What's the Beef with Raw Dairy?

[zeno]

I would like for the members of this community to expound upon the theoretical and practical concerns of consuming raw dairy. It seems that raw dairy should be a celebrated food in a raw food circle such as this. Is it because dairy is only available through the domestication of animals? Or is it because humans are the only animals to consume milk (and of another species) into adult hood?

The reason I ask is because I definitely benefited on a diet of solely milk and enjoy milk but don't understand why some people celebrate abstaining from dairy or don't condone consuming raw dairy.

[eveheart]

I cannot digest milk properly. This includes cow's milk, goat's milk and fermented products from these two animals. It's really not a matter of being anti-dairy. No celebration here; I just don't drink it. Also, I look askance at those who tout milk as the universal snake oil and attribute dairy-intolerant symptoms to detoxification. What's their beef with people who can't tolerate dairy?

[KD]

I think people don't condone the idea that AV and others claimed that as long as milk was raw it was suitable to eat for everyone as the basis for a natural diet. Which is a totally legitimate skeptical place to be.

Some people actually believe that other nonsense about what 'all animals do' or that the entire world would be better off if we all wore short-pants made out of shells and never figured out how to do anything of any significance.

---

I really dont know if milk or other dairy products are completely healthy. I do know that adult humans can generally live off milk longer than on water, single fruits or lean meat which indeed proves without question that maturation of an organism has nothing to do with the ability to absorb a wide spectrum of nutrients from milk. Also that it ironically exists as one of the only natural 'whole foods' found in nature next to fruit and the animals which can be eaten whole and not bought in foam containers.

If milk is detrimental (which is possible) people need to find direct links of problems in traditional people's that consumed dairy, not combine a bunch of backward ideals with experiences of modern people seeking health, who may have had multiple fixable problems in consuming dairy foods. Which is not all AV hocus but also noted by other researchers as being hormone and health related in terms of ability to process dairy. Meaning that these underlying issues do not necessarily get better sans dairy consumption.

[KD]

If one struggles to think about it honestly, actual physical recordable presence of a lactase enzyme in a modern person when there once was none + improved blood/hormone profile and overall health ( in 1/100 of a lifetime) = bodes poorly that adaptation to dairy is some kind of mutagenic allowed eventual destruction that tricks your body (like the cooking of da food!) into thinking it is good right now ...nor that it "never happened" for humans in 10s of thousands of years times that.

 But I'm not quite sure if crystal meth or other human concoctions would have similar results.

[TylerDurden]

You'll have to forgive KD. Judging from the above remarks, he is clearly a deluded, religiously devout believer in the "Noble Savage" theory. This theory insists, blindly(with very poor, highly biased evidence), that hunter-gatherers were supposedly icons of physical and spiritual perfection exhibiting perfect health(lol), and that "therefore" we should adopt all  or most of those hunter-gatherer practices. These Noble-Savage-adherents never once consider that HGs(Hunter-Gatherers) practised numerous customs which were either useless or harmful to humans such as cannibalism( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_(disease) ) or male circumcision.

All people can correctly state about HGs is that their diets were (often, though not always) "less worse" than modern diets and that their levels of daily exercise was also greater, thus meaning that they were healthier than modern SAD/SMD eaters. That's all. HGs routinely cooked their foods so would have been taking in plenty of heat-created toxins, which have been scientifically verified as causing harm to human health. While, admittedly,  exercising and fasting have been shown to reduce the levels of one type of heat-created toxin(ie advanced glycation end products), that does NOT mean that HGs were somehow magically "immune" to the effects of heat-created toxins derived from cooking.

Here's a good debunking of the widely-discredited Noble-Savage theory in general:-

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

http://snarkypenguin.blogspot.com/2007/04/myth-of-noble-savage.html

Back to dairy:-

The main problem with dairy is that 75% of the world's population are lactose-intolerant. Now, people claim that some of those report having no issues  with raw dairy. I suspect this is inaccurate. I have often come across people who claimed that they did fine on raw dairy for a years, before finally admitting that raw-dairy-consumption affected their health slightly negatively  in some way. So I reckon that minority still have problems but they are merely significantly reduced.

There are all sorts of old-wives' tales about putting raw honey in the raw milk or consuming raw dairy at room-temperature etc., but most of those don't work, and the one or two that do only improve things for a small segment of those who do badly on dairy.

Then there are those who are casein-intolerant. Simply put, cows' milk has way more casein in it than human milk and a wholly different profile. It also has some nasty hormones which harm human health. Then there's the issue of the excess calcium in it. If too much calcium is absorbed into the body and not enough magnesium(easily achieved on a diet high in raw dairy) then, over time, magnesium-uptake into the body gets blocked, and magnesium-deficiency results. Which is why some long-term Primal Dieters admitted, on the Primal Diet yahoo group, that they ate magnesium-rich raw pumpkin seeds to compensate for this potential problem.

