Milk, All Species & Types

Being a World War II baby, I spent the first fifteen years of my life on food rations. It is said that we are the "lucky" generation: Many unhealthy foods like sugar, bacon, pork, beef, milk, butter, fat, cakes, and even bread were strictly rationed. Meanwhile, we could eat as much as we liked of cabbage, onions, and turnips!

Milk is simply not human food and is harmful to our biochemistry. The milk of almonds (and other nuts) is a great alternative to regular milk, particularly in cookery. However, soy milk must be avoided. Fruit juices, even when freshly made, are glycemic— for this reason, they get the "Amber" classification. It is much better to eat the fruit itself. Watch out for tomato juice: Choose brands that are made from pure tomatoes and have no salt. Sugar-sweetened carbonated drinks and colas are high-glycemic and disrupt bone building.

One cup is one serving of water, milk, or nut milk.

if your infant is not drinking m other's milk or formula milk, then the only other beverage he or she should have is plain water. Will any kind of water do? Tap water, unjustly, is much maligned and is quite safe to use when boiled. For all young babies, you should boil the water anyway. For the cautious, by all means buy bottled water. Avoid the high-sodium brands and varieties that are flavored with sugars. Distilled water is the safest. Juiced non-starchy vegetables are fine, but avoid carrot juice and fruit juices— they give a sugar rush and help rot teeth. As for packaged drinks, be ultra-suspicious. Read the fine print, as they are almost always loaded with sugar and other harmful substances. Don't even think of giving your child colas and other carbonated drinks. Get your child to accept water as the normal thirst-quencher.

in 1942, the USDA issued a new food guide that reduced the number of food groups to what they called the "Basic Seven." These were: green and yellow vegetables; oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit; potatoes and other vegetables and fruit; milk and milk products; meat, poultry, fish, eggs, and dried peas and beans; bread, flour, and cereals; and butter and fortified margarine.

In 1956, the "Basic Seven" groups were condensed to the "Basic Four": milk and milk products; meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dry beans, and nuts; fruits and vegetables; and grains. This time the "green and yellow vegetables" group has disappeared. "Butter and fortified margarine" has been dropped. "Oranges, tomatoes, and grapefruit" are lumped into the catch-all category "fruits and vegetables."

They were early Europeans who lived in the treeless plains of what is now the eastern Ukraine. By 4000 B.C., these people had learned to keep herds of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats. However, under the sparse conditions of the steppe, a migratory way of life became necessary. The animals consumed the grass faster than it could grow, so the herders had to keep their animals moving in search of new pastures and, as a consequence, abandon planting. This was the first time that human beings learned to live largely from their animals. In practice, this meant consuming the only renewable resource: milk, cheese, and other dairy products. To do that, they had to tame mother animals that had just given birth to a calf to allow milking by human hand. By about 2000 B.C., the herders had mastered their techniques and, constantly in search of new pastures, these nomads infiltrated much of northwest Europe, carrying the practice of dairy farming with them.

. . . Slavs, Germans, Scandinavians, and Anglo-Saxons became dairy farmers . . . , focusing on the cow. Some parts of southern Europe adopted, in a minor way, sheep's milk and goat's milk. Roquefort cheese is made from sheep's milk in Toulouse, France, and the Greeks use goat's milk to make feta cheese. To the east, the Mongols took up the practice of dairying with the yak (a kind of massive ox).

The unhealthy properties of milk fat are now mostly accepted. We are told that fat-free milk is good for us and it is even better to stay away from cream, butter, and ice cream. For many years now, the connection between these foods and high cholesterol, heart disease, strokes, and hardening of the arteries has been well known. Scientific findings show that dairy consumption from any source (cow, goat, sheep) and in any form (including skimmed milk, cheese, and yogurt) is associated with a number of serious, slow-acting diseases, including osteoporosis, high cholesterol, cancers, allergies, heart disease, and obesity. The notion that dairy products cause osteoporosis is so contrary to conventional nutritional dogma that it needs solid justification.

Our species, like most on the planet, are designed to get most of their liquid intake from water. Until recent times, that was still the case for us, even in the West. But we have seen the rise of alternative drinks, which have come along just in the average grandparent's lifetime. Setting aside wine, distilled spirits, and liqueurs, which are not thirst quenchers, what are we now consuming instead of water? When we add up the figures for beer, tea, coffee, cocoa, soft drinks, juices, and milk, we find that the average American is consuming, in a year, 150 gallons of liquid that is not plain water— that comes to 3.25 pints per day!

Professor Serge Renaud dug deeper and found that there were strong regional differences. In Toulouse, in the southwest of France, a Mediterranean-type diet was practised. While not consuming much olive oil, the Toulousains did use duck and goose fat rather than butter. He found that they drank red wine copiously— up to one bottle per person per day (it is the Bordeaux region after all). In contrast, in the northern city of Strasbourg, on the border with Germany, the diet is more "Anglo-Saxon": the population drank much more milk, used butter for everything, and drank beer rather than wine.

What causes an allergen disease? Pollen? Cat dander? Shellfish? Peanuts? These are some of the answers likely to be given by the average person, yet he or she would be wrong. All of these substances certainly have strong links to allergic reaction. Indeed, allergy counselors would add milk, soy, and wheat to the list. However these cannot be root causes. If so, everyone would suffer from allergen disease. The root problem is not the triggers (pollen, peanuts, etc.), but a failure of the body's defenses, the immune system.