The milk controversy, continued....
So, you all know that I have been doing a lot of self-education on nutrition lately as I try to figure out how to make my body work (the good news - I have drastically reduced the gassiness / bloating / etc that usually comes with eating. The bad news - I'm up like 10 lbs! So that's nearly 35 from my wedding day :-( ). I have switched to natural, grass fed meats when I can, I take natural enzyme supplements with my meals to help me break it all down (which my MD thinks is silly because the proteins provide all the enzymes I need, but they seem to work), and even though I have always been a good fruit and veggie eater I have upped my intake avocados and nuts, which I have always shunned due to fat content (especially since starting work at Frito-Lay, where I eat way more chips than ever - all fried in heart-healthy oils, though). And I have always been good at limiting my sugar consumption (although, I have had a recent upswing in my sugar intake, which I need to work on).
But the one piece that still confuses me is milk. So the hippies wanted me to try raw milk. I did the reading, and I can buy into why they want me to drink it. Except that it grosses me out because I don't have a cow whose udders I can clean every time I milk her or whose feed I can control, etc. The udders are just too close to the excretory organs for my taste, thankyouverymuch. So I stick with pasteurized. I tried to switch to organic, but that made Mike sick.
Well, I'm reading yet another book on nutrition (I swear, I should go get a second Ph.D. with all the research I have been doing.. this is WAY more interesting to me than solution thermodynamics!). This vilifies all cow's milks - pasteurized, raw, organic, etc. The starting rationale is that mammals drink their mothers' milk until a certain age and that's IT. They don't go and then start drinking the milk of other species. So right there it doesn't work with mother nature. But beyond that hippy-vegan-logic (which is kind of logical, I have to say), they site all these studies that show the ill effects of milk. They talk about how it causes cancer, IBS, blah blah blah. It's bad. It's poison. And that's when you're milking your own cows whose udders you have cleaned yourself. It's even worse with industrial farming. Cows get sick with a version of Crohn's Disease, which gives them explosive diahreah. Apparently lots of cattle pastures are effected. This makes the cows fire poop all over the place, including on their udders, and there is an acceptable limit of poop in US produced milk (as well as pus, which gets there when the udders get all sore and infected from the mechanical milkers). So it HAS to be pasteurized so you don't DIE from this nasty stuff.
I won't bore you with the details, but it has pretty much grossed me out. Which is unfortunate, because I really like milk and dairy products.
But then the authors go on to tout soy as a suitable replacement. Switch to soy milk products. Soy cheese. Soy ice cream. Soy, soy, soy. Umm... but soy is an endocrine disruptor unless it is fermented properly. It makes boys grow boobies and gives women ovarian cancer. I just read a book that went on and on about why having all this soy is stupid and will kill you. Many of you know all about this, so I won't go into it all. But it makes me question all of their milk theories, because filling our bodies with estrogen-mimics isn't good either.
And, of course, everything I read cites reliable sources. They all quote the sources. I really wish I knew the answer to the great milk debate. It makes me kind of want to go back to school full time and study nutrition, specifically milk and its effect on ______. Because I want to know what I need to do to make myself healthy.
Or maybe the answer really is MODERATION.
Of course, all of these hippy, holistic nutrition books have one thing in common, and that is that they vilify the food industry. They say that the food industry makes up lies so that you buy their products. I just don't think that is true anymore. Maybe one day it was, but it's really not now. Maybe I'm biased because I work in the food industry. But at Frito-Lay we do a lot of work around understanding nutrition, we do more of it every year. We do studies on healthy oils, on plant sterols, etc. The studies are sound. We have people with Ph.D.s in nutrition devising the studies. We have a medical doctor as our CSO. And, yes, we all stand to profit when people eat more Lay's. But they really are just potatoes that are sliced and fried in sunflower oil (or sometimes a blend of sunflower and corn oil) and seasoned with salt. I have seen it with my own eyes. I'll be doing some process testing tomorrow to see if I can convince those buggers to soak up less of the oil. But these books will tell you otherwise, which makes invalidates them for me in the first place. But then, what do they stand to gain by vilifying the food industry? It's not as though they are getting kick backs from orange growers (I don't think, anyway).
Anyway, rant done!
But the one piece that still confuses me is milk. So the hippies wanted me to try raw milk. I did the reading, and I can buy into why they want me to drink it. Except that it grosses me out because I don't have a cow whose udders I can clean every time I milk her or whose feed I can control, etc. The udders are just too close to the excretory organs for my taste, thankyouverymuch. So I stick with pasteurized. I tried to switch to organic, but that made Mike sick.
Well, I'm reading yet another book on nutrition (I swear, I should go get a second Ph.D. with all the research I have been doing.. this is WAY more interesting to me than solution thermodynamics!). This vilifies all cow's milks - pasteurized, raw, organic, etc. The starting rationale is that mammals drink their mothers' milk until a certain age and that's IT. They don't go and then start drinking the milk of other species. So right there it doesn't work with mother nature. But beyond that hippy-vegan-logic (which is kind of logical, I have to say), they site all these studies that show the ill effects of milk. They talk about how it causes cancer, IBS, blah blah blah. It's bad. It's poison. And that's when you're milking your own cows whose udders you have cleaned yourself. It's even worse with industrial farming. Cows get sick with a version of Crohn's Disease, which gives them explosive diahreah. Apparently lots of cattle pastures are effected. This makes the cows fire poop all over the place, including on their udders, and there is an acceptable limit of poop in US produced milk (as well as pus, which gets there when the udders get all sore and infected from the mechanical milkers). So it HAS to be pasteurized so you don't DIE from this nasty stuff.
I won't bore you with the details, but it has pretty much grossed me out. Which is unfortunate, because I really like milk and dairy products.
But then the authors go on to tout soy as a suitable replacement. Switch to soy milk products. Soy cheese. Soy ice cream. Soy, soy, soy. Umm... but soy is an endocrine disruptor unless it is fermented properly. It makes boys grow boobies and gives women ovarian cancer. I just read a book that went on and on about why having all this soy is stupid and will kill you. Many of you know all about this, so I won't go into it all. But it makes me question all of their milk theories, because filling our bodies with estrogen-mimics isn't good either.
And, of course, everything I read cites reliable sources. They all quote the sources. I really wish I knew the answer to the great milk debate. It makes me kind of want to go back to school full time and study nutrition, specifically milk and its effect on ______. Because I want to know what I need to do to make myself healthy.
Or maybe the answer really is MODERATION.
Of course, all of these hippy, holistic nutrition books have one thing in common, and that is that they vilify the food industry. They say that the food industry makes up lies so that you buy their products. I just don't think that is true anymore. Maybe one day it was, but it's really not now. Maybe I'm biased because I work in the food industry. But at Frito-Lay we do a lot of work around understanding nutrition, we do more of it every year. We do studies on healthy oils, on plant sterols, etc. The studies are sound. We have people with Ph.D.s in nutrition devising the studies. We have a medical doctor as our CSO. And, yes, we all stand to profit when people eat more Lay's. But they really are just potatoes that are sliced and fried in sunflower oil (or sometimes a blend of sunflower and corn oil) and seasoned with salt. I have seen it with my own eyes. I'll be doing some process testing tomorrow to see if I can convince those buggers to soak up less of the oil. But these books will tell you otherwise, which makes invalidates them for me in the first place. But then, what do they stand to gain by vilifying the food industry? It's not as though they are getting kick backs from orange growers (I don't think, anyway).
Anyway, rant done!