Beyondveg.com talks about how the adaptation to dairy is not really genetic in origin, thus debunking KD's erroneous assumption re dairy in his last post:-
  "Incompatibilities between dairy
consumption and human physiology

*** "...for our purposes here, the example [of lactose tolerance having developed within 1,150 years in some segments of the population] does powerfully illustrate that genetic adaptations for digestive changes can take place with much more rapidity than was perhaps previously thought."

The estimate of 1,150 years is from the Cavalli-Sforza data. A somewhat more conservative estimate based on the prevalence of lactose tolerance in those of Northern European extraction is that the gene for adult lactose tolerance would have increased from 5% to 70% prevalence within about 5,000 years (approx. 250 generations). [Aoki 1991]

Genetic changes due to "neoteny" (such as adult lactose tolerance) not indicative of overall rates of adaptation. Even while these data for relatively quick evolutionary changes resulting in adult lactase production remain essentially true, however, an important point that should be clarified is that the gene for lactase production is already present and expressed in all humans (for breastfeeding) up through the time of weaning. Therefore, for lactase production to continue into adulthood would require only relatively small changes in the gene, e.g., via the process known as "neotenization" (the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood). Thus, "brand-new" traits, so to speak, unlike polymorphisms such as the gene for lactase production which already exist (even if not in a form previously expressed in adults) would take much longer to evolve.

Additional indications of incongruence between dairy and human physiology. Further, beyond the question of lactose tolerance, I have since learned there would be many additional genetic changes required (than just that for lactose tolerance) to result in more complete adaptation to milk consumption. A number of recent studies demonstrate problems of milk consumption that go considerably beyond whether or not a person is capable of handling lactose:

    * Lactose and heart disease. One is that lactose itself is a risk factor for heart disease, since in appreciable quantities it induces copper deficiency which, in turn, can lead through additional mechanisms to heart pathologies and mortality as observed in lab animals.

    * Poor Ca:Mg ratio which can skew overall dietary ratio. Another problem is the calcium-to-magnesium ratio of dairy products of approximately 12:1, which is directly at odds with the ratio of 1:1 from a Paleolithic diet composed of meats, fruits, and vegetables. Depending on the amount of milk in the diet, the resulting overall dietary ratio can go as high as 4 or 5:1. This high ratio leads to reduced magnesium stores, which have the additional ramification of increasing the risk of coronary heart disease, since magnesium helps to lower levels of blood lipids (cholesterol), lower the potential for cardiac arrthymias, lower the oxidation of LDL and VLDL cholesterol (oxidation of cholesterol has been linked to atherosclerosis), and prevent hyperinsulinism. (More about hyperinsulinism shortly below.)

    * Saturated fat. Milk has also been linked to coronary heart disease because of its very high saturated fat content.

    * Molecular mimicry/autoimmune response issues. Additionally, autoimmune responses are being increasingly recognized as a factor in the development of atherosclerosis. In relation to this, research has shown milk to cause exceptionally high production of certain antibodies which cross-react with some of the body's own tissues (an autoimmune response), specifically an immune response directed against the lining of the blood vessels. This process is thought to lead to atherosclerotic lesions, the first step that paves the way for consequent buildup of plaque.

[See Part 2 of Loren Cordain, Ph.D.'s posting of 10/9/97 to the PALEODIET list (relayed to the list and posted by Dean Esmay) for details and references relating to the above points about dairy consumption.]"

As you can see from the above, lactose causes copper deficiency, thus leading to heart-disease. The saturated fat claim, however, is clearly only an issue with pasteurised dairy, not raw dairy.

And milk is certainly NOT "found in Nature", it is something that requires domestication of an animal to be eaten regularly.

[goodsamaritan]

I would like for the members of this community to expound upon the theoretical and practical concerns of consuming raw dairy. It seems that raw dairy should be a celebrated food in a raw food circle such as this. Is it because dairy is only available through the domestication of animals? Or is it because humans are the only animals to consume milk (and of another species) into adult hood?

The reason I ask is because I definitely benefited on a diet of solely milk and enjoy milk but don't understand why some people celebrate abstaining from dairy or don't condone consuming raw dairy.

Know when to use raw dairy.

I am incompatible with raw dairy. I experimented many times. I just can't digest it without my body resorting to intense gas formation.

My 10 year old son benefited with a short stint on raw dairy for a few weeks to help heal his intestines.  After that he just went downhill with constipation and mucus formation.  End of dairy.  But his intestines and pooping to color brown normal were helped.

[TylerDurden]

What I'm curious about is whether those ethnic populations which do best(eg:- Scandinavians) or worst(eg:- Orientals) on pasteurised dairy, also are the best or worst as regards raw dairy, as well. It would make sense.

[raw-al]

It is getting difficult to find people who are of one race or area of the world.

I know that TD has developed the art of milk trashing to a science where he can spout it out for pages where this percentage and that percentage will die if they consume it..... LOL....

Then there are those who think as Tyler has pointed out, that if they get sick, it is not the milk, but a downloading of toxins. Untrue.

