When I ask patients what they put in their coffee, they almost always say “cream.”  So I say, “Like from a cow?”  And they usually say no.

What do they mean by “cream” then?  They mean coffee whiteners.   “Cremora Rich ‘n Creamy!”, “Coffee-mate Lite The  Original,” “International Delights Coffee House Interpretations Vanilla Latte,” “Spoon ‘N’ Stir Non-Dairy Creamer,” and so on.  They mean corn syrup solids and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.  Translation?  Sugar and trans fat.  Some of my patients even have a favorite flavor, now that the folks who make and market coffee whiteners have identified and exploited the consumer’s insatiable desire for variety.

Coffee whiteners are everywhere.  They’re at the office, at meetings, at the workshop I attended last week, and at parties given by folks otherwise committed to fresh food, backyard gardens, and the like.  Like some kind of stealth bomber, they slip in under everybody’s radar.  Coffee whiteners are Trojan horses filled with diabetes, obesity, heart attacks, and strokes.

A visit to my neighborhood supermarket reveals a few interesting facts about coffee whiteners, also known as non-dairy creamers.  In and of themselves, they are a study in advertising spin.  First, although they contain no milk sugar (lactose), they are NOT non-dairy; virtually all of them contain a milk derivative called sodium caseinate.  People who are allergic to milk protein cannot consume them.  That is why the Orthodox Union classifies them as dairy for those consumers, Jewish and otherwise, who purchase kosher food.  And that’s just the beginning.

Coffee whiteners, a very successful form of fabricated calories, are advertised as containing zero trans fats even though they actually contain almost 1/2 gram per serving.  That’s because, according to the law, products containing up to 1/2 gram may be advertised as trans-fat free.  But a teaspoon of powder isn’t very much.  If you use more, whether in one cup of coffee, tea or cocoa (as recommended on the label), or several cups, you get more trans fat.  And even small amounts of trans fat cause damage to blood vessels, increase the risk of heart attacks and strokes, and interfere with fat storage, cholesterol synthesis, and fertility.  There is no amount of trans fat that is safe to consume. 

Okay, so if you use more than the recommended serving size, you’ll get more trans fat.  That’s obvious.  What of it?  Well, I’m having a hard time with the fact that the advertising on packages of coffee whitener actually encourages people to use more than a single teaspoon (powder) or tablespoon (liquid) serving size:  “Pour in a teaspoon or more of Cremora.”  “Savor the rich flavor and smooth creaminess of Cremora, cup after creamy cup.”  “Scoop or pour…”

Remembering that the more manufactured the product, the more creative the names, let’s take a look at the coffee whitener flavors: Coffee-Mate makes liquid versions in French Vanilla (blue), Hazelnut (yellow), Peppermint Mocha (light blue), Vanilla Caramel (orange), and Italian Sweet Creme (purple), this last one part of their special “World Cafe” line.  Linking each flavor to a particular color spectrum improves identification, selection, and loyalty.  International Delight makes French Vanilla (blue), Hazelnut (orange), Hershey’s Chocolate Caramel (brown), Amaretto (pink), Irish Creme (green), White Chocolate Mocha (purple), Caramel Macchiato (light brown), and Vanilla Latte (turquoise), the last three from their “Coffee House Inspirations” (silver) line. 

Coffee-Mate liquid French Vanilla comes in regular, sugar-free, and fat-free versions.  I can’t figure out how it is that all of these list the same first three ingredients (water, corn syrup solids, and partially hydrogenated soybean and/or cottonseed oil) in the same order.  But they do.

International Delights also makes a product called Sweet Buttercream, advertised as Limited Edition, whatever that is.  Sweet Buttercream features a thickly iced cupcake in hues of tan, gold and ivory.  I figured since it had the word “buttercream,” there must be some butter, or maybe cream, in the ingredient list, but I just found the usual — corn syrup solids and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, i.e., sugar and trans fat.

So what should you do?  Don’t use coffee whiteners.  Put cream (from a cow!), half-and-half, or milk in your coffee.  You will not gain one single pound.  Substitute soy, rice, coconut, or almond milk if you are intolerant of dairy, and stick to the original without added sugar and flavorings.  Or drink your coffee black.  Don’t use “fat-free half-and-half.”  I’m still trying to figure out what that even means. 
 
Don’t buy anything with the words “partially-hydrogenated” in its ingredient list.  “Partially-hydrogenated” means trans fats, and there is no place for trans fats in the diets of your loved ones, friends, or coworkers.  We will not build healthy communities with coffee whitener.

This article is Cross Posted on DrCate.com

Milk may be the single most historically important food to human health. Not just any milk, mind you, but raw milk from healthy, free-to-roam, grass-fed cows. The difference between the milk you buy in the store, and the milk your great-great grandparents enjoyed is, unfortunately, enormous. If we lived in a country where raw milk from healthy, pastured cows were still a legal product and available as readily as, say, soda or a handgun, we’d all be taller and healthier, and I’d see fewer elderly patients with hunched backs and broken hips. If you’re lucky enough to live in a state where raw milk is available in stores and you don’t buy it, you are passing up a huge opportunity to improve your health immediately. If you have kids, raw milk will not only help them grow, but will also boost their immune systems so they get sick less often. And, since the cream in raw milk is an important source of brain-building fats, whole milk and other raw dairy products will also help them to learn.

It’s a common misperception that milk drinking is a relatively new practice, one limited to Europeans. The reality is that our cultural—and now, our epigenetic—dependence on milk most likely originated somewhere in Africa. It is highly likely that milk consumption gave those who practiced animal husbandry such an advantage that it rapidly spread across the continent and then into Europe and Asia. With such widespread use, it’s likely that to allow for optimal expression, many of our genes now require it. In those countries where people’s stature most benefited from the consumption of raw milk, when raw milk is replaced with a processed alternative, their bones take the hardest hit. It’s a case of the bigger they are the harder they fall. In places like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, people now suffer from particularly high rates of osteoporosis and degenerative arthritis.^[i]

Our genes have been infused with real dairy products for tens of thousands of years. Recent geologic and climatologic research reveals that between 100,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Sahara was a lush paradise of grassland. During that window of abundance, the human population exploded. To deal with the consequential depletion of wild resources, people began experiments in “proto-farming,” a term coined by biologist and historian Colin Tudge to describe humanity’s slow-motion leap from living in harmony with the land as hunter-gatherers to adopting the now-familiar program of altering the ecology to suit our interests. Author Thom Hartmann explains in his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight:

Something important happened around 40,000 years ago: humans figured out a way to change the patterns of nature so we could get more sunlight/food than other species did. The human food supply was determined by how many deer or rabbits the local forest could support […]. But in areas where the soil was too poor for farming or forest, supporting only scrub brush and grasses, humans discovered that ruminant (grazing animals like goats, sheep, and cows) could eat those plants that we couldn’t, and could therefore convert the daily sunlight captured by the scrub and wild plants on that “useless” land into animal flesh, which we could eat.

