses and bacteria, it's a deactivated version of the virus... It's essentially "dead" for all intents and purposes. It just resembles the virus so closely that it effectively trains your immune system to recognize it.

With all that being said, not all bacteria and viruses are something we can develop a natural immunity to, partly because some of them just kill us, partly because there's something that is preventing it. Again I'm not a scientist.

Regardless, these idiots think that by exposing yourself to "natural" viruses and bacteria, you can strengthen your immune system. Bluntly, it's possible to do that, and why the fuck would you want to do it that way? It's literally a randomized version of a science we already have that's tried, tested, and proven effective, called immunizations. With immunizations, you get all the benefits of surviving the horrors of some of the most nasty viruses and bacteria out there, without suffering through what those viruses and bacteria are going to do to you.

The whole thing is stupid.

If anyone argues about "good" bacteria, tell them to eat yogurt. FFS.

Many, but not all, of the anti -pasteurization people believe that there is an invisible "life force" in the milk that is killed by processing. This is an old idea, but this unfalsifiable and unprovable "life force" thinking undergirds a lot of pseudoscience. People believe in getting energy aligned and unblocked and so on, and believe that drinking milk with mysterious life force is more natural.

Some people are just defiant against reason and if someone they don't like told them it's safer or better that will assume the opposite conclusion then look for any terrible reason that agrees with their already accepted conclusion.

SEWARD, Mark – Died at Gooseberry Cove, Trinity Bay, on the 2nd inst. [January 1891], Mark, youngest child of Thomas and Rosanna Seward, aged 4 years. 

SEWARD, Peter – Died on the 10th inst., Peter, second youngest son of Robert and Mary A. Seward, aged 2 years.

SEWARD – Died on the 14th inst., infant child of James and Mary A. Seward.

SEWARD, Richard – Died on the 15th inst., Richard, youngest son of Joseph and Louisa Seward, aged 4 years.

SEWARD, James – Died on the 19th inst., James, second youngest child of James and Mary A. Seward, aged 2 years (Evening Telegram, January 29, 1891)

https://swahsociety.com/records/obituaries/obituaries-1880s

Smaller graves fit more efficiently into the cemetary, AND they stimulate the economy via the funeral industry, which Im heavily invested in!

• Some political ghoul, probably

the whole reason primitive people started baking bread, roasting meat,

It's to start the break down of food. We evolved to outsource our digestion to cooking.

Brewing beer is entirely different though.

As the former slaves' descendants were increasingly shoehorned into the new industrial prison complex

Malaria has killed a quarter of all humans who ever lived.

No modern grains: find the original wild versions of wheat, corn, and rice and only process and eat those.

Well, maybe not any old-timer...a lot have fallen into that conspiracy black hole

No, graph of life expectancy would.

25, that is quite a historical extreme, isn't it?

In the wild, average live span was around 40 to 50 years. There's even studies about the evolutional reasons why we live longer than other primates/why we are the only hominide with grandparents.