However, my training and experience is that all foods will adversely affect someone, somewhere. That does not mean that one can make up blanket statements about celebrating this food or that food. Dairy is a food. Some can tolerate it some cannot. It is difficult to digest. In Ayurveda it is considered to contain a lot of air, so some people will get gas or bloating issues. I do fine on raw dairy, but have serious issues with pasteurized.

There will always be theories and unquestionably, if you were in a situation where dairy was a staple part of your diet say in your tribe, then you would adapt or starve or find an alternative.

Nowadays we can go to the grocery and pick up food from everywhere in the world, so suddenly we can have these theoretical discussions about this food vs that food.

Reality is that there are people in the world who lived and whose ancestors have lived on a very few food types, with no difficulty.

Theories are fun, when you are not hungry.

[TylerDurden]

I wasn't remotely suggesting that everyone dies from consuming raw dairy products. (Though it is scientific fact that those people suffering from galactosemia do indeed  die after consuming dairy for any sizeable length of time, with less serious problems appearing quickly soon after consuming the stuff).

As regards tribes eating raw dairy, again, as Cordain points out  we humans  will need a considerably longer period in order to eventually evolve to handle non-lactose-related problems  with raw dairy. Even, lactose-tolerance is a dodgy issue, since many people gradually lose their lactose-tolerance as they get older, due to not producing the right enzyme in sufficient quantities any more.

My only issue with raw dairy is that it is the one raw food most commonly complained about by RVAFers(it's no coincidence that allergies to pasteurised dairy are  the most commonly reported ones, too). So, I think it's reasonable to warn newbies about all the various possible negative effects that can occur in individuals from raw dairy,  just in case.

[raw-al]

I wasn't remotely suggesting that everyone dies from consuming raw dairy products. ...

Now come on....... you get so serious! I was just kidding.

I have read the stories of people saying that humans shouldn't consume dairy as it is intended as food for baby cattle or goats etc.

This logic is reminiscent of the "we shouldn't be eating meat because we don't have pointy teeth, strong digestive juices and short intestinal tracts like wolves" theory of the world.

The people who say this second theory forget that we don't have seven stomachs and even seven stomachs are no good for grain. OK we don't have gullets for grinding the grain so we shouldn't eat grain........ and on they go.

You could keep these evolutionary arguments going for longer than it takes to evolve such a change.

Indeed there is no proof of evolution being right or wrong, despite Richard Dawkins insistance of it's factuality, because it is just like creationism and every other theory, a theory. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

A real scientist (unlike R. Dawkins) gives both sides of an argument their due. He dismisses every argument as being preposterous, anti-scientific etc. that is not 100% in agreement with his conclusion which he started out with.

Quote from Tyler:

"The main problem with dairy is that 75% of the world's population are lactose-intolerant. Now, people claim that some of those report having no issues  with raw dairy. I suspect this is inaccurate. I have often come across people who claimed that they did fine on raw dairy for a years, before finally admitting that raw-dairy-consumption affected their health slightly negatively  in some way. So I reckon that minority still have problems but they are merely significantly reduced."

Tyler,
You can suspect all you want, I and my GF do fine on raw dairy and have for years.

Pasteurized caused me issues.

I cannot comment on others experience any more than you can. Your comments come dangerously close to sounding like Aajonus when he insists that everyone can consume dairy if they just "try hard enough".

Present your case but stay away from conspiracy theories.  Like the implication that people have been lying all along that dairy is fine for them till they "finally admit", like a dairy consumer is some kind of underground pervert that shoots it up with dirty needles. They make you sound like the mercury conspiracy theorists.

Dairy is fine for some and not fine for some others and there are various gradations of grey in between.

You probably don't realize that what you are saying "reads" a bit extreme at times on certain subjects. No doubt we all do at times. 

[TylerDurden]

The argument you make re more people intermixing may be right in some respects but not in others(some areas have less intermixture) but that actually makes your argument much, much weaker, since most people in the world are lactose-intolerant or have some other problem with dairy and so therefore, the minority who do fine with dairy, through intermixture with the majority will gain much less adaptability to dairy while the majority of dairy-allergic peoples would only benefit slightly from intermixture with the minority who do well on dairy, given the numbers of people involved. I hope you can see the logic re this....

Your other logic is also somewhat fallacious. For example, there are some excellent arguments for why we should be eating meats. For example, we may not have as strong stomach acids as wolves etc., but we have a longer digestive tract than carnivores to compensate for that. Similiar arguments have been used to debunk the pro-vegan line quite sufficiently.

As regards dairy, like I said it is designed to get calves to reach adult size. The opioids in dairy allow calves to be sedated so that they are less trouble for the mother to care for etc.


Re comment:- ".  Like the implication that people have been lying all along that dairy is fine for them till they "finally admit", like a dairy consumer is some kind of underground pervert that shoots it up with dirty needles."

The above point is very valid since many people were so fooled by Aajonus/WAPF's bullshit fanatical advice re raw dairy that they went on far longer on the stuff than they would otherwise have done. The fact is that the pro-raw-dairy-movement is very cult-like, and the fact that raw dairy has addictive opioids in it is very noteworthy.

