Give it to me straight (re: dairy)

[eternamariposa]

I grew up very enthusiastically eating lots of dairy everyday, I drank milk with my PB J's and put cheese in anything I could.  I was absolutely an allergic child.  I needed inhalers as a teenager and often suffered with yeast overgrowth issues as well.  I had my first child and we struggled with thrush the entire 2 1/2 years that he nursed.  One day I made the connection and eliminated dairy and things seemed to get better.  Not totally better, but improvement.  I had my second child and was off of dairy for nearly a year-a record for me-and we have not struggled with thrush which is nice.  It was black and white, dairy was a bad idea.  I even started to think that maybe no one should eat dairy.  Then I discovered some of the basic principles behind traditional foods, healing tooth decay, etc.  and I am questioning everything.  I think about how many of the most allergenic foods are also the most heavily treated/mishandled (on the conventional level) foods.  So are we reacting to the processes or the foods them selves? Hmm...

I look back to my childhood and the obvious trigger I was dealing with for breathing problems was smoking parents inside my home, I moved out and got way better.  The year that I spent off of dairy I began eating more fresh, organic produce than I ever had before.  When I experiment with dairy now I don't see clear signs anymore.  So when I read things written by Dr. Price or regarding the benefits of a traditional foods diet I really wonder if maybe it is not the best idea to eliminate an entire food group that holds a good amount of nutritive value.  I really don't know.  I figure if I experiment here and there with organic grassfed stuff and see that we are doing well than its safe to proceed but I guess what I am wondering is, just because we can does that mean that we should?  Is high quality dairy really that beneficial?  How important do you think it is to growing children for bones and teeth and what not?  I am really not looking to insight conflicts or anything I am just going back and forth in my own head about this a lot and respect the opinions of the mamas in these forums very much.

 

[CoBabyMaker]

  I'm curious to see what people have to say.  I am in a similar place right now.  Both kids have reacted to dairy while I am nursing and DD1 didn't handle it well the couple times we tried to introduce it.    DH doesn't handle it well.  I really only miss yogurt and would maybe eat cheese once a month if I could. We've never tried raw milk though.  It's illegal in our state so I'd have to track down a herd share.  I'm at the point that if I can't get raw milk I am not sure I want it but I am not sure it's worth it just for me.

[Magelet]

I think that for people who can digest it, raw grass-fed dairy (and even moderate amounts of low temp pasturized grass-fed non-homogenized dairy) is a great nutritional source. Particularly for kids, but adults as well.

There is so many factors to "good" (or more digestible/healthy) dairy.

What breed of cow is it?  A jersey or guernsey is going to produce higher fat milk and healthier milk than say, a holstein.

Is it A2/A2? (Cows produce A1 or A2 casein, slight variations, and produce either all one, all the other, or a mix, depending on their genes. I don't know much about it but I know several people for whom it is so important they started their own small dairy cow herds, to get A2A2 milk.)

Is it grass-fed? If it is fed some grain, is the grain a significant part of it's diet, or is it a snack at milking time?  Is it mostly on pasture? Is it mostly eating hay?  (I don't think there is one answer to this that is the healthiest.  If a cow is mostly eating grass, with just organic grain as a small treat or minor supplement, and on pasture when local seasons allow it, and still with lots of space to roam in other seasons, that's good enough for me.)

Is it raw? If not, how was it pasteurized?  I drink raw milk and milk which was pasteurized at low temperatures.

Is it homogenized?  I'm a pretty big stickler for non-homogenized milk. I might drink a glass of organic, in good part grass-fed milk at my mom's house with cake or cookies, but I only buy non-homogenized.

Is it cultured? Cultured milk is easier to digest. In some traditional diets, adults only ate/drank cultured dairy and only young children drank uncultured dairy.

If you feel fine/well on good dairy, then by all means drink it, it's nutrient dense, tasty, healing, magical stuff, but there certainly are people for whom dairy isn't an option, they can't digest it at all.  There are also people (like my DP) who have damaged digestive tracts, and once they heal their guts, they can digest good dairy when the previously couldn't.