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.

This entry is cross-posted at http://yourhealthisonyourplate.com .

I am pretty excited this morning, because today’s the day that the grounds manager from a small local college is coming over to spend a few hours helping me salvage a row of overgrown, antique quince bushes and convert a small corner of my yard into an edible garden.  I expect that we’ll be working pretty hard, so before he gets here I need to eat breakfast, and that’s what we’ll be discussing today.

Well then, what’s for breakfast?  In one word?  Protein.  In three words?  Not refined carbohydrate.  For more on why not, read here,  here, and here.    When I stayed in a youth hostel in Cairo, Egypt, many years ago, breakfast consisted of steaming bowls of mashed fava beans.  In Germany the breakfast tables were filled with plates of thinly sliced cheeses and meats.  In Israel, we ate soft cheeses, cucumber and tomato salads, and roasted eggplant.  Where refrigeration is less common, people typically eat the leftovers from dinner when they awaken. 

The six major categories of protein include meats, eggs, fish, beans, nuts and dairy.  Now I’m not saying you have to eat them all.  Just pick what you like from among all these choices.  Want some examples?  OK — here goes.

In the meats department, you could have a leftover hamburger.  Or ribs.  Or heat up some chicken wings from last night.  Yes, for breakfast.  In the Midwest, you know, a typical breakfast 150 years ago might have been a pork chop and a cup of coffee with real cream.  They didn’t have a diabetes epidemic then.  Want something more exotic?  Check your refrigerator.  Chopped liver maybe?  Anything goes, from aspic to venison, or veal, if you prefer. 

Don’t care for meat?  What about fish?  There’s smoked whitefish, catfish, tuna (straight from the can if you’re in a hurry), sardines of course, kippered salmon, leftover trout, cod or shellfish, though I expect the chances are slim that you’d find much leftover lobster.  Still…

Eggs.  My favorite, hands down.  Boiled, fried, scrambled, poached.  You can crack one into a little ramekin containing a spoonful of basil pesto. Put the dish into a water bath (loaf pan with 2 inch water) and stick it in the toaster oven at 350 for 15-20 minutes.  You cannot believe how extraordinary this recipe is until you taste it.

For really busy people, nuts are a mainstay of healthy breakfast eating.  When my children were younger, particularly the one who did not usually appear downstairs until 2 minutes before the bus was scheduled to come, I would run plastic spoons along the surface of the peanut butter and hand them over, calling them “peanut butter lollipops.”  A short time later, on my own way out, I would collect the empty spoons from the mailbox at the top of the driveway.  Peanuts not your thing?  Try almond butter, or cashew butter.  It’s not cheap, but then again you don’t have to eat it every day.  I also keep a jar of peanut butter at the office for the 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. hungries. 

Then there are the nuts themselves.  If you keep a bag of nuts in the car, you can eat a handful or two on the way to work.  This has to be the easiest way to eat breakfast!  If your excuse is that you don’t have time to eat breakfast, this is the way to go!  Don’t care for peanuts?  No problem.  Try almonds, cashews, brazil nuts, pecans, walnuts, pine nuts, hazel nuts…did I miss any?  Buy a different kind each time, or make a trail mix from a few.  The more the merrier.  Don’t buy coated nuts.  Make sure to avoid salted nuts, especially if you have salt-sensitive high blood pressure.  You want to buy pure, unadulterated nuts.  I would also suggest storing large bags in the refrigerator or freezer to protect their fragile oils.  They will keep fresh a lot longer. 

Allergic to nuts?  No problem.  Substitute sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.

Now let’s talk about beans.  Maybe there’s some lentil soup in your refrigerator, or a three-bean salad.  If you have refried beans, you could heat them up in the microwave with some cheddar melted on top.  Hummus and tahini are great choices for breakfast.  Scoop them up with slices of cucumber, celery sticks, carrots or even apples. 

What about a burrito?  Is it ok to eat a whole-grain tortilla for breakfast?  Here are your guidelines for eating grain at breakfast time:  If you are 1) diabetic, 2) pre-diabetic (at high risk), or 3) more than 30 lbs. overweight, do not eat grain for breakfast.  Can’t deal with that?  OK, maybe one serving once a week, like at a Sunday brunch, or on another special occasion.  Otherwise, stay away.  It’s making you sick. 