Whatever the case, I haven't been stating absolutes. I have stated that some people do fine on both pasteurised dairy and raw dairy. As regards those who do fine on raw dairy but not pasteurised dairy, I accept that some are like that, too. But I am also aware, from past accounts on this and other forums, that there is a segment of those, who eventually report having minor issues with raw dairy after all, after some years consuming it. After all, there are plenty of people who, like me, are not able to detect allergical symptoms if they don't appear immediately after consuming the allergenic food, especially if the symptoms are very minor.

[KD]

hmm yeah, I do have a poor habit of  pointing out that whether we are talking hgs or athletes or movie stars stars that people's health is NOT determined by the current ammount of neolthic food or heat-created-toxins in their diet, but a number of far more improtant factors.

Somehow it is offered up that you can actually prove these people are not healthy by suggesting these things MUST contribute to  poor health in the ways a few people self defines it, and i'm always foolishly asking for evidence that shows these (modern or ancient) people have any actual health issues due to these practices.   Anyway, I think more accurately, what I have suggested is that even if diet is the MAIN factor that we need to critcise how these diets people construct with modem food (even raw) are healthier than other diets, with an assumption on my part that most of these other blanket ideas about what is healthy , obstruct people from actually constructing a healthy diet that has anything to do with how anyone ever ate in nature.

I don't even care about dairy really. The issue that people want to suggest is absolute: that there is no way we can improve on our diet over the centuries is a unscientific (as in - not sanctioned by most scientists), unreaslistic philosophy illustrated very well with dairy adaption among other things. As well as the the data suggesting  the correlation of unhealthy people with" lactose intolerance" (which almost always is not actually lactose intolerance) to be absolute, and not in any way the opposite. As these things are linked to healthy hormone and enzyme levels all around and improve together with health.

I think what I have implied in the bulk of my posts here actually is that hg emulation ( paleo OR modern) will likely yield way worse results for a modern person than EITHER group. Their conditions and others factors are indeed huge bringers of health that we can not retrive or micmic unfortunately and thus even if either diet was perfect, people need to do EXTRA things than what was done in the past, not mimic or remove bad habits or make assumptions that things that don't even stack up are adequate, like is constantly being suggested. If people want to prove those things they promote are "good enough" or have the gall to present themselves as healthier than HGs, they - in my book - do indeed need to prove it with actual measurable results, not suggestions that HGs 'had to be unhealthy' because they did what such truly little evidence suggests is unhealthy.

[KD]

so yeah, the point in bringing up HGs in this context is to say that whether or not raw dairy did have measurable problems IN REAL PEOPLE as more relevant than anecdotes about unhealty modern people (all with issues - by definition in raw circles) or used in improper human studies or in rats.

For some reason this is not ok to state this, but it is somehow OK to remark about all the peoples who do not do dairy and still have "strong bones" etc... Again, no one actually looks at whatver other things these people are actually doing (like cooking alot of food that has calcium) or recommending actually doing ANY of the things we know or don't know that create proper calcium and other nutrients when not actually consuming dairy foods. These multiple needs of calcium alone (nevermind K) which has indeed been suggested by some experts as best at the level which the Masai got for optimal health, and not just a bunch of folks like Aajonus. Real science that would recomend people to eat eggshells every day or lbs of dark greens  every day when not eating dairy. But of course there is science 'debunking' this and that is the sole truth to pay attention to. Also of course every diet of store bought muscle meat and fruit with no sat fats or dairy or organs must be ok for K and calcium as long as it doesn't contain neolithic food and surely is better at least than any possible diet that contains neolithic food.

---

basically any agreement that some people "thrive on the stuff" is clearly an empty gesture, as if it was even remotely possible that some people  actually did better (with no consequences) with dairy over a identical "paleo" diet without dairy, it would be totally transparent that it really doesn't matter if food existed 200,000 years or not whatsoever. And that would also create an environment with no automatic assumptions that state people don't adapt to cooked food or dairy and we would have to just get on with mentioning aspects of eating raw food which are real and honest.

[TylerDurden]

The BIG problem with your claims is that we have real scientific evidence that HGs were unhealthy or had signs of ill-health. There was that Mann study on the atherosclerotic aspects of the Maasai, for example, which I showed a long while back. Then I previously cited another source stating that the Maori were somewhat unhealthy prior to the advent of the white colonists etc.

We had scientific evidence showing that Bantu women had strong bones despite eating a low-calcium diet. There are also studies linking high-calcium consumption via dairy to high rates of osteoporosis. And, yes, the studies were examining as to whether there were other sources of calcium. In the case of the Bantu study, they cited specific ranges of figures for their average daily calcium-intake. So, that is incorrect.

As regards lactose-intolerance, again, people do often start to lose their ability to handle lactose due to  producing ever lower amounts of the relevant enzyme over the years. Nothing to do with health.

