Lale pointed out that I've done
coffee,
sugar, and
artificial sweeteners, so I've nearly completed my favorite drink - a latte. A bad latte, I might add. The thought of artificial sweeteners in a latte grosses me out. Bad latte or not, if we're going to finish my drink, we need to talk about milk.
As a kid, I wasn't allowed to leave the dinner table until I drank my milk. I hated milk. I remember sitting there as my dad told me "Three more sips" and then counted as I took them, one at a time, hoping with each one I looked so miserable that he would say "That's enough."
My parents paid for milk in my school lunch too. At some point during elementary school, I wised up and realized I didn't even have to take the milk, let alone drink it. Whether Mom's milk money went as a charitable donation to the school, the dairy industry, or both, I'll never know.
My parents believed I'd face catastrophic consequences if I did not drink my milk every day. Another school of thought is "Milk is for babies and cow's milk is for cow's babies." Which is it?
I started by checking the
World's Healthiest Foods site:
Cow's milk, the basis for all other dairy products, promotes strong bones by being a very good source of vitamin D and calcium, and a good source of vitamin K--three nutrients essential to bone health. In addition, cow's milk is a very good source of iodine, a mineral essential for thyroid function; and a very good source of riboflavin and good source of vitamin B12, two B vitamins that are necessary for cardiovascular health and energy production.
Cow's milk is also a good source of vitamin A, a critical nutrient for immune function, and potassium, a nutrient important for cardiovacular health.
Milk produced by grass fed cows also contains a beneficial fatty acid called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). Researchers who conducted animal studies with CLA found that this fatty acid inhibits several types of cancer in mice. In vitro (test tube) studies indicate this compound kills human skin cancer, colorectal cancer and breast-cancer cells. Other research on CLA suggests that this beneficial fat may also help lower cholesterol and prevent atherosclerosis.
That seems consistent with my upbringing - with the not very surprising caveat that grass fed cows produce more nutritious milk.
However, most people in the world do not produce lactase, the enzyme needed to digest lactose, in adulthood. Adult lactase is most prevalent in people of northern European descent and becomes less common as you go across southern Europe to Asia and Africa. When I was in China, I met a few girls from Inner Mongolia who told me their culture eats a lot of dairy. As you stray away from northern Europe, more and more of the dairy that is consumed is eaten in fermented forms such as cheeses and yogurts that are easier to digest. Think of that the next time the U.S. sends tons of powdered milk to Africa to aid a famine.
The fact that many cultures cannot or do not consume much dairy and yet their people stay healthy conflicts with our culture's understanding of dairy as one of the four essential food groups. That milk, particularly milk from grass-fed cows, contains valuable nutrients and that it can be a part of a nutritious diet is without question. What I am interested in (and what the dairy industry hopes no one asks) is:
1. Can you have a healthy diet without dairy and
2. To what extent do all of the hormones and antibiotics in conventional dairy products diminish the benefits of dairy or outweigh it with harmful additives?
USDA Guidelines
The dairy industry has waged an incredibly successful marketing campaign for decades upon decades. That isn't to say they aren't telling us the truth - that milk is good for you - but maybe they've overstated the necessity of three cups a day. For example, we think "calcium" is practically synonymous with "dairy" even though other foods such as spinach are high in calcium.
I've been reading Food Politics by Marion Nestle, which traces the history of the food pyramid. I grew up with the pyramid, never suspecting the controversy behind it. Nestle deconstructs the Nutrition and Your Health: Dietary Guidelines for Americans from 2000:
As a means to reduce saturated fat, the 2000 guideline advises, "Choose fat-free or low-fat dairy products." Thus it merely suggests substitution of low-fat for high-fat options and says nothing about eating less. Dairy foods are sources of calcium, but they are also high in fat, saturated fat, and lactose, a sugar that cannot always be digested by most people in the world over the age of five years. The "Let the Pyramid guide [your food choices]" section suggests that people require 2-3 servings of dairy foods daily, preferably fat-free or low-fat, and it also lists high-fat cheeses as recommended sources of calcium.
How dairy foods came to be considered essential despite their high content of fat, saturated fat, and lactose is a topic of considerable historical interest. As it turns out, nutritionists have collaborated with dairy lobbies to promote the nutritional value of dairy products since the early years of the twentieth century.
Nestle picks apart the exact language of the USDA's nutritional guidelines throughout the 20th century for the better part of 100 pages. While it's a fascinating history, it makes for some dry reading. To sum up, you can bet that various food lobbies nitpicked over every single word that is in (or not in) any government nutritional guideline.
With this in mind, I headed over to MyPyramid.gov to see what it would give me. The first time I went there I wondered if they'd let you check boxes saying you were lactose intolerant, vegetarian, or diabetic, etc. Nope. You put in your age, sex, and daily activity level.
