I’ve had a number of awakenings about milk since then.  The first inkling I had that milk isn’t naturally like that indigestible supermarket skim came in college.  My co-op started buying glass bottles of cream-top milk from a local farm.  We were all intrigued; even most of the vegans tried it.  This stuff tasted earthy and rich.  It was the first milk I ever liked. 

Milk awakening number two came when I discovered milk that wasn’t from a cow.  I had always liked goat cheese, so when I first saw goat milk for sale, here in Seattle, I bought some and loved it.  The third milk awakening was about raw milk.  I first bought raw milk at a farmers’ market, having heard about it and tried (unsuccessfully) to find it at the grocery store.  Each sip of raw milk was interesting and complexly flavorful. 

In honor of rediscovering milk, I’m sharing some information you may not have about milk other than supermarket skim.  My next post will be a simple and delicious recipe.

Cow, Sheep, and Goat Milk

Human beings have been consuming dairy products from a diversity of animals, from yaks to horses to sheep, since long before the black and white cow.  You’d probably have a hard time finding yak milk, although if you do, it’s really high in fat, protein, carotene and other goodness.  Today I’m going to stick to the dairy trinity of cow, goat and sheep.

I’ll give a break down of each milk variety, and then a

chart comparing a few nutrients. 

Cow milk

Cow milk also tends to be a little harder to digest for those with lactose intolerance or other milk digestion issues.  This is especially true for pasteurized and unfermented cow milk, but I’ll get to that later.

Cow milk is pretty nutrient-rich.  It often has added Vitamin D, an essential nutrient, although I’m not convinced that vitamins added through fortification are absorbable.  It’s about on par with goat milk nutritionally, scoring better in some areas and worse in others.  Because cow milk is mass-produced in this country, it’s likely that standard cow milk you see in the store is of low quality, from cows fed a poor diet (grains, other cows, donuts...), kept in poor conditions, and pumped full of hormones and antibiotics.

Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of the nutrients (the full picture is here):

Vitamin A: 249 IU, or 5% DV

Protein: 7.9 grams, or 16% DV

Fat: 7.9 grams, or 12% DV

Vitamin B12: 1.1 mcg or 18% DV

Vitamin C: 0 mg or 0% DV

Calcium: 276 mg or 28% DV

Riboflavin/Vitamin B2: 0.4 mg or 26% DV

If you live in Western Washington, a great source for delicious, local raw cow milk is

Sea Breeze Farm.

Goat milk

I enjoy the ripe, earthy flavor of goat milk. I make yogurt out of it, although goat milk yogurt tends to be more runny than cow’s and definitely more than sheep milk yogurt.  Goat milk also makes fine cheese; I think the best soft-ripened (i.e. gooey and moldy) cheeses are goat.  While I don’t eat a lot of sugar, I admit goat milk ice cream tastes great.  It was a nice discovery after years of cow ice cream upsetting my stomach.

Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of the nutrients (the full picture is here):

Vitamin A: 483 IU, or 10% DV

Protein: 8.7 grams, or 17% DV

Fat: 10 grams, or 16% DV

Vitamin B12: 0.2 mcg or 3% DV

Vitamin C: 3.2 mg or 5% DV

Calcium: 327 mg or 33% DV

Riboflavin/Vitamin B2: 0.3 mg or 20% DV

If you live in Western Washington, a great source for delicious, local, raw goat milk is

St. John’s Creamery.

Sheep milk

If you can get your hands on sheep milk yogurt, or on some sheep milk out of which to make your own, by all means, do it right away.  Sheep milk makes a naturally thick yogurt, so full and fatty you can cut it with a knife.  It’s my favorite kind of yogurt, with a sharp, rich flavor and wonderful texture.  If you happen to be in London, the ewe’s milk yogurt they sell at Neal’s Yard is the best I’ve ever had; even my yogurt-disliking father devoured it.  If you happen to be in Manhattan, there’s a vendor at the Union Square Greenmarket who sells great sheep yogurt.  If you live in Western Washington, it’s coming soon to our markets.

Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of the nutrients (the full picture is here):

Vitamin A: 360 IU, or 7% DV

Protein: 14.7 grams, or 29% DV

Fat: 17 grams, or 26% DV

Vitamin B12: 1.7 mcg or 29% DV

Vitamin C: 10.3 mg or 17% DV

Calcium: 473 mg or 47% DV

Riboflavin/Vitamin B2: 0.9 mg or 51% DV

If you live in Western Washington, Willapa Hills is a brand new sheep local farm.  They’ll be selling their own dairy, yogurt, cheese and lamb, although they don’t sell raw milk due to all the hoops the USDA makes dairy farmers jump through.