[cherimoya_kid]

Calcium is not really that important, beyond  a certain point.  The groups that Dr. Price studied were eating more magnesium than calcium, in pretty much every case.  Excess calcium is actually implicated in heart disease. 

[KD]

Re: calcium, it is just one minor example. I really dont think anyone truly knows about these levels but the problem I see is assuming that if we don't do X than we have our bases covered for any number of things. That we can quote certain people (and not others) and not take into account whatever practices they actually were doing and just assume because they didn't do X that anything we can come up with that is 'more pure' is surely better.

Whatever the amount of calcium is needed, we need enough. There are indeed arguments among experts for both high and low levels of calcium, so neither one truly has authority there - is the point. From what I've read, its possibly correct that calcium doesn't play the role we think in bones per se, but the unfortunate thing is it plays a role in quite a alot of other areas. google: "calcium organ calcification" to find info how low calcium can actually cause tissues to calcify despite the 'alt' claims. Just another hypothesis (not fact), that may be reason to not unilaterally slam the possible need for calcium/neolithic food where we arn't getting these things other ways. Defaulting back to what was possibly doable, without actually being honest to what people did or what health they truly had..as being akin to glamorizing more current HGs, was more the point than "we should eat dairy for calcium" - of which I don't know is true and can easily believe is false.

---

I'm on board with saying HGs weren't at some peak of health, but really the 99%  of people that actually share your opinion are not at all the paleo community who rationalizes not drinking milk and loves saturated oils, but those who think these groups are incredibly backward and "In The Dark Ages", NOT for the minimal amount of cooking and processing and "neolithic" activities.  My point generally is at least HGs could exist and reproduce on their diet in nature without modern convenience.  I often use myself as an example of some person who even with my 100% raw food delivered to me on a platter, that I could not likely live where I am living outside year-round without succumbing to some likely decrease in my health that would slowly (or quickly) become unsustainable.

[Dorothy]

KD - your posts are delicious - but hard to get at sometimes - like a really good nut! 

Here's the paragraph where I think is your most salient point comes through the best. It speaks to the broader factors of health that often are overlooked:

"I think what I have implied in the bulk of my posts here actually is that hg emulation ( paleo OR modern) will likely yield way worse results for a modern person than EITHER group. Their conditions and others factors are indeed huge bringers of health that we can not retrive or micmic unfortunately and thus even if either diet was perfect, people need to do EXTRA things than what was done in the past, not mimic or remove bad habits or make assumptions that things that don't even stack up are adequate, like is constantly being suggested. If people want to prove those things they promote are "good enough" or have the gall to present themselves as healthier than HGs, they - in my book - do indeed need to prove it with actual measurable results, not suggestions that HGs 'had to be unhealthy' because they did what such truly little evidence suggests is unhealthy."

Then at the end of your most recent post you talk about how even with all your raw foods delivered you couldn't survive outside like HG's did.

Would you please go into more depth on what you think might be the other factors involved if you have given them some thought - even if just imaginings and flights of fancy?

Basically what your writing left me with is a reminder that I am a moderner, with a different lifestyle, genetically different and barraged with totally new challenges and a different set of supports. I would like to think more on what those supports could be.

Thank you KD.

[KD]

Well the main thing I think is clear is that within the same thread of me just suggesting we look at real people in regards to the real ill effects of dairy and others saying this is irrelevant or romantic that we have whatever other traditional people are ok to cite and which are not. We also have whatever bits we choose to approve of in W.A.P, which 'experts' are right or wrong etc...without ever truly acknowledging that any amount of adaptation equated with healthy people is in fact devastating to this idea that we are only suited to certain foods prior to whatever date is currently popular. With negative anecdotal experience being far less meaningful.

As for the other thing, it deserves it's own topic. It really is an issue of dismissal of modern convenience buttressing 'paleo' even as the whole argument over dairy is predicated on how we cannot improve upon nature. even when milk is simply something people figured out how to obtain through pretty minimal intervention as far as tech goes. Interventions no greater than those that make raw eating today sustainable year round anyway.

Milk has indeed been on the planet since before humans and primates and is literally one of the ONLY foods designed to be food other than fruit. Eggs and meats clearly are not designed in any way whatsoever TO BE food, but humans invent tools in order to exploit those sources from the environment as food. Some can be acquired without tools but it is perfectly ok to say the development of more sophisticated weapons to take down larger game allowed us to advance (in evolutionary terms) over other animals and the like. Yet containing an animal (which was inevitable) and understanding that you can get both milk and then meat is just black magic.

The only thing that is "new" is understanding how to get the food that is usually only made for babys and getting that it is likely very nutrient dense. Then just figuring out how to take it and the time period of which it took place for domestication. So basically when people use these kinds of arguments without taking into account how all the other things 'man' does is actually beneficial for them, they damage their credibility in having a real discussion of how altering the environment or eating "new" foods may have consequences. Which is why I am only interested in measuring consequences, not hearing either idealization.

