Dairy & Your Diet
I wanted to go a bit deeper into the nutritional aspects of dairy, I know I’ve mentioned before that if your trying to lose weight or just be healthier its probably a good idea to reduce the amount in your diet.
However I’ m not a fan of totally eliminating foods all together forever, because we live in the real world where we eat out or visit other peoples homes for meals and then you just feel bad if you go off your “rules”. But its important to be conscience about your nutritional decisions, and sometimes the easiest way to break a habit is to go cold turkey for a little bit. Whether its sugar, dairy, red meats, wheat or whatever but once you make a choice to go without that food you realize just how much of it you were actually consuming.
In a way I feel particularly bothered by dairy, there are billions of dollars spent by big industry trying to convince us that it’s a fundamental staple of the human diet and basically a nutritional powerhouse. In the past several years more of the facts about milk and its production have come to light. From my own research I have decided to keep milk in my kitchen but its definitely not something my family relies on, if anything it’s more of a treat, here are some the reasons why I think you should reduce the amount in your diet:
The newest studies have found that dairy is actually the biggest cause of improper digestion, so bloating, gas, and constipation and stomach pain.
Roughly 75% of the world has some degree of lactose intolerance.
Milk contains vitamin D and Calcium, and they are important vitamins in terms of bone health, however out of all the studies conducted none have ever confirmed that supplementing with dairy actually reduces fractures, or even prevents osteoporosis!
In fact societies that don’t consume milk have much lower incidences of osteoporosis.
When you measure the amount of calcium in a cup of milk in ratio to its calorie content its actually quite low compared to other foods, for example 100 calories of turnip greens has over 3 times the amount of calcium versus milk.
A protein in milk called casein promotes the formation of mucus in the body and also makes existing mucus thicker leading to congestion of the nose and sinuses.