Calcium means strong bones and helps us build muscle, but there are other sources of calcium than milk. Milk actually has harmful effects on our health. People with chronic constipation, arthritis, and allergies have had their condition disappear when they stop eating dairy. Here are the most common dairy health concerns:
Low Quality Forage (Dairy cow health concerns)
Low quality cattle feed can alter the milk, and can cause health conditions in the cow. Cows are fed soy, corn, cottonseed meal or commercial foods. These contain a lot of bad things; chicken manure, and pesticides are just a couple of the ingredients in dairy cows food.
Cattle feed is an essential source of nutrients needed for milk production. It provides protein, energy, as well as fiber needed fur cud chewing, rumination, and rumen health. Dairy farms need to think about how much and what quality of cattle feed they should use before deciding on the diet that they’re going to give their cows. Grains, proteins, and other supplements are added to cattle feed to provide the same nutritional value as fodder.
Pasteurization
Pasteurizing milk means that the milk has been heated to a high enough temperature to kill specific bacteria and stop enzymes. Unfortunately it also destroys vitamins, denatures milk proteins, kills valuable bacteria and encourages pathogens. Calves that are fed pasteurized milk are not healthy and often die young. Pasteurization was started in the 1920’s to stop many diseases started by dirty production methods, but now that production methods have been cleaned up pasteurization is no longer necessary.
Raw milk contains living food of all types, such as delicate enzymes and probiotic bacteria. However, it often goes through a very high heat process which kills these nutrients. The result is lost vitamins and minerals and changes in flavor or texture.
Ultra-pasteurized (UHT)
This is used to kill heat resistant bacteria. It increases the milks shelf life, but lowers it safeness. Ultra-pasteurized milk goes from refrigerated (cold) to above boiling in less than two seconds. This has the same effects as regular pasteurization just to higher effects: less vitamins, more pathogens. UHT alters the taste of regular pasteurized milk and can lose up to 20% less folate, riboflavin, vitamin A, vitamin B12, vitamin C and thiamin.
Homogenized
Homogenization breaks down fat pieces so they do not rise to the top. This type of milk is harder to digest. Rather than proteins being digested in the stomach, they are being broken down and absorbed into the bloodstream. These unusual proteins can cause the immune system to be inflamed. Homogenized milk has been known to increase your risk of heart disease.
If you want to drink milk, rather than buying any milk it is suggested to buy pure raw milk from grass-fed cows. The problem is not the milk, but rather the processing it goes to from cow to store.
