Alkaline Foods
Meghan Telpner is a Toronto-based nutritionist and holistic lifestyle consultant. Her Making Love In The Kitchen video series will bring you tips on how to prepare healthful, nutritious goodness from whole foods. Visit her site for more love.
Before I get into the info on dairy, I want to mention that my reference to dairy here is about conventional cow’s milk dairy and in no way is intended to also cover Raw Milk, Raw Milk products, organic yogurt, organic butter , or organic sheep or goat milk products. These I will be discuss in a couple days.
Now on to milk, the substance I affectionately refer to as The Devil In The White Dress
Whenever I suggest that a client go off milk, the next question that always comes is: But where will I get my calcium? Let’s think about this. Is there any single food on earth that we need to consume in order to obtain one particular nutrient? Is there any vitamin or mineral that is only available from a single source? So why would dairy be the only place we could get calcium?
Calcium and Bone Health
- Researchers have found that nations with the greatest calcium intake have the highest rates of osteoporosis and hip fracture
- Healthy bones require more than calcium-rich foods.
- Retaining the calcium we’ve stored up is more vital especially in our late 40s, when bones begin to break down faster than they can be rebuilt.
It is not a problem of calcium consumption but calcium loss
- Preventing calcium loss is more important than calcium intake.
- Mineral imbalances, stress and a highly acidic diet will promote calcium loss.
- Coffee, tea, table salt, meat, eggs, milk, cheese, pop, bread, and junk food all force the body to produce copious amounts of acid.
- The acid-forming Westernized diet forces our body to utilize massive amounts of calcium to maintain a pH balance in the blood.
- Calcium is used within the body to maintain the correct acid balance of the blood, which can only function at a certain pH level.
- Stomach acid is needed to digest meat protein like poultry, cheese, meats, eggs and processed foods.
- Calcium is then secreted to alkalize this acidic digestive mixture when it enters the bloodstream and is then excreted with other metabolic wastes.
- On the way out, calcium compounds can lodge in the kidneys causing kidney stones, or in the gall bladder producing gallstones.
Protein and calcium loss
- One of the greatest instigators of calcium loss is a high-protein diet
- When protein intake is above 75 grams per day, more calcium is lost in the urine than is retained in the body.
- Protein, especially from animal sources including milk, makes our urine acidic, a condition the body attempts to remedy by drawing calcium, an alkaline mineral, from the bones and then flushes from the body in the urine.
- Meat and/or dairy free diets produce less acid
The bottom line: Less calcium is needed in the diet if less dairy, meat and junk food is consumed.
No Dairy? Then where will I get my calcium?
- Many green vegetables have absorption rates of more than 50 percent, compared with about 32 percent for milk. This means that these foods are providing your body with more biologically available calcium than milk and milk products.
- For an individual trying to improve calcium balance, fruit and vegetables are the best foods to add, as they are rich in potassium which reduces calcium losses.
Other health issues linked to dairy
- Allergies: Milk is the most common cause of food allergy. A recent study found that one way to reduce the number of allergies in infants is for the breastfeeding mother to avoid consuming, or make very limited use of cow’s milk. Milk allergy in children has also been associated with chronic cough, excess mucous, ADD, ADHD, recurring ear infection and bed-wetting.
- Food safety concerns: Dairy farmers regularly administer drugs and growth hormones to cows to boost milk production. Investigations have routinely found residues of these veterinary pharmaceuticals in milk and other milk products, some of which may raise cancer risks.
- Heart disease: According to cardiologist Dean Ornish, MD, “Milk rates second only to beef as the largest source of saturated fat in the American diet.”
- Lactose intolerance: Many people cannot stomach lactose, the sugar in milk, because they lack the necessary digestive enzyme. Some people are also sensitive to milk protein. An estimated 50 million Americans experience intestinal discomfort after consuming dairy products. Symptoms include bloating, stomach pain, cramps, gas or diarrhea.
- Women’s health concerns: Studies indicate that osteoporosis, which afflicts 20 million American women, and ovarian cancer are most common in those countries with the highest consumption of dairy food and lowest in those countries with low dairy intake.