Or drink, as the case may be.

For millennia, much of the world’s population has depended largely on milk for nutritional sustenance. However, the medical world has been ignorant of milk’s nearly ubiquitous use, confused by the issue of lactose intolerance. Because Europeans have lower rates of lactose intolerance, most Western physicians presume that only European populations have historically practiced dairying. But this confusion arises in part because most Western physicians don’t know very much about fermentation.

Lactose Intolerance

Lactose is the major type of sugar in milk. Nearly everyone can digest it while we’re babies and dependent on our mother’s milk, but many people lose the lactase enzyme in the lining of the intestine, growing lactose intolerant as they get older. Fermentation breaks down lactose, and so you don’t need that enzyme as long as you only eat fermented dairy products, such as yoghurt and cheese. The reason people living in warmer climates tend to be lactose intolerant more often than Europeans stems from the fact that fermentation progresses rapidly in warmer climates. Once fermented, the potentially irritating lactose sugars are gone. A child living in a warmer climate would, after weaning, have such infrequent need for the lactase enzyme that the epigenetic librarian would simply switch the gene off. In cooler European climates, fresh milk stays fresh for hours or days, and was presumably consumed that way often enough to keep the lactase enzyme epigenetically activated throughout a person’s life. If you have true lactose intolerance, as opposed to a protein allergy, you should be able to tolerate yoghurt, cheese, and cream (dairy fat contains little to no lactose—and minimal protein).

Why Most Milk is Pasteurized Today

Most of us also have heard that milk needs to be pasteurized to be safe. But we haven’t heard the whole story. For perhaps thousands of years, people who gave their animals the basic, humane care they deserved survived and thrived drinking completely raw, fresh milk. The need for pasteurization was a reality when in-city dairies housed diseased cows whose hindquarters ran with rivulets of manure. Tainting milk’s reputation even further, around the same time, dairymen were often infected with diphtheria, spreading the deadly bacteria through the medium of warm, protein-rich milk. But no epidemics have ever been traced to raw milk consumption when the cows were healthy and the humans milking them were disease free.[ii] If the animal is sickly—as they invariably are when raise in crowded, nightmarish conditions—its milk should probably not be consumed at all. When that’s your only choice, then, yes it ought to be cooked first to reduce risk of potentially lethal infections including undulant fever, hemolytic uremia, sepsis, and more. But it’s not your only choice.

If you erase any ethical entanglement, impulse of social responsibility, nagging moral prohibition, and investment in human health, you could call milk pasteurization a good thing. In terms of volume of product output per production unit, pasteurization plays a crucial role in converting small family farms into perfectly efficient milk producers for the national brands: cheaper feed (silage and grain instead of fresh grass and hay), more cows per square foot, more “milk” per cow. That explains why big agribusiness roots for pasteurization. But how did the rest of us get convinced?

Our fear of fresh milk can be traced to the energetic campaigning of a man named Charles North who patented the first batch-processing pasteurization machine in 1907.[iii] A skilled orator and savvy businessman, he traveled small towns throughout the country creating publicity and interest in his machines by claiming to have come directly from another small town, just like theirs, where people were dying from drinking unpasteurized milk.[iv] Of course, his claims were total fiction and doctors were staunchly opposed to pasteurization.[v] The facts were on their side. Unfortunately, North had something better—fear. And he milked that fear right into a small fortune. The pasteurization industry mushroomed from nonexistence to a major political presence. Today, at the University of Pennsylvania where medical professors once protested that pasteurization “should never be had recourse to,”[vi] medical students are given lessons on the many health benefits of pasteurization.

Whenever I have a patient who was raised on a farm, one who looks tough and boasts how rarely they get sick, I ask them if they drank raw milk as a child. Nine times out of ten, they say yes. Every family dairyman I’ve talked to keeps raw milk around for their own families and happily testifies to its health benefits. Unlike meat or fruit or really any other food, milk is unique in that its one and only purpose is to nourish something else. Not only is it loaded with nutrients, it is engineered with an intricate micro-architecture that is key to enhancing digestive function while preventing the nourishing compounds from reacting with one another. Processing fundamentally alters this micro-architecture and diminishes nutritive value significantly. How much of a difference does this make? Enough that, based on their health and bone structure, I can guess with a high degree of accuracy which of my patients had access to raw milk as a child and which did not.

Since 1948, when states began passing mandatory pasteurization laws, raw milk fans have waged a bitter battle against government intervention. During hearings in which laws requiring pasteurization have been challenged, pasteurization proponents deny any nutritional difference between pasteurized, homogenized milk and raw. But as dairy scientists point out, heat denatures proteins, and homogenization explodes the fat droplets in milk. This is significant. Even to the naked eye, there’s a difference: Unlike cooked milk, the fresh product has a layer of cream floating at the top. But to fully understand how these two products differ, we need to bust out the microscope.

The Difference Between Fresh and Processed

If we put a drop of fresh milk on a slide, we see thousands of lipid droplets of varying size streaming under the cover slip and maybe a living lactobacilli or two wiggling from edge to edge. These come from the cow’s udders which, when well cared for, are colonized with beneficial bacteria, as is human skin. We want good bacteria in our milk. These probiotics protect both the milk and the milk consumer from pathogens. Good bacteria accomplish this by using the same bacterial communication techniques we read about in the section on fermentation.

