By Guest Blogger on September 8, 2011
In NutritionFacts.org‘s video-of-the-day today, I note that the antiseptics used to disinfect cow teats can provide a source of iodine, but have been found to boost the level of pus in the milk of cows with staph-infected udders. Today’s dairy cows endure annual cycles of artificial insemination, pregnancy and birth, and mechanized milking for 10 out of 12 months of the year (including seven months of their 9-month pregnancies). This excessive metabolic drain overburdens the cows, who are considered “productive” for only two years and are slaughtered for hamburger when their profitability drops, typically around their fourth birthday – a small fraction of their natural lifespan.
Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness and mastitis (udder infections), the two leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States. We all remember the Humane Society of the United States investigation showing sick and crippled dairy cows being beaten and dragged into the California dairy cow slaughter plant en route to the national school lunch program, triggering the largest meat recall in history. That loss of body condition is a result of the extreme genetic manipulation for unnaturally high milk yields.
Because of the mastitis epidemic in the U.S. dairy herd, the dairy industry continues to demand that American milk retain the highest allowable “somatic cell” concentration in the world. Somatic cell count, according to the industry’s own National Mastitis Council, “reflects the levels of infection and resultant inflammation in the mammary gland of dairy cows,” but somatic cells are not synonymous with pus cells, as has sometimes been misleadingly suggested. Somatic just means “body.” Just as normal human breast milk has somatic cells – mostly non-inflammatory white blood cells and epithelial cells sloughed off from the mammary gland ducts – so does milk from healthy cows. The problem is that many of our cows are not healthy.
According to the USDA, one in six dairy cows in the United States suffers from clinical mastitis, which is responsible for one in six dairy cow deaths on U.S. dairy farms. This level of disease is reflected in the concentration of somatic cells in the American milk supply. Somatic cell counts greater than a million per teaspoon are abnormal, “almost always” caused by mastitis. When a cow is infected, greater than 90 percent of the somatic cells in her milk are neutrophils, the inflammatory immune cells that form pus. The average somatic cell count in U.S. milk per spoonful is 1,120,000.
So how much pus is there in a glass of milk? Not much. A million cells per spoonful sounds like a lot, but pus is really concentrated. According to my calculations* based on USDA data released last month, the average cup of milk in the United States would not be expected to contain more than a single drop of pus.
As the dairy industry points out, the accumulation of pus is a natural part of an animal’s defense system. So pus itself isn’t a bad thing, we just may not want to have it in our mouth.
And you can taste the difference. A study published in the Journal of Dairy Science found that cheese made from high somatic cell count milk had both texture and flavor defects as well as increased clotting time compared to milk conforming to the much more stringent European standards. The U.S. dairy industry, however, insists that there is no food safety risk. If the udders of our factory-farmed dairy cows are inflamed and infected, industry folks say, it doesn’t matter, because we pasteurize – the pus gets cooked. But just as parents may not want to feed their children fecal matter in meat even if it’s irradiated fecal matter, they might not want to feed their children pasteurized pus.
* According to the new USDA data, the American milk supply averages 224,000 somatic cells/ml (based on bulk tank samples taken from whole herds). Subtracting the 200,000 that could be present in nonmastitic milk and subtracting the non-inflammatory fraction (10%) leaves us with 21,600 neutrophils per ml, and multiplying that by the volume of milk in a cup (237ml) comes out to be about 5 million neutrophils per cup. Then it depends on the cellular concentration of pus. Pus usually has more than 10,000 cells/microliter, but “In purulent fluids, leukocyte count is commonly much lower than expected because dead cells or other debris account for much of the turbidity,” and so apparent “pure pus” may have <10,000 cells/microliter. Conservatively using what was described in the medical literature as frank pus (80,000 cells/microliter) and converting from microliters to drop (50 microliter/drop) would mean 4 million cells per drop. Assuming the excess neutrophils drawn to the infected udder are pus-forming, 5 million divided by 4 million equals little more than a single pus-drop per cup (though I guess that could mean as much as 2 or 3 per tall frosty glass).
Michael Greger, M.D., is a physician, author and internationally recognized speaker on healthy eating. Hundreds of Dr. Greger’s nutrition videos are freely available at NutritionFacts.org, with a new video posted every day! All the proceeds from the sales of his books and DVDs are donated to charity.
Photo credit: www.bluewaikiki.com
Read More
By Lilli Link, MD on April 8, 2009
The second most frequent question I hear when I tell someone I eat a primarily raw vegan diet or suggest one of my patients try it is, “Don’t you need milk for your bones?” If you don’t want to read all the way through the blog to get the answer, I’ll give it away right now: No!
