Many people trying to implement the paleo way are confounded about milk. It's not paleo and could not have been, for two primary reasons:
- Try milking a wild animal.
- We were genetically programmed to lose the ability to digest lactose (milk sugar) in early childhood (weaning). What we refer to as "lactose intolerance" is actually the previous normal human state of affairs.
Here's a good overview of the whole issue, in USA Today.
Instead, people who are lactose intolerant can't digest the main sugar —lactose— found in milk. In normal humans, the enzyme that does so —lactase— stops being produced when the person is between two and five years old. The undigested sugars end up in the colon, where they begin to ferment, producing gas that can cause cramping, bloating, nausea, flatulence and diarrhea.
If you're American or European it's hard to realize this, but being able to digest milk as an adult is one weird genetic adaptation.
It's not normal. Somewhat less than 40% of people in the world retain the ability to digest lactose after childhood. The numbers are often given as close to 0% of Native Americans, 5% of Asians, 25% of African and Caribbean peoples, 50% of Mediterranean peoples and 90% of northern Europeans. Sweden has one of the world's highest percentages of lactase tolerant people.
Curiously, it now seems that the genetic mutation to allow lactose persistence took place independently in several populations (technically different genetic adaptations with similar end results), from 2,700 years ago in parts of Africa, to 7,500 years ago in the Balkans and Central Europe.
Now, to tie some things together and connect dots, there's this from Mail Online: White Europeans 'only evolved 5,500 years ago after food habits changed'. The idea is that the change from hunter-gatherer to agriculture is what drove a rapid evolution of skin color for those living at increasingly higher latitudes.
Scientists at the University of Oslo believe this change in diet may have led to our dark-skinned ancestors evolving paler skin to overcome this problem.
The link between skin colour and Vitamin D from sunlight has been suggested before.
It had previously been believed that our ancestors’ skin had gradually lightened to generate more Vitamin D the further north they moved away from the equator to places where there was less sunlight.
Now scientists believe that the change in their diet away from foods rich in Vitamin D also played a major factor in the skin lightening in colour.
And the particularly pale skins of people in Scandinavia may have evolved to maximise the amount of Vitamin D that could be produced, the research suggests.
If the theory is correct it would mean that until this period in history, the ancient inhabitants of Britain and Scandinavia - our ancestors - would have had a dark skin tone.
Johan Moan, of the university's Institute of Physics, said in a research paper: ‘In England, from 5,500-5,200 years ago the food changed rapidly away from fish as an important food source. This led to a rapid development of ... light skin.’
The research paper, written with Richard Setlow, a biophysicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state, states : ‘Cold climates and high latitudes would speed up the need for skin lightening.
‘Agricultural food was an insufficient source of vitamin D, and solar radiation was too low to produce enough vitamin D in dark skin.’
So, could milk have played a role in why "the food changed rapidly away from fish as an important food source"?
In the end, my suspicion is that's it's some of both. Otherwise, how do you explain white skinned Asians, with significant fish in the diet? At any rate, interesting ponderables.
Which is what we like to do as practitioners of a paleo / primal / evolutionary / ancestral life way. We get to figure this stuff out on our own, because we have the information to do so. We don't have to wait for "experts" and "authorities" to tell us that in order to prevent all the diseases that have cropped up over the last couple of hundred years of civilization, we need to eat way less of the foods we evolved to eat over millions of years, instead eating more of (even when not hungry) the foods and concoctions that have cropped up in...the last couple of hundred years.
So, should milk be a part of your diet? Well, obviously, if lactose intolerant, or you know you do worse on it, no. But what if you do quite well on it (you should go for whole, raw milk if you can get it, otherwise organic whole pasteurized)?
I see no problem, even from the perspective of the "paleo principle," i.e., the idea that we restrict ourselves to pre-agricultural food sources. Why, when clearly we have evolved to handle this food? Yea, I know there's talk about hormones and such (which I know little about), but there's simply no doubt that animal milk is loaded with excellent protein and fat nutrition.
I make raw milk, cream, butter and cheese part of my diet. In terms of milk, due the higher carb count, I tend to keep it pretty intermittent, like a half-gallon in a week or two. Raw milk keeps very well.
As a final note, I find it interesting, given the above, that when rickets showed up in kids, it was milk that they chose to fortify -- which is now essentially worthless, as D is fat soluble and everyone's drinking skim (those "experts"). Vitamin D deficiency is now epidemic. Now, the other part of it, again given the above, is that if you can't have whole milk as part of your diet, perhaps you should be getting a lot more fish...
And, you should be supplementing with vitamin D in any case, especially the darker your skin and the farther north you live.
Thai Coconut Milk & Ginger Soup with Shrimp & Mushrroms
Vitamin D: Slathering More Sunscreen Equals Buying More Sunscreen, Study Finds
I drink raw goat milk, which is much closer to human milk than cow milk. If you drink cow, then you have to watch what kind of cows it comes from, A1 or A2. Go here for more info: http://thebovine.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/merco…
Thanks. I have seen this issue a few times, had only looked briefly,
but now I'll dig deeper.
Another way for lactose-intolerant folk to get their vitamins A, D, and K2 is to consume butter from pastured cows. I buy butter that comes from New Zealand and it is very yellow and very yummy (they sell it at Whole Foods).
Back before my days of low cal, high fat, moderate protein, I drank tons of regular pasturized milk and I had a lot of difficulty sleeping and would always wake up with a nose full of mucos. Thought maybe I had sleep apnea. When I cut out the milk, the mucus went away and I slept a lot better. I never considered I was lactose intolerant…but maybe I was/am.
