As often as I tell my patients that dairy is unhealthy, they have a hard time abstaining.
So, let’s discuss which form of dairy is the least detrimental.
• Make sure you buy only organic. Commercial milk has extra growth hormones – and dairy is a hormonal food to start with.
• Ice cream: Probably the most unhealthy form of dairy. Not least because it is laced with sugar. Even yogurt ice cream is discouraged, for that reason. Highly addictive. And not needed in your diet because it has no nutritional value. Get your calcium from vegetables and herbs, whole grains, legumes and nuts, and your vitamin D from moderate sun exposure.
• Same with chocolate milk or any sweetened dairy product, like custards, including all yogurts other than plain ones.
• Cream cheese is made by adding more milk solids to milk. So, it is enriched with milk proteins. A bad idea.
• Cheeses: Never eat anything that is not cultured cheese but “processed.” If it comes in a perfectly square form, don’t eat it. Because nothing in nature comes square. Cheese is best to avoid – it is responsible for much of our present obesity epidemic.
• Raw milk is less adulterated than commercial milk, but you run the risk of unpleasant infections. If you know the farm and the farmer, you might want to take the risk. Still, raw milk naturally contains hormones that might make invisible or already diagnosed cancers grow.
• Whole milk is better than skim milk because it is less processed. It also contains less protein (because, by definition, skim milk contains less fat; consequently it contains more protein). And I am not worried about the milk fat as much as about the milk proteins because they are allergenic and they are inflammatory.
• Which means that butter and heavy cream are better than whole milk because they contain even less protein. The best, obviously, is ghee – or purified butter, also called butterfat. There the proteins have been skimmed off. Ghee does the least damage as far as inflammation from dairy goes – but you still have to worry about calories. We are less concerned nowadays with saturated fats. In moderation, they seem to be good.
• The best butter would be European cultured butter. No extra growth hormones, preferably from grass-fed cows.
• Yogurt, kefir, crème fraîche are cultured foods with wholesome bacteria (provided no fruit, sweetener, etc. are added). Make no mistake – they are still dairy products with inflammatory capacities, and contain hormones that might trigger cancer. Even worse, they are delicious and highly addictive. Once in a while, celebrating something grand, I allow crème fraîche on the table…
If you consume dairy products, observe how you feel: Do you experience bloating, reflux, joint pains, headaches, breast discomfort, cravings? Or what else? Become aware what dairy does to your body – and try to avoid it. Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Life Is Not Fair
August 5, 2010
Life is not fair! How often have you said that, and grumbled?
Poor, rich, healthy sick, gifted, dumb, beautiful, ugly - most attributes come to us unbidden, and are unfair. This is a lesson we have to learn in life, if we want or not.
The world is not a fair place - the only thing that is in our hand is making it a fairer place.
We can lend a hand to the down-trodden; or we can kick them down a bit more. In most cases, nobody will see it.
Only we ourselves know what we have done - and we have to live with ourselves - with our friendly self, with our mean self - for the rest of our lives. Read More
Soaking and Sprouting
August 2, 2010
“Give us our daily bread” is a prayer. If somebody is out there to listen to this prayer, He seems to prefer to listen to First-World supplicants; the Third World does not need to apply, apparently.
World hunger is appalling, but perhaps it is beneficial that not all people get to have their daily bread. Because our staple bread, surprisingly, contains ingredients that might hurt you.
All seeds – including grains, legumes and nuts – contain indigestible parts. It is a survival strategy for seeds: They don’t want to be eaten, they want to germinate and build new life.
About five to ten thousand (depending on where people lived) years ago, the agricultural revolution happened. Suddenly we were eating grains (the other part of the agricultural revolution was coaxing cows into give up their milk for human consumption). When people still were hunters and gatherers, grains barely ever showed up in their meals – grains then were trifling kernels, not worth the effort. Cavemen ate greens, roots, nuts, small fruit (big fruit are the result of modern hybridization), game, fowl and grubs – whatever was available. Not much was available, so famines and starvation were frequent – especially after mankind had successfully hunted to extinction the huge animals that populated the world in prehistoric times: huge deer, woolly mammoths, giants pigs, and so on.
Agriculture was a step forward. It provided more calories, and reliably so. More children could survive; populations slowly increased.
But grains come with a price: They contain antinutrients (such as lectins, phytates, protease inhibitors) that have negative health consequences. These ingredients interfere with the successful uptake of important molecules – mostly minerals, like calcium – and they are harsh on the gastro-intestinal tract. As they are indigestible, eating them can lead to upset stomach, bloating, diarrhea, even colitis.
But things are never easy: Polyphenols and flavonoids are also antinutrients, and we surely want those in our daily fare (though not in overdose).
Antinutrients can be destroyed or at least reduced by cooking, sprouting and fermentation. About fermentation and its benefits we have already talked. We also discussed raw foods-only diets, and that cooking makes more nutritional components available.
Soaking and sprouting is a method still not used widely enough. I can't marvel enough that the simple fact of adding water to a seed will make it easier to digest (be aware that for some people it is not enough to eliminate the digestive problems). Store-bought sprouts in the past have occasional had problems with germs, alfalfa and soy bean sprouts, for instance - a good reason to do it at home. Just keep your (simple) equipment clean. There are a few tricks for different sprouts from amaranth to Brazil nuts, from mung beans to lentils which I don’t want to discuss here – information is easily found on the Internet.
This is my stress-free methods: Soak in clean water overnight. There are plastic jars available at health food stores with sieves of different sized hole, for small and bigger seeds. One can also just (and perhaps healthier without plastics leaching out) use glass jars and paper towels and/or cheese cloth for straining.
Pour off the water next morning, rinse in clean water (repeatedly, if the water is cloudy) and let stand for sprouting (or beginning to sprout). Eat your sprouts during this day. For me it works – without being too meticulous about it. I like sunflower, flax, sesame, almonds. Make sure you start with seeds that have not been irradiated, roasted, salted or processed in any way; organic is preferable. Make sure you don’t let them sprout for too long, they might get bitter. Experiment with different soaking/sprouting times. Anything longer than two, utmost three days can lead to mold – discard it. Always clean jars and sieves thoroughly.
Add sprouted seeds and nuts to bean dishes, leftovers and as snacks.
If you seem to have “allergies” to every single nut or seed there is, try removing antinutrients by soaking and sprouting. After all, yours might not be a real allergy, you might just not be able to digest certain indigestible food ingredients. Which is determined by genetics. Read More