Note to My Most Stubborn Self
Madam Persnickety-Pants: You are in Europe. Henceforth into perpetuity, when ordering a latte while visiting here – you must come to understand there is only one kind of milk – it’s called MILK. It’s not 2%, fat free, almond, coconut or soy – just plain old, whole milk from the mature female of a brown-eyed bovine animal, not unlike what was served in Frankfurt, Milan and Rome, and to you when you were an unassuming, snot-nosed kid after playing in the dirt of Northern Indiana. So, stop asking for something new in your froth, because the subsequent disappointed pout is not becoming to a lady of your stature. Madam, here in Italy, MILK most certainly does not swing from a tree!
P.S. Milk Does Not Swing from a Tree, is a very good title for a picture book.
By Michael H. Tunick
Lipids (fats and oils) have historically been thought to elevate weight and blood cholesterol and have therefore been considered to have a negative influence on the body. Foods such as full-fat milk and cheese have been avoided by many consumers for this reason. This attitude has been changing in recent years. Some authors are now claiming that consumption of unnecessary carbohydrates rather than fat is responsible for the epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Most people who do consume milk, cheese, and yogurt know that the calcium helps with bones and teeth, but studies have shown that consumption of cheese and other dairy products appears to be beneficial in many other ways. Remember that cheese is a concentrated form of milk. Milk is 87% water and when it is processed into cheese, the nutrients are increased by a factor of ten. The positive attributes of milk are even stronger in cheese. Here are some examples involving protein:
Some bioactive peptides in casein (the primary protein in cheese) inhibit angiotensin-converting enzyme, which has been implicated in hypertension. Large studies have shown that dairy intake reduces blood pressure.
Cheese helps prevent tooth decay through a combination of bacterial inhibition and remineralization. Further, Lactoferrin, a minor milk protein found in cheese, has anticancer properties. It appears to keep cancer cells from proliferating.
Vitamins and minerals in cheese may not get enough credit. A meta-analysis of 16 studies showed that consumption of 200 g of cheese and other dairy products per day resulted in a 6% reduction of risk of T2DM, with a significant association between reduction of incidence of T2DM and intake of cheese, yogurt, and low-fat dairy products. Much of this may be due to vitamin K2, which is produced by bacteria in fermented dairy products.
Metabolic syndrome increases the risk for T2DM and heart disease, but research showed that the incidence of this syndrome decreased as dairy food consumption increased, a result that was associated with calcium intake.
There is evidence that lipids in cheese are not unhealthy after all. Recent research has shown no connection between the intake of milk fat and the risk of cardiovascular disease, coronary heart disease, or stroke. A meta-analysis of 76 studies concluded that the evidence does not clearly support guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.
Participants in a study who ate cheese and other dairy products at least once per day scored significantly higher in several tests of cognitive function compared with those who rarely or never consumed dairy food. These results appear to be due to a combination of factors.
Seemingly, the opposite of what people believe about cheese turns out to be the truth. Studies involving thousands of people over a period of years revealed that a high intake of dairy fat was associated with a lower risk of developing central obesity and a low dairy fat intake was associated with a higher risk of central obesity. Higher consumption of cheese has been associated with higher HDL (“good cholesterol”) and lower LDL (“bad cholesterol”), total cholesterol, and triglycerides.
All-cause mortality showed a reduction associated with dairy food intake in a meta-analysis of five studies in England and Wales covering 509,000 deaths in 2008. The authors concluded that there was a large mismatch between evidence from long-term studies and perceptions of harm from dairy foods.
Yes, some people are allergic to protein in cheese and others are vegetarians who don’t touch dairy products on principle. Many people can’t digest lactose (milk sugar) very well, but aged cheese contains little of it and lactose-free cheese has been on the market for years. But cheese is quite healthy for most consumers. Moderation in food consumption is always the key: as long as you eat cheese in reasonable amounts, you ought to have no ill effects while reaping the benefits.
Michael Tunick is a research chemist with the Dairy and Functional Foods Research Unit of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. He is the author of The Science of Cheese. You can find out more things you never knew about cheese.
Chemistry Book Giveaway! In time for the 2014 American Chemical Society fall meeting and in honor of the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Food Fermentations, edited by Charles W. Bamforth and Robert E. Ward, Oxford University Press is running a paired giveaway with this new handbook and Charles Bamforth’s other must-read book, the third edition of Beer. The sweepstakes ends on Thursday, August 14th at 5:30 p.m. EST.