Why?  Because grain requires a ton of insulin to metabolize.  Even whole grain.  Worse, stripped grain requires even more insulin.  Stripped (refined) grain requires an absurdly enormous load of insulin to digest and metabolize.  Remember that insulin works less efficiently in the morning, and that learning to eat smart is all about learning to conserve your insulin.  So if you eat refined carbohydrate at breakfast time, not only are you wasting your body’s insulin, but you are wasting it at the exact time of day when it works worst.  That’s like hitting a man when he’s already down.  Don’t do it.  Eat plenty of fresh produce with your high-protein breakfast instead.  Especially vegetables.

Now, as long as you do not fit into one of the above 3 categories, you should feel free to incorporate some grain into your breakfasts — BUT it must be a whole-grain product. 

Lastly, let’s discuss dairy.  Last week’s post about yogurt works.  So does cheese, and milk.  Less well known, but just as good, are kefir, clabber, and so on.  Goat milk works, just like all the other mammals whose milk is consumed by humans, although not commonly in America.  What kind of cheese?  You name it, as long as it doesn’t contain the words “processed” or “food.”  If someone has to tell you it’s food, it probably isn’t. 

So what did I choose for breakfast?  Leftover guacamole, tomatoes, and 3 generous slices of jarlsberg (a type of swiss) cheese.  A cup of tea with real cream.  And 1 banana for good measure.  Now watch me garden! 

Sugar River Cheese, a kosher cheese company, has just announced that they now have parmesan cheese!  It took over two years to develop this cheese, with the characteristic flavor and  texture that makes parmesan so unique.

The parmesan is aged 10-18 (or more) months and is made traditionally, in wheels, by an award winning Wisconsin cheese maker.  As a kosher cheese, it is made with microbial rennet and starters, not animal-based rennet.  The cheese is made with premium rBGH free milk from small Wisconsin dairy farms and it is certified Orthodox Kosher by the Chicago Rabbinical Council.  You can buy the parmesan in wheels, retail pieces, shredded or grated.

Sugar River Cheese Company makes all of their cheeses with rBGH free milk.  Go to sugarrivercheese.com to find out more and to purchase online.

Related:
- Read an Interview with Sugar River Cheese Company’s founder and owner, Mark Rosen

By Rachel Gelman, Hazon Food Area Intern

There’s no doubt that including dairy in your diet can have a wide array of health benefits. Dairy staples such as yogurt, milk, and cheese offer a healthy dose of calcium, protein, and vitamin D. Consumption of low-fat dairy has been proven to help lower blood pressure, and the calcium that comes from dairy can increase bone density and has even been linked to weight loss. Plus, it’s absolutely delicious! But there are also some considerable reasons to choose organic dairy products over their non-organic counterparts.

First of all, dairy can only be certified as organic if the production animals consume certified organic feed and are managed organically. Therefore, buying organic and local dairy products not only supports organic farms, but it also supports fair treatment of the production animals. Organic dairy products can also be better for your health and the health of the animal. The chemical rBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, is a genetically-synthesized hormone that some dairy farms inject into their cows to increase milk production. This hormone can have some serious health risks for animals. For cows, this hormone can lead to a 40% reduction in fertility, a considerable increase in the risk of clinical mastitis, and a 55% increase in the risk of lameness. Although there is no direct proof that rBGH is carcinogenic for humans, there’s been a lot of controversy within the environmental world as to whether or not this hormone is actually safe for human consumption. So it seems like organic and local is your best bet, not only for personal health, but also for the welfare of the animals producing your dairy products.

Aitan Mizrahi is a Jewish goat farmer that started Adva Dairy in 2004, eventually merging herds with Adamah in 2009 to become Adamah Dairy. He has 46 goats in his herd and he uses the goat’s milk to craft kosher, organic, artisanal cheeses and yogurt, as well as teaching Adamah visitors how to milk the goats. All of Adamah Dairy’s products are sold through their CSA or at local farm stands and markets. I was lucky enough to get to speak with Aitan Mizrahi and ask him some questions about his goats and his dairy. The interview is below.

First of all, why a goat farm? What inspired you to start a goat farm?

