30/03/2018
WHAT’S WRONG WITH DAIRY?
If you’re a baby calf then dairy is the perfect food. If you’re not a calf then it’s a bit more complicated. This one’s a little different than the other foods we’ve looked at because in some circumstances dairy is very beneficial and in others absolutely not.
First you need to consider your ancestry. There are some parts of the world where dairy was historically a necessary food. The climate and geography maybe didn’t support a lot of foods and milk was necessary to get the needed nutrients. In other parts of the world where food was abundant dairy wasn’t eaten and these people never adapted genetically to be able to digest it.
In milk there’s a sugar called lactose. Infants produce an enzyme called lactase which digests this milk sugar, so that they can drink breastmilk. Around the ages of 2-5 this enzyme stops being produced and at that point the infant has been weaned. In those countries where dairy was a traditional food, their genes had adapted over generations to produce the lactase enzyme into adulthood. So if your ancestors were from Northern Europe, Iceland, Scandinavia then you’ve a much higher chance of having the lactase enzyme and being able to tolerate milk. If you’re from Asia, India, Africa, South and Central America then you’ve a higher chance of being lactose intolerant. This means you can’t digest lactose and it causes digestive symptoms.
If you are lactose intolerance then you’ll likely be able to tolerate yoghurt and butter ok. This is because butter is mostly fat so doesn’t contain the milk sugar, and yoghurt is milk that’s been fermented, which means bacteria have digested the lactose to turn the milk into yoghurt, so again no lactose to worry about.
Many people also have problems with milk proteins, mostly casein. In these cases the immune system is activated and all kinds of symptoms can occur from sinus issues and acne to headaches and autoimmune diseases. In these cases you need to stay away from all dairy, although butter being almost entirely fat may be ok, but still can have traces of protein, so depending on the severity of the reaction can still be a trigger food. Ghee - clarified butter is usually fine.
As milk is designed for baby calves it’s the ideal nutrition for rapid growth as calves grow very fast in their early days. Much more so than human babies. These growth hormones may not be something you want as a fully grown adult, especially as they can cause cells to grow out of control.
So assuming you can tolerate the proteins and the sugars, and want to eat dairy, you next need to consider the source. Commercial dairy farming is quite a digesting process. The cows are pumped with antibiotics, which pass into the milk destroying your gut bacteria. They are pumped full of hormones to make them produce more milk than is natural for them, and these also pass into the milk. Due to the poor farming standards and low levels of animal welfare, a lot of these dairy cows have mastitis and so a fair amount of blood and pus gets into the milk. There are limits on how much is allowed in your milk, but those levels are not zero, so it’s a bit gross.
Due to the higher standards, organic milk will be hugely better on both farming methods and animal welfare. Organic farmers are still allowed to use antibiotics, but only if the animal needs them to avoid suffering, not as a continuous preventative to the spread of disease in crowded and dirty conditions. Synthetic hormones are not used, although there are still natural growth hormones in the milk.
Also consider the cow’s diet. If the cow was out in the open eating fresh grass, the milk will have a healthier nutritional profile. Grass-fed cows make milk rich in anti-inflammatory omega 3 fats, conjugated linoleic acid, vitamin D, vitamin A and vitamin K2. Cows raised indoors and fed on grains and corn which are inflammatory will have a very different nutritional profile. Also to get those good nutrients, you may have noticed they are all fats or fat-soluble vitamins and that obviously requires fat, so you need the full-fat milk. Skimmed milk is just the sugars with that good stuff removed. So if you want to enjoy dairy as part of your diet choose organic full-fat milk, or fermented dairy like natural yoghurt or kefir. Butter also should come from cows fed on grass to have the beneficial fats.
As a final note, dairy is high in calcium, which we know is an important mineral found in bone. But calcium needs to be in the correct ratio with magnesium, which is very low in dairy. So make sure you balance your dairy with some magnesium-rich foods or you’ll get into trouble with the ratio imbalance.
This is a post from my 're-tune your health' facebook group that I'm copying here as I had a request to make it available to share, which can't be done from a closed group. If you enjoyed it and want to join in the many discussions on nutrition and foods there, please join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/387369391628456/
