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I've received some questions about what one can expect from Nutrition Guide that accompanies The High Performance Handbook Gold Package, so I thought I'd use today's post to highlight a few "Ah-Ha" moments from Brian St. Pierre's awesome contribution. For those who aren't familiar with "BSP," he's one of Dr. John Berardi's right-hand-men at Precision Nutrition. Check out these thought provoking ideas directly from the text:
Point #1: The Dairy and Diabetes Risk Relationship
With little fanfare, a study recently came out by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and colleagues. Why so little fanfare, you ask? It’s because the study suggests that dairy fat may actually protect against diabetes, and that goes against conventional wisdom and government recommendations.
Dr. Mozaffarian and company collected two measures of dairy fat intake in 3,736 Americans. They took six 24-hour dietary recall questionnaires, as well as assessing blood levels of trans-palmitoleate. Trans-palmitoleate comes almost exclusively from dairy fat and red meat fat, and therefore it reflects the intakes of these foods. Dairy provided most of the trans-palmitoleate fatty acid in this study.
Adjustments were made for confounding factors, and trans-palmitoleate levels were associated with a smaller waist circumference, higher HDL cholesterol, lower serum triglycerides, lower C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation), lower fasting insulin and lower calculated insulin resistance. In addition, people who had the highest levels of trans-palmitoleate had 1/3 the risk of developing diabetes over the 3-year study period.
Again, it is important to note that trans-palmitoleate is a fatty acid, and so is only provided in significant amounts by whole fat dairy, not from low-fat or fat-free versions. The investigators also noted that “greater whole-fat dairy consumption was associated with lower risk for diabetes.” This is an important distinction, as it wasn’t just trans-palmitoleate levels that were associated with the decreased risk, but the actual consumption of whole-fat dairy itself that seemingly provides the benefit.
Here’s another nice quote from the authors: “Our findings support potential metabolic benefits of dairy consumption and suggest that trans-palmitoleate may mediate these effects. They also suggest that efforts to promote exclusive consumption of low-fat and non-fat dairy products, which would lower population exposure to trans-palmitoleate, may be premature until the mediators of the health effects of dairy consumption are better established.”
While it is certainly possible that trans-palmitoleate is mediating a lot of these positive health outcomes that were associated with it, in all reality, it only makes up a tiny fraction of the fat content of milk. I tend to believe that instead, it is more of a marker of dairy fat intake, with the benefits more likely coming from the other elements contained in dairy fat – CLA, vitamin K2, butyric acid, vitamin D – in addition to the trans-palmitoleate.
Point #2: Sleep: Why We Need It, and How To Get It
We all know that sleep is important for our health. However, many of us (if not most of us) tend to act as if that just doesn’t hold true for ourselves. We seem to believe that we can get away with it. While you may blame “work” or simply being “busy,” research clearly and consistently shows that people miss out on sleep due to something called “voluntary bedtime delay.” Basically, we stay up late because we want to, often watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” re-runs, or mindlessly reading useless info on Facebook. No matter the reason, it is unlikely to actually be more important than logging sufficient and quality shut-eye.
In the big picture, sleep is just as important as nutrition and exercise when it comes to improving your health, performance, and body composition.
The average adult gets about 6 hours and 40 minutes of sleep per night. In fact, about 30% of the population gets fewer than six hours per night. Women tend to sleep a bit more than men, and people who carry high amounts of body fat tend to sleep less than those with a normal body fat level. Studies suggest that people who sleep fewer than six hours per night gain almost twice as much weight over a 6-year period as people who sleep 7-8 hours per night.
Excessive sleep isn’t necessarily better, either; those who sleep more than nine hours per night have similar body composition outcomes as those who sleep less than six hours.
