Dairy Milk Products with Cyndi O’Meara

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In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio Show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Cyndi O’Meara explains all about dairy milk products.

Cyndi O’Meara is a nutritionist, film maker – What’s With Wheat? – best-selling author, international speaker and founder of Changing Habits. Cyndi graduated with a BSc in Nutrition – her special interest was ancestral foods. After graduating, she became disillusioned by the global ‘standard’ nutritional guidelines that she paved her own path. Cyndi started Changing Habits in 1990, from her regular newspaper column on nutrition. Her ground-breaking book Changing Habits, Changing Lives became an instant best seller and from there she has grown a successful organic food company, certified online education program, a ground-breaking documentary and is currently building a 60-acre organic food bowl which will be used as an education centre for sustainable farming practices.

Main Questions Asked about Dairy Milk Products:

Can you tell us about the history of milk? Why is it so pervasive in our diets?
How has the quality of our milk changed?
Why are we seeing such an increase in dairy allergies?
How can you get calcium without dairy milk products?
Is yogurt good for us?
What is A2 milk?
What are good substitutes for dairy milk products?
Is soy good for us?

Key Points made by Cyndi about Dairy Milk Products:

Animals have been domesticated for 10,000-15,000 years and whose milk has been consumed primarily in raw or fermented form.
Hindu culture does consume milk as clarified butter, ghee, but they do not necessarily consume the animal.
Dairy consumption in ancient cultures depends on where they live, so it could be coming from a cow, yak, goat, sheep or camel.
Tribes in Afghanistan milk their yaks then ferment it into a very hard ball.
The Himbas of Namibia mostly eat dairy milk products in the fermented form.
Modern milk consumption is a mechanical process where people get to drink milk from a mixture of thousands of cows.
Ancient cultures consumed dairy milk products from a single animal as raw or fermented, clarified butters from animals that they knew well, treated well.
Modern milk is pasteurized, homogenized, ultra pasteurized, cold-pressed pasteurized, low fat, and is mostly with additives, coming from animals not treated well or infected and medicated.
Dairy allergies are a result of many factors: mechanically processed dairy milk products from many animals; infections and medications of animals; consumption of grass that has been sprayed with insecticides.
Glyphosate sprayed on grass disrupts the shikimate pathway that prevents synthesis of amino acids needed for neurotransmitters.
Glyphosate is water soluble and an antibiotic that is being sprayed in high amounts on our land, our drinking water, which kills our microbiome.
Glyphosate is being consumed by animals whose dairy we are consuming which causes leaky gut, leading to brain degeneration, aging, allergies, autoimmunity.
The allergen lactoglobulin is shown to cause allergy only when it is not attached to mineral iron, which does happen in the modern methods of animal husbandry.
Glyphosate is now also detected in wines because growers think it’s safe to use on their land.
Countries that eat the most dairy milk products also have higher rates of osteoporosis.
Hadza tribe in Tanzania does not eat dairy milk products but do eat game meat, berries and lots of root vegetables and do not have osteoporosis and live to 80.
Any food that is grown in calcium rich soil will be a good source of calcium.
Calcium from dairy milk products may not be absorbed very well but calcium from plant sources is better absorbed.
Yogurts in stores have a lot of sugar, thickeners and preservatives and also do not contain live cultures, to stop the fermentation process.
Seiko, an Italian yogurt producer continues the old tradition of only two bacteria and is made with milk from just one animal.
Yogurts made from real live traditional cultures, unpasteurized milk from a single animal, not eating glyphosate grass, is a good one to eat.
It’s best to go off dairy milk products if you can’t find the traditional yogurt culture.
A1 milk is from hybrid European cows, and produces a casomorphin from the milk protein, casein, which is almost like a drug and has been linked to sudden infant death syndrome, Type 1 diabetes and autoimmune diseases.
A2 milk does not create casomorphin and in some countries there is a push to move more cows, goats and camels to A2 to improve health outcomes.
Most vegan cheeses are full of preservatives, flavors, isolated proteins and foods not been tested on animals.
Non-dairy milks in the market contain only 2% nuts and rest is thickeners and flavors with added calcium carbonate which is limestone from rocks but with questionable growing methods that may have been sprayed with glyphosate.
Some vegan restaurants are using margarine instead of butter which is refined, full of flavors, synthetic vitamins, fillers, diglycerides and colors.
Some good dairy substitutes in the market could be cashew cheese and ghee which does not have dairy but contains omega-3 and butyric acid that is good for intestines.
It’s best to make your own nut milks or try camel and goat milks from small dairy farms instead of commercial ones.
Commercial soy products in the market are not prepared in the Japanese traditional methods that take into consideration its effects on men and women.
Soy milk, if fermented the traditional way, must taste woody.
Traditionally, Japanese eat only 6% soy in their diet, but in North America, most vegans are overloading on soy through tempeh, soy milk, textured vegetable protein, TVP.
Commercial soy is also likely to be genetically modified, may have glyphosate and have added canola oil.
People must learn from local farmers and boutique producers to understand their growing methods and buy locally as much as you can.
Try to find out best sources of all foods and cook at home, nitrate-free bacon and eggs with a salad on side.
Cook wild caught salmon with sweet potato and a salad for dinner, which will feed your microbiome and also produce vitamins and amino acids.
According to nutrigenomics, you feed your body with evolutionary foods that can regulate the DNA.
The metabolites of the microbiome that lives within you also speaks to your DNA and with the right foods, the innate intelligence of the body will do right things.