It came together for me in 2004 as the Adamah fellow. By my mid to late 20s I started figuring out that I wanted to work outside, work with my hands, and be more involved with the Jewish community, and through Adamah I was introduced to goats and animal husbandry. I found working with animals more rewarding than working with vegetables because they had personality and they were just engaging. It also connected me to my Judaism in a way that I hadn’t felt before because I never really identified with the white collar academic Jew of the 20^th or 19^th century, I always identified more with the biblical Jew, the nomadic Jew. My dad’s family is Kurdish, Mizrahi, and so I always had this inkling of what it would be like to be outside with your animals and I think it was a combination of the Judaism and the work and just being involved with growing my own food and providing food for myself and my community.

How do you feel that the values associated with organic dairy might correspond with Jewish values?

What distinguishes a Jewish dairy farmer, at least a dairy farmer who identifies as Jewish and practices Judaism is that on Shabbat when other farmers are going out to milk and to save the milk and bottle it to convert it into cheese, we don’t use the milk, we pour it out. As a business it’s kind of radical to think that one day a week you pour out your product. We milk for the sake of the animal, her utters are filled with milk and it’s uncomfortable to have full udders for so long so it’s our duty as caretakers to milk her. Early on in the Torah it talks a lot about proper stewardship and the land, and proper stewardship includes caring for your domesticated animals and for their well-being. There’s also a lot in the Torah and in the following texts about not really polluting your body and taking care of yourself, and there seems to be an obvious connection here- eating healthy foods is a good way of taking care of your body as a Jew.

Do you think there is value in forming relationships with your animals?

There are some interesting dynamics of working with domesticated animals and the relationship and the responsibility we have towards caring for animals. Doing it in a respectful way and in a small scale way is important. When it gets to be 100 or 200 animals and you don’t know the animals personally there’s more room for error, and here on a small scale we have the ability to pay attention to the detail and be able to bring in variety.

Do you think it is important to choose organic dairy products over industrial? If so, why?

I would say one important value is that it gives the consumer the opportunity to know the farmer and know the animals. Whenever customers come and see the animals it really puts together some of the missing pieces about where food comes from and gives them a different relationship and value with their food. So I think the small-scale element and knowing the farmer is very important. A lot of Judaism is about learning and knowing, how much better to know and really be there and experience it. We hand milk our goats so there’s no interference between us and the animals. We’re really going to the source, and our animals eat whatever is growing in the woods. They roam the woods and they convert all of that local energy that’s stored up in the woods into liquid sunshine. If you have the choice, after seeing what’s out there in the commercial industry, why would anyone choose that. On a basic level it makes sense as human beings to make your own food and participate in food making, it’s a basic need that we all have and it’s a pleasure to be involved in that and be able to bring that to people.

“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.

It’s not so much the dilemma over recipe that irks me every Shavuot, it’s the huge crack (or 3) down the middle of the cheesecake when all I want is a smooth, beautiful top I don’t have to cover with fruit to hide the imperfections.

After doing some reading on the chemistry of baking cheesecake (and lots of failed experiments [in appearance, not taste ]), I found the perfect technique for making a smooth, creamy cheesecake. It freaked me out the first time I did it, but it was the most amazing cheesecake I’ve ever made.

There are two key elements:
1. Bring all ingredients to room temperature to avoid the need to overmix.
2. Allow the cheesecake to bake, then cool for 5-6 hours in the oven, no peeking allowed!

Yup. Bake, and then turn the oven off and walk away. Don’t open the oven to peek. You won’t see what the cheesecake looks like for many hours. Freaky, right?

But it really works–the slow cooling of the oven allows the cheesecake to cool very slowly to avoid cracking.

Here’s my favorite recipe, but feel free to try it with your own! The lemon zest really brings a brightness to this dish, but you can use lime or orange zest if you prefer, or just leave it out altogether if you aren’t a citrus fan.

Creamy Lemony Cheesecake

Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: 7ish hours

Makes: 1 9-inch cheesecake

Ingredients:

2 eggs
1 1/4 cups sugar
2/3 cup sour cream
1 tsp vanilla
1 Tbsp flour
zest of 1 lemon (optional)
24 oz cream cheese
1 graham cracker crust

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Let all ingredients including eggs come to room temperature.
3. Beat eggs and sugar until well blended, then stir in sour cream, vanilla, flour, and lemon zest. Fold mixture into cream cheese until smooth. Do not overmix.
4. Pour into graham cracker crust. Bake in oven for 50 minutes, then turn oven off and leave cheesecake for at least 5 hours, and no more than 8. Do not peek or open oven door.
5. Cool and serve (tip: Dip the knife in hot water before you make each cut to avoid jagged edges).

