(…and the reason I don’t use soy milk either)
It was another crazy busy day in Mama and Mia land. The whole family over-slept the alarm this morning, which led to a crazy morning of Ferris-wheel baby—you know, when your kid gets to ride round and round the wheel of being set down and picked up, handed to another parent, set down, picked up, another hand off, and around she goes! Daddy had to dash to work, and Mia and I showed up fashionably late to a Meeting of the Moms get-together on co-sleeping, held by the local attachment parenting group.
The talk on co-sleeping was interesting, but like most MoM get-togethers (or any play date for that matter), the topic strayed to all things parenting. Almost everyone had seen the article from huffingtonpost.com that made the rounds on Facebook yesterday. (The article can be found here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-robbins/female-infants-growing-br_b_676402.html). It talks about infants (girls and boys, although the headline only mentions girls) in China who grew breasts from exposure to hormones in formula. The experts’ best guess is that the guilty hormones originated from dairy cows. The article voices some concern that affected products may be making their way into the US food supply, or that similar US products may also have the potential to reprogram the development of our local young. All of this was, of course, fodder for discussion among moms with infants.
For the better part of an hour, we sat there and had the milk discussion. All the children in the group are (or were) breastfed. And while we were all relieved to have breastfed our babies, everyone was concerned about exposure from other sources (besides formulas), like cheese, milk, and yogurt.
Now, I realize that I’m a food nerd. Or maybe a nutri-nut. And like all nutri-nuts, I make a hobby of reading articles and studies on nutrition. And, I have strong opinions about the food I eat. One of the things I am passionate about when it comes to the better health I’ve worked so hard to achieve is milk. Milk origin, quality, production, processing, and substitutes: You name it, I’m probably concerned about it. So, I had a lot to say on the topic. Some of it I said, some of it I saved for my blog.
Up until a few years before I got pregnant, I didn’t drink milk at all and only bought it when I absolutely had to have it for cooking. For the most part, I drank soy milk as a substitute. However, Brian and I were having trouble conceiving a child and I was advised to limit soy in my diet because it can increase estrogen production—and my estrogen levels were already elevated. With our fertility issues, cutting out soy made sense, even though it was no easy task. It is in nearly every processed health food product known to man. (The Weston Price Foundation has put together an overview of some of the worries about soy, which happen to be a great summary of the same points I found in my reading. You can check them out here: http://westonaprice.org/soy-alert.html and here http://www.westonaprice.org/soy-alert/266-myths-and-truths-about-soy.html. If you feel the WPF is too controversial, I suggest looking at the source research and statistics.) We did what we could to reduce our soy intake, but it was impossible to completely eliminate it and still eat store, factory and restaurant prepared foods.
About a year ago, I read an article that put me on the path to forever changing my mind about the type of milk products my family and I should be consuming. (The article can be found here: http://www.experiencelifemag.com/issues/september-2009/healthy-eating/skimming-the-truth.html). Up until then, we were skim, fat free, and low fat dairy all the way. Our dairy came from the store. I bought organic milk and yogurt, but not always organic cheese—organic is expensive and choices were limited.
We were already getting our food from a co-op at the time I read that article, but I had not yet started buying our milk straight from the dairy. The dairy only offered whole milk, and I’d been improving my diet and nutrition on the “switch to low-fat or no-fat dairy” advice for several years already. (Nevermind that the Dairy Council was forced to halt it's mega-star campaign to that effect as false advertising--it's message was strong and stuck around!) I was afraid I would backslide, gain weight, slip off the program, or something like that. In fact, I had been offered one of the extra gallons for free and had turned it down with a polite, “Oh, we don’t drink milk!” What I didn’t realize was that although there is good evidence that dairy is beneficial for losing weight, when it replaces other not-so-good-for-you options like soda, there really is no proof that low-fat or non-fat dairy is any better than whole dairy at doing so. In fact, some studies suggest whole milk products are better at helping you keep off weight. (For example, this Swedish study found a positive relationship between consuming whole milk products and lack of weight gain over a period of time http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/84/6/1481). Another factoid that assisted me in the decision to give local whole milk a try was the information that nearly all commercial dairy milk has puss in it because cows are over-milked (which is why they often need antibiotics)—Yeeeuck!! (Some people even suspect the soy in cow feed--which is added to increase milk production--as a source of those unwanted hormones!)
After poking around and doing some more reading, I decided to try out the whole milk from the co-op. At the time, I wasn’t thinking of using it as a drink. I had refused to drink milk since my pediatrician told my mom to temporarily take me off of it when I was two years old. He thought taking it out of my diet would resolve some digestive issues I was having, and it did. After that, I simply refused to start drinking it again. But, when we got our first order from the dairy I tried a sip of this unpasteurized*, non-homogonized milk, with cream naturally floating on top. It was so incredibly rich, smooth, and delicious that it wiped away more than thirty years of prejudice in my taste buds. I had never had anything like it and I was hooked.
Even after falling in love with the taste and texture, I was very apprehensive about making the switch from skim to whole. My weight loss of around 40lbs (at the time, it’s now over 60lbs) was hard won. But, perhaps foreshadowing what was to come in our family’s journey for health, I was persuaded that animal fats in dairy and meat were really only dangerous when consumed in the context of a diet filled with modern, processed foods. As the Experience Life magazine article points out, there is even evidence that those processed foods are more the culprits for increased cholesterol levels than animal fats ever have been.
So, milk was one of the first products to enter our growing no-processed zone. Through our small co-op we buy milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and cream from a small, family-run dairy. And, now that restaurant food isn’t mucking up our average, we consume 100% local, organic dairy products that come from humanely raised cows who are not fed soy, given hormones, or over-milked.
Since we made the switch, no one in our family has gained weight, had an increase in blood cholesterol, suffered from high blood pressure, or dropped dead from consuming sinfully good food. What I have noticed is that we are more satisfied with our dairy foods, we eat less food overall, and we are healthier. Mia, who loves to nibble on cheese and drink warm goat milk with a little vanilla bean, consistently wins the pediatrician’s smiles of approval for her healthy development.
When you see that most of my recipes call for whole dairy, including butter and cream, it’s not that I’ve forgotten that we are trying to improve our health as a family. We’ve made an informed and conscious decision to buy whole dairy from a trusted local source. Not only is it nutritious, but it has a personal touch. And I like that in my food. As a mom and self-proclaimed nutri-nut, it’s a decision I stand behind 100%. When I see articles about contamination in formula and commercial milk, it makes me feel good that I don’t have to wonder if any of our milk products might also be suspect. I also feel secure knowing the farmer who provides for our family.
Sarah
*Raw milk is highly controversial. Although I’m passionate about it, I’m not really trying to open up that discussion in this forum. It’s a very personal choice, and I think individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether or not they trust a local farmer and dairy (or their own cow) enough to drink it. It is worth noting that while many people in this country consume raw milk purchased from small, local farmers, vastly more people are affected by food born-illness from other USDA sanctioned food sources (like bagged salads and commercial peanut butter) than suffer any illness related to the rawness of their milk. Some news articles have featured very convincing profiles of people who have gotten sick from milk, but you may notice they do not give comparison coverage of of other food born illness outbreaks and do not put milk illness statistics in context of overall outbreak data.
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