www.simplysupplements.net

It is time for the public to be made more aware about the differences of nutrtional therapists, who are trained rather dubiolusy, to sell supplements and promote the health benefits of adrvark tooth juniper berries, and the scientific training of a proper accredited nutritionist.

www.nutritionsociety.org/index.php?q=node/39

1. You’re correct. Most humans don’t eat diary products. Paper is difficult to chew, and tastes awful because it is a virtually indigestible cellulose, which adds nothing but insoluble fibre to the diet.

2. Only milk and yoghurt products contain lactose. Hard and soft cheeses are virtually lactose free. ‘Live’ or ‘Bio’ yoghurts contain less lactose than pasteurised or ambient products as the probiotic bacteria can use sugars as a potential energy source.

3. As Dr Aust correctly points out – most western populations can tolerate milk lactose because we continue to include this valuable source of dietary calcium of high bioavailability, in our daily diet

4. And its possible to ‘retrain’ your bowel to tolerate lactose by gradual re-introduction. Clinical research has established this in African-American girls at high risk of osteopenia.

So there. If you like milk, drink it. If you don’t like milk, avoid it. And if you want to drink milk but get bloating, wind and interestingly explosive diarrhoea after consuming it, start with a teaspoon a day for a few days, gradually increasing over a period of a month or so to a cupful. Then enjoy it symptom free.

Can I answer your ten-points:

1. Diary farming has been around for more than 200 years – diary farms are certainly mentioned in the Magna Carta (although I am taking someone else’s word for this – I haven’t read the Magna Carta myself) and there are references to drinking milk in the Bible (although that may be goat’s milk). Throughout dairy farming there has been selective breeding to increase milk yields. There has been similar selective breeding in other areas of farming (beef cattle, sheep, corn, carrots, apples, you name it). Some people have been worried recently about genetic modification and there have been some very silly stories about trying to breed cows which provide strawberry-flavoured milk. This is absurd.

2. The cows are not pregnant. They are impregnanted once, and then milked continually. If the milking continues they could, in theory, continue to produce milk until they die, but in general they dry-up after a while. The ‘better breeds’ of cow last longer before drying up. The cows are then impregnated again.

3. Actually, there are bulls on some farms, but farmers these days tend to use articifical insemination to impregnate cows. I’m not condoning this, but bulls are required somewhere to produce the semen. It’s actually some of the smaller farms which keep bulls, the farmers not being able to afford artificial insemination.

4. Yes, bull calves tend to go for food production, not being very useful for diary farming. Some of the conditions that beef cattle are kept in are shocking.

5. Diary cows which are too old to be commercially viable are killed, although they tend to get the ‘humane killer’ rather than a bullet. The ‘humane killer’ isn’t that humane, either. However, they tend not to go into burgers, they go into pet food, unless the abattoir is poorly run.

6. Refrigeration has changed the diary industry massively. Milk can now be shipped over large distances in refrigerated containers, although what has generally happened is that milk distribution is still on a relatively local scale with centralised diaries taking milk from the farms back to be processed and bottled. The milk from the different farms is mixed together to remove variations, although some is kept apart, eg, ‘Jersey’ milk. The days of getting a pint of milk from your local farm are long gone.

7. Unpasteurised milk will certainly go off if you try and keep it for the shelf-life of pasteurised milk. That’s part of the reason for pasteurising it – it kills a lot of harmful bacteria. It probably kills a lot of harmless bacteria, too.

8. See above re: old diary cows going into burgers. Abattoirs are quite hot on this kind of thing these days. Especially after foot and mouth, and all that.

9. I’m not sure quite what you mean by this point. In nature breast feeding only continues for a short period before the animal is weaned onto a more adult diet. Maturity (sexual maturity) happens at a completely different period in the life cycle.

10. Yes, rennet (from the stomachs of ruminants) is what makes cheese hard. The more interesting thing is how they found this out.

Before you berate me for being another city-based Pollyanna with potted theory after potted theory – I’m from a farming family. Farmers don’t make money on milk these days – the diary conglomerates and supermarkets have driven the price of milk so low that it’s scarcely economically viable.

Yes, the diary industry doesn’t care overmuch for the welfare of the animal, they can’t afford to. But milk is a good source of calcium, and calcium is required in our diet (despite your protestations). If you are lactose intolerant (eg, many asians do not produce lactase, an enzyeme which breaks down lactose) then you can get calcium from seaweed, nuts, broccolli and oranges (fresh orange juice isn’t a bad source).

Martin

Still, the appearance of a true eccentric makes a nice change, I suppose. Keep up the good work!