I'm a 25 year old female who gets 30-60 minutes of exercise each day. Uncle Sam tells me to eat 3 servings of dairy every day. As Nestle pointed out, the nutritionists who put these guidelines together meant it as "up to 3 servings per day" but once it makes its way to my computer screen, it looks to me like I need 3 servings to be healthy. I clicked a link called "Tips" and got the following:
Tips for making wise choices
- Include milk as a beverage at meals. Choose fat-free or low-fat milk.
- If you usually drink whole milk, switch gradually to fat-free milk, to lower saturated fat and calories. Try reduced fat (2%), then low-fat (1%), and finally fat-free (skim).
- If you drink cappuccinos or lattes--ask for them with fat-free (skim) milk.
- Add fat-free or low-fat milk instead of water to oatmeal and hot cereals
- Use milk products as dip
- Use fat-free or low-fat milk when making condensed cream soups (such as cream of tomato).
- Have fat-free or low-fat yogurt as a snack.
- Make a dip for fruits or vegetables from yogurt.
- Make fruit-yogurt smoothies in the blender.
- For dessert, make chocolate or butterscotch pudding with fat-free or low-fat milk.
- Top cut-up fruit with flavored yogurt for a quick dessert.
- Top casseroles, soups, stews, or vegetables with shredded low-fat cheese.
- Top a baked potato with fat-free or low-fat yogurt.
--snip--
For those who choose not to consume milk products
- If you avoid milk because of lactose intolerance, the most reliable way to get the health benefits of milk is to choose lactose-reduced or low-lactose alternatives within the milk group, such as cheese, yogurt, or lactase-treated milk, or to consume the enzyme lactase before consuming milk products.
- Calcium choices for those who do not consume milk products include
- Calcium fortified juices, cereals, breads, soy beverages, or rice beverages
- Canned fish (sardines, salmon with bones) soybeans and other soy products (soy-based beverages, soy yogurt, tempeh), some other dried beans, and some leafy greens (collard and turnip greens, kale, bok choy). The amount of calcium that can be absorbed from these foods varies.
Ok, so veganism isn't a "wise choice." Got it. I would love to read the memos, emails, and minutes that went into the final product here. The top half looks like a promotion for the dairy industry, and the bottom tells you that if you are lactose intolerant, you can consume dairy anyway - and oh, by the way, milk isn't the only food with calcium.
I'm not saying the tips for eating low fat dairy aren't helpful. They are. Especially if you are looking for new ways to include dairy in your diet. It brings back a memory of a marketing class where they told us how brilliant baking soda is for always creating new uses for itself - the fridge, the freezer, the laundry, your toothpaste; the list of ideas for eating more dairy reminds me of that.
This drives home Nestle's point that the government's guidelines imply that you require 3 servings per day and you should transition from high-fat products to fat-free or low-fat ones. In her book What To Eat, she devotes several chapters to milk, concluding that "you do not have to drink milk to be healthy, but if you like drinking it, you can do so and also stay healthy" (p. 90).
Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone
I think we can move from my first question to my second one: to what extent do all of the hormones and antibiotics in conventional dairy products diminish the benefits of dairy or outweigh it with harmful additives? The main hormone in question here is recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH or rBST).
According to Marion Nestle in her book What To Eat (p. 69):
Since 1970, U.S. dairy producers have . . . increased total milk production from 120 million to 160 million pounds per year - at the same time that they reduced the overall number of dairy cows from 12 million to 9 million
I am no math scholar but it looks to me like the average milk output per cow grew something like 77% in the last 35 years. Either cow breeding techniques have drastically improved to create a superrace of dairy cows, giving us a surge in productivity, or Uncle Monsanto came to help us out.
According to Wikipedia "bovine growth hormone (BGH) is a protein hormone that occurs naturally in the pituitary gland of cattle. It is a factor controlling the amount of milk produced by a dairy cow."
rBGH is a different story. rBGH comes to us courtesy of Monsanto. It is legal in the US but illegal in Canada, the EU, Australia, and New Zealand. Here are a few other points from Wikipedia (I've added bullets but changed no text):
- Injected into dairy cattle, the product can increase milk production from 10% up to 40%.
- In November 1993, the product was approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA, and its use began in February 1994.
- The product is now sold in all 50 states. According to Monsanto, approximately one third of dairy cattle in the U.S. are injected with Posilac [the brand name of rBGH]; approximately 13,000 dairy producers use the product.
- It is now the top selling dairy cattle pharmaceutical product in the U.S.
- The FDA does not require special labels for products produced from cows given rbST.
--snip--
- Use of rBGH in cows also increases insulin growth factor (IGF-1) in milk.