Using the powerful electron microscope, we can magnify milk 10,000,000 times. Now we can see casein micelles, which are amazingly complex. Imagine a mound of spaghetti and meatballs formed into a big round ball. The strands of spaghetti are made of protein (casein), and the meatballs are made of the most digestible form of calcium phosphate, called colloidal calcium phosphate, which holds the spaghetti strands together in a clump with its tiny magnetic charge. This clumping prevents sugar from reacting with and destroying milk’s essential amino acids.

Each tiny globe of fat in the milk is enclosed inside a phospholipid membrane very similar to the membrane surrounding every cell in your body. The mammary gland cell that produced the fat droplet donated some of its membrane when the droplet exited the cell. This coating performs several tasks, starting in the milk duct where it prevents fat droplets from coalescing and clogging up mom’s mammary passageways. The milk fat globule’s lipid bilayer is studded with a variety of specialized proteins, just like the living cells in your body. Some proteins protect the globule from bacterial infection while others are tagged with short chains of sugars that may function as a signal to the intestinal cell that the contents are to be accepted without immune inspection, streamlining digestion. Still others may act as intestinal cell growth factors, encouraging and directing intestinal cells growth and function. As long as the coating surrounds the milk fat globule, the fat is easily digested, the gallbladder doesn’t have to squeeze out any bile for the fat to be absorbed, the fatty acids inside the blob are isolated from the calcium in the casein micelles, and everything goes smoothly. But if calcium and fats come into contact with one another, as we’ll see in a moment, milk loses much of its capacity to deliver nutrients into your body.

Let’s go back to the light microscope to take a look at pasteurized, homogenized milk and identify what distinguishes it from raw. One striking difference will be the homogeneity of fat globule sizes and the absence of living bacteria. But the real damage is hiding behind all this homogeneity and is only revealed under the electron microscope. Now, we see that these fat blobs lack the sophisticated bilayer wrapping and are instead caked with minerals and tangled remnants of casein micelles. Why does it look like this? The heat of pasteurization forces the sugar to react with amino acids, denaturing the proteins and knocking the fragile colloidal calcium phosphate out of the spaghetti-and-meatballs matrix, while the denatured spaghetti strands tangle into a tight, hard knot. Homogenization squeezes the milk through tiny holes under intense pressure, destroying the architecture of the fat globules. Once the two processing steps have destroyed the natural architecture of milk, valuable nutrients react with each other with health-damaging consequences.

Processing can render milk highly irritating to the intestinal tract, and such a wide variety of chemical changes may occur that processed milk can lead to diarrhea or constipation. During processing, the nice, soft meatball of colloidal calcium phosphate fuses with the fatty acids to form a kind of milk-fat soap. This reaction, called saponification, irritates many people’s GI tracts and makes the calcium and phosphate much less bioavailable and more difficult to absorb.[vii] How difficult? Food conglomerates have a lot of influence on the direction of research funding. And the dairy industry is big business. Little wonder that no studies have been funded to compare the nutritional value raw, whole cow’s milk to pasteurized head-to-head. But studies have been done on skim milk and human breast milk comparing fresh versus pasteurized, and the difference is dramatic: Processed milks contained anywhere from one half to one sixth the bioavailable minerals of the fresh products.[viii]^,[ix] When fresh, the milk fat globule carries signal molecules on the surface, which help your body recognize milk as a helpful substance as opposed to, say, an invasive bacteria. Processing demolishes those handy signals and so, instead of getting a free pass into the intestinal cell, the curiously distorted signals slow the process of digestion down so much that it can lead to constipation.[x] Heat destroys amino acids, especially the fragile essential amino acids, and so pasteurized milk contains less protein than fresh.[xi] But the damaged amino acids don’t just disappear; they have been glycated, oxidized and transformed into stuff like N-carboxymethyl-lysine, malonaldehyde, and 4-hydroxynonanal—potentential allergens and pro-inflammatory irritants.[xii]

And there’s more. Many of the active enzymes in fresh milk designed to help streamline the digestive process have also been destroyed. Other enzymes, such as xanthine oxidase, which ordinarily protect the milk (but cause damage inside our arteries) can play stowaway within the artificially formed fat blobs and be absorbed. Normally our digestive system would chop up this enzyme and digest it. But hidden inside fat, it can be ingested whole, and may retain some of its original activity. Once in the body, xanthine oxidase can generate free radicals and lead to atherosclerosis and asthma. One more thing that makes raw milk special is the surface molecules on milk fat globule membranes, called gangliosides. Gangliosides inhibit harmful bacteria in the intestine. Once digested, they’ve been shown to stimulate neural development.[xiii] Homogenization strips these benefits away.

What does all this scientific data mean to you? It means that the processed milk you buy in the store is not milk, not really. If you can’t find a good source of fresh, unprocessed milk, what can you do? Get the next best thing: yoghurt made from organic, whole milk. The fermentation process rejuvenates damaged proteins and makes minerals more bioavailable. A breakfast of yoghurt, fresh fruit slices, and nuts is nutritionally far superior to cold cereal and processed milk. But if you aren’t ready to give up milk for breakfast, then get organic whole milk (not low fat), preferably from cows raised on pasture—not grain! Non-organic dairy may seem cheaper, but in reality you get far less nutrition for the dollar than you do with organic because at least organically raised cows produce milk. The stuff that comes out of malnourished cows living in cement milk-factories hardly qualifies as such. Whatever you do, avoid soymilk. The primary difference between Yoohoo, a junk-food beverage snack sold in your local 7-11 and the soymilk sold in the health food stores is that Yoohoo is flavored with chocolate.

Splendor in the Grass: Anti-Cancer CLA

Source matters. The anti-cancer properties of a fatty acid called CLA (conjugated linolenic acid) are extremely potent. In a new clinical trial investigating the ability of CLA to reverse cancer in women undergoing biopsies, Dartmouth-Hitchock investigators use a single, approximately 800 mg dose and believe regressions will be visible in ten days. Ruminant animals’ (goats, sheep, cows, camel, etc.) milk and meat offer us the only natural source of CLA. But not all that ruminates fits the bill.

Milk from cows feeding on freshly growing grass contains more than 500 percent the CLA of milk from cows fed grain.[xiii] To give you an idea of the difference, 2-3 Tbs of grass fed butter (200-300 calories) are equivalent to the 800 mg being studied to reverse cancerous growths at Dartmouth-Hitchocock, but it would take 10-15 Tbs of grain-fed butter (1000-1500 calories) to get the same dose of CLA. (If you aren’t into dairy, then gently cook one untrimmed NY strip steak, or bone-marrow medallion, or other fat-rich bit of bovinious bliss from an animal that’s been properly pastured.)