Comparison

For those of you who like things to be visual, I made you a bar graph comparison of a few nutrients in the milk trinity.  I graphed the percentage of recommended DV (daily value).  It’s arguable that some of the federally recommended daily values are lower than they ought to be (like for fat), but since the nutrients are measured in different ways, charting by percentage keeps it simple.

Milk Nutrition Comparison - sample nutrients

That said, cow milk and goat milk seem pretty similar nutritionally, with each beating the other at a few of the sample nutrient measurements.  But check out that sheep milk!  Nearly half the daily recommended calcium, a third of the protein, and lots of delicious fat.  See why I’m so impressed with sheep milk?  However, I suggest getting whatever kind of milk you can find that is good quality, sustainably-produced, nutrient-rich, digestible to you, and (very important) appeals to your taste buds. 

Dairy and Fat

Another recent study suggests that women consuming regular low-fat dairy may actually be more likely to experience anovulatory infertility (i.e. infertility due to lack of ovulation) than women consuming regular high-fat dairy.  Interestingly, consuming low-fat dairy (2+ servings a day) seems to have had a stronger negative association with fertility (85% reduction in fertility) than consuming high fat dairy (2+ servings a day) had a positive association (25% increase in fertility).  One of their hypotheses for the negative association with low-fat dairy is that the addition of whey proteins back into skim milk, which can have androgenic (testosterone-like) effects, might negatively impact fertility.  Also, they speculate that some fat-soluble substance in dairy fat may positively affect fertility; I’d think it would be the fat itself, considering we need good-quality fat in our diets.

I’m not convinced that the study shows a cause rather than an association (and they’re pretty straightforward about that), and even my non-scientist eyes catch some things to question, like automatically categorizing yogurt as a low-fat food and only taking limited other diet information into account.  Still, it’s pretty eye-catching information.

Sadly, the researchers haven’t yet caught on about eating saturated fat not actually being bad for you; they later recommend that a woman trying to get pregnant switch temporarily to high-fat dairy, and then switch back to low-fat dairy once pregnant.  Not only does this fly in the face of evidence, but it would seem that if infertility may be associated with consumption of low-fat dairy, that there is a possibility of other negative associations between low-fat dairy and reproductive health.  Why drink low-fat dairy during pregnancy (or any time for that matter) if low-fat dairy may be negatively associated with other stages of fertility?  Seems like a risky situation. 

I wonder if eating dairy with the fat artificially removed might affect our own hormones that trigger ovulation.  I’m also curious whether the milk was artificial hormone free, and whether artificial hormones might be more/less concentrated in reduced-fat dairy.  Anyway, interesting stuff.

Hormones, Antibiotics, Feeding, and Ethics

I don’t know about you, but the idea of consuming meat and milk from sick cows pumped up on antibiotics to keep them alive and hormones to keep the milk coming doesn’t really whet my appetite.  The recent revelation that meat from downer cows was released into the nation’s food supply and ended up in school lunches is enough to cause alarm in and of itself.  I favor milk free of hormones and antibiotics, partly out of concern for health, safety, and the environment, and partly out of appreciation for food that’s sourced and prepared as naturally and traditionally as possible. 

Antibiotic use is rampant in dairy herds in this country.  A 2005 study of antibiotic use in Pennsylvania dairy herds indicated that commercial dairy farmers are administering antibiotics with high frequency, often without the supervision of veterinarian.  Some of the numbers are staggering; less than a quarter of farmers said they finish a dose they’ve started applying, which, as you probably know, only leads to sicker animals and more robust, disease-resistant bacteria.  Calves from 70% of farms were fed medicated milk replacers instead of milk.  This isn’t about occasional application of antibiotics to the farmer’s daughter’s favorite calf who got a cold; this is a systemic and large-scale application.  Is this the kind of food you want to be eating?  How much pressure for high-quantity, cheap milk must there be for farms to resort to this?

We use a lot of antibiotics in this country, and dairy farming seems to play no small part in that.  The problem is, we’re developing disease resistant bacteria at alarming rates.  No one wants to see a time when antibiotics are no longer useful.  In the meantime, I don’t want to drink them in my milk, or in water tainted by runoff from dairy farming.  

Okay, on to hormones.  Is this making you thirsty?  I thought so.

Recombinant bovine growth hormone, or rBGH, has been banned in Europe and Canada due to concerns for the health and safety of cows and of people who consume the milk and meat from those cows.  A growing majority of dairy farmers in the U.S. are now refusing to use hormones.  What exactly is the problem?  (What isn’t the problem?  Ugh.)  Well, the point of rBGH is to increase milk production.  Yet, rBGH has been associated with increased risk of mastitis, lameness, and decreased fertility.  Not only does this sound like a poor way of treating cows, something meant to increase milk production isn’t doing its job if it’s making the cows sick and infertile. 