[Dorothy]

Consequences are what counts. Cool.    Thanks. Another time, another thread for the discussion of factors that affect us.

One thing about what you wrote though - eggs are a lot like milk and are designed to be food for young - at least the egg yolk that is. The yolk is in a way the baby bird's milk supply. The yolk is what the developing bird or reptile eats - so it is truly designed to be food too - like the milk and fruit you noted. That's a very interesting way to look at foods by the way - as foods that were developed to be eaten or not. Never thought about that besides with fruits. Egg yolks and milk are designed for babies - but still the only foods designed precisely for eating at all.

[KD]

Good call. But is is different as milk is a whole food that flows right from one being to another. This is a factor of which increased intelligence likely saw could be interrupted. But anyway, even though the milk is meant for the feeding of the young (exclusively, anyone should admit) in a similar way, the egg itself - as it exists whole In the world - is not meant to be eaten by the offspring. It contains it of course.

But the irony is the very idea that milk is not meant to be eaten by others is pretty much the same idea that animals are not really created to be food, even though they are food for many other creatures.

But certainly seizing eggs falls under the natural understanding that all complex matter (meat or 'products' from most creatures)  is usually soaked with nutrients of some kind, and is a omnivore's and carnivore's main innate primary desire to have these satisfied in usually whichever way a species is intelligent enough to obtain them.

[Dorothy]

Ah yes - the mammalian separation of the food source for development (which in the reptilian animal is completely contained until birth) became a flow that could be interrupted and usurped. In a way we do the same with raising chickens though. We interrupt the development, the eating of the food - it's just that all of the "milk" in that thick viscous fluid that is the yolk is en toto wrapped up with the growing baby - not to be interrupted - but to be taken all at once. It is not as apparent, but much like developing milk cows we have developed "milk" chickens in sense. We raise them to make the eggs so that we can take that baby feeding substance from them to feed ourselves with instead.

Yes, yes - what you are saying is important. Milk was not designed to be eaten by us, but neither were eggs and more importantly neither was meat or vegetables or nuts! Nothing but fruit really was designed to entice us for that species use. So, just because we are the only species that had the intelligence to figure out how to steal that milk - does that make it much different really from other species that have figured out how to more effectively steal eggs? Neither milk nor eggs were designed to be stolen - both are baby food. Are either of them perfect foods for us by themselves? Why ask that question? Do both of them offer a food source that can be used? Yes. Much like the different things that we can kill and steal - that we might not have been able to do otherwise without our increased intelligence. How useful something can be might only be able to be evaluated within the context of the overall diet.

So the most useful question is not: Is this food "meant" for me to eat?...... but it is: What are the results in health of eating this food for us today in our modern world and in combination with other foods and factors?

I learn so much from you KD. Thank you.

[KD]

Well the people that say all products of domestication are bad and that eating eggs and nuts and fruits and such acquired from the wild are at best seasonal and that we should only eat things we retrieve ourself locally that involve no tools or processing to acquire or store, they win of course.

In all seriousness, some of the above truly are not as important for day to day health than perhaps the possible consequences of dairy and other things. Its pretty clear tho that certain interventions are presented by someone as having less consequences depending on what they see is important or "natural". Some of these labels are indeed meaningful and some more meaningful than others. MIlk is a product that is natural but the acquiring is indeed "un-natural". Its a "proper" Neolithic exploitation of materials that requires no technology per se or processing but requires a somewhat more advanced social structure and species -than, say chimps - to confine and breed animals.  With a domesticated egg still by definition being 'more paleo' than milk even from a Purdue chicken butt I suppose.

Its equating these labels and distinctions with implicit absolute health ramifications i'm not quite sure is actually scientific. Keep in mind always that the more curent subjective take on what correlates with health dropping though the ages (if this is even accurate) isn't just automatically associated with the actual products of the Neolithic/agriculture etc... but also every other possible change these things contributed. people arent giving enough 'credit' to agriculture = less travel/variety and less meat or crowding/contaminated water etc... They just think grains = bad. This other focus is indeed mostly where the current consensus currently lays in science.

Speaking of which they have these sea otters that use rocks as a tool to hammer abalone shells (at a rate of 45 blows in 15 seconds, not quite accidental) and I wonder if any theorist has ever put it together that abalone is not really what these sea otters should be eating. I mean, no other aquatic seal mammal is doing that shite.

[Dorothy]

"Its equating these labels and distinctions with implicit absolute health ramifications i'm not quite sure is actually scientific. Keep in mind always that the more curent subjective take on what correlates with health dropping though the ages (if this is even accurate) isn't just automatically associated with the actual products of the Neolithic/agriculture etc... but also every other possible change these things contributed. people arent giving enough 'credit' to agriculture = less travel/variety and less meat or crowding/contaminated water etc... They just think grains = bad. This other focus is indeed mostly where the current consensus currently lays in science."

And there's the rub! It's got to be about results, not about concepts in the end.... and yet...... science is such a skewed thing. So much is about who benefits, who gets to make money off the results of the data that so often determines not only what gets studied but how the data is interpreted.

