The Evils of Dairy
Most people will aim to achieve optimal health and wellness during their lives, un-fortunately a lot of people believe their current nutritional diet is fantastic and leading them to a healthy lifestyle, but in actual fact the foods they are consuming are playing negative rolls towards their health.
Why is it that so many people are eating incorrectly when they strive to achieve optimal health? The answer is fairly simple; it’s the advertising and marketing of un-healthy food products as being essential for health which misguide people’s beliefs on healthy foods.
Currently, there is a huge amount of quality research documentation showing health related problems associated with certain foods. There are also many health care practitioners, who through general practice have seen many patients suffer health issues because of the consumption of these foods and as a result have spoken out about the issues in books, magazines and on TV.
Two food products which fall under the statements above include dairy and grains.
These two foods have been marketed as health foods for many years, even with the huge amounts of evidentiary support showing these foods to be bad for us, dairy is still being heavily marketed as the best source of calcium and grains are still being heavily marketed as an essential dietary food source.
Although this may have been the case 1000yrs ago, times have changed and the manufacturing of these particular foods has changed dramatically. Before the mass production of these products, milk would be consumed almost straight after being milked from the cow. Cheese, butter, yogurt and kefir would be made by hand and left to mature or ferment in a natural environment. Grains would be harvested by hand and soaked for several days or weeks before being cooked; this soaking process reduces the anti-nutrient content and improves the grains nutritional quality.
In addition, the quality of soil grains where grown in were much richer in nutrient value and weren’t sprayed with chemical pesticides in order to keep bugs and insects away. Cattle are now eating these grains instead of their natural food source of grass.
Today, it’s extremely hard to find dairy and grain products which have been made fresh from chemical free grains and grass fed cattle and produced with the natural fermentation or soaking methods. The processing factors which both grains and dairy are now going through denature the natural nutrient value behind these foods, not only do the chemical additives such as pesticides and growth hormones injected into cows reduce the quality of the foods and increase the burden of added chemicals which our body’s system must eliminate, but the speed and method in which these foods are being processed further reduces the nutritional value.
Milk is a perfect example of this, firstly if the label on the milk you are purchasing doesn’t state that the cattle the milk came from ate grass, then chances are the cattle are fed grains which isn’t their natural food source and definitely isn’t a food source they should be consuming. Cows have the ability to convert omega3’s in grass to omega3’s in their body; if you aren’t aware of the many health benefits associated with omega3 fatty acids, read my article titled ‘Time to bust out the cod liver oil!’. It will then be clear that the health of the cattle eating grains is very poor as they will not be achieving the same state of good health associated with omega3’s and antioxidants, which are rich in grass and close to non existent in grains. In addition, as mentioned earlier, cows are now being pumped full of bovine growth hormone to increase the amount of milk the cows will produce on a regular basis, although this may be beneficial for the manufactures, the consumers of the milk will also be consuming traces of growth hormones designed for cows which is causing many health problems for them including;
- Delivering deformed calves
- Digestive problems
- Causing puss to enter the milk supply
- Causing inflammation of the mammary gland (mastitis) which can enter the milk supply
- Shortening lifespan by up to 13 years
If this is what is happening to cattle being injected with growth hormone every week, how do you think this will affect your health, not to mention the health of your children who are still growing and developing?
Once the milk has been obtained, it is then run through processing methods including pasteurising and homogenising. You may have read these on a carton of milk, or at least heard of them, but do you know what that process involves and do you know how it’s affecting the quality of the milk you are drinking?
Pasteurising aims to destroy microorganisms and bad bacteria in the milk; this process exposes the milk to high temperatures. The pasteurisation process not only kills off bad bacteria, it also kills off the good bacteria and digestive enzymes which are essential in the human body for good health.
Homogenising significantly alters the structure of milk by breaking up the fat particles in order to prevent the cream floating to the top of the milk during storage. When the fat particles are extremely small, the cream/fat is constantly distributed evenly throughout the milk.
When reading through the feeding of cattle and the processing stages milk now goes through compared to how milk used to be consumed many years ago, it’s clear to see how milk is not a healthy food source anymore. However, it is still marketed to us as an essential dietary food for good health and essential for the healthy growth of children, why is this? Well, what would the billion dollar dairy industry care more for… billions or dollars, or your health? Want the short answer? The $$$$$!
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Comments
I’m glad to hear your family is sticking to the natural methods of milking and making cheese, while allowing the cattle to eat grass. I’m aware there are more people out there like you and your family who produce grass fed, raw milk, cheese, etc.
My focus in this article was that of the milk found in supermarkets, i live in Australia and have never seen any grass fed un-pasteurised milk on the shelves, even a lot of health food stores won’t stock any grass fed butter or milk, it’s definitely something people need to source after in order to buy it. But unfortunately most people don’t realise this and will keep hearing through advertising how essential milk is, for calcium, strong bones and to prevent osteoporosis, etc. Although i believe grass fed, unpasteurised and hormone free milk can be beneficial and healthy towards ones diet, people will associate milk in general as being healthy and will go purchase milk from the supermarket which doesn’t hold the same nutritional qualities as that of raw milk.
Thanks for the comment!
Great post. As a dairy producer, it is disheartening that fellow producers have gone the route of growth hormones (rBST) and feeding grain. However, here in the states, a shift is growing among organic producers, my family included, who have remained or gone back to the way dairying ‘used to be,’ keeping their herds small, raising them on pasture and forgoing any sort of hormone treatment. The cheese my family produces is a raw milk cheese with no additives, from our 25 cows who have access to 60 acres of rotational pasture and are never treated with hormones. And there’s many more like us. Sure, if all dairy products were produced the way you describe, I would agree in milk’s ‘evilness,’ but consumers do have the choice of hormone-free, pasture-based (and sometimes even raw or non-homogenized if you look hard enough!) milk and dairy products. Maybe we just need to work harder at getting the word out there.