We’ve already discussed many of the problems associated with consuming dairy, from the horrible practices of factory farming to the difficulty the body has digesting cow’s milk. Well ... we’re going to do it again! Because while you may choose to be an ovo lacto vegetarian – and that’s a great step towards eating a healthy, socially responsible diet – there are still some very good reasons to limit the amount of dairy products you eat.
The truth about osteoporosis
You probably believe that osteoporosis, the crippling disease that results in weak, brittle bones, is caused by a deficiency of calcium. For pretty much your entire life you’ve heard that "milk does a body good" and that the only way to prevent osteoporosis is to drink lots of milk, and to eat plenty of cheese and yogurt. You know, "for healthy teeth and strong bones!"
And yet, Americans and Canadians eat more dairy products than any other country while having the highest incidence of osteoporosis. In fact throughout the world, the level of hip fractures (a symptom of osteoporosis) rises in direct relationship to how much calcium the people consume!
The truth is that, like heart disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes and a host of other ailments, osteoporosis is the by-product of affluence, not of calcium deficiency. As scientists study osteoporosis, they’re discovering that it’s the result of a bad, overall lifestyle, including diet. Calcium certainly plays a part in building strong bones – as we discussed earlier, however, bones only build their density in our younger years, so by the time we reach adulthood that die has been cast. Consuming a lot of calcium as an adult simply has no bone-building effect.
Animal protein is high in sulfur-containing amino acids, which requires the body to find a way to offset the effects of those amino acids. Our bodies do this by first using the small amount of calcium in our food, then by taking it from our bones – after which point it exits the body through our urinary tract. The more meat and dairy products you eat, the more calcium you need to process them through the body. A researcher at the Creighton University School of Medicine named Robert Heaney – an advocate of dairy consumption – found in his research that the single most important factor in the rate of bone growth in young women is not how much calcium they consume, but how much calcium they consume in relation to animal protein. The more protein eaten, the more calcium must be consumed to offset the calcium drain. Most people in the U.S., Canada and Northern Europe eat more than twice the recommended amount of protein, and more than four or five times the amount of protein actually needed, with 70 percent of it coming from animal sources. Osteoporosis is not a result of calcium deficiency – it’s a result of eating too much animal protein!
That burning feeling
Have you ever downed a glass of milk to sooth an upset stomach, only to find an hour later that your stomach feels bad all over again? That’s because milk actually causes the stomach to become more acidic. Here’s how it works: animal products are more difficult to digest than plant foods, which means that your stomach needs to produce more hydrochloric acid (HCI) to break them down. So let’s say that you had a bowl of cereal with milk for breakfast, a little cream in your coffee and a slice of toast with melted cheese. All that dense protein needs plenty of acid to digest it, so HCI is produced. You feel that familiar burn of acid indigestion a few hours after you ate, so you drink a glass of milk to settle your stomach. And it does, temporarily, by neutralizing the acid. But you you’ve just added more animal protein to your stomach, and now your stomach has to produce even more acid to digest it! Milk is a highly alkaline substance, so whenever you drink milk with a meal, you’re actually hindering your body’s ability to digest your food properly.
The hormone factor
If nothing else has convinced you to get your calcium from rich plant sources like broccoli, tofu, nuts, seeds and leafy green vegetables, try this on for size – your ingesting antibiotics and hormones every times you consume dairy products.They don’t the meat and dairy industries "agribusiness" for nothing – they’re businesses, and their primary goal is to make a lot of money. They make that money by selling lots and lots of animal products, and that means keeping animals healthy and growing them big/ To do this, they pump them full of antibiotics and hormones.
Just like a nursing baby ingests whatever its mother has eaten, you consume the cow’s diet when you eat animal foods. That means that you’re getting hormones in your food, hormones that were used to fatten pigs, make cows give more milk, hormones to force chickens to produce more eggs and for turkeys to grow massive drumsticks.
Hormones regulate every aspect of the human body, from how much weight we gain or lose, to our sex drives and our moods, to how much hair we have. They influence your sleep cycle, your complexion, your reproductive cycle and your brain functions. When cows are given excessive, unnatural levels of artificial hormones to produce more milk, what affect do you think it might have on you when you drink the milk they produce?