So my ears have really perked up to Tyler and his dairy as the evil monster lurking beneath the surface and messing with longer term results of people working on this little experiment of ours - because he's talking about some results. Here are people eating other raw animal foods and some do well with raw dairy and some do not.... according to their own subjective appraisal....  which may or may not have to do with other foods they eat or a whole litany of possible variables. It's in the longer-term negative and subtle side-affects of eating a food consistently that things seem to get the murkiest. What one considers to be "health" and "healthy" are so often so relative as well. I think about the people that have keyed into Johanna Budwig's well-established cure for cancer using sulfur containing dairy mixed with flax oil. This is how I got introduced to milk. The closest thing we have here that most people can get to her raw fully fermented German quark is pasteurized, homogenized cottage cheese with a tiny bit of live bacteria in comparison. As a raw foodist I experimented trying out this on myself (before giving it to other's with cancer) and felt that it was simply horrid as a food and couldn't imagine it healing anyone of anything - yet it does! My thought was that the people taking the cure must have diets that are so poor and/or be starving so badly and already feel so badly that it's a step up for them! Raw Quark didn't make me feel worse so I could at least imagine it being a food that could be generally health supporting - but then again - that was a comparison relative to my health which is generally higher than most - but who knows what it might do to someone that CAN survive outdoors and is healthier than stronger or maybe just different than me? Gauging results often necessitates deciding what your criteria are. Is it a positive indicator of what to choose to eat just because that food can relieve a sickness? Does my feeling better than what I felt like before necessarily mean a diet "should" be promoted generally? Just because one or more persons do not feel badly with raw milk or even feel badly beforehand and improve by drinking it- what does that really indicate in a general way? Johanna Budwig used the sulfured milk to help people with limited liver function (as all cancer sufferers are) by-pass the liver in making the flax oil become water soluble and be able to get into the cells. Is this necessary if you have a perfectly functioning liver? It's become Budwig that a weird new little fad in the health community started to mix any kind oil with some dairy - which makes no logical sense. Just because people with limited liver function were helped by one certain kind of fermented dairy and one oil it got generalized to all dairy and all oil for everyone. This is the kind of thing that so often happens. This was/is good for me - so is good all around.

I wish science was interested in how to promote real health and would study diets for the sake of general guidelines for increased health, but alas, that is not the approach. I think the best we can do is gather together our experiences as flawed and subjective as they are. Tyler sharing his experiences and those of others that he has known as well as Citrus reporting that dairy is fine for him and his partner has given me the impetus to do an experiments of my own with and without dairy completely for me and my husband (who thinks that raw is fine for him but does poorly with heated dairy).

One aspect that is important to take into consideration is the perceived difficulty of holding to an extremely narrow diet for us moderners. Raw dairy widens the playing field of taste, texture and enjoyment of food by a big margin for us. The question of whether or not to add dairy to a diet might also include what one's overall health goals are - what is your personal criteria for health. For me for instance, if my goal was to never be sick, never have a cold and to be generally healthy compared to most people while enjoying my food as much as possible, well, then including raw dairy in my diet would fulfill those goals. But that isn't the extent of my goals because I have been lucky enough to experience different levels of health beyond just the lack of disease and wish to explore them more.

And..... like you said early...... I have more at my disposal to possibly achieve levels of health and well-being that are unprecedented. I can move beyond the mind-set that just because I can't go out and find the food without tools all by myself or with the help of a few others it's the only food that would enhance my health. I don't have to label any food wrong or bad. I can open my mind and experiment for myself.

[KD]

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I'm not saying because the bulk of "science" says that we should adapt to many things that - that is in fact true. What I'm saying is no matter how frequent the correlation, that these type of arguments aren't the final word on healthfulness of new or even old practices..as many would also point out with cannibalism, circumcision, bloodletting , human sacrifice and the like. Particularly as we are happy to enjoy MANY new practices, its clear people generally pick and choose at whim. That not ALL things are disqualified for being new in regards to whatever date. The problem is more that they suggest that it is scientific or based on real experiences while discounting whatever other experiences or science. Because in the end they still have the "neolithic" card which to them does not need to be backed up in any way as being absolute even when not always accurate. Not saying much more - in that respect - to how meaningful science is.
 
In regards to the truly minimal intervention to get AT dairy, are all these same arguments absolutely sufficient proof that water or clay buried under a lava bed only retrieved with a laser beam are automatically toxic to 'man'? Or how about something more realistic like deep ocean fish we would have 0 chances of ever eating without technology. Some with pretty advanced technology. 'Foods' that (very similar to dairy) have compounds people can isolate and claim is bad and "back up" with this "unnatural" element.

