One good thing that our food industry does is to label food so we know what we are putting in our bodies. That empowers those of us who care to be able to make good choices.
For it to work, though, you need to know what the labels mean. That can be confusing, especially if it's a subject that you aren't very knowledgeable about.
I am knowledgeable about milk. Let's define milk labels, and more importantly, let's read between the lines about what they really mean for your health.
Milk Labels
A2A2
There is a company in Austrailia that claims that milk from certain genetic lines of cows that did not undergo the A1 mutation is easier to digest. In this blog I thoroughly discuss the A2 / A1 debate, but in summary, lactose intolerance is the inability to digest milk SUGAR, lactose. A2A2 milk concerns PROTEINS in the milk. True lactose intolerance (trouble digesting a sugar) is not going to be affected by consuming milk from cows whose proteins are a certain way. Proteins are damaged by high heat treatments such as ultra pasteurization, which denatures the proteins and makes them harder to digest. That would be true whether the milk was A2 or A1. Switching to raw milk will solve that problem. Raw milk also contains lactic bacteria and enzymes that aid in the digestion of lactose.
Some raw milk dairies in America have A2A2 cows. For most people it makes no difference if cows are A2 or A1. After all, people have been consuming milk for thousands of years with no knowledge of the cow's genetic status. What matters is that milk is RAW. Raw milk is easy to digest.
Dairy Free
This means that it does not contain real animal based milk or cream. Because many people have trouble digesting processed milk, we have created nondairy milk substitutes. However, processed dairy free milk isn't good for you. Most dairy free milks contain sugar, thickeners and stabilizers which cause inflammation of the digestive tract, seed oils, phosphates which lead to organ calcification and kidney damage, and preservatives. Dairy free milks tend to be high in carbs and low in protein. While they don't cause the problems associated with difficulty digesting milk, they are just another processed food.
Flavored
Wouldn't it be great if chocolate milk came from brown cows and strawberry milk came from... pink cows? Flavored milk has a bunch of bad stuff added that you really should avoid. Get in the habit of reading the ingredients of everything you buy, and train yourself to recognize and avoid artificial ingredients and chemicals additives. While chocolate milk, strawberry milk, and vanilla milk might sound yummy, and might be easier to get your kids to drink, they are packed with stuff that is bad for you such as artificial flavors, colors, stabilizers, and various forms of sugar. You can make your own healthy flavored milk from real raw milk. Blend the milk with frozen berries and honey for strawberry milk, or follow this recipe for a nourishing chocolate milk mix made with raw honey.
Fortified
Is processed milk better than raw milk because it has been fortified with vitamins, protein, and calcium? No. Raw milk has everything that a baby needs to grow and thrive without needing to be fortified. The reason that they fortify processed milk is because pasteurization makes many nutrients unavailable or detroys them. What gets added back to the milk is the synthetic version of the nutrients. Synthetic supplements can lead to liver damage, birth defects,and hypercalcemia. The New England Journal of Medicine reports that adverse effects of supplements are responsible for an average of 23,000 emergency room visits per year.
Grade A
Without some sort of regulatory oversight, mass produced milk would be made in disgusting conditions, both on the farms and in the factories where it is processed. This happened in the early 1900's on "swill farms" where milk was produced in filthy conditions and was responsible for making many people sick. It was the government's reaction to those swill farms that led to the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance and the pasteurized, processed milk that is ubiquitous today. Grade A means that the farms and factories have met certain standards of cleanliness.
Still, it may surprise you how dirty the milk is before it gets pasteurized--although it IS cleaner than what the swill farms used to pump out. There is still significant manure that gets into the milk and must be filtered, and the milk lines never quite get clean, which can breed pathogens. That is why they insist on pasteurizing that milk--because it really would make a lot of people sick if it was consumed raw. It was not produced in conditions suitable for raw milk consumption.
Grass Fed
Grass fed milk is much better for you than milk from cows that eat grain because cows were meant to eat grass, not grain. Grass fed cows are healthier. Grain fed dairy cows only get about 50% of their diet in grass, the rest is a mixture of corn, soy, and other feedstuffs.The reason that most dairy farms feed grain is because cows make much more milk if they are supplemented with corn and soy. In fact, modern dairy cows have been bred to make more milk than their bodies can keep up with without grain, and they will milk themselves to death if they are not given plenty of it. If you have corn or soy sensitivities, this milk will bother you because milk is made directly from what the cow eats.
It's hard to find cows that thrive on grass alone. Grass fed cows don't make as much milk, but the milk is so much better for you; it's higher in omega 3's and CLA's.
Grass fed milk bought at the store is still pasteurized, which makes it harder to digest than raw milk.
Homogenized
Unprocessed cow's milk, when left to sit for 24 hours or so, will have its cream rise to the surface. To make a more uniform product, and one that had a longer shelf life, dairy plants began to homogenize milk so that the cream stays mixed throughout the milk. They do this by forcing the milk through an extremely fine mesh that breaks up the milk fat particles into smaller pieces that don't rise. This can lead to faster oxidation of the butterfat.
Lactose Free
There are two steps in turning regular milk into lactose free milk: filtration and the addition of lactase.
Lactase is the enzyme made by the digestive system to break down lactose, milk sugar. True lactose intolerance means that a person does not produce lactase in their digestive juices. It is a genetic trait. If your ancestors were among populations that consumed milk, chances are, you have the ability to produce lactase. If your ancestors did not historically consume milk, you may be lactase deficient.
Lactase causes milk sugar, lactose, to break down into easily digestible galactose and glucose. If you are lactase deficient, drinking milk causes uncomfortable bloating, diarrhea and gas because your body can't break it down in the small intestine, so it passes undigested into the large intestine where bacteria ferment it.