The best time of year to introduce yourself to raw milk varies depending on your local climate. You want the animals to be eating fresh, growing grass because that’s their natural food and they will be healthier. Best of all, the milk will taste delicious and the cream to die for. (I add extra cream to my milk and it’s as good as ice cream.)

Safety First!

Still, you can’t just drink raw milk from anywhere. You really really need to do your homework. Tainted milk can contain pathogens such as brucella, listeria, and invasive E. coli. Raw milk must come from a trusted source, from a dairy committed to cleanliness, protocol, and animal welfare.

How do you identify a trustworthy source of fresh dairy? What I have to do, as with all animal products, is get in my car and drive. I go to local butcher shops, farmers markets, and farms, and meet the people who make my dinners possible. When I find a rancher or farmer who talks about caring for animals in ways that make me think he or she actually gives a damn, I know I’ve found someone who deserves my money.

Excerpts from Dr. Shanahan’s book Deep Nutrition: Why Your Genes Need Traditional Food

and from Food Rules: A Doctor’s Guide to Healthy Eating

Copyright 2008, 2010, Catherine Shanahan, MD and Luke Shanahan, MFA

[ii] The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. William Campbell Douglass II, MD. Rhino Publishing 2005.

[iii] Continuous Thermal Processing of Foods: Pasteurization and Uht. Heppell NJ. Springer 2000 P194

[iv] Dr. North and the Kansas City Newspaper War: Public Health Advocacy Collides with Main Street Respectability. Kovarik B. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (72nd, Washington, DC, August 10-13, 1989) accessed online dec 27, 2007 at www.radford.edu/wkovarik/papers/aej98.html

[v] The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. William Campbell Douglass II, MD. Rhino Publishing 2005.

[vi] The Milk Book: The Milk of Human Kindness is Not Pasteurized. William Campbell Douglass II, MD. Rhino Publishing 2005. p11.

[vii] Modificiations in milk proteins induced by heat treatment and homogenization and their influence on susceptibility to proteolysis. Garcia-Risco MR. International Dairy Journal 12 (2002) 679-688.

[viii] Soluble, dialyzable and ionic calcium in raw and processed skim milk, whole milk and spinach. Reykdal O. Journal of Food Science 56 3, pp. 864–866. 1991

[ix] Calcium bioavailability in human milk, cow milk and infant formulas—comparison between dialysis and solubility methods Roig MJ. Food Chemistry Vol 65, Issue 3, P353-357.

[x] Carbonylation of milk powder proteins as a consequence of processing conditions François Fenaille. Proteomics Vol 5 Issue 12 pp3097-3104

[xi] Modificiations in milk proteins induced by heat treatment and homogenization and their influence on susceptibility to proteolysis. Garcia-Risco MR. International Dairy Journal 12 (2002) 679-688.

[xii] Chemistry And Safety of Acrylamide In Food, Friedman M. p141. Springer 2005

[xiii] Dietary Fat Requirements in Health and Development, Thomas H Applewhite, American Oil Chemists Society 1988 p30

[xiv] Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets, J Dairy Sci. 1999 Oct;82(10):2146-56.

“But how can you be sure it’s safe”

“I guess I won’t be eating that from now on.”

I’ve received all of these reactions and more from friends when they’ve heard me explain that my wife and I make our own sourdough bread, yogurt and buttermilk. The products aren’t so distressing, but the processes, which are fundamentally the same, go against some deeply ingrained habits of thought: if germs are so bad, who in their right mind would deliberately cultivate germs and then eat the culturing medium?

It’s not so surprising that people feel this way. We are trained from early childhood to avoid microbes, instilled with the fear that they will make us sick-not entirely unreasonable, because some of them will. What our collective consciousness has lost, perhaps because so few of us are involved in food production these days, is that bacteria are responsible for the tastes and textures of many foods we love, while making many of them more easily digestible. Without careful application of bacterial cultures, we could never enjoy a salad with vinaigrette (we would have no vinegar), buttermilk pancakes (no buttermilk), numerous dairy-based South Asian curries and raitas (no yogurt), ripened cheeses, or pickled vegetables ranging from cucumber pickles to sauerkraut to jalape’os en escabeche.

Some time after toddlerhood we learn the word “fungus”, usually in association with mold that covers something lost in the refrigerator, or perhaps an infection such as athlete’s foot. We do our best to ignore the inclusion of edible mushrooms in this category. Those of us who bake bread may use packaged yeast, but tend not to know that it, too, is a fungus, and prefer not to think about it if we do know. We eat soy sauce and miso soup without considering the koji mold that gives the otherwise bland soybean such complex flavors, and those of us who drink alcoholic beverages rarely give a thought to the yeasts that make them possible. (Brewing sake involves two different fungi: koji to convert the rice starch to sugar and yeast to convert the sugar to alcohol.)

Our visceral reactions often betray a failure to recognize the complexity of an ecology too small to see with the naked eye. By producing acids, many of the bacteria used in food production actually inhibit the growth of pathogenic (illness-causing) bacteria and other harmful organisms. In sourdough, yeasts and bacteria form a stable and mutually beneficial culture that excludes other microbes from taking hold.

In a sense, fear of all microorganisms is a perfect form of paranoia: the very things that you can’t see are the ones that are out to get you! Why do we subject ourselves to this, rather than appreciate the wonderful effects these helpful creatures have on our health and our enjoyment of life? For that matter, why do we outsource to big companies a project that can be done at home with a minimal investment of time, effort and equipment? Making your own fermented foods offers a number of benefits over buying them: it is usually cheaper, it gives you complete control over the ingredients, and it knocks an item or two off your shopping list. It also provides an educational activity for children, who can learn from experience that the microbial world is a lot more complicated than they’ve been led to believe. Besides, doesn’t everything taste better when you make it yourself?