There is a fairly strong body of research showing that lack of sleep increases risk of many conditions, including:
- altered food intake
- decrease in satiety hormones, increase in hunger hormones
- increase in pleasure response to food, causing increased food intake
- altered glucose tolerance, insulin resistance & diabetes
- inflammation
- obesity
- disruption of cortisol levels and rhythm
- decrease in testosterone and increase in estrogen
- loss of lean mass, including muscle, bone and organs (such as your brain)
- decrease in thyroid stimulating hormone
- heart attack
- stroke
It is important to note that sleep debt is cumulative, meaning that the more nights with less sleep, the greater likelihood of negative effects taking place. The good news is that you can catch up with just a few consecutive nights of adequate sleep. Experts hypothesize that each hour of sleep debt needs to be repaid eventually, so don’t let it add up.
Okay, so we know lack of sleep is a problem. As researchers have noted regarding sleep debt: "these alterations are similar to those observed during aging and sometimes during depression." Awesome.
Fortunately, research also shows that simply getting adequate sleep can quickly right the ship on these issues. [Note from EC: Brian goes into great detail on strategies to improve sleep quality and duration in his guide].
I'll be back later today with a few more key points from BSP's manual, but in the meantime, you can check out The High Performance Handbook here. Don't forget: the $30 off discount is only around for this week!
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| I love writing multi-part features because it really affords me more time to dig deep into a topic of interest to both my readers and me. In many ways, it’s a challenge on par with writing a short book, whereas individual blogs tend to be quick bullet points. That said, here were five noteworthy features from 2011 at EricCressey.com:
How to Deadlift: Which Deadlift Variation is Right for You? - Part 1 (Conventional Deadlift) - This kicked off a three-part series on why certain deadlift variations may be more appropriate than others for certain lifters. Be sure to read installments 2 and 3: the Sumo Deadlift and the Trap Bar Deadlift.
Is an Exercise Science Degree Really Worth It? - Part 1 - I expected this series to be far more controversial than it was, but to be honest, most people simply agreed with me, so it was popular for a different reason! Check out Part 2 as well.
Coffee Consumption and Health: The Final Word - Part 1 - As I noted the other day, one of the biggest surprises for me in 2011 was that my readers were psyched to get nutrition content at EricCressey.com, and Brian St. Pierre's guest blog on coffee consumption and health was one such example. Be sure to check out Part 2 as well.
How to Fit Core Stability Exercises into Strength and Conditioning Programs - Part 1 - This two-part feature was published late in the year, but that didn't stop it from receiving enough traffic to rank in the top five at year-end. It was a follow-up to the Functional Stability Training seminar that Mike Reinold and I presented at Cressey Performance in November. Click here for part 2.
Is Dairy Healthy? The Whole Story - Part 1 - This three-part feature was another great guest submission from Brian St. Pierre on a hotly debated topic in the nutrition world. Check out Part 2 and Part 3 as well.
Speaking of features, that wraps up this third installment of the "Best of 2011" series; I'll be back soon with the top videos of 2011.
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| Today marks the third and final installment of Brian St. Pierre’s guest series on dairy consumption. In Part 1 and Part 2, he covered a lot of ground on the total health impact of dairy foods. If you missed them, I highly suggest reading these before you continue here with Part 3.
Pasteurization – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
I am going to assume that you all know that pasteurization is the method by which milk is heated to destroy bacteria that may cause harm, as I am not going to get into technicalities of what it is and the different techniques available. Anyway, it does seem all well and good right? It destroys harmful bacteria, making contamination almost impossible. Is it really all it is cracked up to be, though?
When Louis Pasteur came up with the process, our food production was terrible. Sanitation was poor, and (thanks to Pastuer) we’d really just begun to understand that germs caused illness. Animals (like cows) were not brought up in pristine conditions. Folks were starting to mass-milk cows in these unsanitary conditions, too – so there was certainly an increased likelihood of getting sick and ending up with serious health problems, as medicine back then surely wasn’t what it is today.
This was before the creation of the FDA or any other food regulatory system, and before Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle showcased to the nation how disgusting our food production was (incidentally, that book led to the creation of the FDA, but that is beyond the scope of this article). It is completely logical to believe that pasteurization was a huge breakthrough, and a necessity at the time of its inception. At the time, pasteurized milk was safer than raw. The question is though, is that still the case today?