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Image credit: Hand milking a cow, by the State Library of Australia. CC-BY-2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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By Martin Luck
A recent edition of BBC Radio 4′s On Your Farm programme spoke to a dairy farmer who supplies colostrum to athletes as a food supplement.
Colostrum is the first milk secreted by a mother. Cow colostrum is quite different from normal cow’s milk: it has about four times as much protein, twice as much fat, and half as much lactose (sugar). It is especially rich in the mother’s antibodies (IgG and IgM), providing the newborn calf with passive immunity before its own immune system gets going.
People who take colostrum believe it has health and performance benefits. It’s said to reduce muscle recovery time after intense training, maintain gut integrity against the heat stress of exercise, and assist recovery from illness and surgery. The radio programme spoke to cyclists, rugby players, footballers, runners, and others convinced of its value and who are prepared to pay the significant premium which colostrum commands over ordinary milk.
Unfortunately, the scientific evidence for these effects is rather poor, especially on the health side. Nutritional and clinical scientists who have reviewed the research literature report a lack of well-designed and reliable trials. There is some evidence for enhanced speed and endurance and for increased strength in older people undertaking resistance training, but many studies show equivocal or unconvincing results. So for the moment, it’s probably safest to describe the benefits of colostrum consumption as anecdotal.
Colostrum undoubtedly contains some hormones and growth factors in higher amounts than in normal milk. Levels of insulin and IGF-1 can be eight times higher in colostrum, especially during the first few hours after calving. Growth hormone is also present at this time, and disappears later. Other hormones, including prolactin, cortisol, vitamin D and a range of growth factors (hormones controlling cell division and maturation), also occur at relatively high amounts in colostrum.
Colostrum cakes
These hormones all have well known biological effects in the body, but finding them in colostrum doesn’t necessarily mean that they will be active when it is consumed in the diet. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, protein hormones like insulin and IGF-1 get broken down in the gut and are unlikely to be absorbed in an active state. (If the reverse were true, diabetics could take insulin in pill form rather than injections.) Secondly, naturally-secreted hormones generally work in concentration-related ways, appearing in the blood as repeated pulses with which their receptors become coordinated. This pattern is unlikely to be replicated by pouring colostrum over the breakfast cornflakes.
Nevertheless, the possibility that colostrum is a source of potentially performance enhancing bioactive materials has been considered by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Many hormones and growth factors including insulin, IGF-1, cortisol and Growth Hormone, appear in their list of prohibited substances. So could colostrum make athletes fall foul of the regulations? The WADA website advises that although colostrum is not banned, its growth factor content “could influence the outcome of anti-doping tests” and its consumption is not recommended.
Aside from efficacy, colostrum poses a wider, ethical question: when does a natural food product become an artificial supplement? At one extreme, it might be feasible to extract the active ingredients and take them as a training aid or performance enhancer. At the other, perhaps as recognised by WADA, one might happen to consume colostrum as a food without intending to benefit unduly from it. Somewhere in between would be the deliberate consumption of colostrum knowing that it contains potentially beneficial components.
But then why is that different from, say, increasing ones intake of protein or energy to support a higher level of athletic performance? Neither whey protein nor glucose, nor for that matter caffeine or bananas, appear in WADA’s prohibited list, yet they all have their place in the training and performance regimes of many athletes and sports men and women.
Identifying hormones as discrete, potentially bioactive chemical components of food seems to encourage the drawing of a false line along this continuum. No one condones cheating or the gaining of unfair advantage, but it is not clear why one food product should be restricted when another is not, especially when it is available to all and has no identified side effects.
But this brings us back to the question of efficacy? Does colostrum really work? If it could be shown that it does and if it were made widely available as a food item, there is no doubt that all athletes would use it. This might make the doping authorities review their position, although it could mean, of course, that no one is really advantaged (just as being tall brings no gain when playing basketball against others selected for their height).
To find out if colostrum really does work, many more well-designed, high quality, double blind placebo-controlled trials would be necessary. Such investigations are expensive and difficult and few organisations will have the expertise or resources to devote to something which, as a completely natural product, is unlikely to bring commercial gain. But this is the problem with many food supplements and so-called superfoods (and partly explains why health food shops abound in the high street).
In the end, people use food supplements because they believe them to work, not because there is much reliable evidence that they do. And perhaps this, in turn, means that there is no legitimate reason for banning their use.
Based at the University of Nottingham as a Professor of Physiological Education, Martin Luck is the author of Hormones: A Very Short Introduction. He was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship by the Higher Education Academy in 2011.