Basically, - to me - unless peoples' 'intolerances' really consist of swelling + emergency room + everyone and not come on the back of 20 years of more-or-less-ok 'Pizza Party" experience, I think its fair to say these typical 'arguments' are just start points of criticism/thinking these things might not be ideal. But then even if they are not ideal....in comparison to what? A diet that is 'paleo' but not truly a complete diet?  or one not resembling anything in terms of structure as to what was done in nature? Basically anything fruit veg and meat regardless of the actual 'paleo' existence of the food itself (in the case of fruit, veg and meat in MOST cases) or in most cases: whatever heating or processing. i.e., flat-out missing many respects of whole food found in nature as 99% of 'conventional' 'paleos' practice and still rationalize against dairy because it requires one to 'confine animals' and have 'a stabilized non-nomadic culture that grows food' like everything else they do?

Just because doing both raw and paleo possibly grabs  the best of both worlds and doesn't legitimize "anything paleo" as best doesn't  make the typical 'paleo' argument valid in regards to everything in the past being good and everything we use tools or intelligence to obtain is bad. In fact I think it would be an attitude of quite the opposite.
 

[Dorothy]

I'm not sure what you are getting at here. I'm not saying because the bulk of "science" says that we should adapt to many things that - that is in fact true. What I'm saying is no matter how frequent the correlation, that these type of arguments aren't the final word on healthfulness of new or even old practices..as many would also point out with cannibalism, circumcision, bloodletting , human sacrifice and the like. Particularly as we are happy to enjoy MANY new practices, its clear people generally pick and choose at whim. That not ALL things are disqualified for being new in regards to whatever date. The problem is more that they suggest that it is scientific or based on real experiences while discounting whatever other experiences or science. Because in the end they still have the "neolithic" card which to them does not need to be backed up in any way as being absolute even when not always accurate. Not saying much more - in that respect - to how meaningful science is.
 
In regards to the truly minimal intervention to get AT dairy, are all these same arguments absolutely sufficient proof that water or clay buried under a lava bed only retrieved with a laser beam are automatically toxic to 'man'? Or how about something more realistic like deep ocean fish we would have 0 chances of ever eating without technology. Some with pretty advanced technology. 'Foods' that (very similar to dairy) have compounds people can isolate and claim is bad and "back up" with this "unnatural" element.

Basically, - to me - unless peoples' 'intolerances' really consist of swelling + emergency room + everyone and not come on the back of 20 years of more-or-less-ok 'Pizza Party" experience, I think its fair to say these typical 'arguments' are just start points of criticism/thinking these things might not be ideal. But then even if they are not ideal....in comparison to what? A diet that is 'paleo' but not truly a complete diet?  or one not resembling anything in terms of structure as to what was done in nature? Basically anything fruit veg and meat regardless of the actual 'paleo' existence of the food itself (in the case of fruit, veg and meat in MOST cases) or in most cases: whatever heating or processing. i.e., flat-out missing many respects of whole food found in nature as 99% of 'conventional' 'paleos' practice and still rationalize against dairy because it requires one to 'confine animals' and have 'a stabilized non-nomadic culture that grows food' like everything else they do?

Just because doing both raw and paleo possibly grabs  the best of both worlds and doesn't legitimize "anything paleo" as best doesn't  make the typical 'paleo' argument valid in regards to everything in the past being good and everything we use tools or intelligence to obtain is bad. In fact I think it would be an attitude of quite the opposite.
 

Ok, you're pointing out that people can point to particular data and disregard the rest to support their generalized opinions.

Then - questioning what technology really entails. Many things included in a paleolithic diet are certainly not ascertained with paleolithic technologies.

If one is going to eat paleo based on technology or have a less than optimum diet so that it can be labeled "paleo" it makes little sense to you to criticize dairy because it involves domestication.

I do understand you - I think?

I'm above basically agreeing with you and adding that really the only way to know if a certain food is going to be beneficial to you or not is to try it out and try out not having it in one's diet. One cannot assume that it will be good or bad because there are so many variables - but it is a very good thing to have a group like this where it can be pointed out that some people on a certain kind of diet found that dairy (although they thought it was at first) was in the long-run not ideal so that one can know that it might be wise to experiment with taking dairy out of one's diet to see. At certain stages in life or in certain degrees of health and mixed with other foods the results might change even for an individual.

I mentioned the Budwig material because that is a perfect example of dairy being better than what was being eaten and an example of a circumstance where dairy can be highly beneficial with a certain illness. Perhaps part of the reason why AV loves dairy so much is because he had cancer?

I getcha that just because paleolithic people didn't eat grains does not necessary equate to all grains prepared in all ways as being bad at all time. For instance, I find that certain soaked seeds prepared in certain ways digest beautifully and add to not only the variety in my diet, but I also to my general overall health. In that sense I am still not eating a paleolithic diet because of my sprinkled oat groats on my fruit. Would it be better for me to get rid of them just because they don't fit the paleolithic model? I really don't believe so. If one benefits from eating raw dairy, has tried the rest of one's diet with and without it and feels better with it - does it make sense to delete it just because it doesn't fit the paleolithic paradigm?

I'd rather feel healthier than fit into any box. So far the concept of raw and paleo has been extremely useful for me. I use it, instead of letting it define me and what it is that I must or must not eat.