Milk, Meat, And Other Protein Foods

Categories: Diet and Nutrition
Sources: How And When To Be Your Own Doctor

Speaking of butter, how about milk? The dairy lobby is very powerful

in North America. Its political clout and campaign contributions

have the governments of both the United States and especially that

of Canada eating out of its hand (literally), providing the dairy

industry with price supports. Because of these price supports, in

Canada cheese costs half again more than it does in the United

States. The dairy lobby is also very cozy with the medical

profession so licensed nutritionists constantly bombard us with

"drink milk" and "cheese is good for you" propaganda.



And people naturally like dairy foods. They taste good and are

fat-rich with a high satiety value. Dairy makes you feel full for a

long time. Dairy is also high in protein; protein is hard to digest

and this too keeps one feeling full for a long time. But many

people, especially those from cultures who traditionally

(genetically) didn't have dairy cows, particularly Africans, Asians

and Jews, just do not produce the enzymes necessary to digest cows

milk. Some individuals belonging to these groups can digest goats

milk. Some can't digest any kind except human breast milk. And some

can digest fermented milk products like yogurt and kiefer. Whenever

one eats a protein food that is not fully digestible, it putrefies

in the digestive tract, with all the bad consequences previously

described.



But no one, absolutely no one can fully digest pasteurized cows

milk, which is what most people use because they have been made to

fear cow-transmitted diseases and/or they are forced to use

pasteurized dairy products by health authorities. I suspect drinking

pasteurized milk or eating cheese made from pasteurized milk is one

of the reasons so many people develop allergic reactions to milk.

Yet many states do not allow unpasteurized dairy to be sold, even

privately between neighbors. To explain all this, I first have to

explain a bit more about protein digestion in general and then talk

about allergies and how they can be created.



Proteins are long, complex molecules, intricate chains whose

individual links are amino acids. Proteins are the very stuff of

life. All living protoplasm, animal or plant, is largely composed of

proteins. There are virtually an infinite number of different

proteins but all are composed of the same few dozen amino acids

hooked together in highly variable patterns. Amino acids themselves

are highly complex organic molecules too. The human body

custom-assembles all its proteins from amino acids derived from

digesting protein foods, and can also manufacture small quantities

of certain of its own amino acids to order, but there are eight

amino acids it cannot make and these are for that reason called

essential amino acids. Essential amino acids must be contained in

the food we eat. .



Few proteins are water soluble. When we eat proteins the digestive

apparatus must first break them down into their water-soluble

components, amino acids, so these can pass into the blood and then

be reassembled into the various proteins the body uses. The body has

an interesting mechanism to digest proteins; it uses enzymes. An

enzyme is like the key for a lock. It is a complex molecule that

latches to a protein molecule and then breaks it apart into amino

acids. Then the enzyme finds yet another protein molecule to free.

Enzymes are efficient, reusable many many times.



Enzymes that digest proteins are effective only in the very acid

environment of the stomach, are manufactured by the pancreas and are

released when protein foods are present. The stomach then releases

hydrochloric acid and churns away like a washing machine, mixing the

enzymes and the acid with the proteins until everything has

digested.



So far so good. That's how its supposed to be. But. Dr. Henry

Bieler, who wrote Food Is Your Best Medicine, came up with the

finest metaphor I know of to explain how protein digestion goes

wrong. He compared all proteins to the white of an egg (which is

actually a form of protein). When raw and liquid, the long chains of

albumen (egg white) proteins are in their natural form. However,

cook the egg and the egg white both solidifies and becomes smaller.

What has happened is that the protein chains have shriveled and

literally tied themselves into knots. Once this happens, pancreatic

enzymes no longer fit and cannot separate all the amino acids.

Cooked proteins may churn and churn and churn in the presence of

acid and pancreatic enzymes but they will not digest completely.

Part becomes water soluble; part does not.



But, indigestible protein is still subject to an undesirable form of

consumption in the gut. Various bacteria make their home in our

airless, warm intestines. Some of these live on protein. In the

process of consuming undigested proteins, they release highly toxic

substances. They poison us.



What is true of the white of an egg is also true of flesh foods and

dairy. Raw meat and raw fish are actually easily digestible foods

and if not wrongly combined will not produce toxemia in a person

that still has a strong pancreas. However, eating raw meat and fish

can be a dicey proposition, both for reasons of cultural sensibility

(people think it is disgusting) and because there may be living

parasites in uncooked flesh that can attack, sicken and even kill

people. It has been argued that a healthy stomach containing its

proper degree of acidity provides an impenetrable barrier to

parasites. Perhaps. But how many of us are that healthy these days?

Cooked flesh and fish seems more delicious to our refined, civilized

sensibilities, but are a poor food.



In my household we have no moral objection to eating meat. We do

have an ethical objection in that meat eating does not contribute to

our health. But still, we do eat it. A few times a year, for

traditional celebrations we may invite the children over and cook a

turkey. A few times for Thanksgiving when the children were going

through their holier-than-thou vegetarian stage, I purchased the

largest, thickest porterhouse steak I could find at the natural meat

store and ate it medium-rare, with relish. It was delicious. It made

me feel full for hours and hours and hours. I stayed flat on the

couch and groggily worked on digesting it all evening. After that

I'd had enough of meat to last for six months.



When milk is pasteurized, the proteins in it are also altered in

structure. Not so severely as egg white is altered by cooking

because pasteurization happens at a lower temperature. But altered

none the less. And made less digestible. Pasteurizing also makes

milk calcium far less assimilable. That's ironic because so many

people are drinking milk because they fear they need more calcium to

avoid osteoporosis and to give their children good teeth. What

pasteurized milk actually does to their children is make them

calcium deficient and makes the children toxic, provoking many

colds, ear infections, sinusitis, inflammations of the tonsils and

lung infections, and, induces an allergy to milk in the children.