Good Food, Good Diet, Good Life:  Got Milk?

So I am on my third official week of the Standard Process Purification Program and I am feeling great! Good energy, clear mind, improved memory, sleeping well, no aches or pains and my appetite is not stressing me out.  Seven more days to go.  When I am done with the program I plan to start for the first time, the  Standard Process Post Purification Program.  For now though, I need to take it one day at a time.

Today, I want to give you my opinion of milk.  I can remember back to my teenage years when I was busy with sports and trying to gain muscle.  When my mom brought home the groceries, my brother and I would race to see who could finish them first.  I only understood why my mother would get so upset with us for polishing off all that food when I started to pay for my own groceries.  Anyway, one of the best treats was to grab a cold gallon of whole milk and chug as much as possible.  We drank on average, one gallon each day until….I  realized that I was allergic to the milk!

When I was 17 and trying to clear up my skin, I found that the acne was much worse when I drank milk.  Since then I have all but stopped drinking it.    It took a few months, but I don’t have much of a taste for milk anymore.  

Ok so you’re thinking milk is good food, right?  Milk production is big business and they spend hundreds of millions of dollars to get us to believe that it is good food.  However, my personal experience both in and out of the office do not support  this advertising campaign.  When many of my clients stop drinking this “bovine super food”, it is not uncommon for their sinus issues to disappear, skin improves, mucus disappears, energy improves, recurrent infections go away, bowel issues resolve and bloating disappears.  

Interestingly, many of these patients that discovered milk products were causing their symptoms have no symptoms when they drink raw (non-pasteurized) grass fed cow’s milk.

Pasteurization is a process of heating milk very quickly at high temperature to kill off bacteria.  Sounds like a good idea, but for some reason most good ideas seem to have bad unintended consequences.  Pasteurization destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamin content, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamins C, B12 and B6, kills beneficial bacteria, promotes pathogens and is associated with allergies, increased tooth decay, colic in infants, growth problems in children, osteoporosis, arthritis, heart disease and cancer.  

Calves fed pasteurized milk do poorly and many die before maturity.  Raw milk sours naturally but pasteurized milk turns putrid; processors must remove slime and pus from pasteurized milk by a process of centrifugal clarification.  Inspection of dairy herds for disease is not required for pasteurized milk.  

Pasteurization was instituted in the 1920’s to combat TB, infant diarrhea, undulant fever and other diseases caused by poor animal nutrition and dirty production methods.  But times have changed and modern stainless steel tanks, milking machines, refrigerated trucks and inspection methods make pasteurization absolutely unnecessary for public protection.  

Pasteurization does not always kill the bacteria  for Johne’s disease which is suspected of causing Crohn’s disease in humans.  Most confinement cows are infected with Johne’s disease.  Much commercial milk is now ultra-pasteurized to get rid of heat-resistant bacteria and give it a longer shelf life.  Ultra-pasteurization is a violent process that takes milk from a chilled temperature to above the boiling point in less than two seconds. The good news is : Clean raw milk from certified healthy cows is available commercially in several states and may be bought directly from the farm in many more. (Sources are listed on www.realmilk.com.)

Dr. Pottenger Cats

In one study conducted by Dr. Pottenger, dubbed the “Milk Study,” the cats were fed 2/3 milk and 1/3 meat.  All groups were fed raw meat with different groups getting raw, pasteurized, evaporated, sweetened condensed or raw metabolized vitamin D milk. The cats on raw milk were the healthiest while the rest exhibited varying degrees of health problems similar to the previous cooked meat study.  

By the end of the first generation the cats fed pasteurized milk started to develop degenerative diseases and became quite lazy.

By the end of the second generation, the pasteurized milk fed cats had developed degenerative diseases by mid-life and started losing their coordination.

By the end of the third generation the pasteurized milk fed cats had developed degenerative diseases very early in life and some were born blind and weak and had a much shorter life span.  Many of the third generation cats couldn’t even produce offspring.  There was an abundance of parasites and vermin while skin diseases and allergies increased from an incidence of five percent in normal cats to over 90 percent in the third generation of deficient cats.  Kittens of the third generation did not survive six months.  Bones became soft and pliable and the cats suffered from adverse personality changes.  Males became docile while females became more aggressive.  The cats suffered from most of the degenerative diseases encountered in human medicine and died out totally by the fourth generation.

So what about calcium?  Milk is advertised as the calcium rich food.  It’s an ok source but the best.  We also know that in countries where they drink the most milk also have the highest risk of hip fractures (marker for osteoporosis) and in countries where they drink the least milk (Japan) they have very low rates of risk factors.  Dark green leafy vegetables, sardines (yum) and nuts are good alternative sources of calcium.  Milk alternatives like almond milk have a good amount of calcium.

Milk alternatives:  If you are tied to the idea of drinking milk try almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk and my favorite hemp milk.  With Rice Milk, be careful to buy the low sugar brands.  Do NOT use soy milk no matter what you read.

Fermented milk like yogurt and kefir are also good alternatives if you make your own.  Look online for starter kits. Cheese aged for more than 100 days is ok.  Cheese made in Europe is usually a better quality cheese because of the way the cows are fed and the milk is processed.  

Organic butter and organic heavy cream (CostCo) are pasteurized but have very little protein and do not cause problems.  Because they are organic they do not have all the hormones and pesticide residue, etc. that would be found in non-organics.  

Changing your diet can seem impossible.  The first thing people always say to me is “so what do I eat?”  It takes some education, creativity and perseverance, but before you know it your health will be much better and you will realize that the foods you thought were impossible to give up you hardly miss.  

Next blog….food you should eat a lot more of!

One Comment

  1. Heard about you from Dr. Bob Marshall’s radio show. Read your blog, looking forward to reading more.
    Thanks, Steve