Yogurt

This method is a combination of two different approaches, one described by Poopa Dweck in Aromas of Aleppo, and the other by Neelam Batra in 1,000 Indian Recipes. It produces tart, fresh-tasting yogurt that matches or beats the stuff you’ll find in stores. Yogurt and buttermilk cultures both consist primarily of lactobacilli, which are bacteria that eat lactose and excrete lactic acid. The finished products have very little lactose, making them attractive choices for people who are lactose intolerant.

You will need:

• 1 quart milk, fat content of your choice.
• 1 cup dry milk solids, which may be sold under the names “dry skim milk” or “powdered milk.” (Optional. Use if you want yogurt with a texture similar to that of commercially produced yogurt. Yogurt without a thickening agent is much more watery, with a texture closer to that of buttermilk.)
• 1 cup yogurt with active cultures. (Begin with store-bought, then reserve some of the yogurt you make for the next batch.)
• A glass or ceramic crock with a loose-fitting lid and at least a six cup capacity.
• A probe thermometer.
• Toweling or something else to serve as an insulating blanket around the crock.

Instructions:

1. Combine the milk and the milk solids (if using) in a saucepan and heat to at least 180 F. This serves two purposes: it denatures the milk proteins so that they turn into smooth yogurt rather than curds when acidulated, and it eliminates competing bacteria to ensure that the yogurt culture dominates. (NB: I have tried several times to do this in the microwave, heating the mixture and stirring occasionally until the whole thing registers at 180 degrees. It never works right: the milk solids do not thicken the yogurt as they’re supposed to. Any readers out there want to tell me why?)
2. If the crock is non-pyrex glass, warm it first with hot water from the sink to ensure that it doesn’t crack due to a sudden temperature change. Transfer the hot liquid to the crock and let it sit uncovered until the temperature drops to 120 F.
3. Add the yogurt to the warm milk and whisk briefly to combine. Cover the crock and wrap it with a towel, leaving no surface exposed. (Alternately, if you have a warm place to put it that will hold it at just over 110 F, do that and don’t bother with the insulation.) Let it sit undisturbed for four to six hours, though a few hours more than that won’t hurt it.
4. Check the yogurt for consistency; if it is done, refrigerate for several hours. There may be a watery layer floating on top; you may carefully pour this off, if you like, after the yogurt is chilled.

Buttermilk

This method comes from Dr. David B. Frankhauser, a professor of biology and chemistry at University of Cincinnati Clermont College. In the American South, buttermilk is a traditional beverage. I’m a born and raised New York City boy who doesn’t really understand this, but I do cook with buttermilk quite a lot. It is absurdly easy to make. Some commercial buttermilks are thickened with concentrated milk or other products, so this may seem as if it’s on the thin side, but it is still good for any application.

You will need:

• 1 quart milk, fat content of your choice.
• 1 cup buttermilk with active cultures. (Begin with store-bought, then reserve some of the buttermilk you make for the next batch.)
• 1�jar or crock with a tightly fitting lid and a capacity of at least six cups. (A mason jar works well, but unlike the container used for the yogurt, this one need not be heat tolerant.)

Instructions:

1. Combine the milk and buttermilk in the jar.
2. Cover tightly and shake to mix thoroughly.
3. Leave the jar at room temperature for about 24 hours, but start checking it after about half that time, as higher ambient temperature or an unusually active culture can speed the process. The buttermilk is done when it is thick and aromatic. If after 36 hours it doesn’t seem to be finished yet, your culture may have died off. Start again with fresh buttermilk from the store.

Trans fats,�an invention of the 20th century, permitted the development of such synthetic�food-like products as margarine and coffee whiteners.� Neither of these products�existed around the time my great-grandparents caught their first sight of the Statue of Liberty.� Nevertheless, as a result of focused, sustained, and wildly successful marketing campaigns to gain their recognition and acceptance,�they became an integral part of what is now considered �traditional� kosher cooking.� In 1912, for example, after Procter and Gamble of Cincinnati launched a nationwide campaign for Crisco, its new vegetable shortening,�it enlisted the support of American orthodox rabbis, notably Rabbi Moshe Zevulun Margolies (the �Ramaz�) of New York, to endorse Crisco as ritually pure.� P&G advertised that �the Hebrew Race had been waiting for 4,000 years� for a solution to its shortening problems.� Mazola worked with the Hebrew Ladies� Aid Society in Fargo, ND, to teach interested parties how to use their product, and made contributions to the local women�s burial society for every unit sold.� Other examples abound.

I went to my local supermarket to check out the ingredients in�pareve margarine and coffee whitener.� Mother�s lists �liquid and partially hydrogenated soybean oil� first. �Fleischmann�s lists partially hydrogenated soybean oil second, after liquid corn oil.��The first three ingredients in original Coffee-Rich are, in order,�water, corn syrup and partially hydrogenated soybean oil.� The first three ingredients in fat-free Coffee-Rich are, curiously, identical.� �Partially hydrogenated� means trans fats.

What’s wrong with trans fats?� The problems are numerous, diverse, and well established.� Trans fats cause heart disease.� They increase insulin resistance, which causes diabetes.� Trans fats decrease good cholesterol and increase bad cholesterol. �They suppress the immune response, interfere with reproduction, and decrease the nutritional quality of milk.� They alter the properties of cell membranes.� They enhance deposition of abdominal fat.� In a famous study of 85,000 women conducted by Harvard University,�individuals with heart disease were found to have eaten significantly higher amounts of trans fats.

Trans fats have been banned in other countries, and in several cities throughout the U.S., but they have yet to be banned across our nation.� What the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has mandated is that food containing less than � gram of trans fat per serving may be advertised as�”trans-fat free.”� That�s not good enough.� In the case of Coffee-Rich, a serving is 1 tablespoon.� This morning I felt like making my�coffee extra light, so I put 4 tablespoons, or � cup, of milk into�the mug.� If I had used Coffee-Rich, that would have added up to almost 2 grams of trans fat.� Just for the first cup.� So it would be easy, on any given day, to consume quite a bit of trans fat solely from trans-fat-free food.� That�s a problem.

