Taking a closer look at Dairy

A closer look at dairy. Most people you speak to have pretty strong feelings about dairy, wether they only use “heart healthy” spreads, more on that later or they will only have skimmed or a certain milk. Of course you are free to choose which ever milk or butter you like, but are you really getting healthiest choice.

Let’s start will milk, in my experience a vast majority of people in the UK will drink either skimmed or semi skimmed milk. I believe this is due to growing up & living through the 80’s where we were told fat is bad for us. Most modern milk goes through a process called pasteurisation to kill off bacteria such as E coli.

It also goes through homogenisation which basically means making the fat in the milk suspend in the milk itself, rather than having to shake it or cut the cream off the top.

You will find many people in the fitness industry now try to get hold of RAW milk straight from the farmers as you can’t get it in shops. They dislike the processes milk goes through before it get’s to the shops and ultimately our bodies.

I feel it’s important to note while adults may choose to do this I would not advise it for children as milk was pasteurised for a reason and I believe children would have a weaker immune system to such bacterias in unpasteurised milk. I personally will drink full fat milk or gold top here in the UK which is pasteurised but not homogenised and here’s why. It’s less processed and closer to the real thing.

The vitamins in milk are fat soluble, the fat soluble vitamins are A,D,E & K so if you drink skimmed milk where the fat is gone, or greatly reduced you may not get the same benefits from it. If you also skim the fat away from milk you are left with more milk sugar or as you may know it, lactose. Many people have issue’s with lactose so if you are one of them skimmed milk is not a great idea for you. Sometimes I find people who do not get on with cows milk may be fine with goats milk. It’s also worth mentioning milk is not the only source of calcium, green leafy veg has lots, often more! Look out for kale, pak choi & broccoli.

John

www.johnchapmanfitness.com