If you want the generally medically accepted facts about lactose intolerance (rather than il-informed ranting or alternative bollocks) , and a few useful references, see:

www.patient.co.uk/showdoc/40025194/

But Neil’s paragraph you were quoting from said:

“Compared to some of the stuff we eat, milk is quite sensible. I mean who first thought it would be a good idea to eat an egg?”

billy dude, calm down and read things properly — egg doesn’t contain milk, not the eggs round here anyway…

If you have a real problem with dairy, show us evidence that it’s universally harmful in moderate quantities as you seem to be implying, rather than accusing everyone else of quoting “study after study” without references.

Andrew.

Yet another person with a minimal grip on reality. Forgive me please but I thought this site was called badscience.net. All I have seen so far is potted theory after potted theory with the exact unshakable notions that “nutritionists” are accused of. Study after study are quoted without reference and the amount of pooh poohing is amazing.

What is a “sensible amount”??? Following your logic, how many grammes of cocaine is a sensible amount. How many teaspoons of rat poison (Vitamin D) should I take every morning? Is it sensible to drive at 80mph in fog?

Where do you get this sensible measure thing?

Dairy food is produced in a cynical, mechanised way with no regard for the animal nor the human duped into thinking it is anything other than junk food. Its bullshit to drink milk for calcium. Calcium is oversold. Milk is to healthfood as guns are to population control. Overkill and totally unnecessicary.

Its bullshit that milk is in any way good for humans. The only humans milk is any good for is the farmers and milk distributors wallets. The rest of us are just their fools.

I am dairy industry intolerant. I am intolerant of the industry’s lies, half truths and self serving use of scientific analysis for the sole purpose of selling more and more milk. Surely this qualifies for being bad science or has it jumped the shark and has achieved religious status and milk is now infallibile?

It is true that most humans do downregulate lactase after childhood. However, most humans don’t live mostly on milk after they are 1 yr old, or 2-3 yrs old at the outside.

The evidence that a standard daily intake of dairy products- milk in a cup or three of tea or coffee, butter on bread, some cheese – is “indigestible” by low lactase people – at least in the UK – is thin to non-existent. The controlled studies that have been done show that many people who think of themselves as “intolerant to dairy” – or who are “diagnosed” as such by alt healthies – can consume sensible amounts of dairy products perfectly happily.

As with all food “intolerances”, learned habit and the power of suggestion are a major factor behind what people think they can, or can’t eat.

With the greatest respect to you you are typing horseshit. Your anthropological study of ancient farmers is also mindless fantasy.

The notion that cows spew milk spontaniously and forever as a result of some fantastic evolution is total and utter nonsense.

Actually it is total and utter bullshit. It is a complete fantasy to say that cows mutated so we can have obscene amounts of milk to pour on millions of cornflakes. It is man made man manipulated and a scam.

Cows were and are bred for purpose. Yield is the only consideration when breeding dairy cattle. Dairy cattle are so badly bred they can barely walk. They produce so much milk that it distorts their frame.

Cows are forced to produce milk. If a cow isn’t pregnant it does not produce milk. I come from a dairy producing country and I grew up around a farm. I have seen first hand what goes on and it is not pretty nor is it natural. Nor is it scientific. The “science” behind milk was and is developed after the fact. Just like cigarettes.

Refrigeration and pastuerisation is not several thousand years old. These two technologies coupled with artificial insemination are the backbones of the modern dairy industry.

Look very very carefully at a dairy farm and I will give you £1000 if you find a bull. There are NO bulls on dairy farms and yet the cows are all pregnant. How could this be?

Artificial insemination. The Dairylea ad and the Ambrosia ad where you seem to get your mutant cow ideas from are F A N T A S Y.

“Milk was good for early farmers” Name them. Show me the evidence. Where are the studies?

“Compared to some of the stuff we eat, milk is quite sensible” What stuff? Show me the stuff you are wobbling on about. I bet that it contains milk or a milk derived ingredient.

I concede that Mongolians drink horse milk but you don’t see them getting it delivered. Nor do they use it in the industrial quantities we do.

Your “points” are all city based Pollyanna fantasies about how farming works.

1. Cattle evolved to a point but commercial cattle have been bred for yield for about 200 years.
2. Cattle are pregnant – that is why they produce milk. That is why humans make milk too. If you think that cattle changed their evolution just so that you can have a pint of milk for breakfast you are obviously unwell.
3. There are no bulls present on dairy farms.
4. Bull calves get the bullet or are used for veal or fattened for eating.
5. Cattle when the get too old get the bullet and go into your beef burgers.
6. Commercial dairy deliveries were impossible on a mass scale before the invention of the fridge in the 1930s
7. Unpasteurised milk will kill you if left for as long as milk is left today.
8. Milk is the basis for junk food. The fast food industry depends on the dairy industry for cheap meat.
9. When an animal matures it is weaned. Humans have been marketed to that weaning is not a good idea. Breast feeding is also under attack from the dairy industry.
10. The thing that makes your cheese hard Neil is the stomach of the dead bull calf. Its called the rennet.