So many people are diagnosed as "lactose intolerant" because they have trouble digesting milk, but as the other entries in this blog point out, there are many reasons a person might have trouble with processed milk and only a fraction of them are lactose related. I prefer to call people "lactase deficient" rather than "lactose intolerant" because I feel that that term is overused and misunderstood.
Reasons for people having trouble digesting processed milk, besides lactase deficiency, are:
because high heat treatment causes proteins to become difficult to digest
or the cows were fed grain
or the cows were administered pharmaceuticals that irritate people's immune systems.
In a case of true lactase deficiency, milk that was treated with lactase would be easier to digest.
Raw milk is still potentially a good option for lactase deficient individuals, because there are lactose eating bacteria in raw milk, and raw milk contains other enzymes to help break it down. The more raw milk you consume, the more you will build up populations of lactose eating bacteria in your gut. Raw milk kefir is a fantastic source of good microbes that thrive on milk, and most of the lactose in raw kefir has already been transformed by these microbes into easier to digest molecules. Also, you can buy bottles of lactase and add drops of it to fresh milk.
Non-homogenized
See "Homogenized" above.
Also known as "cream line" or "cream top" milk. Raw milk is not homogenized, meaning that the cream rises when it is left undisturbed.
It is possible to find small dairies who sell gently pasteurized milk that has not been homogenized.
You can make butter or ice cream from the cream that rises.
Did you know that milk left after skimming the cream off is not what you think of as "skim milk", or fat free? When big dairy plants process milk, they separate the cream by putting it through a powerful centrifugal force separator which removes all of the milk fat. Skimming cream from raw milk does not remove all of the fat. So skimmed raw milk is yummier than processed skim milk.
Many people who buy raw milk love the cream on top of the milk. If you want the cream distributed more evenly, just shake the jar before opening it.
Organic
Organic milk is produced from organically raised animals, which means that it is better for the environment than conventional milk, and it will not have the pharmaceuticals that conventional cows are treated with.
Organic milk is, in most cases, high heat treated, meaning that it will be harder to digest. And unless it is labeled as grass fed, the cows are still fed a heavy grain diet.
Pasteurized
Heat kills the bacteria found in milk. If milk contains pathogens, then you want it to be heat treated so you don't get sick from it. It is common for raw milk to harbor pathogens, such as if the cow is sick, or if milking equipment is not kept meticulously clean.
You probably thought that pasteurized milk was free of bacteria, right? Actually, milk on store shelves is permitted to have up to 10 coliforms and 15,000 total bacteria per mL.
My raw milk, which gets tested twice a month, typically has less than 1 (in other words, none found) coliforms and well under 500 total bacteria per mL. My raw milk is cleaner than pasteurized milk is allowed to be!
Raw
The dairy industry really pushes the line that raw milk is dangerous. That's because they don't profit from small, independant dairies. We are their competition. And frankly, their milk IS dangerous before it gets pasteurized.
Thankfully, not all raw milk contains pathogens. And raw milk contains many enzymes and beneficial bacteria that aid in its digestion. Raw milk contains all of the vitamins and minerals that is was designed to have in their natural and bioavailable forms. Raw milk is a perfect, complete food.
As an insider, I know how dirty raw milk can be if the farmer doesn't work hard to produce the highest quality clean milk. Here are guidelines to help you determine if a dairy sells safe raw milk or not.
rbST
Recombinant bovine somatotropin is a synthetic growth hormone that increases milk production in cows. Even though labels that pledge their milk is rbST free are required to state that there has not been any evidence found that milk from treated cows is different from untreated cows, I personally do not want to take a chance of traces of artificial hormones entering my body. Hormone balance is crucial for good health. Many of our health crises today are due to imbalanced hormones.
You can ask small raw milk dairies if they use rbST, but it's a safe bet that they don't.
Shelf Stable
There are various degrees of pasteurization, and even though heat kills bacteria, there might be a few lingering bacteria in some pasteurized milk. Shelf stable milk has been so incredibly high heat treated that it is completely dead. There are no bacteria and no enzymes left in it. This is great for the food industry because the milk has a long shelf life and does not require refrigeration prior to opening. But it is going to be very difficult for you to digest, for all the reasons stated in the next entry.
Ultra Heat Treated (UHT) / Ultra Pasteurized (UP)
These two types of heat treatment are essentialy the same and result in the shelf stable milk described above. The reason this makes milk so hard to digest is that proteins are easily affected by heat. Consider a raw egg versus a cooked egg... heat changes proteins. UHT and UP milk are heated to a whopping 280F. Think about that. The boiling point of water is 212F. In order to get milk that hot, it has to be put under enormous pressure. This drastically changes the shape of the protein molecules, much more so than simply boiling milk on your stove top would. Proteins need to be broken down by enzymes in a very specific "lock and key" relationship. Enzymes rely on the protein being a certain shape to do their job, and high heat treated proteins are no longer that shape. Also, the enzymes that were in the milk when it came out of the cow are deactivated by that heat. This is why so many people have trouble digesting milk.
Cheese makers must avoid buying UP or UHT milk for cheese making as the milk turns to mush rather than forming a good strong curd.
Vat Pasteurized
The same small dairies who sell unhomogenized milk at the grocery store typically vat pasteurize their milk. It is heated to about 165F. It lacks the beneficial bacteria and enzymes found in raw milk, but it is not as difficult to digest as UHT or UP milk.
Take charge of your health! Understand what you are feeding yourself and your family. Choose to eat foods that truly nourish you. Prioritizing good food in your budget now will pay you back dividends in good health later.
Buy grass fed raw milk here!
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