Let me back up a second and talk about glutathione, our body’s master antioxidant. Glutathione has many important functions:
- Neutralizes free radicals and peroxides
- Maintains blood levels of antioxidants vitamins C and E
- Helps the liver and white blood cells in the detoxification of foreign compounds and carcinogens
- Is essential for the optimized immune function
- Plays a key role in a plethora of metabolic and biological processes like DNA synthesis, protein synthesis, prostaglandin synthesis and more.
We know that whey protein’s cysteine content is responsible for much of its ability to boost glutathione, but not all of it. This ability may also come from two biological fractions found in whey: beta-lactoglobulin and serum albumin. These proteins contain some very special glutamyl-cysteine bonds that tend to enter our blood stream intact, and are much more readily turned into glutathione. Unfortunately, it seems that when whey protein undergoes extensive heat treatment, these two delicate fractions are destroyed.
This is not only problem in whey protein powder processing, but also with pasteurizing milk. In fact, pasteurization in general decreases the whey protein concentration in milk. The heat causes the proteins to denature and associate with the casein proteins. The higher the temperature – as when milk is ultra-pasteurized – the greater the denaturing of whey.
In fact, whey normally makes up about 20% of the protein in raw milk. Gentle pasteurization (high temperature, short time) causes this to drop down to about 12-13%, while ultra-pasteurization causes whey to fall to only about 5% of the total protein content!
On top of that, exposing raw milk to different heat treatments also affected those delicate biological fractions of whey. In raw milk, beta-lactoglobulin makes up almost 90% of the whey protein. After gentle pasteurization, it makes up just under 70%, and after ultra-pasteurization it drops down to just over 20%!
In addition to the beta-lactoglobulin, serum albumin levels are also affected by pasteurization. Gentle pasteurization has been found to decrease serum albumin levels by 40%, while ultra-pasteurization reduced it by 77%!
After reviewing the evidence, does raw milk seem healthier? I would say one could make a very strong argument that this is the case. Is raw milk any less safe? This is also debatable, but in my opinion it is probably only an issue for pregnant and nursing moms, as well as young children. For them, I am hesitant to recommend raw milk, regardless of the potential benefits. For everyone else, the choice is yours – if your state allows it.
Whole Fat Milk Leads to Greater Muscle Growth?
I haven’t discussed the role of dairy in muscle growth yet in spite of the fact that it’s surely of interest to you – so let’s get to it now. Researchers compared skim milk to whole milk in the post-training period to see which would produce greater anabolic effects. They pitted 14oz of skim milk against 8oz of whole milk, to make them calorically equal. Theoretically, the results should be even or in the favor of skim milk, since it had six more grams of protein. The research actually showed that whole milk was more effective than skim, despite the lower protein content and equal total calories.
Another notch in favor of whole-fat over fat-free, and while it is just one study, at the very least it seems clear that fat (specifically milk fat), is certainly not going to inhibit results if consumed post-training.
In Conclusion
If you made it this far, I applaud you, as this was an absolute beast of an article. You have just read almost 3,000 words on dairy, so give yourself a little pat on the back.
In my mind, and from the totality of the data, it is clear that if you choose to consume dairy (and I’m not even saying you have to) your best bet for health and body composition purposes would be whole-fat, grass-fed and lightly pasteurized (or raw) options.
However, finding companies that make such products can often be difficult. To make matters worse, not all organic dairy options are created equal, and not all are even grass-fed. In fact, many organic dairies produce milk and dairy that is no better than conventionally-produced grain fed options. To find out whether the organic dairy available to you is of high quality, or even grass-fed, check out this report from the Cornucopia Institute. It will provide you with national and local organic dairy options, as well as how much time their cows spend on pasture, whether they receive antibiotics and more.