If you’ve ever taken any sort of a hormone for medical purposes – steroids, birth control pills, cortisone shots – then you know how quickly that small amount of hormone introduced into your body makes dramatic changes. An imbalance of hormones in your body can make you grow hair in unexpected places, create accelerated maturity in children and adolescents, cause you to feel anxious, depressed, angry or overly emotional, and cause your face to erupt in blemishes.
Antibiotics for breakfast ?
Another cause for concern are the antibiotics found in eggs and dairy products, another by-product of factory farming. Over half of the antibiotics produced in the United States go to treat livestock. Certainly, these drugs keep the animals healthy – but are they something you want to be consuming in your food?
The biggest problem with antibiotics is that they’re all-purpose bacteria killers. Yes, they kill the viruses and bacteria that can cause disease, but they also kill the good bacteria that we need to keep our body’s delicate systems in balance. Good bacteria, like acidophilis and bifidophilis, live in your intestinal tract and on your skin, and they do battle with bad bacteria that can cause you harm.
Taking antibiotics on a regular basis, whether by prescription or inadvertently through processed foods, lowers your resistance to bacterial illnesses like salmonella, which is found in small amounts in eggs, poultry and meat. Normally, your body should be able to fight off the lesser bugs that it ingests but, if you build up a tolerance to antibiotics through constant exposure, your natural immune system is weakened, leaving you more susceptible to illnesses like food poisoning.
On top of that, you may be taking antibiotics prescribed by your doctor, in a carefully measured dose. If you then eat eggs that contain salmonella, when it hits your small intestine it suddenly finds no good bacteria waiting to kill it – they’ve all been done in by the prescription antibiotic. So the salmonella has a nice, warm, moist, antibody-free environment in which to incubate, and you find yourself sick as a dog for a week. Then your doctor prescribes more antibiotics, and the merry-go-round continues.
Dumping the dairy
Dairy products are so much a part of so many recipes, it may seem like a huge challenge to replace them. Not so! The variety and quality of dairy substitutes has improved greatly in the mast decade, and you have a lot of options. If you don’t like the taste of one style of non-dairy product, just try another – you’re bound to find one that works for you.
Cow’s milk can be replaced in recipes by soy milk, rice milk, potato milk, almond milk or even oat milk. The quantities are the same (1 cup cow’s milk = 1 cup rice milk, etc.) the only difference is the taste. Oat milk is very mild, and lacks the sweetness of both cow’s milk and other replacements – you may find you prefer it, or you may choose to add more sweetener to compensate. Either way, you have all the control! The nut milks, like almond milk, are quite sweet, and both soy and rice milk are available with flavors already added. You may find that vanilla soy or rice milk tastes better to you than cow’s milk ever did, especially for lightening your coffee or on cereal.
Soy milk is manufactured by cooking soybeans and then compressing them to remove the liquid. In one of his television specials, comedian Lewis Black riffed on the term "soy milk," saying, "There’s no such thing as soy milk. It’s soy juice. But they couldn’t sell soy juice, because every time you say ‘soy juice’ you actually start to gag." Nut milks – or, nut juices, if you prefer – are made in a similar manner to soy milk.
Remember that soy milk is actually far better for you than cow’s milk (and other alternatives, like rice and almond milks) for a lot of reasons – fortified soy milk has extra calcium, plus Vitamins A, D and B12.
All the milk substitutes can be found in shelf-stable, aseptic boxes at natural foods stores and, increasingly, in supermarkets. This is another advantage over cow’s milk – you can save money by purchasing it by the case, if you like, and stock your milk right on the pantry shelf without worrying about it expiring in the fridge (you will want to refrigerate them once opened, however). Soy milk can also be found in powdered form, too, although you’ll probably find that the liquid product tastes better.