What are our alternatives?� First and foremost, skip the coffee whitener.� Drink your coffee black, or choose tea with honey or lemon.� Try coconut, almond, soy, or rice milk if you�d like.� Bake pareve as our foremothers did for a thousand years, with coconut oil, which stays solid below 75 degrees Fahrenheit.� Decline to make�recipes that call for pareve margarine.� Don’t use it in place of butter; make different recipes.� We vote every time a bar code passes over a scanner, so don�t buy margarine or coffee whitener for your home, office, or synagogue.� There is no place for synthetic trans fats in a healthy community.

Let me be the first to say that I�m all for fighting for justice the little guy and when necessary, boycotting the big evil corporations of the world. But because we live in the age of �astroturfing,�� �Tea Parties,� and� �Birthers� there is plenty of false, misleading and sometimes offensive information presented in the guise of educational materials or concerned citizenship.� Needless to say, I�ve grown cynical enough not just to swallow every bit of Michael-Moore-like corporate bashing I come across.

Take for example a recent report by the Cornucopia Institute a Wisconsin-based think tank that according to their website is a group �seeking economic justice for the family-scale farming community.�� It wasn�t their mission that caused me pause as much as their vehement attacks on certain brands of soy products readily found in most grocery stores.

It first started out with my boyfriend�s favorite brand of chocolate soymilk � Silk.� One day he came home from shopping and said, �The co-op isn�t selling Silk anymore.�� Curious he tried to figure out why.� �Oh, I guess there is a question about their organic soy products.� They are not using all organic soybeans like they used to and the company has not been very forthcoming about it.�� The information that sparked the change in product availability at our co-op had come from the Cornucopia Institute�s report Behind the Bean: The Heroes and Charlatans of the Natural and Organic Soy Foods Industry.

Then last week, that same boyfriend said, �Oh man, now veggie-burgers are going to kill me.��� It turns out that the Cornucopia report also lists a number of popular soy products that contain trace amounts of hexane � a hazardous air pollutant according to the EPA also known to cause nervous system failure and skin disorders in humans.

So who are these Cornucopia people, and why do they seem to hate soy so much?� Sure, I�m used to grass-roots groups and unions bashing huge companies like Wal-Mart and Sodexo but something felt a little odd about a think-tank I had never heard of attacking soy milk and veggie burgers. With a little Internet research I quickly found a few suggestions of conflicts of interest associated with the Cornucopia Institute.

• After the �hexane in your soyburgers� story came out, other stories were published claiming that the report had actually been funded in part by a pro-meat anti-soy company.� This however was quickly debunked by a Mother Jones reporter who talked to Mark Kastel, the Director of the Cornucopia Institute who denied any such funding for the report.

• Prior to his work at the Cornucopia Institute, Mark Kastel had been the President of M.A. Kastel and Associates, Inc., which had at one time represented Organic Valley � a competitor to brands like Silk.� Kastel denies any existing relationship with Organic Valley.

So, despite initially rubbing me the wrong way, the Cornucopia Institute doesn�t really appear to be thinly veiled front group set up to bash the competition for other corporate interests.� And some good apparently has come from their work.� After the Cornucopia Institute�s inclusion of Amy�s on the bad list of companies, Amy�s website now reads, �Because of concerns around soy protein extracted with hexane, we have eliminated the use of any soy protein ingredient that uses hexane in its processing.�� In return, the Cornucopia Institute has modified its list.

Perhaps more so than other issues, food policy advocacy is difficult and terribly nuanced work.� There are very few, very large corporate entities that own most everything you can buy in a grocery store.� So it is understandable to want to know who is really behind any group that has an ax to grind against popular food products.� I want there to be watchdogs in the world willing to fight against the shenanigans of large corporations, but I also want to know if these groups have any ulterior motives.

This week, as Earth Day came and went and I attended a fair here or an Earth celebration there, it also donned on me that Spring is here!

So, beyond my environmental excursions, I also attended of variety of events held on my very own Columbia University. Yet, what I found was an inability to fully appreciate some of the events due to the ubiquity of plastic water bottles. Some may laugh, but I find myself becoming more and more annoyed with these obnoxious bottles that I suddenly see everywhere. As I have previously written about bottled water, my awakening began when seeing the movie “Blue Gold: World Water War’s” on instant play on Netflix. Then, I really became irked when seeing “The Story of Bottled Water,” which I posted on this blog.

Last week though, I attended another water documentary screening, this one a full length feature exclusively focused on the water bottle industry. Now, the movie does a lot of pointing fingers. Most obviously, the manufacturers, NESTLE, Coca-cola, and Pepsi Co., bear a large portion of the blame.

Yet, beyond these stormtroopers, the film also criticizes the manufacturing of plastic bottles, or specifically the type of plastic used for water bottles. Called “PET” or “PETE”, this plastic has traces of all sorts of toxins linked to all kinds of health hazards. The most common and perhaps scariest is the link between the toxins in the plastics and fetal development. You would think the Right-to-Life community would be all over this one?

We remember the BPA discovery that destroyed Nalgene and made SIGGs cooler than Uranus, but what we don’t realize is that much of the plastic in your “Poland Spring” “Dasani” “Deer Park” or “Aquafina” contains some trace of BPA, benzene, or some other kind of harmful toxins. Though it seems impossible to escape simply breathing in toxins because of the pollution we all breathe daily, it is more distressing that we choose (most of the time out of ignorance) to put these poisons in our body.

And just to reiterate, Dasani and Aquafina are JUST PURIFIED TAP WATER. It is exactly what you drink out of the sink! Only it’s less healthy because there are some other salts and chemicals in it, as well as, whatever has mixed into the water from the plastic bottles.

And this is the danger. We don’t know why and how these poisons leak into the water contained in the bottle. Now, we know not to drink a bottle if it has been sitting in your car in the heat, yet none of us know where that bottle came from before we bought in the store. Perhaps it was sitting in a heated area. Or perhaps, simply long liquid exposure with the plastic releases some of the toxins into the water. I don’t know, but either way, tests (from the film) found that the water in plastic water bottles is often highly polluted and/or toxic.

So, take all this information and then attend some University events I did this past weekend. Every event had an assortment of drinks, including plastic water bottles. The BBQ on Saturday Afternoon on the South Lawns, in the middle of the heat of the day, had plastic water bottles to drink.