Everywhere I looked for information about rBGH (except maybe the Monsanto website) said the exact same thing. Here is a good blurb to sum up the Internet's CW on rBGH:
Meanwhile, the European Commission had commissioned two independent committees of internationally recognized experts to undertake a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on both the veterinary and public health effects of rBGH. The veterinary committee fully confirmed and extended the Canadian warnings and conclusions. The public health committee confirmed earlier reports of excess levels of the naturally occurring Insulin-like-Growth Factor One (IGF-1), including its highly potent variants, in rBGH milk and concluded that these posed major risks of cancer, particularly of the breast and prostate, besides promoting the growth and invasiveness of cancer cells by inhibiting their programmed self-destruction (apoptosis). Faced with this latest well documented scientific evidence from both Canada and Europe, the U.S. bowed to the inevitable and failed to challenge the Codex ruling in support of the European moratorium. [emphasis mine]
In short, rBGH causes increased levels of IGF-1 in milk. IGF-1 (in high levels) causes breast and prostate cancer. Non-rBGH milk normally contains IGF-1 too - just in lower levels:
Milk contains IGF-1 for good reason: milk is designed for babies, and IGF-1 helps us grow. IGF-1 affects growth, as well as other functions, and is normally found in our blood. Higher levels of IGF-1, however, appear to stimulate cancer cells.
Another tidbit of note that appeared in the news recently is that those who consume dairy give birth to twins at higher rates than those who don't consume dairy do. The culprit here appears to be IGF-1 as well. My favorite article on this was titled Dairy diet the natural way for mothers to conceive twins (love their use of the word "natural").
Depending on your point of view, an increased probability of giving birth to twins might be a blessing - I'm just interested in the proof that rBGH (via increased IGF-1 levels) can have a demonstrable affect on women who drink conventional milk. These aren't rats and this test didn't occur in a lab; this is real world proof that rBGH does something to those who drink the affected milk, whether you think that something is beneficial or not.
In line with my latte theme, the Organic Consumer's Association urges consumers to ask Starbucks to stop using milk with rBGH.
If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em - Or Blur the Difference
You might have already heard about Horizon and Aurora. Horizon is the organic dairy brand by Dean. According to The Cornucopia Institute (as reported by The Organic Consumers Association), these dairies "have become leaders in the organic dairy sector by producing cheap milk on factory farm feedlots, feeding the cows organic grains, but providing no access to pasture, as organic standards require." Presumably, industry pressures on the USDA keep them from closing the loopholes that industrial organic agribusinesses exploit.
Within the USDA, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) serves as an expert advisory panel. So far as I can tell, decisions handed down by political appointees or others who are under pressure from industry lobbies frequently overrule the NOSB's recommendations in the current political climate. The specific articles I'm looking at relate only to dairy, but I'd bet some money this occurs across the board. The Cornucopia Institute put out a press release on another strategy used by industrial organic dairies:
Proposed new federal organic livestock regulations are coming under sharp criticism for failing to close critical loopholes that are allowing a handful of factory-scale dairy farms in western states to continue bringing into their milk herd new animals raised with antibiotics, hormones, and genetically engineered feed produced with toxic pesticides.
In 2002 and 2003, the NOSB unanimously passed recommendations that all animals being brought onto an existing organic dairy farm had to be under organic management starting no later than the last three months of pregnancy.
That's "Join 'Em" - here's "Blur the Difference." The Center for Global Food Issues put out a web campaign called Milk is Milk.
To find out who the Center for Global Food Issues is, I had to do some digging. The first link I clicked led me to an even more priceless website called Stop Labeling Lies. From there I clicked over to The Hudson Institute. Nothing good there. On a hunch, I Googled "hudson milk is milk agribusiness astroturf." Ta-da! CGFI is a Hudson-run organization that is funded by agribusiness (and they have a book out, Saving the World with Plastics and Pesticides).
Here you have it, folks. Milk is milk. (My comments are in italics)
Some Milk Labels are Misleading
Some milk labels raise concern for consumers. Other labels actually mislead consumers or prey on their fears, implying that one milk is superior to another because of what it does not contain. The simple truth is that there really is no difference. Milk is Milk.
"No Hormones"
All milk produced by cows contains hormones as part of the normal biology of reproduction and lactation. There is no such thing as hormone-free milk.
"No Pesticides"
There are no pesticides added to any milk or dairy products.
No, but there are pesticides in conventionally-grown grains that non-organic cows eat.
"No Antibiotics"
Antibiotics are never added to milk. All milk is tested to ensure that antibiotics used to treat cows are not present in milk.
I've read that rBGH causes an increased risk to the cows of developing mastitis, for which antibiotics are administered. As for testing, if that's true, it's the only true sentence on the entire website.
All Milk is Produced the Same Way - By Cows
Abundant and high quality milk production results from the daily management of well-fed healthy dairy cows. Some dairy producers may use a variety of technologies, but the milk remains the same nutritious product, providing vitamins, minerals, protein and calcium.
