Of dairy queens and human cheese

From Puff the Mutant Dragon blog:

Calvin and Hobbes comic strip via Puff the Mutant Dragon blog.

“A couple of years ago, an enterprising New York chef made headlines by serving cheese made from his wife’s breast milk. His stunt provoked a swift reaction from the New York Health Department, which didn’t seem to find this novelty menu item amusing. Despite his venture’s unsuccessful end, a London ice cream parlor tried to imitate him last year by selling a breast-milk-based product.

Do you find the idea of human cheese and ice cream bizarre? Disturbing? If so, it’s not very difficult to see why. What’s more difficult to explain is how we came to drink milk from other mammals in the first place.

New study on lactose intolerance finds raw milk is not necessarily a solution

David E. Gumpert, writing for Grist.org:

“For many years, raw-milk advocates have claimed that unpasteurized milk counters lactose intolerance — the upset stomach many people feel after consuming dairy products. There have been loads of anecdotal claims, and an unpublished study of raw milk drinkers in Michigan in 2007 showed that more than 80 percent of 155 individuals who said they had been diagnosed with lactose intolerance could handle raw milk without problems.

But opponents of raw milk, prime among them the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, have always been adamant that there’s no difference between raw and pasteurized milk for individuals who are lactose intolerant.

Raw milk redefines “dairy intolerance”

The following picture and story excerpt is from Kimberly Hartke’s blog and is a guest post from Kate at www.modernalternativemama.com

Kate and her kids. Photo via Kimberly Hartke's blog

“Two and a half years ago, I had no idea what I was in for.

I was 7 months pregnant with my first baby and we hadn’t yet started our “real food” journey.  We ate whatever sounded good to us, whenever we wanted it.  That meant a lot of boxed meals, restaurant food, and dairy — processed, pasteurized dairy.  Ice cream, cheese, etc.  I loved cheese and couldn’t imagine ever being able to go without it.

Fast forward about 15 months and I had a 13-month-old who we discovered couldn’t eat dairy. A 13-month-old who was still breastfeeding.  I couldn’t bring myself to give it up, and since she wasn’t breastfeeding too often, I just had a little bit.  Her favorite type of cheese was mozzarella — the kind you buy in a bag in a store labeled “low-moisture, part-skim.”  Unfortunately, it was also the type to which she reacted worst.  After eating this cheese, she would have horrible diaper rashes, bad diarrhea, eczema over her whole body, and she’d wake several times each night.  Once we took cheese out of her diet, she did much better.