For example, Organic Valley and Whole Foods 365 are two brands that are available nationally and received good reviews. In contrast, Horizon, the largest organic dairy producer, would not even provide their information to the Cornucopia Institute. I don’t know about you, but I am not willing to consume food from a company that is not transparent about its production practices.
In the end, the choices are yours, so choose wisely.
References
Douglas F, Greenberg R, Farrell H, Edmondson L. Effects of ultra-high-temperature pasteurization on milk proteins. J Agri Food Chem. 1981 29(1):11-15
Morales F, Romero C, Jiménez-Pérez S. Characterization of industrial processed milk by analysis of heat-induced changes. Inter J Food Sci Tech. March 2000 35(2):193–200
Elliot TA, Cree MG, Sanford AP, Wolfe RR, Tipton KD. Milk ingestion stimulates net muscle protein synthesis following resistance exercise. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2006 Apr;38(4):667-74.
About the Author
 Brian St. Pierre is a Certified Sports Nutritionist (CISSN) and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS). He received his degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition with a focus in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Maine, and he is currently pursuing his Master's degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the same institution. He was the Nutritionist and a Strength and Conditioning Coach at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA for three years. He is also the author of the Show and Go Nutrition Guide, the accompanying nutrition manual to Eric Cressey’s Show and Go Training System.
With his passion for seeing his clients succeed, Brian is able to use his knowledge, experience, and energy to create highly effective training and nutrition programs for clients of any age and background. For more information, check out his website.
Related Posts
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| Today marks the second installment of Brian St. Pierre's guest contribution on the topic of dairy consumption. In case you missed Part 1 - which discussed the history of dairy consumption, how dairy production has drastically changed, and the benefits of grass-feeding - you can find it HERE.
The Skinny on Dairy Fat
Whole or full-fat dairy is actually a topic I want to cover in a lot of detail. I personally feel that this is a grossly misunderstood topic, and I want to clarify several things here.
There is actually a good amount of research, in several populations, that shows that full-fat dairy consumption is associated with lower BMI, lower waist circumference, and lower risk of cardiovascular disease (especially stroke). Yes, you read that right: whole fat dairy is associated with a decreased risk of CVD, especially stroke. Low-fat or fat-free dairy is actually often associated with increased BMI and waist circumference (though to be fair this is not always the case).
In fact Dr. Ronald Krauss, one the world’s leading lipid researchers, showed that while saturated fat from dairy does raise LDL, it is an increase in large, fluffy and benign LDL – not the small, dense and atherogenic LDL.
Whole fat dairy from grass-fed cows contains a boatload of powerful vitamins and healthful fatty acids. These vitamins are fat-soluble, meaning they are bonded to the fatty acids in the dairy, and are therefore nearly non-existent in fat-free dairy, same for the fatty acids obviously. The fat is where vitamins A, D, E and K2 are, as well as conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), butyric acid, omega-3 fatty acids, trans-palmitoleate and medium chain triglycerides. Low-fat and fat-free dairy are woefully lacking in these properties.
CLA is present in human body fat in proportion to dietary intake, and has been shown to be a powerful ally in the fight against cancer. Meat and dairy from grass-fed animals provide the richest source of CLA on the planet, containing three to five times more CLA than feedlot-raised animals. CLA has been found to greatly reduce tumor growth in animals, and possibly in humans as well. In a Finnish study, women who had the highest levels of CLA in their diet had a 60% lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest levels. Simply switching from conventionally-raised grain-fed meat and dairy to pasture-raised grass-fed versions would have placed all the women in the lowest risk category.
In addition, CLA may also help to fight against heart disease. In a study of 3626 Costa Rican men and women (a country that uses traditional pasture-grazing for dairy cows), people with the highest level of CLA in their body fat were 49% less likely to have had a heart attack, compared to those with the lowest level. This may be due to CLA intake and tissue levels being associated with greater amounts of large and fluffy LDL, and inversely associated with small and dense LDL.