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Image credit: Colostrum cakes, by Surya Prakash.S.A., CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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I have to say, these last three months have not been easy. I had to drink water, milk and other stuff besides my beloved soft drinks. What a serious “first world” problem. Right? And until I started writing this post, I was really proud of myself for giving up the soft drinks for three whole […]
i LOVE this piece and am enjoying EVERY second of painting it!:) ok...so as well all know, i am the world's worst photographer;) took this pic with my phone really quick so the colors are a bit "off". but, i'm getting there...:) can't wait to finish it!!!
ok...this could be one of my new favorites:) this is a sketch for a comissioned piece for the cousin of the little girl's room i just finished up last week-isabelle.
http://theenchantedeasel.blogspot.com/2011/02/isabelles-roomall-done.html
thank so much to liz for asking me to now adorn her niece's room with my work. i am beyond excited to do another piece for this wonderful family!:)
*a few background notes about this piece-mailee loves loves loves cows! her room is pink and brown AND they used to live in washington d.c.*
so i couldn't resist the cherry blossom trees (which are my favorite) and a sweet little pink and brown stuffed cow. besides, what little girl doesn't absolutely love to have tea parties with her stuffed animals/dolls?! i am super excited to start painting this in the next couple of days...:)
Well, I think I've "Milk"ed this James Franco thing all I can. For now, ciao, James Franco, and good luck with all your endeavors.
"Ya gotta give 'em hope." - Harvey Milk
Comments welcome! =)
Today at HarperTeen's MySpace I'm blogging about weather and how it shapes my prose. A subject I likely would not have razzled up for consideration had not the ever-dear Lisa Bishop written earlier in the week and said, "How about a blog entry for our site?" Lisa and I spend most of our email time talking about movies. I just saw "Milk." She just saw "Slumdog Millionaire" and "Frost/Nixon" (both high on my list of wanna sees). Today she was telling me about "Happy Go Lucky." I hadn't known about that movie until she told me.
Imagine all the things I do not know. Oh. It pains me to imagine.
In any case, the world here went from snow to sleet to rain (to many people without power), and while I tried to capture the metamorphosis with my camera, I failed. Everything gray, meaning everything bleak, meaning no contrasts, which is what a photo needs. When I can't capture my world, I have a harder time feeling as if I've lived it. I want to go back and do the day again. Give me some vivid, I plead with someone, something. Give me some something to hold onto.
Tomorrow is another day. I'll go back out there. Intrepid.
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Great goal! Right now, I’m pretty much committed to care-giving, but I *will* spread the word–and the blog. Don’t you just love how putting black marks down on paper lets us see our thoughts and know them, sometimes for the very first time? Yeah.
Donna, I DO understand. I recently did the same thing with drinks. I trought the artificial sugar was impeding my diet. I thought it wasn’t good for my kidneys. I thought the caffeine wasn’t Healthy. So I started drinking club soda and when I went back to have a diet Dr Pepper, it just didn’t taste as good. I’m so glad that I switched.
Digging wells for water sounds like a great idea. Please keep me posted on this project.
Joy
Sent from my iPad
Donna,
What a great cause! Fresh well water–what a precious gift. What a great mission. Go for it!
Glad to know we’re in this together!
I’ll keep you updated on the 5K!
Thank you, Linda, for the encouragement!!
Thank you for sharing this on FB and with your friends. You are in my thoughts, my friend. And I appreciate your encouragement and spreading the word!!
Hi, Donna!
Nice to see you again at the SCBWI conference this year!
What a great challenge for yourself. If I lived closer, I would definitely participate in the 5k as a runner. Will this be the first year ever for the racing event? Have you read the true story in a pb about Ryan from Canada who raised enough money to build a well in Africa? It’s awesome. My son, who is 9, is so impressed by Ryan’s actions and motivations.
Would you be willing and able to answer a few interview questions for my blog feature, High Five? I’d need the answers by Friday the 4th around 8pm at the latest. I can e-mail the questions to you in a Word.docx attachment. Just let me know.
Also, how do you go about becoming a speaker for a breakout session at SCBWI? I’m interested in doing that for probably 2015 (*maybe* 2014). You can e-mail me at wildbike @ netzero . com. Thanks!!!
Dear Donna,
Walking to help others, also helps you get fit. Celebrate you and your sense of humor and your compassion for others.
I am so proud of you, Donna! Definitely let us know the details of your 5k run/walk when you get it planned. I would love to participate in some capacity!