Why would someone choose to stay away from dairy when ice cream and cheese taste so good and it’s supposed to be healthy? Even the government says we should be eating it. One reason to avoid dairy is based purely on logic, not science. It makes no evolutionary sense. No other mammal drinks milk after infancy, and certainly not the milk of a different species. In addition, although most people of European descent have adapted over the years so that they don’t lose the enzyme (lactase) necessary to digest dairy, more than half of the world’s population is lactose intolerant and can’t digest it.
But if those reasons aren’t convincing enough, here is a list of problems that have been shown in scientific studies to be associated with eating dairy: constipation, acne, asthma, and eczema. With regard to cancer, the evidence indicates dairy may be linked to a decreased risk of some cancers and increased risk of others. But it definitely increases a hormone called IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1) which is a tumor promoter – something we cancer survivors would just as soon avoid. Finally, it is full of antibiotics, dioxin and hormones. Even if you are drinking organic milk from a cow who was never injected with bovine growth hormone, the milk is still full of the hormones she produced naturally.
So there are a lot of reasons to stay away from dairy. But doesn’t it help make your bones stronger? How else can you get enough calcium in your diet? The US RDA for calcium is 1000-1300mg/day, depending on your age and gender. In fact, it is hard to consume that much calcium if you are not eating dairy. This may be where the confusion begins. In a study that compared calcium consumption in different countries, the countries with the lowest calcium intake, about 500-1000mg/day, had lower rates of hip fractures (the dreaded outcome of low bone density) than the countries with the highest calcium intake (over 1000mg/day). Another study showed that countries with the highest consumption of animal protein intake had the most hip fractures, whereas the countries with the highest vegetable protein intake had the fewest hip fractures.
Although a number of studies show that eating dairy is associated with a decreased risk for fractures, a similar number of studies show it makes no difference. One of the major obstacles to getting a true picture of the importance of dairy for bone strength is the way the studies are done. Study participants are asked what they usually eat and then followed to see how many end up with broken bones. Since milk is touted as a healthy food, the people who eat the best and exercise the most are also the ones likely to be eating the most dairy. Curiously, of the scientific review articles about dairy and osteoporosis, most of the ones that showed a favorable association between dairy and bone health were sponsored by the National Dairy Council.
Since people from other countries who eat much less calcium than we eat have fewer fractures, maybe it’s not all about how much calcium we eat. Actually, more important is how much we keep. There are two other nutrients, in particular, which affect how much calcium we hold onto: protein and sodium. The more protein and sodium we eat, the more calcium we urinate out. So if we eat less protein and sodium (which are all too commonly consumed in a Western diet), we probably don’t need to eat as much calcium.
The other side of the equation is the absorption of calcium. It is better absorbed in an acidic environment, such as with vitamin C. That means that the lemon juice on your green leafy vegetable is helping you absorb the vegetable’s calcium. And vitamin D also increases the amount of calcium absorbed by the body.
Finally, it is becoming increasingly clear that there are other nutrients that are also very important for bone formation, such as vitamin K (high in dark green vegetables) and magnesium (high in green vegetables and seeds).
If you are wondering if a raw vegan diet can be okay for your bones, there has actually been a small study which suggests that it is. In this study, the people following the raw vegan diet were much thinner and had lower bone density (which goes along with being thinner). The reassuring part of the study was that the blood markers of bone turnover (i.e., how much bone was formed and broken down) showed no difference between those who followed the raw vegan diet and those who followed a typical American diet that contained almost twice the amount of calcium as the raw vegan diet.
Perhaps you are starting to think you might like to take dairy out of your diet, and you want to be sure you are still getting enough calcium. Good sources are dark green vegetables, nuts and seeds. Especially good foods are collard greens, kale, almonds and sunflower seeds.
Now if you are interested, theoretically, in cutting dairy out from your diet, but need some added incentive, read on. (If you still want to enjoy your milk, however, I suggest you stop reading now!) As a result of the milking process, cows often have mastitis (an infection of the udder), making dairy full of white blood cells, aka, pus. This means your yogurt, cottage cheese, ice cream, etc., are also full of pus.
It’s been 10 years since I have had dairy of any kind, and at this point I no longer even miss the cheese that sits on top of my former favorite food: pizza. But if you think you need some milk or cheese substitutes there are plenty of vegan (e.g., soy or rice-based) and raw (e.g., nut or seed-based) options to satisfy your palate!
Read More
