Dairy Products and Human Health/Diet?

[SpyderEdgeForever]

I admit, I really do like dairy products. Cheese and yogurt and icecream, and others. But over the years I have discussed, heard, and read all sides and all levels of the spectrum, from the big dairy advocates and dairy farm folks, as well as doctors, who insist that dairy products (cow based as well as goat and others) are not only healthy but needful for properly balanced human diets....all the way to the other extreme who attack dairy and have even cited papers and claims to me that "dairy and milk are poison to humans" and "milk is for baby cows, not mankind." (aside from the animal rights' arguments, mind you.)

Where do you all think the balance is? There is definitely lactose intolerance where a person can get ill and stomach pain from consuming dairy, and there are alternatives to lactose for these people, and, I have heard that goat cheese and milk is easier to digest than cow milk and cheese.

Also, there is this "Paleo Diet" that tells people to eat the foods humans ate pre Agriculture, ie, the "cave man days diet" and a lot of the breads and dairy and sugars and such that many in the Western hemisphere have grown up with would be out.

I welcome all views and takes on this.

I also keep in mind what has been said before: There is no truly "unhealthy" food, it depends on the person's body and metabolism, activity levels, and so on.

[The Deacon]

Between germs, chemicals, and allergies, eating is a risky business. Unfortunately, the only alternative is starvation which is not much fun either. Lots of things, dairy included, are "good" for you (or, more accurately, are convenient ways to ingest vitamins, minerals, and proteins that are good for you). That is, unless you're allergic to them, in which case they can kill you. Most things eaten in excess, are bad for you and dairy is no exception in that regard.

As for the rest, opinions are like assholes, everybody has one and a lot of them stink.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Great point, Deacon. I remember a nutritionist told me (and others have also voiced this on this here forum) that certain food items are better at transporting needed nutrients into our bodies than others.

[tvenuto]

My opinion is quite unlike my *******: well considered, the product of a lot of experimentation, professional, and open to modification as new data presents itself. I've yet to meet such an *******. Also note that none of this is specific heath advice, just my opinion based on clients I work with daily, my readings of both studies and digestions of studies, and my own experimentation on myself.

As you said, "health" is not a quality that a food possesses, and every dietary decision must be viewed in the light of the goals, current state, and all other relevant dietary decisions of the individual in question, with a healthy dash of noticing how the ingredient actually effects said individual.

Milk is a substance produced with the express goal of containing all the nutrients needed to turn a small animal into a larger one. It both contains and stimulates the production of IGF-1, known as "insulin-like growth factor." Growth of tissue is often an inflammatory process. Aside from whole milk, dairy products have modified the macronutrient (protein/carb/fat) content of the original milk. Cheese is largely the protein and fat, with the carbohydrate (sugar, which is primarily lactose but contains other forms as well) being fermented out. Butter is largely the fat, with the sugar and protein staying dissolved in the buttermilk that is left behind. Skim milk is the protein and sugar, with the fat having been removed for some silly reason.

So, given those facts, we can address some of the questions at hand.

Q: Should you eat dairy at all?
A: Maybe. You should remove it completely for a period of time (2 weeks or so) and then add it back to see how it affects you. Do you notice that your nose runs more? Are seasonal allergies or asthma worsened? Do you get acne? Do you get stomach pains or other gastrointestinal distress? Do you fart so much your friends and family abandon you? If the answer to any of these is "yes" then you may be allergic to the protein (primarily casein) or be unable to digest the lactose. If that is so, the best thing to do is just stop eating dairy. You can deal with the symptoms, but it's not worth it in the long run.

If the answer to the above questions is "no" then you have further considerations. Do you want to lose weight? If so, remember the express purpose of milk, and consider how that might be hindering your goal of doing so. Are you relying on dairy as a main protein source? If so, remember that it often comes with carbohydrates and fat, and thus your goal (if it is a goal) of "getting more protein" might not actually be changing your macronutrient ratios in the way you think it is.

Q: Should people eat dairy at all?
A: Yes, at least as an infant. You drink it from your mother after birth, and this process sets you up very well in the following ways: you borrow your mothers immune system, you populate your gut flora, you have to work a bit for your food, etc. There is a period of time where rapid growth, and the associated inflammation, is not an issue. There are rare conditions that don't allow infants to drink breastmilk, but in any other scenario I think it is only a positive, albeit inconvenient and possibly stressful, practice.

Q: After infancy, should people eat dairy at all?
A: I am loathe to give a completely general opinion, since I believe there are many workable diets for a given person that support their goals, and many of those can include dairy. However, thanks to the milk moustache campaign, I do think that people drink/eat too much dairy, and view it as a "health food." Here's why:

In general, most of the population is dealing with an already inflammatory diet that dairy is exacerbating. Almost all maladies that we deal with can be traced back to inflammatory processes, and in general, limiting detrimental and systemic inflammation should be a prime focus of the diet. Drug companies are all too happy to let you live in inflammation only to interrupt it chemically via drugs later, to your detriment. What's just face-palm worthy is that the medical establishment knows exactly what foods are inflammatory, and seem to only want you to worry about it in specific circumstances, like if you have arthritis.

