Lately a lot of people have been asking me if I eat dairy products and if not, what is the reason behind my decision. Probably a lot of you are wondering why I haven’t written a post about dairy. I often know what you’d like to read, but I still do not write a post about it, because I need to decide what I’d like to share with you and what is just a useless information, which some of you will take too seriously and will risk losing the whole picture, focusing too much on the little fragments.
And after all do I eat dairy products?
Not very often, besides the butter! And it really depends on the type of the dairy product. I would rarely buy a dairy product from the supermarket, first, because since I’ve been eating just clean, real food, my taste has changed a lot and I really can taste when the food is with high quality and when it is fake. The taste of fake foods does not appeal to me at all and foods that I used to eat back in the days, without even giving it a thought, nowadays seem so tasteless.
For me milk and yogurt, bought from the supermarket are everything else, but dairy products. I don’t mean just the quality, but the taste as well.
When do I eat dairy? In the summer my grandma makes homemade, sheep yogurt and cheese ( not quite sure it is called sheep yogurt in English, but I mean that the milk is from sheep). I find them to be delicious ( especially the cheese). In this case I might add some cheese to my omelets, but still it is not the type of food I would eat in excess.
Milk has never been a favorite of mine, but still, if it is from a farm I would be more than glad to eat the cream on top! 😉
So what are the reasons to avoid dairy products?
Milk undoubtedly has its place in a human’s diet. The question is, if its place is not just until a particular age. What do I mean? One of the problems with milk is with lactose or in other words the sugar in milk. In order to digest lactose, we need the enzyme lactase, which is being produced in kids until the age of 4-5. Then the production of this enzyme, is being down regulated by genes.
This leads to a bunch of questions, who don’t have a single answer.
Some people tolerate lactose even when they grow older and obviously they do not feel discomfort from eating dairy products. But still, a big percent of the population has lactose intolerance and eating dairy products leads to gas, feeling of sluggishness and so forth.
Nowadays, when we keep in mind the junk food, which is the base of most people’s diets, it is really hard to notice these “side effects” from the consumption of a particular food. That’s why in such cases, you could try the elimination diet, where you would limit your food intake to just paleo foods ( the foods that are considered to be the staple of the diet on which men have evolved) and then, one by one start including other food groups. You will have to note how each new food group is making you feel.
This is the only way to understand how a particular food is influencing your health.
Back in the past, when I did not eat the way I do now, I have never thought what an impact my nutrition could have on the way I feel… just because I have never had the base for comparison and this was the way I always felt, so I accepted it as just normal.
But then it turned out that it is not normal and that food is one of the most important things, we should pay attention to.
After all… milk is without doubt nutritious. It is no coincidence that all baby, mammals consume it.
The other problem with milk is casein. Casein is the protein in milk. How does it harm you? As a matter of fact casein resembles gluten ( the protein in grains), and as you know it leads to health problems, such as the leaky gut syndrome. ( I wrote about it HERE).
The problem with establishing a single opinion once again comes up to the way the researches are conducted. Why? Because most researches are made on the base of dairy products from supermarkets, which are processed and with low fat, which immediately lowers the quality of the products and changes the way the body digests them.
Here , you can read more about how proteins in milk could harm you, but in case they are separated from the natural fats in milk. I.e. low fat milks could really harm you, but things are not the same when it comes to whole fat milk.
Besides that milk is insulinogenic, which means that it increase insulin. As you know insulin is a vital hormone for the human body, but its chronic high levels, lead to health problems, like insulin resistance, followed by diabetes.
Besides that if you dig deeper in the literature, where the topic about dairy is discussed, you will find a lot of information about the breed of the cows, that give the milk. Can you imagine that! Why is that? I won’t bother you with a lot of information about this, I will just mention that it has to do with a mutation, which leads to a change in the chain of amino acids which build the proteins in milk. Then, this leads to a change in the chemical reactions, which happen in the body. I guess that there is no need to mention that nowadays, the milk comes exactly from the breeds of cows, which have that mutation. If you’d like to read more about it check out THIS!
Besides that low fat, dairy products often cause skin problems, because when the fat is being derived, the quality of the milk is lower, the fat soluble vitamin A, can not be absorbed and this leads to negative consequences.
And after all my advice would be as follows. First, make sure that you excluded all modern, supermarket foods. Take out the grains from your diet and then worry about dairy.
If you’ve decided that dairy products will be present in your menu, try buying them from local farms, or in other words buy homemade dairy products.
Do not over consume milk. If you eat dairy, eat more cheese, butter and cream and not the other derivatives.
Milk is best when it is raw, because raw milk has the enzyme lactase, which is needed for the digestion of lactose, as well as other good stuff, which are being “killed” when you heat the milk. But because raw milk, could be the topic of a couple books with a lot of controversy opinions, I won’t dig deeper into the details.
I will just mention that milk from goats and sheep are better than cow milk. Goat milk is consider to be the closer to the “human” milk, which means that we have higher tolerance towards it.
If you eat dairy, do not buy them from the supermarket and stay away from low fat products. As I’ve said before, it is not coincidence that particular foods, contain a given amount of macro and micro nutrients. Probably they are best digested and absorbed in exactly these proportions!
You could read a lot on the topic, go through different researches, compare and analyze them, but always believe the most on your personal experience.
And my personal experience is as follows. Dairy products are not a big part of my nutrition. First, because I don’t find them that tasty, besides the homemade cheese. Second, dairy do not satiate me the way eggs and meat do. And third, I feel a lot better when I do not eat dairy products and even though I can’t say I am intolerant to them, I am better without dairy.
And in conclusion I will tell you that you could limit dairy products and you will definitely feel better. But still. If you love them that much, eat some, especially if they are homemade, but in reasonable quantities. And please do not become maniac. Look at the big picture and do not get stuck into details! Do me a favor and the next time when you decide to eat dairy, DO NOT ASK what was the breed of the cow!
More on the topic:
Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry
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