Got Milk? Just Say No

milkWhy Avoiding Dairy Might Be a Good Option

Food issues are complicated.

I recently ranted about butter vs margarine (see article here). I came out in favour of butter.

Now I have a confession.

I stopped ingesting dairy in January 2012.

Every year I try to make a change to improve my health. I decided to try eliminating all dairy products.

I was surprised at the outcome. I immediately stopped snoring, a condition of great concern to my light-sleeping husband. I also ceased to require deodorant (unless I have cheese. Then I stink the next day!)

Truthfully, dairy hasn’t agreed with me since I was a child. My grandparents had mixed farms, including a few dairy cows. We drank warm milk, fresh from the separator (a machine for separating cream (milk fat) from milk).

I never liked warm milk with the fresh froth on top. It tasted like cow.

In fact milk has always tasted off to me. (When my kids were little and drank milk I could never discern whether the milk in the carton was sour).

But buying into the “dairy is essential to good health” mantra, I sought palatable forms. I liked cottage cheese and other soft and hard cheeses, sour cream and ice cream. Cream didn’t bother me and I would pour it on my cereal instead of milk. I drank chocolate milk and added milk to soups in an effort to consume dairy.

One day about 20 years ago, I had a Dairy Queen strawberry milkshake, my favourite rare treat. Within an hour my intestines were twisting. I felt like I had a couple of sumo wrestlers in there. It lasted for several hours, tempting me to go to Emergency more than once.

I noticed discomfort with other ice cream so I eliminated it from my diet for five years. When I reintroduced it, it was occasional and only high-quality varieties.

By the time I gave up dairy, I was eating cheese once per week, cream on berries occasionally, ice cream twice a month. I would add a tsp of butter to steamed veggies or to fry a free-range egg. A pound of butter would last a month or two.

Post snore, I find coconut oil is a suitable butter substitute. Now that I’ve tasted ice cream made with coconut milk I will never go back to dairy: no cow taste and no mucous! Almond milk is another product that I use. I find it works in most places milk is required.

I am conflicted. Butter is natural.

But is it really?

Modern dairy operations are CAFO’s (Confined Animal Feeding Operations).  Milk from grass-fed, hormone-free, pesticide-free cattle is nutritionally superior to milk from CAFO animals. It has more vitamins and more healthy fats.

Animals in CAFO’s are sick. They need antibiotics to survive like junkies need heroine. They live and produce for only a fraction of their natural life expectancy due to inferior feed and the stress of CAFO life.

I was taught that we don’t eat sick animals or their products. CAFO milk is sick. Therefore so is its milk fat (butter).

Modern dairy processing further renders milk indigestible and void of most of its celebrated benefits. Pasteurization and homogenization threaten enzymes, kill beneficial bacteria and change the structure of the milk and, some claim, affect our bodies’ ability to assimilate it.

Pasteurization is unavoidable for big dairy operations but small farmers can safely distribute unpasteurized products. The pro-biotic benefits of raw milk are real. Unfortunately, raw milk farmers are often persecuted in North America so it’s tough to find suppliers.

Some experts claim adult humans are not designed to eat dairy. After age four, the majority of us lose our ability to digest lactose. Asian and African populations have particular difficulty digesting dairy.

One researcher suggests one’s blood type may affect the ability to digest dairy, with B and AB tolerating better than A and O types. If that were true, I would be able to tolerate dairy. But just because it’s not true for me, doesn’t mean it’s not true for another.

When they learn I avoid dairy, people are alarmed. Where do you get your calcium? What about osteoporosis? I get my calcium from greens and nuts. Dairy isn’t the only food with calcium. Osteoporosis is higher in countries with high dairy consumption. The fact is milk causes acidosis and the body leeches calcium from the bones to neutralize the acid, causing bone thinning.

Calcium from cow’s milk is not very bio-available. The official recommended intake for calcium is high because the body can only use a small portion of calcium from dairy.  Incidentally, my latest bone scan indicated I have bones of a 20 year old. The technician raved that I must be a milk drinker. He was dismayed when I revealed the truth.

If you do consume dairy, seek products that are from grass-fed cows, unpasteurized, and organic, (no hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and no unnatural feeds like ground up carcasses). Ideally you know and support your local farmer.

