What Evil Cows Don’t Want You to Know About Dairy

We have been taught since we were children that dairy is a foundation of our diet.

It provides protein and immense amount of calcium. It helps us grow faster and keeps our bones strong to prevent us from getting diseases like osteoporosis.

Media has drilled into our minds that you aren’t cool unless you have a white mustache. Corporate America, companies like Kraft, make us ask ourselves daily, “Got milk?”

But what if it was a rouse? What if we have been bamboozled by Dairy-Duggery and Cow-Foolery?

What if we found out it was terribly wrong for us to “Got milk?” (My apologies to my 1st grade teacher Dr. Chandler)

What if we discovered that it was all a big conspiracy like Soylent Green? What if we detected there were a bunch of ticked off cows that wanted vengeance on years of making them a staple of our Fast Food diets and yanking at their teats? Slowly…methodically…letting us drink their toxic milk and eat their lethal cheese only to suffer from chronic diseases and gradual death.

Warning…this post may make you buy gold, live in a mountain, and pile of up firearms. Or just change your eating habits.

Cows Kicking Us in the Gut with Dairy

So what is dairy doing to our bodies, namely our gut lining?  Robb Wolf mentions in his book The Paleo Solution that “In simple terms, dairy and legumes have problems similar to grains: Gut irritating proteins, antinutrients, and protease inhibitors”

Dairy, like grains, can damage the gut lining causing leaky gut issues with intestine content flowing into your gut. Is that bad? That isn’t good. This can translate into dairy intolerance from any dairy product, chemical sensitivities, food allergies, and autoimmune diseases.

Your gall bladder then doesn’t receive the triggers it needs chemically to release bile salts, which is vital for absorption of fats and proteins. This is what causes gall stones, the eventual removal of the gall bladder, and other digestive problems caused by these utters of mass destruction.

Finally, enzymes called protease inhibitors rear their ugly heads. They prevent the breakdown of proteins, which is very important to help against autoimmunity and allergies. All of this breaking down the intestines and causing more diseases, medical bills, and a terribly limited lifestyle.

All of which…a part of the Cow plan for world domination. You can bet your cheddar cheese they get excited every time they get milked. One pinch closer to supremacy.

Their Deadliest Weapon: Glucose

Dairy has another colossal issue. The carbohydrate portion of dairy combined with the dairy proteins produces glucose, which is insulin spiking. Insulin regulates our blood sugar and in turn our body fat. Insulin is spiked by sugar as well as certain carbohydrates like grains (bread, pasta, or anything with flour whether white or “whole wheat”). When you keep shooting up your insulin levels, your insulin resistance becomes shot. Your liver can’t constantly battle the attack of Glucose that is created by dairy and refined carbs. Hormones like Glucagon that are there to maintain energy levels are crushed. Leptin, which tells your mind “stop eating fatty”, and a host of other satiety hormones stop speaking sense to you.

Madness and obesity ensues.

You are left on an island. Your Jiminy Cricket of fat has bailed on you. The glucose prisoners have slowly broken through the walls like Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption, but they are now running the prison instead of searching for freedom. Anarchy has ensued in your body. You are thrown into a perpetual downward spiral of being constantly sleepy, only charged to get more food, but never satiated.

Welcome to Fatty Paradise: a living nightmare.

Don’t worry there is plenty of other horror stories about what happens after this, but I will save that gory tale for another post. The bottom line is that dairy has pretty much the same effects as many carbohydrates that leads to increased rates of diabetes, accelerated aging, stronger seasonal allergies, Parkinson’s, strokes, cancer and the list goes on.

Western diet + cow = Cow Zombie Holocaust. (Ok maybe I am stretching that a little.)

Or in other words, The Rise of The Cow.

Yes they knew all along. They have been fairly silent all these years gaining beachheads in towns like Green Bay. Just “mooing” us to drink their milk and eat their cheese.

But We Can’t Survive Without Calcium!

This now seems like a catch-22. You have to get calcium, but where if not dairy? We have been taught by parents, government, and the media that dairy is the prime source for calcium. The thought may come up that “If I can’t eat it, then I will surely die. Non dairy calcium sources don’t exist!  It is a myth like dry land!” Not so fast.

