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Dairy always seems to be a big discussion in the health world, so I think it’s time to set a few things straight.  Clear the table and start over from scratch.

Let’s start off with a few key points for you dairy conneusseurs:

• Most dairy studies and blanket claims are bogus, because they utilize pastuerized milk (the same as using cooked carrots for a study on carrot nutrition)
• What a cow eats is paramount to the health of it’s milk/cheese/etc. (this goes for all other milkable animals)
• Did your ancestors drink milk?  Depends on where you came from. Domestication happened anywhere from 4,000-40,000 years ago, depending on what part of the world your talking about.  These statistics are under constant scrutiny, so just take that as a ballpark reference.

These three bullet points will help you to decide if using dairy products is a good choice for yourself.  Dairy is good for some people and bad for others, it can’t be classified into simply “milk is good or milk is bad“.

Let’s dig in a little deeper:

1.  Most dairy studies and blanket claims are bogus because they utilize pastuerized milk.

What is pastuerization? It’s a process of heating milk to a temperature below boiling that will reduce the number of pathogens that could possibly cause disease in the human being.  Scientists do not consider a product pastuerized until all of the enzymatic life has been destroyed.

In the case of milk, you end up with a product that is safe from a bacterial standpoint, but hardly digestible and usable for human consumption.  A cooked, dead product.

The primary reason why milk catches a bad rap is because of ‘lactose intolerance’.  Well, junior scientists:  what do you need to break down and assimilate lact-OSE?  You need Lact-ASE.

The Suffix -OSE means ‘sugar’………..The suffix -ASE refers to it’s enzyme counterpart.  Enzymes speed process up exponentially, in this case digestion. The sugar and the enzyme come together in nature, and both of them are necessary for healthy digestion.  When milk is pasteurized, the enzyme is destroyed, forcing the body to synthesize the enzymes necessary for digestion.  This is a significant stressor.

Pastuerization rancidifies a significant proportion of the fats in milk.  This is why you get that absolutely awful stench if you leave milk to sit for too long.  It rots……..Unpastuerized milk will not do this, because the beneficial bacteria are still intact, allowing the milk to transform into sour cream.  Its still an edible product after weeks, not the same with pastuerized products.

2. What a cow eats is paramount to the health of it’s milk/cheese/etc.

Just like how strong athletes put out a good performance, a healthy cow will put out lots of high quality milk.  Unless your some kind of bovine expert, you won’t be able to go to the farm and visually tell how healthy the cows are.  Forego all that by asking the farmer (or reading the label) if the cows are grass-fed or grain-fed.  This is very important.  The prime reason why cows need antibiotics…..Why I should add, amounts to around 55% of the world’s production of antibiotics…….is because they are fed an improper diet in the first place, weakening the immune system.  Cows are not meant to eat grains!  You don’t see cows out there stripping the wheat berries off the stalk, there out there eating GRASS!  When cows are fed grains, they develop a whole host of digestive imbalances that lead them to need a whole host of pharmaceuticals.  Healthy animals make healthy milk, so stick with grass fed dairy products.

3.  Did your ancestors drink milk?  Depends on where you came from.

Lactose intolerance nicely correlates with how long your ancestors have been utilizing dairy products.  Domestication was very recent in some parts of the world.  In other places they’ve been sluggin’ milkshakes for 40,000 years.  This relates to your genetic capability of digesting dairy products.

Use your own judgement here.  If you getting symptoms like fatigue, inflammation, etc., then it may be something to relate to if you’re from one of the countries with high incidence of lactose intolerance.  Check out this map for a little more in depth review.

But hey…….You don’t need milk to survive.  Take it or leave it.

If you do take it, then take it RAW!