Consider goat milk, which is more easily digestible than cows’ milk, having a molecular structure closer to human milk. Goats are not generally subjected to CAFO life and appear to leave a smaller “footprint” on the earth.

When I was in Arizona I drove by a dairy farm that was miles and miles of Holstein cows standing in their own feces, forlornly searching for food and stimulation, a black and white wall of despair.

There are many good reasons to avoid dairy but the most important is I feel better. I sleep better.

If you have mysterious illnesses for which you’ve found no solution, consider giving up dairy for a short while. You might find solutions to heath issues you don’t even know you have.

Many people I know have transformed their health by just saying “no” to, “Got milk?”

http://organicconnectmag.com/got-proof-the-myth-of-milks-benefits/#.UkzYnBzoOgg

Butter vs. Margarine

butterpicRevised July 2013

Margarine is the generic term used for butter substitutes. Its history goes back almost 200 years to the discovery of margaric acid from whence margarine derives its name. Over the years various ingredients have been used to concoct a less expensive spread than butter including beef tallow, whale, seal, and fish oils, vegetable oils and sometimes even a little butter.

Both butter and margarine are water-in-oil emulsions; they have similar calories, depending on the amount of water in the margarine or “spread”. Sadly, most people erroneously think they are interchangeable.

Margarine consumption surpassed that of butter in the late 1950’s when some scientists proposed a correlation between the consumption of saturated fats and blood-serum cholesterol levels with heart disease. Doctors began advising their patients to use margarine instead of butter.

Many people still believe in this supposed cause and effect but the explosion of heart disease in our society would suggest otherwise. Food manufacturers seized the opportunity to increase profits by using cheaper inferior ingredients while proclaiming the health benefits of their products.

Margarine is a manufactured “food”, generally accomplished by passing hydrogen through (often) inferior quality oil in the presence of a nickel, cadmium, or palladium (all toxic heavy metals) catalyst. The addition of hydrogen to the unsaturated bonds results in saturated bonds, effectively increasing the melting point of the oil and thus hardening it.

This process creates trans fats, which the body does not recognize as food and ironically are now known to contribute to heart disease and other diseases like cancer. Furthermore, the oil is extracted at high temperature, which damages the oil and destroys the vitamin E in it. The advertisements and the packaging for margarine are usually deceptive lies, stating it contains ‘polyunsaturated oil’, when the processing saturates or partially saturates the oil.

Butter has many nutritional benefits, where margarine has few. Butter contains antioxidants, which help offset free-radical damage to cells. It is a source of vitamin A, D, E, and K, calcium, selenium, and conjugated linoleic acid, which helps maintain lean body mass, prevents weight gain and may reduce certain cancers. Butter fat helps the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals. And it tastes better.

Although many people are sensitive to cow’s milk dairy products, often butter is well-tolerated because butter is almost a pure fat, and does not contain many of the allergens found in other milk products.

 

One issue is the treatment of dairy cows. They are often pumped full of antibiotics and hormones which naturally land in the milk.

 

The argument that margarine helps control cholesterol is a myth as most cholesterol is manufactured within the body; a maximum of about 4% of all cholesterol comes from the diet.  Cholesterol is the raw material for the adrenal stress hormones and the sex hormones. The body often reacts to stress by producing more cholesterol allowing the body to make more stress-fighting hormones. Therefore it is quite likely that the consumption of trans fats stresses the body to produce more cholesterol.

 

The human body is not designed to consume manufactured food but thrives on a diet of whole, real food. Butter is a natural food and one of the best sources of important fat-soluble vitamins. You will pay more for butter, but nutritionally, for its purity, and its taste it is well worth it. Just remember, all things in moderation; the body is not served by eating any fat, including butter, by the pound.

 

 

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturodoc.com/library/nutrition/margbutt.htm

Aviva:

http://www.healthcastle.com/butter-or-margarine.shtml

http://www.homemakers.com/health-and-nutrition/nutrition-and-diet/margarine-vs-butter-the-debate-continues/a/27133

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002114.htm

This site is sponsored by margarine producers who proclaim the “debate is over”.  It is included in this list in the interest of balance:

http://www.choosemargarine.com/latestSpread_marg_vs_butter.html

http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/butter.htm

http://www.chatham-kent.ca/community+services/Public+Health/keeping+you+healthy/healthy+eating/Butter+or+Margarine.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine