The U.S. Department of Agriculture has emphasized their importance for livestock, the priest pointed out, but they are just as good for people. Staudenmaier said many people in the Himalayas live to be 120 or more because of trace minerals in their food. These minerals are washed down the mountains each spring and deposited in their fields. He also advocates eating bread made from whole grain wheat and drinking raw milk. He learned the value of raw milk, he said, during the seven years he spent as a milkman for his father's dairy farm near Marinette after he dropped out of high school in 1927.
Raw milk contains lactic acid which is necessary for easy digestion, Fr.
Pasteurization destroys the acid. Staudenmaier's interest in food goes beyond what he eats. When he was confirmed, he took St. Vincent de Paul as his patron, and like him, he has tried to find ways to feed the poor. In the early 1970s, he arranged with an Appleton area farmer to cultivate and plant a seven-acre community garden. The garden was divided into 10 by 105-foot plots.