I’m most worried about rBGH and other hormones ending up in the milk we drink.  This is, frankly, a controversial topic, and one I’m still learning about.  It seems there haven’t been any long-term studies on the safety of these hormones, but I don’t see evidence that they are safe.  One common concern is whether rBGH is associated with early onset of puberty in girls, although some sources debate that idea.  Another concern is that IGF-1 (Insulin-like growth factor 1), which results from hormone-treated milk, is associated with higher levels of breast and prostate cancer.  I also wonder whether it would affect insulin levels, which would have implications for a lot of other areas of health and chronic disease.

So why is this stuff out there if nobody likes it?  Well, there’s strong speculation that a lot of the pressure to keep this stuff in the market and legal comes from Monsanto, makers of Posilac, the common form of rBGH on the market.  This is the same company that sues farmers for saving seeds.  Recently the New York Times highlighted Monsanto’s efforts to restrict dairy companies from labeling their milk “hormone and antibiotic free.” 

Hormones and antibiotics aren’t the only health and ethics issues; what animals eat and how they’re kept plays a big part in nutrition, safety, and animal welfare.

Dairy from grass-fed, pasture-rotated animals is not only more sustainable and better tasting, it’s also better for you - and better for the cows, who prefer a life of grazing to one in confinement.  Milk from grass-fed cows has, among other things, higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids.  Check out this report on grass-fed meat and dairy for more information.   Incidentally, the same report suggests that cows get sick in the first place (prompting the application of antibiotics) due to confinement and poor living conditions. 

As a former vegetarian who didn’t consume much dairy, I can understand the perspective some vegetarians and vegans have of not wanting to exploit or kill animals for food.  However, for me, ensuring that animals are treated respectfully, fed well, and kept healthy in a comfortable, natural environment is more important than eschewing meat and dairy entirely.  We are carnivores, after all, and there’s a community benefit to supporting small-scale, organic, grass-feeding producers; it helps them succeed and increases demand for sustainably-raised dairy and meat.  We also win out nutritionally if we favor meat and milk from small farms that feed and treat their animals well (and don’t send them off to a crowded feedlot for the last few months of their lives).  Maybe we can even dream about government subsidies for farmers producing small-scale, sustainable meat and dairy, to make the cost of these products more within reach for people of all income levels.

Raw Milk

I’ve mentioned raw milk a few times in this post, and want to delve into it briefly.  Raw milk has more nutrients than its pasteurized cousin, and less lactose; I’ve drank nearly a quart of raw cow’s milk this week already - mostly in the form of strawberry milk - and had absolutely no problems.  Being lactose intolerant, that would never happen with pasteurized, supermarket milk.  Pasteurizing destroys lactase, an enzyme that breaks down lactose, and lipase, which aids in the digestion of fats.  It also destroys some of the vitamins and other nutrients found in milk.  There are even questions as to whether pasteurized milk is associated with childhood allergies and asthma; check out what the blog the free radical has to say about this.

There are arguments concerning the safety of raw milk, but in reality, the safety risks are few and the health benefits are many.  Some sources suggest that enzymes in raw milk actually prevent the growth of pathogens.  To produce raw milk legally, dairies generally have to follow such stringent standards for cleanliness and safety that I feel safer drinking raw milk than pasteurized milk from antibiotic-filled downer cows, personally.  Wait, and I get nutritional benefits too?

Raw milk also just tastes good.  When we get used to pasteurizing our food, we forget what it tasted like for generations before we started that trend.  Have you ever tasted unpasteurized fresh apple cider?  It’s unlike any pasteurized version, the complete essence of apple, unadulterated.  Raw milk is similar; you taste it and think, “Oh, that’s what milk’s supposed to taste like.”

And finally, as Stephan points out in Whole Health Source, if you can’t access or don’t want raw milk, fermented milk offers some of the same benefits as raw, like lactose reduction. 

So, what next?

Find the milk you like the taste of and that your body can handle, preferably from animals raised as sustainably and humanely as possible.  Even if you’re not someone who is particularly interested in health, nutrition, safety, or animal welfare (which I doubt if you’ve made it this far in the post), you probably care about taste.  Go out and get a container of the best raw, grass-fed, organic milk you can find - cow, sheep, goat, or all of the above - and taste it.  Not bad, eh?  Don’t miss the industrial, pasteurized, hormone-enhanced flavor, do you?

We’ve come a long way from the cartons of poison-tasting skim milk that were the only option my parents knew of on the supermarket shelves of the 1980s.  I’d like to see us go further, to make good quality milk the norm.  In the meantime, maybe I’ll invite my parents for a visit, bring out a container of grass-fed, organic, raw milk, calm their (hyper-worried) minds about the safety of raw milk, and invite them to have some.  Drink it, I’ll urge them; it’s good for you.