Vitamin D is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread, and getting some from food is always a good thing. Low blood levels of vitamin D are associated with lowered immunity, increased risk of 17 cancers (and counting), increased risk of heart disease, neurological and psychological disorders (including ADD and depression), diabetes, stroke, hypertension, bone loss, and loss of muscle mass and strength as we age and more.
Omega-3s are absolutely amazing, as they may improve nerve, brain, eye, heart and cardiovascular function as well as decreasing inflammation, joint pain, arthritis, psychological disorders, and risk of breast cancer and heart disease - all while improving mood and body composition!
Medium chain triglycerides are unique fatty acids that are more readily utilized as fuel rather than stored as energy, as well as particular ones, like lauric acid, containing anti-viral and anti-microbial properties.
Vitamins A and E are powerful antioxidants.
Butryric acid may help with bodyweight regulation, and is a primary fuel source for our intestinal flora.
Notice that I didn’t mention vitamin K2 yet? That is because I was saving what might be the best for last. Several studies have found that a higher vitamin K2 intake is associated with a lower risk of heart attack, ischemic stroke, cancer incidence, cancer mortality and overall mortality. Men with the highest vitamin K2 consumption had a 51% lower risk of heart attack mortality and a 26% lower risk of all cause mortality compared to men consuming the lowest amount!
One of the ways vitamin K2 improves cardiovascular health is its ability to prevent and decrease arterial calcification by 30-40%. And, this only speaks to vitamin K2’s effects of cardiovascular health; it is also crucially important for proper fetal development and bone health, to name a few additional benefits.
What about Dairy and Diabetes?
With little fanfare, a study recently came out by Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and colleagues. Why so little fanfare, you ask? Because the study suggests that dairy fat may actually protect against diabetes, and that goes against conventional wisdom and government recommendations.
Dr. Mozaffarian and company collected two measures of dairy fat intake in 3,736 Americans. They took six 24-hour dietary recall questionnaires, as well as taking blood levels of trans-palmitoleate. Trans-palmitoleate comes almost exclusively dairy fat and red meat fat, and therefore it reflects the intakes of these foods. Dairy provided most of the trans-palmitoleate fatty acid in this study.
Adjustments were made for confounding factors, and trans-palmitoleate levels were associated with a smaller waist circumference, higher HDL cholesterol, lower serum triglycerides, lower C-reactive protein, lower fasting insulin and lower calculated insulin resistance. In addition to that awesome data, people who had the highest levels of trans-palmitoleate had 1/3 the risk of developing diabetes over the 3 year study period.
Again, it is important to note that trans-palmitoleate is a fatty acid, and so is only significant from whole fat dairy, not from low-fat or fat-free. The investigators also noted that "greater whole-fat dairy consumption was associated with lower risk for diabetes." This is an important distinction as it wasn’t just trans-palmitoleate levels that were associated with the decreased risk, but the actual consumption of the food that provides that element was as well.
Here's another nice quote from the authors: “Our findings support potential metabolic benefits of dairy consumption and suggest that trans-palmitoleate may mediate these effects. They also suggest that efforts to promote exclusive consumption of low-fat and nonfat dairy products, which would lower population exposure to trans-palmitoleate, may be premature until the mediators of the health effects of dairy consumption are better established.”
While it is certainly possible that trans-palmitoleate is mediating a lot of these positive health outcomes that were associated with it, in all reality it only makes up a tiny fraction of the fat content of milk. I tend to believe that instead it is more of a marker of dairy fat intake, with the benefits more likely coming from the other elements contained in dairy fat – CLA, vitamin K2, butyric acid, vitamin D, etc.
Stay tuned for part 3!
References
Berkey CS, Rockett HR, Willett WC, Colditz GA. Milk, dairy fat, dietary calcium, and weight gain: a longitudinal study of adolescents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2005 Jun;159(6):543-50.
Rosell M, Håkansson NN, Wolk A. Association between dairy food consumption and weight change over 9 y in 19 352 perimenopausal women. Am J Clin Nutr. 2006 Dec;84(6):1481-1488.