I am now absolutely enjoying having a quart of heavy whipping cream per week on berries
or a few stone fruit. So far, in the last 4 months, no sign of mucus.
Dextery,
This is an excellent example of self-experimentation. Mucus is an inflammatory signal, and you are listening to your body perceptively.
Personally, I experienced the same mucus-production and poor feeling from drinking pasteurized milk. No longer: Now, my only 'dairy' in my self-experiment is Classic Total FAGE Yogurt (full of fat, lowest carbs) and Raw cheese — these do not cause any inflammation or mucus production for me.
One important thing that we all must consider in the paleo / primal / evolutionary / ancestral lifeway is the importance of 'good bacteria' in our diets. Our 'antibiotic' culture has put us at risk for many devastating infections, like MRSA and C. Diff, so consuming high fat yogurt and raw dairy provide a good source of good bacteria while also aligning with the nutritional principles that work.
Thanks, Richard, for commenting on this topic insightfully.
Keep up the great work.
Pasteurized dairy made my life a NIGHTMARE for decades. I consumed a lot of it. I didn't realized it was causing most of my problems until I eliminated it in an attempt at going full “paleo”.
Raw dairy is awesome. Those “good bacteria” do amazing things for my guts! If pasteurized dairy was all I had access to, I would do no dairy.
Note: Don't be fooled, most of the “organic” dairy in total garbage! Even worse than just plain pasteurized most of the time. A good percentage of it is UHT. <- Google that.
When looking for dairy, look for “raw”.
You said,
“nd 90% of northern Europeans. Sweden has one of the world's highest percentages of lactase tolerant people.”
This is very interesting.
I am a mediterranean european who is living in finland.
When I came here I was surprised at the amount of gas I got from milk. I always had some gas, ignorant at the time, I ignored it, but here it got worse.
Then I started asking around, and I was told I have lactose intolerance.
So, I went from regular milk, 70 cents to low lactose milk at 1.70..
Gas problems were solved but the milk was still not feeling right.
I asked around and learned that “lactose intolerance” was rampant. Half the people I talked to were drinking that processed lactose free milk at a high price.
One day in the shops, they had no more lactose free milk, but they had organic milk.
Same price. 1.70.
I bought it, and after drinking half the box, I could not stop myself, and finished the whole liter. No gas. None. No tiredness. No heaviness. I was up and running like a maniac.
I experimented, and this organic milk was great.
One day, I noticed something I missed due to the language barrier.
Norman milk was homogenized.
Organic milk, for some reason was not.
so now I am trying to make people drink the organic milk, which sadly is only produced by the same company that is producing the poison milk.
Half the population here is apparently not lactose intolerant, but is poisoned by the milk factory.
About cheese, I looked around to find raw cheese, and it is almost impossible to find raw cheese. Every one of them is from UHT, of homogenized milk.
Thank you EU bureaucrats.
The cheese I found from raw milk cost 26 euros per kg!!!
And end story:
A family with two cows in my town here was producing traditional cream from the milk of the cows, and selling it during christmas season to the neighbors. the stuff sold out on the first day it was put to the stand. Not two years pass, and the officials come and prohibit the family to produce that cream from the healthy free running cows because it had to be industrially treated to make it fit the regulations.
You bet!
The EUdSSR is a monster.
Nowadays, Countrymen rarely sell raw milk in my country, Germany. They are afraid of the new hygiene acts.
And a lot of people are blinded by the EU wide Bio certificate, what you can get easily if you just feed your cows up with organic corn.
I was looking for some high quality supplements to improve my primal lifestyle (right now, i'm into it for only 2 months with impressive results) and to compensate for my non grass-fed meat. Also the same sort of supplements in germany are either not available or too expensive and overpriced despite of their bad quality.
I really wanted the Carlson Products for me, so i dropped an e-mail.
http://screencast.com/t/tL51INB8Ioy9
but no way to get it.
Vitacost also sells carlson products as well as other American Vitamin Stores. They might send it but i very likely won't get it
some off topic, but it's about milk
:
Unfortunately the majority of the dairy farmer here in Grmany are acting like morons. They are looters and everything they do is central planned by the government and subsidized by the EU. I just want to present you a short story. It's an event what happens again every year: The price for milk is falling and supermarkets are constantly trying to under-bid each other. (hooray for competition, although it's a pseudo free market) Some dairy farmers have to drop their price, but the most of them go on strike planned by the unions. They demand high prices again and say it's important for their families (i don't care for this at all, i just want good products) and for the quality of the milk (it's anyway homogenized UHT-milk). Instead of offering real quality raw milk, so they would get their money (at least from me) they want the goverment to do something, so they can demand their high unfair price again and other dairy farmers are forbid to sell under the new gov regulated price.
But it's getting worse. I'm used to see this in the news for every year, but you might get shocked.
they pour the subsidized milk (tax payers money anyone?! ) on the streets
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,1415151,00.jpg
Politicians who solidarize with the farmers
http://www.welt.de/multimedia/archive/121267055…
Still the majority oft the country feels with the farmers, so the politicians do everything to protect them. (assisting their unmoral acting)
That sucks!
Looking for Carlson's? They have some good products, but check out this page too.
http://www.westonaprice.org/basicnutrition/clar…
Is Dairy Primal? - Who in the World Are We? // Jun 18, 2010 at 10:10
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