Forget everything I have just written about the health dangers of bottled water. Consider this:

Imagine the price of a 6-pack of .5 L bottled water to be about $6 (let’s say 1 dollar for every bottle)
Multiply that by however many people are coming to your event (let’s say 50 ppl): $300

Already you have spent several hundreds of dollars on something you can get essentially FREE:
84 oz pitcher (from wal-mart.com): around $20
Igloo 10 gallon water cooler: Around $80

So it is obviously much cheaper to have someone refilling the water at your event, then buying bottled water for “convenience” (I’m sure your constituents won’t mind the poison you serve with that “convenient” bottled water).

One good thing about Tapped: The Movie was contact it made with another organization – Food and Water Watch – about how to “get off the bottle” and reclaim the TAP. The produced a brochure about how public events can easily be ran without plastic bottled water. The more we refuse to serve it in our public events, the more people will stop using it.

Please, if you are reading this and you are organizing an event soon, DON’T BUY PLASTIC BOTTLED WATER. There are other, healthier ways of keeping your peeps refreshed.

To read more astonishing facts, here is the No Impact Man’s opinion.

If you haven’t had a chance to see Food, Inc., carpe diem! PBS recently aired it on POV, television’s oldest showcase for independent non-fiction films. POV has also put the entire film on their site for free viewing for a limited time. It’s only up until April 28, so check it out today!

I have long harbored misgivings about soy.  It is highly estrogenic. It’s associated with many environmental concerns (fields are clear cut internationally to support it, most of the crop goes toward feeding animals on feedlots, etc.) It’s highly processed (and a non whole food) as milk, frozen entrees, and other products.  And honestly, and this is just my perspective, I don’t enjoy the taste. But I have always respected the fact that many people do not agree with me on all these points, and enjoy soy as a deliberate and integral part of their diet.  Most of these folks have countered my concerns with the fact that it is a healthy, non-animal protein that provides efficient calories at a low cost. 

Recently, the Cornucopia Institute released their Soy Report and Scorecard, and it is quite a read.  Some highlights include:

• Questionable sourcing, especially as it relates to soy beans from China.
• Widespread use of hexane for processing soy foods.  Hexane is a neurotoxin listed as a hazardous air pollutant by the EPA.
• Significant transparency and quality concerns with private label products.

The report also assigns scores of 1 – 5 beans of excellence to various brands and producers, and allows you to drill down and read details of their findings for each. 

Regardless of your preferences, this report is worth reviewing. It provides significant information about soy and it’s risks, origins, practical uses, and better options.

Image: USDA Agricultural Research Service

The genetically modified alfalfa seed at the heart of the dispute has been engineered to be immune to Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup. Monsanto intervened in a 2007 federal district court ruling that the Department of Agriculture’s approval of GE alfalfa was illegal. The Center for Food Safety (CFS) filed a 2006 lawsuit on behalf of a coalition of non-profits and farmers who wished to retain the choice to plant non-GE alfalfa. CFS was victorious in this case – in addition CFS has won two appeals by Monsanto in the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: in 2008 and again in 2009. Now, upon Monsanto’s insistence, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.

Our struggle here at CFS is a struggle for organic and sustainable farrmers everywhere. This is truly a ‘David versus Goliath’ struggle, between the farmers we represent and Monsanto, a chemical company turned seed company that appears to have control of our food supply as its ultimate goal. Here are the words of my boss, Andrew Kimbrell: “That Monsanto has pushed this case all the way to the Supreme Court, even though USDA’s court-ordered analysis is now complete, and the U.S. government actively opposed further litigation in this matter, underscores the great lengths that Monsanto will go to further its mission of patent control of our food system and selling more pesticides.”

The federal district court required the Department of Agriculture to undertake an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) assessing the impacts of the crop on the environment and on farmers; the first time the U.S. government had ever undertaken such analysis for any GE crop. The court permitted farmers that had already planted to continue, but halted any further planting pending the agency’s re-assessment. That the EIS was required is not in dispute; the legal issue is only the scope of relief while USDA analyzed the impacts of the crop for the first time.

In October 2009 Monsanto asked the Supreme Court to hear further arguments. In response, the Center and the U.S. government separately opposed that request the following December. USDA completed the first draft of the EIS in December 2009.

Alfalfa is the fourth most widely grown crop in the U.S. and a key source of dairy forage. It is the first perennial crop to be genetically engineered. It is open-pollinated by bees, which can cross-pollinate at distances of several miles, spreading the patented, foreign DNA to conventional and organic crops. Such biological contamination threatens the livelihood of organic farmers and dairies, since the U.S. Organic standard prohibits genetic engineering, and alfalfa exporters, since most overseas governments also reject GE-contaminated crops.

Here are the worlds of Phil Geertson who we represent: “We trust the Supreme Court will uphold farmers right to choose their crop of choice and protect us from the constant fear of contamination from GE crops.”

This struggle that we are engaged in is all of our struggle – centered on the right to eat food without GMOs and farmers to grow GMOs. Please stay tuned to this important case, consider a donation to the Center For Food Safety, and please – Submit comments to the USDA on their profoundly disappointing EIS, recently issues.

Onward
zelig

In 2006, the Center for Food Safety (CFS) sued the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for its illegal approval of Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa. USDA failed to conduct an environmental impact statement (EIS) before deregulating the crop. An EIS is a rigorous analysis of the potential significant impacts of a federal decision. The federal courts sided with CFS and banned GE alfalfa until the USDA fully analyzed the impacts of the GE plant on the environment, farmers, and the public in an EIS.

USDA released its draft EIS on December 14, 2009.
A 60-day comment period is now open until February 16, 2010. CFS has begun analyzing the EIS and it is clear that the USDA has not taken the concerns of non-GE alfalfa farmers, organic dairies, or consumers seriously. Instead, USDA has completely dismissed the fact that GE contamination will threaten export and domestic markets and organic meat and dairy products. And, incredibly, USDA is claiming that there is no evidence that consumers care about such GE contamination (also known as transgenic contamination or biological pollution) of organic. USDA’s preliminary determination is to once again deregulate GE alfalfa without any limitations or protections for farmers or the environment.

CLICK HERE to Review the draft EIS:

Review Supplemental documents here:

CFS is spearheading a campaign to ensure that all affected parties are involved in the public process and have the opportunity to submit public comments. This is the first time the USDA has done this analysis for any GE crop. Therefore, the final version (and resulting decision) will have broad implications for all GE crops. The failure of the agency to address the environmental and related economic impacts of GE alfalfa will have far-reaching consequences for organic and conventional agriculture and food producers.