University of Gothenburg (2009, November 4). Children Who Often Drink Full-fat Milk Weigh Less, Swedish Research Finds. ScienceDaily.
German JB, Gibson RA, Krauss RM, et al. A reappraisal of the impact of dairy foods and milk fat on cardiovascular disease risk. Eur J Nutr. 2009 Jun;48(4):191-203.
Bonthuis M, Hughes MCB, IbiebeleTI, Green AC, and van der Pols JC. Dairy consumption and patterns of mortality of Australian adults. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2010;64:569–577.
Elwood PC, Strain JJ, Robson PJ, et al. Milk consumption, stroke, and heart attack risk: evidence from the Caerphilly cohort of older men. J Epidemiol Community Health. 2005;59:502-505
Elwood PC, Pickering JE, Hughes J, Fehily AM, Ness AR. Milk drinking, ischaemic heart disease and ischaemic stroke II. Evidence from cohort studies. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2004 May;58(5):718-24.
Krauss RM, et al. Change in dietary saturated fat intake is correlated with change in mass of large low-density-lipoprotein particles in men. Am J Clin Nutr. 1998 May;67(5):828-36.
Aro A, Männistö S, Salminen I, et al. Inverse association between dietary and serum conjugated linoleic acid and risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Nutr Cancer. 2000;38(2):151-7.
Smit LA, Baylin A, Campos H. Conjugated linoleic acid in adipose tissue and risk of myocardial infarction. Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 Jul;92(1):34-40.
Sjogren P, Rosell M, Skoglund-Andersson C, et al. Milk-derived fatty acids are associated with a more favorable LDL particle size distribution in healthy men. J Nutr. 2004 Jul;134(7):1729-35.
Geleijnse JM, Vermeer C, Grobbee DE, et al. Dietary Intake of Menaquinone Is Associated with a Reduced Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: The Rotterdam Study. J Nutr. 2004 Nov;134:3100-3105.
Gast GC, de Roos NM, Sluijs I, et al. A high menaquinone intake reduces the incidence of coronary heart disease. Nutr Metab Cardiovasc Dis. 2009 Sep;19(7):504-10.
Nimptsch K, Rohrmann S, Kaaks R, Linseisen J. Dietary vitamin K intake in relation to cancer incidence and mortality: results from the Heidelberg cohort of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC-Heidelberg). Am J Clin Nutr. 2010 May;91(5):1348-58.
Spronk HM, Soute BA, Schurgers LJ, et al. Tissue-specific utilization of menaquinone-4 results in the prevention of arterial calcification in warfarin-treated rats. J Vasc Res. 2003 Nov-Dec;40(6):531-7.
Mozaffarian et al. Trans-palmitoleic Acid, Metabolic Risk Factors, and New-Onset Diabetes in US Adults. Ann Internal Med. 2010.
About the Author
Brian St. Pierre is a Certified Sports Nutritionist (CISSN) and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS). He received his degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition with a focus in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Maine, and he is currently pursuing his Master's degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the same institution. He was the Nutritionist and a Strength and Conditioning Coach at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA for three years. He is also the author of the Show and Go Nutrition Guide, the accompanying nutrition manual to Eric Cressey’s Show and Go Training System.
With his passion for seeing his clients succeed, Brian is able to use his knowledge, experience, and energy to create highly effective training and nutrition programs for clients of any age and background. For more information, check out his website.
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In light of the overwhelming popularity of a recent guest blog on the topic of sports nutrition and healthy food options, I wanted to keep the ball rolling with some regular nutrition content. This week, Brian St. Pierre kicks off a three-part series on everything you want to know about dairy. Enjoy! -EC
Dairy: perhaps the most controversial food in history.
While some people would argue that we shouldn’t consume dairy at all, others recommend getting at least three servings per day. There is fat-free, 1%, 2%, whole, cream, butter, and more. There is also the pasteurization, ultra-pasteurized and raw debate. Who is right? What fat content is the best? Should you eat raw dairy?
