Rethinking Your Relationship With Dairy

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Erin Brockmeyer, GoLocalPDX Natural Health Expert

Dairy isn’t evil. Well, maybe ice cream is, but that is not all the dairy’s fault. A life without dairy would be a life without a creamy deliciousness that is the basis of some of the most satisfying of all the foods. Yet recently there is a growing movement armed with a fair amount of science that asserts diary should be nixed from your diet. Many people feel caught in a struggle between compelling health claims and a desire to eat their favorite foods.

Dairy has been a part of the US government-approved food guidelines ever since they started making dietary recommendations in 1917. This idea has been embraced by the public to the point where many American pediatricians still recommend switching babies from breast milk to whole cow milk at the age of 1. After all, it does a body good, right?

On the anti-dairy side of the debate, the claim is that dairy is not only unnecessary, but it is unnatural to consume milk from other animals. The anti-dairy assertions may be true in a sense, but as pointed out by Michael Pollan in his tome In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto, cow milk became a part of the human diet because it was a readily available way to fill a nutritional void. There are many other foods that could provide the nutrients found in milk -- fat, protein, calcium, phosphorus, and potassium, but there was a time when milk was the most efficient way to get them.

Dairy continues to be a key recommendation to the masses mainly because it is still the easiest way to get most Americans to consume adequate amounts of calcium, potassium and [the added] Vitamin D. Calcium and potassium are abundant in many fruits and vegetables, but according to one of the professors on the USDA committee, based on the small amounts of these foods that most people currently consume, it would be unlikely that the government would be able to convince Americans to eat more of them. Sad, but true, and so the milk stays.

The Harvard School of Public Health’s stance is that the government’s dairy recommendations are a “step in the wrong direction.” They site the growing body of evidence that shows consuming 3 or more servings of dairy per day increases the risk of prostate and ovarian cancers, as well as the high caloric content. You can think of the government as the realists and the Harvard School of Public Health as the idealists, as the latter would prefer the recommendations be that people consume more vegetables and less salt.

The fact is that with all of today’s food choices, there is absolutely no nutritional need for you to consume dairy. Saying that dairy is an essential part of a healthy diet is just not true, so if you make all of your food choices based purely on health and necessity, feel free to say goodbye to diary.

If, however, you also make your food choices based on pleasure, community, and tradition, then paying attention to the following guidelines can help you have your dairy and eat it, too.

1. Consume only organic dairy (ideally grass-fed). The nutritional content, especially when it comes to the ever-important Omega-3s is far superior in grass-fed dairy than it is in conventional dairy products. You will also be able to avoid the hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides that can be found in conventional dairy products.

2. Eat full fat dairy. Yes, you have been told for years and years that low-fat dairy is good for you. This is not so. Low-fat dairy is a modified food -- read: not a whole food. That important Vitamin D that the government wants you to get from milk is a fat soluble vitamin, so low-fat or non-fat milk will not allow you to absorb most of the Vitamin D, anyway.

3. Eat probiotic-rich dairy. Yogurt and kefir can be incredibly good for your digestion and are full of great nutrients. Again, make sure they are organic and full-fat.

4. Keep foods that combine dairy and sugar to a minimum. This is mostly because of the sugar, which is found in shockingly high amounts in dairy products you are likely to think are good for you (like the aforementioned yogurt). Sugar might be evil.

5. Cook with butter (sometimes). Grass-fed organic butter is high in Omega-3s, and has a high smoking point which means that it is safe for high-heat cooking. Butter is not scary.

That’s it. Sure there are nuances, but this is a bare bones list that can allow you to stop feeling guilty about eating dairy. You can once again celebrate the words of the late, great Julia Child, “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.”

Erin Brockmeyer, LAc, is owner and acupuncturist at Solstice Natural Health in downtown Portland. She creates custom health plans for patients to help them tackle their most complicated health concerns, including infertility, prenatal care, fibromyalgia, thyroid conditions and chronic and acute pain conditions. Visit her website for more information and to download her free e-book 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Health Today.