We all loved a glass of milk as a child and it still has a fond place in my heart today, although no longer a place in my fridge. I am lucky (if you see it that way) as I tolerate milk and dairy well, in fact I seem to tolerate most food & drinks quite well. That being said when I discovered the Paleo diet & read and listened to a lot of the science behind how our bodies digest & process certain foods I had some choices to make; which foods to eat & which ones to avoid? Dairy is a bit of a grey area in Paleo-land with advocates for & against, it’s very much a personal choice.
I decided that I no longer needed milk in my diet & the only appreciable difference it’s made to my life is that I now drink tea & coffee black, which I have come to prefer. This brings me to the point of this posting, here in the UK we are in the middle of a series of protests by dairy producers who are up in arms about being squeezed by price cuts & increased feed costs which would cause them to make a loss on the milk they sell to the big supermarkets. Although I do understand that these farmers work hard & deserve adequate recompense for the job they do, I find it hard to be sympathetic when I hear farmers saying the cost of feeding their herds has increased because the price of soy & grain has gone up in price! Excuse me if I’m wrong but don’t cows naturally eat grass, that grows for free?
Sadly we are cutting quality for the sake of price & convenience which is one of the main reasons that I quit drinking milk. So why not give your tea & coffee a try without milk & see if you can live without it too?
This is the thing, we watch something like that and it sticks out to us that cows are not supposed to eat grains but for the average person, I guess that just washes over them.
Part of me feels sorry for the farmers, they have made a deal with the supermarket devils and now they are paying the price with these bully boy tactics but overall, if it means they have to find a cheaper (worse) way to feed these animals, it is the public that suffers with further reduced food quality and god knows, grain fed milk products are bad enough as it is.
Standard supermarket milk is pasteurised (heated) for a short period to extend shelf life (profit) and this kills the beneficial bacteria (probiotics). To make up for this, we now have an industry selling probiotic yogurts that are loaded with sugar and some probiotic bacteria artificially inserted – yes, the world has gone crazy.
Folks, you have the power to push for a change, at the very least buy organic milk and ideally go for grass fed organic milk and even better still, raw milk and always, always, always go for full fat milk and cheese products.
There is a great break down of milk products here that looks at bad, average, good and best milk products: http://www.naturalfoodfinder.co.uk/dairy-eggs
Marcus