‘Playing Russian roulette with your health’: my encounter with LA’s raw-milk, powdered-meat smoothie | Food

In Los Angeles, where a $20 smoothie from Erewhon Market has become a key fashion accessory, many wellness drinks are unashamedly girly. There’s Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Skin Smoothie and Kendall Jenner’s Peaches and Cream Smoothie. Alongside the launch of her second album, Guts, Olivia Rodrigo debuted a kombucha smoothie called Good 4 Ur Guts.

But at Erewhon, a celebrity-endorsed grocer that’s half health food store and half catwalk, male wellness influencers also get their chance in the spotlight.

One of Erewhon’s featured drinks this past year isn’t just another raw vegan concoction named after a supermodel: it’s “raw, animal-based“a drink created by one of the most famous men in America”meatfluencers“.

For $19, you can drink a smoothie made from beef organ powder and unpasteurized milk, part of influencer Paul Saladino’s attempt to introduce Angelinos to his much-touted “carnivore diet.”

The smoothie ingredients include a powdered supplement made from uncooked, freeze-dried beef liver, heart, kidney, spleen, and pancreas mixed with more typical smoothie ingredients, including blueberries, banana, and honey. It’s topped with whipped coconut cream mixed with powdered cow’s colostrum, the nutrient-rich milk that cows produce after giving birth.

“The name gives cruelty. Should I call Peta?” an aspiring TikToker influencer quipscalling it “the most un-LA smoothie ever.”

Although “Dr. Paul’s Raw Animal Smoothie” went marginally viral on TikTok, not everyone is a fan. American scientists publish new warnings against drinking “raw” milk as bird flu spreads among dairy cows in the U.S. — raising concerns that unpasteurized dairy could literally go viral.

Michael Payne, researcher and outreach coordinator at the Western Institute of Food Safety and Security, said the contents of Erewhon’s raw animal smoothie alarmed him.

“People who consume this are playing Russian roulette with their health,” he said.

The risks of raw milk

Erewhon (rearrangement of the word “nowhere”) has been a gathering place for proponents of countercultural diet trends since founding in Boston in the 1960s, where it reportedly survived an early attack by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Today, it’s a California grocery store so luxurious it inspired a Louis Vuitton fragrance and a collaboration with Balenciaga.

The grocery store has long sold raw milk, a controversial product with passionate advocates, especially in California, where it can be legally sold in retail stores. Wellness entrepreneurs, including Gwyneth Paltrow, have approved iteven as parents whose children have become seriously ill after drinking raw milk campaign against him. Twenty other states ban the sale of raw milk within state lines, though a handful are now moving to legalized for commercial sale.

Most milk now consumed in the US is heated briefly to kill harmful bacteria or other germs in it before it is sold. That pasteurization process “remains the most important food safety firewall in history,” Payne said.

Without pasteurization, milk can carry “listeria or salmonella or kidney-killing E coli,” he said. “These things happen almost every year from consuming raw dairy products.” (Raw milk consumption is linked to at least 2,645 illnesses and 228 hospitalizations in the U.S. over the past 20 years, according to the Food and Drug Administration.)

Now there’s a new potential risk: Three people have tested positive for bird flu in the US the last farm worker which appear to have contracted the virus directly from an infected cow. The risk to humans from drinking contaminated milk is still theoretical, but recent study examining farm cats in Texas who died after drinking raw milk from cows infected with the H5N1 virus raised concerns about cross-species transmission.

In May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a attention that “high levels of A(H5N1) virus have been found in unpasteurized (‘raw’) milk”. The CDC noted that while the risk of infection from people drinking raw milk with live H5N1 virus is still “unknown,” the CDC and FDA “recommend the consumption of raw milk or raw milk products.”

But Californians who consume raw milk don’t trust the FDA, said Mark McAfee, Fresno, Calif.-based founder of Raw Farm, which supplies the fermented milk drink for Erewhon’s smoothie.

In fact, some of his customers are looking to raw milk to provide protection against a number of emerging viruses, including the H5N1 flu, McAfee said. He said he had to tell some customers proactively concerned about H5N1 milk that, unlike cows in other states, the H5N1 virus has not yet been detected in dairy cows in California.

Raw Farm works closely with California health officials to watching his cows for the H5N1 virus, McAfee said, a move he said has reassured the 500 stores that sell Raw Farm’s products.

Raw farm milk caused 2023 salmonella outbreak in California, and this year the company voluntarily recalled one of its raw milk cheeses fears of an E coli outbreakwhich the CDC says has led to 11 sick and five hospitalized in five states. While direct testing of the company’s products did not reveal any E coli contamination, CDC said“epidemiological evidence” suggests that Raw Farms cheddar “is the likely source of this outbreak.”

The company that pleaded guilty in 2008 to affixing “pet food” stickers. on its raw milk to illegally sell it across state lines for human consumption, still is in a battle with federal prosecutors on the marketing and distribution of raw cheese.

In response to questions about the health risks of its Raw Animal smoothie, an Erewhon spokesperson wrote: “Due to company policy, we are unable to provide specific information regarding this particular product at this time.”

Does it taste like organs?

Saladino, who once went by the name “CarnivoreMD,” rose to fame alongside Jordan Peterson and others influencers of the meat diet.

On his website, Saladino warns his followers against eating plants he says are likely to be harmful, and calls vegetables from cabbage and broccoli to tomatoes and soybeans “dumb foods” that can do more harm than good. (Saladino did not respond to a request for comment.)

“Are the vegans kicking in?” he asked an Erewhon employee one YouTube video during the launch of his smoothie in Los Angeles last summer.

For Angelenos who often use $20 Smoothie Tastings as fodder for building their social media following, the Raw Animal Smoothie’s gross factor seems to be no small part of its appeal.

But many videos about the drink don’t mention the health concerns about “raw” milk.

On TikTok, Spencer Pratt, a former reality star from Los Angeles, simply read the ingredients out loud and said “mmm”.

When I went to Erewhon to try Saladino’s smoothie, the cashier assured me that chunks of raw beef liver don’t go directly into the blender: “It’s like powder,” she said. The smoothie was actually one of her favorites: “It has this sweetness to it—you don’t really taste the organs.”

The smoothie looked harmless enough, even though it cost $22.80 including tip.

A sticker on the cup warned in very small print that unpasteurized milk products “may contain disease-causing microorganisms” and that infants, elderly customers and the immunocompromised were among the most at risk.

I took what I assumed would be my first and last sip of Russian Roulette, and I was shocked: it was tart, creamy, and delicious, with an innocent blueberry flavor. I took another sip, looking for undercurrents of powdered liver, but all I could taste was banana.

Wondering if a more refined palate might detect more meat flavor, I emailed the Guardian food writer Felicity Clokewho had tried the smoothie on a recent trip to Los Angeles and called it’s offal-but-not-terrible.

“My palate was berry yogurt with a faint but unmistakable back note of liver,” she writes. “The sweet earthy sweetness of the innards actually works quite well with the berries, but I found the concept and aftertaste a bit off-putting.”