Vanilla soy milk works great in desserts – use it to make puddings and custards, on your cereal, in baked goods and processed in the blender with fresh fruit for smoothies. Plain soy milk works well in savory dishes like casseroles, soups and sauces. And if need buttermilk – say, to make buttermilk pancakes – you can create a substitute by adding 2 teaspoons of vinegar or lemon juice to 1 cup of soy milk.
Saying goodbye to yogurt and cheese
Yogurt is yummy. Yogurt is healthy. Yogurt is, of course, a dairy product. Because of the active culturing agents in yogurt, it’s easier to digest than other types of dairy, but all of the other reasons for giving up this cow’s milk product still apply. Fortunately, delicious soy-based plain and flavored yogurts are available at your natural foods store. They’re cholesterol-free and lower in saturated fat that cow’s milk yogurt, so it’s even better for you than the dairy version.
Soy yogurt – and soy sour cream! – can be used in almost every recipe tat you would use dairy yogurt. They’re great in sauces and dips, baked goods and topped with granola for a quick breakfast. The downside is that they don’t work well in hot foods, because they tend to separate when heated.
But what about cheese? Most new vegetarians lean on cheese rather heavily. It provides protein and, let’s face it, cheese tastes really good. But it’s also loaded with cholesterol and saturated fat, and like all dairy products is difficult to digest. If you’re ovo lacto but trying to watch your fat intake, you’ve probably tried low- or non-fat cheeses, and found them lacking – they taste awful, don’t melt well, and have the texture of a plastic chew toy.
Even if you’re not vegan, you should try then many varieties of non-dairy cheese on the market. Usually soy or nut based, they come in many of the same styles as dairy cheese, like cheddar, mozzarella, jack or cream cheese. They aren’t usually as tasty as the real thing, but they’re a close enough approximation that they work well in sandwiches or recipes.
When cooking with soy cheese, you’ll find that they don’t melt as well as full-fat dairy cheese (but they’re better than non-fat cheese!) even though they’re fairly high in fat. Some separate a bit when melted, although the oils can be blotted with a paper towel before serving. For Italian dishes like lasagna and manicotti, you can make your own substitute for ricoota or cottage cheese by mashing some soft tofu with a fork and adding a little lemon juice. For that cheesy, dry Parmesan taste, try sprinkling some nutritional yeast on spaghetti, casseroles, popcorn or potatoes – it has a savory taste much like cheese, and it’s good for you!
As with milk substitutes, there are many different brands and styles on the market, so if you don’t like the first soy cheese you try, experiment with a few others until you find one that you like. Remember that most cheese replacements work better as ingredients in recipes and sandwiches than eaten on their own – but there are so many healthy snacks that you can munch on, you don’t need to eat straight cheese, anyway.
Who’s got the butter?
That vegetable-based margarine in your grocer’s cold case isn’t dairy-free – it’s made with casein, a milk protein, and probably has other animal products in it, too. If you’re ovo lacto, you may not care too much, but if you’re vegan then there’s soy margarine available at your natural foods store.
But for most purposes, look to olive oil. Even non-vegetarians are better off stepping away from butter because of it’s high cholesterol, and steering clear of margarine because of the trans fats. Margarine, made from vegetable oil, is semi-solid because of the way it’s produced – the molecular composition of the fats are altered to create trans fatty acids, making them solid enough to spread on bread or form into sticks for commercial sale. While many people long assumed that margarine was healthier than butter because of its low cholesterol and vegetable origins, scientists now know that trans fats are even more dangerous than the saturated fat of butter, and can lead to clogged arteries and heart disease.
Olive oil, though, is good for you. Studies into the health benefits of olive oil have found that it can actually reduce blood cholesterol levels, this lowering the risk of coronary heart disease. In one study, the subjects’ risks of fatal heart attacks were cut 50 percent in two to four years when they started eating the so-called "Mediterranean diet" – a diet which, interestingly, prescribes increased consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grains, limited animal foods, and the use of olive oil as the main source of dietary fat.
In addition, a 2006 study at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia found that olive oil has anti-inflammatory qualities – the active ingredient in olives and olive oil has a similar effect on the body as aspirin and ibuprofin! So use more olive oil, feel better and be healthier!
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