Sometimes we get a bit obsessive about milk.

Amy Kubal at The Paleo Solution mentions: “it is well known that dairy is not the only source for this mineral. In fact, some of the best sources of calcium are sardines, trout, salmon, etc, and these protein rich sea creatures also contain long chain omega 3 (DHA) fatty acids, and a plethora of other nutrients.”

There are a variety of areas you can get non dairy sources of calcium or dairy free products with calcium that are full of nutrients.  These include dairy free foods like protein that Amy talked about and also vegetables like broccoli, spinach, and kale.  Kale is a great source of calcium.

In fact, Dr. Loren Cordain, creator of The Paleo Diet mentions, “One of the great ironies of the low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets is that even though they allow unlimited consumption of high-calcium cheeses, they almost certainly will be found to promote bone loss and osteoporosis in the long run.”

How can that be?  Calcium is not only something that has to come in the body, but also has to be equally excreted (pee) out of the body.  This is a process called Calcium Balance.  You can possibly even have normal levels of calcium balance if with low intake of calcium as long as the excretion levels are also low.  As you eat more alkaline based foods (fruits and veggies) you excrete less calcium compared to the amounts you eat through acids (dairy).  Two studies in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Anthony Sebastian (UC-San Francisco) and Dr. Lawrence Appel (John Hopkins University) demonstrate this.

It makes you wonder with all of these other sources why there has been a strong push for dairy when it does a lot more harm than good. Is this a government conspiracy with the cows?!?! Are cows majority shareholders in corporations like Kraft?!?! Mind blowing.

Butter Not!

I am sorry to say butter fits into this tub as well.  The milk protein and lectin inside also cause problems with gut irritation which leads to autoimmunity.  It also has the same insulin resistance issues.  Bummer.

This also includes margarine and ghee, even though I have to say the taste of ghee makes me want to go “Gheeeee!!” in a garbage can.

Now you may get away with grass-fed butter on an occasion if you want to give in to the dark cow side. Still, even without the gut irritation issues by being grass-fed, that doesn’t solve the insulin sensitivity issues which lead to obesity.

But What About Moderation?

Now what I am about to say about dairy, is the same thing I would say with legumes, grains, and sugar.  You can do all things in “moderation”, but what does that mean?  Moderation bugs me about as much as the phrase “balanced diet”.  It is all relative.  It means nothing.  And often after trying to “moderate” you end up eating just as much as you did because of the insulin spiking properties that makes you come back for more and more.

At Know My Body we try to start with a baseline where everything you are putting in your body is generally going to be healthy for you and most people: protein, vegetables, and fat.  After you start there with a non dairy diet, you have to tinker.

I would start by tinkering first with fruit and nuts because they come with a lot of pluses with nutrients.  See if you can handle that for a month or two.  ”Handle it” means do you have a lot of energy and do you see yourself still on the path toward your goals of either fat loss or muscle gain.

Only after fruit and nuts, would I test the waters on dairy.  I would focus on grass-fed dairy, which has more Omega-3′s.   It also comes with something called “conjugated linoleic acid”.  You just need to know it is muscle promoting.  See if you still have the same energy or better.  Maybe go Cow-Tipping or something.

Dairy can be a heated discussion on it’s health quality even among those ancestor-type diets like Primal and Paleo.   Here is a Dairy Analysis by Dr. Pedro Bastos if you want to really geek out for an hour.   I am sure your new knowledge will bug the crap out of the cows.

So figure out what works for your body, but I would start without dairy and see if you can go through your life without it.

Bottom line: Fight the cow. Eat the meat, spare the milk.

About Cade

Cade is the founder of Know My Body. Sorry...no doctor degree, fancy gym, multi-million dollar fitness program, or label as a self-proclaimed health guru of biblical proportions. He is a common guy just like you. Maybe that helps him get you a bit better.

He has worked the past several years trying to get a grasp of "health knowledgeries" from the perspective of a person working a 9 to 5 job and dealing with the normal and not-so-normal challenges that life gives. Visit our About Page to chew on some more knowledge about Cade and how we want to help you at Know My Body.