Consumer/Organic Outreach Talking Points
*Tell USDA That You Care About GE Contamination of Organic Crops and Food:

USDA claims that there is no evidence that consumers care about contamination of organic alfalfa and alfalfa-derived foods with Monsanto’s GE Roundup Ready alfalfa.

- Prohibition of genetic engineering (GE) is a fundamental tenet of the Organic Standard. In fact, USDA’s failure to exclude GE crops from the first version of the organic rule was one of the main reasons that 275,000 people filed public comments in 1997– the largest outpouring of public participation in the history of U.S. administrative procedure. Consumers care deeply about organic integrity, and genetic engineering is fundamentally at odds with organic. More than 75% of consumers believe that they are purchasing products without GE ingredients when they buy organic.

*Tell USDA You Will Reject GE Contaminated Alfalfa and Alfalfa-Derived Foods:

USDA claims that consumers will not reject GE contamination of organic alfalfa if the contamination is unintentional or if the GE material is not transmitted to the end milk or meat product.

- The Organic Standard requires that livestock feed for animals used for meat, milk, eggs, and other animal products is 100 percent organic. Protecting organic alfalfa, the main source of feed for the organic dairy industry, is crucial to the health of that important sector of U.S. agriculture. Additionally, as the Court found in the lawsuit that required this EIS, to “farmers and consumers organic means not genetically engineered, even if the farmer did not intend for his crop to be so engineered.” Whether or not the end product is impacted is not the issue. Farmers’ fundamental right to sow the crop of their choice is eliminated when it is contaminated with transgenes, and so is the public’s ability to support meaningful organic food and feed production. The public’s trust in the integrity of the organic label is essential to the continued vitality of the organic foods industry. Tell USDA you reject GE contamination of organic by any means or at any stage of sustainable food production.

*Tell USDA to Protect Organic Farmers and All Farmers Who Wish to Choose to Grow Non-GE Crops:

Although USDA says it supports “coexistence” of all types of agriculture, USDA refuses to even consider any future for alfalfa that would include protections from contamination for organic and conventional farmers and exporters.

- USDA can approve GE crops in whole or in part. Partial approval could include use restrictions, geographic limitations or planting isolation distances. Yet, in the court-ordered analysis, USDA analyzed only two options: 1) Full approval, allowing GE alfalfa to be grown and sold without restriction like any other crop; and 2) No action, meaning GE alfalfa could only be grown under USDA permit, as at present. USDA’s “all or nothing” approach leaves un-analyzed any potential options to protect farmers. This is contrary to law and logic. USDA’s basic mission is “protecting American agriculture.” Yet, USDA refused to even consider any options that might protect organic and conventional agriculture from contamination and the resulting loss of markets and ability to sow the crop of their choice.

*Tell USDA That Protecting Farmers is Its Job and That Relying Solely on Monsanto’s Business as Usual “Best Practices” Ensures Widespread GE Contamination:

USDA claims that Monsanto’s seed contracts require measures sufficient to prevent GE contamination, and that there is no evidence to the contrary.

- In the lawsuit requiring the EIS, the Court found that GE contamination had already occurred in the fields of several Western states with these same business-as-usual practices in place!

- The EIS itself acknowledges that GE contamination may happen and includes studies that honey bees can cross-pollinate at distances over 6 miles, and Alkali bees at 4-5 miles, much further than any distances under Monsanto’s “best practices.”

-In general, where other GE crops were approved without restriction, contamination of organic and conventional seeds and crops is widespread and has been documented around the world. A recent report documented 39 cases in 2007 and more than 200 in the last decade. The harms incurred by organic farmers and food companies from GE contamination are many and include: lost markets, lost sales, lower prices, negative publicity, withdrawal of organic certification, expensive testing and prevention measures, and product recalls. In at least one case, pervasive GE contamination eliminated an entire organic sector. According to an article in the journal Nature Biotechnology: “[T]he introduction of GEherbicide-tolerant canola in Western Canada destroyed the growing, albeit limited, market for organic canola.”

*Tell USDA That GE Alfalfa Would Significantly Increase Pesticide Use and Thereby Harm Human Health and the Environment:

USDA admits (correctly) that introduction of Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase Roundup use. However, USDA’s claims that the increase is not significant and that Roundup will replace other, more toxic herbicides are flat-out wrong.

- The great majority of GE crops grown today are Roundup Ready, and their widespread introduction has vastly increased Roundup use and fostered an epidemic of Roundup-resistant weeds. To kill Roundup-resistant weeds requires higher doses of Roundup, often in combination with other toxic herbicides. Over the past 13 years, Roundup Ready crops have significantly increased overall herbicide use on corn, soybeans and cotton – by 383 million pounds – and Roundup Ready alfalfa will only make matters worse.

- As the agency’s own studies here show, the great majority of alfalfa is currently grown without the use of any herbicides at all. So Roundup Ready alfalfa will increase Roundup use and exacerbate the resistant weed epidemic without displacing other herbicides on most alfalfa farms.

- Roundup has been associated with increased rates of several cancers in pesticide applicators (e.g. non-Hodgkin’s & multiple myeloma), and is highly toxic to frogs at field-relevant concentrations. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently re-assessing the safety of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, for the first time in over 15 years. USDA should wait for this new EPA assessment before it considers approving GE alfalfa.

*Tell USDA That Harm to Small and Organic Farmers is Significant:

USDA concludes that GE alfalfa will cause production to shift to larger farms (that can afford built-in isolation distances) and conventional growers who are not threatened by GE contamination, but that these economic shifts are not significant.

- Small, family farmers are the backbone and future of American agriculture and must be protected. Organic agriculture provides many benefits to society: healthy foods for consumers, economic opportunities for family farmers and urban and rural communities, and a farming system that improves the quality of the environment. However, the continued vitality of this sector is imperiled by the complete absence of measures to protect organic production systems from GE contamination and subsequent environmental, consumer, and economic losses.

Comments can be filed online HERE:

Comments are due February 16, 2010. For written, mailed comments please send two copies of your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238. Please state that your comment refers to Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044.