Your point about eggs points to a sheltered British city view of what is and isn’t sensible. Eggs are also forced out of chickens. Chickens are no more than egg making machines.

Milk makes no sense, has no scientific merit beyond fattening calves, which doesn’t even happen in most cases.

Neil, you haven’t a notion what you are talking about.

Cheese is nice (as evidenced by its widespread popularity for thousands of years) and dairy farming has indeed been around for much longer than quack health gurus. See for example Copley et al., “Direct chemical evidence for widespread dairying in prehistoric Britain”. Summarised here if the chemistry’s too scary.

Unless you think it was a conspiracy engineered by the shamans.

Andrew.

Cows aren’t forced to produce milk all the time. They do it naturally. It’s another mutation, one that happen by chance several thousand years ago. We didn’t make that happen; we’re not that clever now and we certainly weren’t that clever thousands of years ago. Ancient humans did spot a useful mutant cow when they saw it though.

We milk drinkers are mutant humans drinking milk from mutant cows.

And milk was very good for early farmers. It allowed them to survive harsh times. Still does in some parts of the world.

Compared to some of the stuff we eat, milk is quite sensible. I mean who first thought it would be a good idea to eat an egg?

BTW sorry about the odd spelling in my previous post. The cat jumped on the mouse and I suffered a premature submission. Now I don’t say that very often.

My point is that mechanised grand scale dairy farming is quite new. Having a cow and robbing a few pints of milk after the calf is born is how it started. If the cow wasn’t pregnant we had no milk. Nowadays we have milk 24×7 by force and this is only able to happen because of Victorian era quackery that milk is in any way good for anything other than a baby cow.

Dairy farming on any scale was impossible before Louis Pasteur and the invention of mass refrigeration. So not before 1886 could it be pasteurized and people did not have fridges to keep milk cold and from killing them until after WW2. It was possible to drink milk before then but we did not have the mass distrubution capacity until 60 years ago. Well after “nutritionists”.

Man, get your facts right. The first quack that started to push health foods is still in business. That company is Kelloggs started by W.K. Kellogg following his quirky notions of what healthy food is. Quack. Duck. Complete hot air.

I am not a cow last time I checked so I don’t drink or consume milk. Weaning, breast feeding and the natural cycle of a cows life has been outlawed and this has become normalised making anyone (like me) who points out the bloody obvious about cows milk as a nutter.

I thought this was a forum on bad science. I am not being a crank but you Mr Clegg are being a smart arse. And not a very clever one either.

Most humans today don’t eat diary products beacuse most humans switch off lactase production at arpuind age 4 and would be very ill if they were to eat a lot of dairy food.

Dairy farming started around 10,000 years ago when a mutant human dipshit found he could safely drink animal milk. You have wonder what he was thinking at the time, but he was probably staving to death – farming was pretty rubbish in those days.

Only those minority of humans descended from the mutant dipshit are lactose tolerant as adults and can safely drink milk. These inlcude some Europeans, some Africans and some Indians.

TAPL may look 10,000 years old, but she can’t be blamed for dairy farming.

See [url=http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0020344]
this link [/url]for more.

I’m in – how much do you want?

What are you planning on calling your company – Cash & Curry?

(Sorry)

Now I WAS thinking that this would be an interesting litte scientific curiosity, and possibly worth a small research grant…

….but I now realised this was misguided of me. Clearly What I SHOULD be doing is getting a mail-order Nutritionist qualification and then setting up a company to rebadge turmeric from my local cash-and-carry as:

“InsulinogenSpice – shown by scientific evidence to work naturally with your body to enhance insulin secretion. Building on centuries of traditional wisdom, InsulinogenSpice is Recommended by Leading Scientists for maintaining a healthy metabolic status”

Anyone fancy becoming a shareholder in this cutting edge nutritional enterprise? Unlike “Prof” Holford or “Dr” McKeith, my buddies and I actually have the odd PhD and some “research expertise”. Of course, we’d have to suspend our normal scepticism and lie through our teeth, but that seems a small price to pay for Helping The Nation To Live More Healthily [ (c) A.N.Utritionist ]

Just think, if we re-sell enough curry powder we might get a Channel 4 series.

Andrew.

Andrew.