Note: For we lactards, substitute parve (non-dairy) cream cheese and sour cream.

I’m sure that like me, many of you cannot get Hanukah cooking and baking out of your minds!  I will be making potato leek latkes, homemade apple sauce and some chewy ginger cookies tonight.  As you can tell, I’m in full holiday mode!  Anyway, if you are looking for a break from the holiday food maddness I have a great recipe for you!

My birthday was about a month and a half ago.  As much as I enjoy eating out I really wanted to cook my birthday dinner at home with my boyfriend this year.  We decided our main course would be homemade pizza – something neither of us had ever made.  I had heard it was very easy to make but having never made any type of yeast-based bread, I was a bit nervous!

I looked into a few recipes and ended up using one based on a recipe from one of my favorite food bloggers.  I will say that this recipe didn’t make quite enough dough for me.  I think next time I will try this recipe.  The most fun thing about making your own pizza is that you can put anything you want on it (and it can be as healthy or unhealthy as you’d like)!  We were especially proud of our pizzas since the vast majority of the ingredients were local and organic.  I hope you enjoy making your own pizza.  Feel free to leave comments with your favorite topping combination!

Dough:

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) of active dry yeast

3 1/2 cups flour (we used whole wheat but you can also do a combination)

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon sugar

If you have a mixer with a bowl you can make the dough easily with it.  If you don’t, have no fear!  I don’t have one and mine turned out great.  I also don’t have a pizza stone.  Definitely use one if you have it but a cookie sheet works just fine.

In the large bowl add the warm water.  Sprinkle on the yeast and let sit for 5 minutes until the yeast is dissolved. Stir to dissolve completely if needed at the end of 5 minutes.

Mix in the olive oil, flour, salt and sugar until combined.  Knead until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes.

Place ball of dough in a bowl that has been coated lightly with olive oil. Turn the dough around in the bowl so that it gets coated with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap. Let sit in a warm place (75-85°F) until it doubles in size, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If you don’t have a warm spot in the house you can heat the oven to 150 degrees, and then turn off the oven. Place the bowl of dough in this warmed oven to rise.

Preparing the Pizzas:

Preaheat the oven to 450°F for at least 30 mins.

Remove the plastic cover from the dough and punch the dough down so it deflates a bit. Divide the dough in half. Form two round balls of dough. Place each in its own bowl, cover with plastic and let sit for 10 minutes.

Prepare whatever toppings you’d like.  Here are the toppings for the pizzas in my picture at the beginning of the post:

Pizza on the right:  Pesto, fresh mozzarella, tomatoes (they were still in season at this point), balsamic caramelized onions, parsley

Pizza on the left: Tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, balsamic caramelized onions and mushrooms.

It’s sort of funny when two worlds collide unexpectedly, especially when one comes to the aid of the other. Take for example my recent search for the perfect milk alternative. I don’t dislike good ol’ cow’s milk, nor am I allergic to it. But as an observant Jew, I often find myself at odds with the fridge staple, usually after I’ve just enjoyed a delicious turkey sandwich.  I am what some would call a Fleish-a-phobe: I rarely eat meat if I can avoid it out of dread for the five hours and one minute to follow, when I will be barred from my favorite treats: ice-cream, chocolate, cheese, milk-based pie, the list goes on.

And so I’ve spent some time searching for that perfect alternative, that wondrous, dairy-free concoction that will replace milk in my cookie recipe and help me whip up the perfect pareve pumpkin pie.  Recently, my best friend and I (with both health and Halacha in mind) unofficially took it upon ourselves to taste-test every non-milk available to us, from various brands of soymilk to the less orthodox (and rarely Kosher) hemp milk, with varying results.

Soymilk is chock full of protein and readily available (call me crazy, but I don’t think the taste is that bad, either), but it’s also full of added sugar and contains estrogen. You know what they say about too much female hormone… Rice milk was the best tasting, but full of empty carbs and calories. Almond milk was pleasant and nutty, but was (as all nut products) high in fat. (Plus, as this website states, although almonds are among the most healthful nuts out there, the amount used in the milk is so small “you’re better off just eating the nuts”). I like to point out that real milk isn’t without its problems (hello, cholesterol), but two foodies can dream, can’t they?