I think that more people than estimated are living with lower level dairy allergies that turn to seasonal allergy medicine (huuuuuuge moneymaker) in lieu of removing other allergens from the diet. And allergens, you guessed it, cause inflammation.

Most people are "overfat." If you're trying to change your body composition, and lower your bodyfat %, then dairy isn't the best choice. Those ads claimed it was good for something called "weight maintenance," but I actually have no idea what that means, and wasn't aware people in America were wasting away. What I am sure of is those ads were purely designed for the "income maintenance" of the dairy industry, which is perfectly fine, but needs to be remembered when they seem to imply some sort of health outcome.

Many dairy products, especially hard cheeses, can contribute to what is known as "renal acid load." The cliffs notes is that your kidneys are responsible for maintaining the acid/base balance of your body, and your diet either contributes acidic or basic load to your kidneys. Neither is "better," but if your diet is net acidic, then your kidneys are forced to balance this by stripping calcium ions to make up the difference. Where is the calcium? In your bones! So if you've taken a minute to reflect, yes, there is a grand irony of dairy being viewed as the bone's savior, what with its calcium content, when it may actually be contributing to their deminineralization. Of course, this falls under "what else are you eating," but for the general population, the answer is "acid load foods" (which doesn't mean "acidic foods" because fruits that contain acid are often basic contributors to the kidneys). Here's a list of some acid/base foods, and a quick explanation on acid/base balance.

[awa54]

tvenuto, are the acid/base values still predicated on combustion byproducts? I thought that there was still a fair amount of debate about how analogous that model was to actual metabolism of the foods...

Thanks for the info and the links!

[tvenuto]

My understanding is that they've developed more logically sound methods of determining it, see here for a discussion on it. As you mention, ash analysis does not take into account the "bioavailability" of the nutrients in question. While ash analysis does give us a fairly reliable idea of the potential energy content we might be extracting from our food, it doesn't take into account several important factors.

First, not all of your food is turned into energy. We tend to look at eating as analogous to "filling up the gas tank," but that is wrong in many ways. First, the food we eat also goes to repairing the system, and generating all of the chemical processes that we require to stay alive. Fueling muscular and brain activity (in the form of glucose) is only one of the many things our food does for us.

Second, and this is the point you're alluding to, not all chemical formulations are treated equally by our bodies. For example, all proteins are not equally digested and incorporated into our bodies. Some actually resist digestion, and it's not hard to imagine why. Animals have teeth to bite you, claws to scratch you, and legs to run away from you. If you defeat these defenses, and kill the animal, its fight is exhausted and it will surrender its nutrients to you without further fuss. Plants, on the other hand, craft their defenses in the chemical realm. If the reproductive parts of a plant were good nutrition, animals would catch on and the plant would die out. Thus, many plants incorporated ways of preventing you from digesting the life-necessary proteins within their reproductive parts. As humans, we've developed methods to extract as much nutrition out of these plants as possible (fermenting, as in tofu, or soaking in lye, as in hominy), but those measures are built of necessity rather than being ideal. In fact, we are probably the first culture in history to put plant protein on equal footing with animal protein. Thanks, science!

Though, to me, Renal Acid Load is not, in and of itself, a reason to eat a certain way. Rather it is yet further evidence that I am on the right track with my dietary thinking. Before I had ever heard of RAL, I was already eating in a way that largely balanced the "acidic" and "basic" contributors. Just like the statement "we didn't evolve to eat grains" is not, in and of itself, compelling evidence to eat a certain way. It's a starting point from which to gather information by asking in the questions: what ingredients does this line of thinking incorporate/exclude and what would be the costs/benefits of either.

[Doc Dan]

Dairy is good for you and every nutritionist and food specialist I know recommends some form of dairy, whether cow or goat, etc. Milk is a good source of nutrients and essential fats. Too much of anything is not good, however, and the same can be true for dairy.
Now if a person allergic to dairy or is lactose intolerant, then it should be avoided. However, in the case of lactose intolerance, adding a bit of live culture yogurt slowly, in small amounts, to the diet will correct this problem, usually. The bacteria in the yogurt produces exactly what the body can't in order to digest the lactose.

[tvenuto]

[SG89]

Thank you for the links tvenuto. I am trying to read everything I can to learn more about foods that cause inflammation.

[tvenuto]

Thank you for the links tvenuto. I am trying to read everything I can to learn more about foods that cause inflammation.

No problem, Marks Daily Apple is another good resource. His book "the Primal Blueprint" is a good read and very practically oriented.