Author: Riley Pearce
Director of Social Media
After carbs and gluten were vilified by the health and fitness industry, they went after dairy. Claims have been made that it is actually a new genetic mutation that allows us to continue consuming dairy beyond breast feeding. Some people claim that the hormones they give the cows are now in our milk. If you are going to drink milk, should it be skim or full fat whipping cream? It’s time to find out if any of these rumours are true and if you should ditch the dairy.
Humans have been drinking milk for 6,000 – 8,000 years and it is the drinking of cow’s milk that led to the domestication of cows. It is thought that the first to drink cow’s milk were european farmers.
Unfortunately for these early adopters of drinking milk, they did not have the right enzyme to break down lactose, and therefore suffered from lactose intolerance. Sounds like a pretty uncomfortable time, but their desperation for the nourishment that cow’s milk provided must have outweighed the discomfort they experienced from drinking it.
Around 7,500 years ago was when the genetic mutation for producing lactase (the enzyme needed to break down lactose) beyond childhood appeared, allowing farmers and their families to enjoy milk, and its many nutritional benefits, without the uncomfortable consequences.
So rumour #1 about needing a genetic mutation to consume milk is in fact true.
So we are now at the point that for the developed world the majority of us are no longer starving and so desperate for nutrients that we need to take milk from another animal. So why do we continue to drink milk?
Drinking milk is so deeply rooted in the food industry now that it is pretty difficult to go a day without some kind of dairy product. Be it cheese, or butter, or ice cream, or just good old fashioned milk in cereal, tea, or coffee – the stuff is everywhere!
Because of the many forms milk can take, and the number of people consuming those on a regular basis, dairy farmers and food companies needed to find a way to mass produce it at a low cost and in an efficient manner.
Whether we like it or not, in order for a mammal to produce milk it needs to be feeding its offspring. This means that the cows that dairy farmers own need to have calves often in order to keep up with the human milk demand. Not only that, but once they have had their calves, they then need to be making the maximum amount of milk possible, with very little issues with that milk (mastitis).
So how does modern society do that?
Here comes rumour #2: is there hormones in our milk? Sometimes
We say sometimes because there are some smaller dairy farms out there who are taking the long way to make milk, and organic milk is growing in popularity.
For the majority of milk there is likely hormones as well as pesticides in their milk. This is because we are feeding cows a special feed that allows them to grow quickly and produce more milk. The feed they are given is typically some type of crop that has been sprayed with pesticides.
When we try to supercharge our cows sometimes they get sick with something called mastitis. In order to get that cow back on the production line, they are given hormones to eliminate this infection.
Just like how a human mother wouldn’t feed her baby breast milk after drinking because everything a mom eats is turned into nutrition for her baby, the same process occurs in cows. Everything they eat, the balance of hormones in their body, and the medicine they are given ends up in their milk.
Not great, especially if we are consuming large quantities of milk.
If, however, you are buying organic milk and therefore a milk that is less likely to have all of those extra pesticides and antibiotics in them, should you be drinking skim or full fat?
In the 80’s and 90’s when fat became enemy #1 in the food industry, skim milk, which was ~0.5-1% fat content, became the best way for us to continue drinking milk.
Now with the keto-diet craze, people are going back to buying full fat dairy.
Turns out that the fat-free and skim milk craze may not have been as beneficial as we once believed. Research has actually found that consuming full fat dairy products (in moderate amounts) can help maintain a healthy weight, keep good cholesterol levels high, and help children absorb vitamin D more efficiently.
Low-fat and skim milk are basically tasteless because all of the flavour (read fat) has been taken out of them. So not only are these options lacking healthy fats, they are now having sugar added to them to make them more palatable.
So rumour #3: Is skim milk healthier than full fat is false.
If you are going to be drinking milk or dairy products, go for a full fat version. It will taste better and provide you with greater health benefits than the low-calorie low-fat version.
With that said, full fat dairy is also a very quick way to sneak your calories up way beyond what you’d like them to be. So if you are consuming dairy, and you do choose the full fat options, just be sure to keep it to moderate portions. Maybe even consider measuring and tracking in a diet app so that you can monitor the additional calories.
As a final note, for those of you who consume lactose-free milk, know that it has the same nutrient profile as regular cows milk, they have just added lactase, an enzyme that breaks down lactose, to the milk so that you can drink it just like the people who naturally produce lactase.
