The Food Renegade recently wrote an excellent article about the details of milk and how to choose the best type of milk for you. As with other food, the least processed and industrialized version you can find, the better...for your health, the health of the animal and the local economy.
The Food Renegade determines that this is the Best Choice:
"BEST CHOICE: Raw, non-homogenized whole milk from grass-fed cows producing milk high in A2 beta casein and relatively low in A1 beta casein — that means milk from Jerseys, Guernseys, and other traditional cattle breeds rather than newer Holsteins. Raw, non-homogenized goat’s milk, sheep’s milk, and yak’s milk only contains A2 beta casein, so you could make a great argument for giving raw goat’s milk preference over raw cow’s milk if you can find it."
Now, let's take this inquiry one step further. Why do we drink milk? Is it necessary? We can argue all day long about the best kind of milk to drink, but do we even need to drink milk or eat processed milk?
Where else in the animals kingdom do we see other animals drinking milk past infancy, let alone the milk from another species?
I'm going to admit some serious ignorance here. Once upon a time (until very recently) I thought milk cows just always had milk to give, as though they existed for no other reason than to produce milk. I thought they were special and different in that they just lactated all the time because that's what their bodies were designed to do. Big D-U-H! Milk only comes from mothers who have recently birthed babies.
Hmmmmm......then the dark door opened and let some light in to my consciousness.....
• In the wild, a cow will produce milk after giving birth to a baby for about 7 months, beginning at less than 10 pounds of milk per day and climaxing at 25 pounds. In today's industrial dairies, the mother cow is artificially pushed to produce from 90 to 100 pounds per day by injecting her with hormones, antibiotics and adding cholesterol (an animal by-product) to her feed. She is force fed by a 7 foot tube shoved down her throat to administer the nutrient-dense solution that she would otherwise not voluntarily eat.
• Cows naturally live 25 years in the wild. In dairies, because of the stress, the cows can give only about 4 years of milk and then are slaughtered for meat. In most cases, dairy cows are are confined to a stall or milking paddock year-round with nothing to do but eat and stand in one place.
• Dairy cows are impregnated (artificially with a sperm gun while lined up on a "rape rack") at a much younger age than would naturally occur in the wild and are kept pregnant virtually continuously, even while they are lactating from the previous pregnancy. She is off the milking machine for only the last two months of pregnancy.
• According to animal science expert Dr. John Webster of Bristol University, "The amount of work done by the [dairy] cow in peak lactation is immense. To achieve a comparable high work rate a human would have to jog for about 6 hours a day, every day."
• Cow's milk is specifically suited to the nutritional needs of herd animals who double their weight in only 47 days, weigh 300 pounds within 14 weeks and grow 4 healthy stomachs. Cow's milk contains 3 times as much protein as human milk and about 50 percent more fat. Dog's milk is nutritionally much more similar to human milk than cow's milk.
• These are childhood symptoms that have been linked with dairy products: colic, earaches, sore throats, colds, fevers, anemia, diabetes, tonsillitis, appendicitis, allergies, inflamed mucus membranes, diarrhea, gas and cramps.
• The majority of practicing pediatric allergists insist that more than half of their patients are allergic to one or more of milk's more than two dozen proteins. Their allergy symptoms include eczema, asthma, middle ear infections, sinus infections, rhinitis, gastroenteritis, and allergic colitis - conditions responsible for 80 to 90 percent of all doctor's office visits!
(This information and more available on WorldPeaceDiet.org as a free download.)
This doesn't even go into the inhumane treatment of the baby cows which are immediately taken from their mothers and sold for their skin (calfskin leather), sold to veal farms where they are en-caged for 16-18 WEEKS before slaughter, or raised for sperm and/or meat.
I've been off all dairy for 37 days and have gone through some interesting detox symptoms which I'll share with you tomorrow. It's been an enlightening experience and I'm glad I've made the change. However, I'm having a heck of a time getting my daughter off butter and cheese. I'm not a fan of un-fermented soy, so the tofu substitutes are not an option. She hasn't been a milk drinker for years, for which I'm glad.
Milk drinkers love their milk as do meat eaters love their meat. But just because we can intake these foods doesn't mean that we should or that it's the right thing to do. Think about what the dairy cows endure to give us milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream and a bevy of other milk-based products.
Live Light, xo-C.
J&J#36: 1 pitcher matcha tea • chopped raw cucumber salad with Bragg dressing + olive oil • samples of GoRaw bars • bamboo rice with garlic, onions + tempeh • some potato chips • 5 mile walk/jog
Hi Carla - milk is definitely odd. The vast majority of the world does not drink nonhuman milk! The original anti-milk people are here http://notmilk.com/ (and much more erdudite than my own crude post www.mindfuleats.com/mindfuleats/2009/03/calcium-and-milk.html).
Interesting that a lactating cow does the same amount of work as a person running 6 hours (I would think it would depend on the kind of runner, since there is a wide range of how hard runners work). I would think the more apt comparison would be a lactating woman? Perhaps that's why all my friends lose weight like crazy when they breastfeed.
Have you done research on family dairies to balance the industrial?
Posted by: Jean | June 17, 2009 at 12:44 AM