A fourth, hemp milk seemed the healthiest: filled with Omega 3 fatty acids, high on the protein, but it proved near impossible to find Kosher. On the day I finally saw that the strange mark on one box was a legitimate Teudah Kashrut, I snatched it off the shelf, never mind the eight dollars a carton.

We found it quite good, definitely a few steps up from the starchy powder my friend had been mixing into his drinks for a protein boost (he’d once remarked to me that it tasted like sawdust), and I happily realized that it had virtually no aftertaste: it was just like rice milk! And one look at the ingredients told us why. The second ingredient was rice milk, and it had brought so many empty calories with it. So much for the cannabis smoothie.

Aside from our dilemma, we grappled with the idea that we may just seem a little, well… nuts to be searching so seriously. I got a few stares from my family when I announced that I’d found hemp milk Kosher. Why did I care so much? Use plain soymilk in baking and be done. Who likes the taste of that stuff anyway? (I countered with something like “I shamelessly enjoy the taste of soymilk, and this argument has been milked to death anyway,” pun totally intended.)

And then last week we sat around the Shabbat table, and the subject turned onto Ma’aras Ayin – the idea that an act might be forbidden not because it technically breaks any laws, but because it looks like it does, and if -one would see us doing it, they would think we were breaking Halacha. My Daf-Yomi-learning brother cited a passage in Gemara that mentiond two types of milk: the old favorite, cow’s milk and almond milk. My father looked up from his beef and potatoes and asked “almond milk? Like milk with almonds in it?”

Oh boy, did this plant-obsessed foodie have fun. And a few days later, still fascinated by the idea that milk alternative was not a hippie-green-party modern invention after all but with connections to Judaism as far back as any gefilte fish, I brought home a carton of chocolate almond milk for my father to try. Then I went looking for that passage in Gemara Masechet Beitzah and found it pretty fast (thank you, internet!). In a question of whether Maras Ayin applies to Rabbinical laws or only to laws stated in the Torah, the Rama stated that “one is permitted to put fowl into almond’s milk without concern for Ma’arat Ayin because the prohibition of eating fowl with milk is Rabbinic.” But when marinating beef in the pareve, milk-like substance, we should place a few almonds on the side, as a sign that no, we haven’t lost our Halachic marbles. We’re just a little nuts.

So who won the battle of the milk alternatives? I’d like to think we did: we’ve got four awesome sources to turn to for once dairy cookies turned pareve. I’m not keen on shelling out eight bucks for hemp-enriched rice milk, but I’ve got a carton of chocolate soy in the fridge, and boy am I thirsty.

The last time I went to Melo Hatene to stock up on tahina, I ran into my friend and fellow kibbutz member, David Leishman. David was there for tahina, too: He occasionally makes tahina ice cream for Melo Hatene’s restaurant in exchange for raw tahina and other yummy things from the shop.

Intrigued by the idea of tahina ice cream, I asked David for his recipe. (David has been making wonderful homemade ice cream since before he came to Kibbutz Gezer, over 30 years ago.) What I got from David was not really a recipe, but vague amounts for a restaurant quantity. 

So I was forced to attempt tahina ice cream on my own. Fortunately, it was one of my more successful attempts, if the reviews are anything to go by. And before you wrinkle your nose at the idea of tahina in ice cream, think cold, creamy sesame halva.  Here’s my recipe:

2 c. whole milk

1 c. cream

1/2 c. light brown sugar

3 eggs

1 t. vanilla

1/4 t. natural almond flavoring

1/2 c. good quality raw tahina (not whole tahina)

1/3 c. honey

Heat the milk and sugar in the top of a double boiler until the sugar dissolves. Beat the eggs in a bowl, and pour a bit of the warm milk into them. Add the eggs slowly to the milk mixture, stirring constantly until it begins to thicken. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla and almond extracts, cool and refrigerate.

In the meantime, mix the tahina and honey with 2 T. hot water until very smooth. Cool separately.

Stir the cream into the custard and freeze in an ice cream freezer according to the manufacturer’s instructions. When the ice cream starts to set, drizzle in the tahina/honey mixture and freeze until firm.