Variety of technologies? Nice euphemism. I'd argue that grass-fed cows have an extra nutrient, CLA, as mentioned above. As for the milk from all grain-fed cows, organic and non-organic, they might have the same nutrients, but conventional milk comes with all that extra pesticide and hormone goodness that makes you just want to dunk a cookie in it.
All Milk is Continuously Tested for Purity, Safety and Quality
Milk is tested numerous times before it reaches the dairy case to ensure that it meets or exceeds government standards and requirements for safety, purity and quality. These tests begin at the farm and continue throughout the processing of the milk.
And agribusiness lobbies the government to loosen government standards. Also, the Bush administration believes in "self-regulation" for industry so you might want to look under that rock before you believe that all milk is pure and safe.
Milk Labels CAN be Confusing
Federal definitions and government standards require certain information on the milk label. This helps consumers make informed choices about the food they buy.
If ingredients are added to the milk, the law requires that they be listed. One example is the addition of active cultures to make "acidophilus cultured milk." Another is Vitamin D, a hormone, which has been added for decades to improve the health benefits of milk.
Labels describe processing techniques which somehow change the milk. Labels will always list whether milk has been pasteurized and homogenized. Other processing steps may also be used. One example is removing water to make evaporated milk.
The simple truth is, Milk is Milk.
As with all other topics we talk about here, big agribusiness aims to cheapen their production processes while using marketing and lobbying to permit them to do so - without hurting sales if the quality of their product suffers. If you've seen the commercials, you know that happy cows come from California, but the images of happy cows prancing through sunny pastures just does not hold up to reality, even for the major organic brands.
To my knowledge, Organic Valley is a nationwide brand of organic dairy products that lives up to its labels. Don't just trust me as a source though - stay posted on the messages coming from groups like The Cornucopia Institute and The Organic Consumers Association.
The difference between milk and foods I've covered like sugar is that milk is actually good for you. Even if you go with the conventional variety, you're still taking the good with the bad - it's never all bad.
If you like dairy, continue drinking (or eating) it, but if you don't like it or your body won't tolerate it, don't take the food pyramid to mean that you have to drink 3 tall glasses of milk a day. It's okay if your mustache is made with soy.
-----------------------------
Recipes
I've had a few people ask me for cookbook recommendations, so I added a new page or two to my recipes site - one for my favorite cookbooks and other food-related books and another for my favorite cooking tools. FYI, if you click through the links to Amazon from my site, I'll get a 10% cut - but I don't want to come across as pushing anyone to buy anything. Especially the cooking appliances (I give a new meaning to the term "pampered chef" and I really did not know how much some of my stuff cost until I went to find them online because I received them as gifts). Check out the books on my site and go get them from the library :)
This week, my CSA box had much of the same as two weeks ago - radishes, spinach, salad mix, sorrel, and asparagus. The two new additions for this week were spring garlic and pea vines.
The pea vines are pleasing in both appearance and flavor. The CSA newsletter that came with them said that they served as a cover crop over the winter, enrich the soil, and keep the weeds away naturally. I ate half of mine in a salad and sauteed the rest up with the spring garlic.
The weekend after we all get home from Yearly Kos, it will be time for strawberry picking. I expect we'll start to see sugar snap peas around then too, and I can't wait!
Asian Style Mustard Greens
Last week I got mustard greens from the farmer's market. I hadn't tried them before but I wanted to because I heard they are healthy. It turns out they have a bit of a horseradish flavor. The end result was a bit interesting, but if you want to try them, I think I came up with an okay recipe. If mustard greens don't sound good to you, substitute spinach, kale, collards, or bok choy.
Prep time: 5 min; Total time: 25 min
Ingredients
* 1 bunch mustard greens
* 2 tbsp. soy sauce or tamari
* 1 tbsp. mirin
* 1 tbsp. rice vinegar
Rinse mustard greens and place them in a saucepan over medium low heat. Stir occasionally.
After 20 minutes, the greens should be wilted. Add soy sauce, mirin, and rice vinegar. Serve.
Sweet Potato Spicy Fries
Prep time: 5 min; Total time: 50 min
Ingredients
* 1 large sweet potato (or a few small ones)
* 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
* 1/4 tsp. cayenne
* 1 tsp. paprika
* 1 tsp. garlic powder
* Salt, to taste
* Fresh ground pepper, to taste
Slice sweet potato in wedges. Toss with olive oil and spices.
Lay all wedges flat on a cookie sheet, pizza pan, or other shallow oven-safe dish. Bake at 425 F for 40 min.
Halfway through cooking, remove the sweet potatoes from the oven and flip them over so that both sides will be crispy.
Makes 2-3 servings.