Let’s find out.
The History of Dairy Consumption
The fact of the matter is that humans have been consuming dairy in one form or another for 10,000 years. Many cultures (e.g., people of the Lotchenstal Valley, the Masai, Mongolians) have subsisted on tremendous amounts of dairy without any problems often associated with it. The difference is that traditional dairy was from cows that ate grass, got exercise, breathed fresh air, and enjoyed the sunshine. Their quality of life – and therefore quality of milk – was excellent.
Fast forward to today and things have changed. Milk demand has increased greatly in the last hundred years, and so the industry responded. Cows moved off family farms and onto Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), which are essentially huge conglomerate farms where they:
a) are fed tons of corn,
b) stand in their own waste
c) are given antiobiotics to prevent the illnesses from that corn consumption and the unsanitary living conditions
d) are given copious amounts of growth hormones to speed their growth and increase their milk production.
Appetizing, I know.
Traditionally, cows were allowed a seasonal reproductive cycle and were milked for only six weeks after giving birth. Today, conventional dairy farmers inseminate cows only a few months after giving birth, which can compromise the immune system and decrease milk quality. What’s worse, it will also cause a huge increase in estrogens in the milk.
These estrogens can fuel the growth of several tumors and are linked to prostate, breast and ovarian cancer. Cows allowed to graze on grass and have seasonal reproductive cycles have significantly less estrogens in their milk, at levels that are not thought to be problematic.
Below is a table to give you a little perspective on the changes in the lives of milking cows brought about by the move off the family farm and onto the CAFOs.
Why Grass-Feeding Rules
While we have certainly made cows more efficient milk-producing machines – going from 336 lbs to 20,000 lbs of milk produced per year – this has had a tremendously negative impact on milk quality. Milk produced in this manner is not what I would consider a healthy food option, and I am definitely not a big fan of this conventional dairy due to the poor production, poor quality, high estrogen content, and loss of important fatty acids and fat-soluble vitamins. Fortunately, dairy from pasture-raised grass-fed cows is an entirely different animal.
Since these cows are actually allowed to eat what they were designed to eat, their milk quality is vastly superior – containing more actual nutrition like increased levels of vitamin A, vitamin K (in the more powerful form of K2), omega-3s, and CLA. In fact, grass-fed cows have been found to contain up to 500% more CLA than their conventionally fed brethren!
In addition to grass-fed dairy being far superior to conventional grain-fed dairy, full-fat dairy is also superior to low-fat or fat-free, contrary to popular belief or recommendations – but we will get to that in Part 2!
About the Author
Brian St. Pierre is a Certified Sports Nutritionist (CISSN) and a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS). He received his degree in Food Science and Human Nutrition with a focus in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Maine, and he is currently pursuing his Master's degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the same institution. He was the Nutritionist and a Strength and Conditioning Coach at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA for three years. He is also the author of the Show and Go Nutrition Guide, the accompanying nutrition manual to Eric Cressey’s Show and Go Training System.
With his passion for seeing his clients succeed, Brian is able to use his knowledge, experience, and energy to create highly effective training and nutrition programs for clients of any age and background. For more information, check out his website.
References
Malekinejad H, Scherpenisse P, Bergwerff A. Naturally Occurring Estrogens in Processed Milk and in Raw Milk (from Gestated Cows). J. Agric. Food Chem., 2006, 54 (26), pp 9785–9791
Qin LQ, et al. Estrogen: one of the risk factors in milk for prostate cancer. Med Hypotheses. 2004;62(1):133-42.
Ganmaa D, Sato A. The possible role of female sex hormones in milk from pregnant cows in the development of breast, ovarian and corpus uteri cancers. Med Hypotheses. 2005;65(6):1028-37.
Dhiman TR, Anand GR, et al. Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets. J Dairy Sci. 1999;82(10):2146-56.
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