Health Product Highlight: Natural By Nature Grass-Fed Milk

"Milk, it does the body good".
"Got milk?"

They should really be: "Grass-fed milk, it does the body good". "Got grass-fed milk?"

Those are the only two milk quotes I know, but thankfully they're all I need to make my point; if you're not lactose intolerant, you should probably be drinking more milk. However, don't drink skim milk that has been raised by cows who eat corn in CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) because it's roughly the same thing as drinking sugar water. You get all of the calories with none of the benefits. Why you ask? Well the vitamins and protein in milk are fat soluble, so they need to be consumed with fat in order to be absorbed by the body. If you're drinking skim milk, you're just excreted all of the good stuff out.

So why am I advocating grass-fed milk? The same reason I advocated grass-fed butter (find post here). When cows consume a diet of grass, they're eating the way nature intended them to, and are therefore healthier. A healthy cow equals healthy milk. Healthy milk equals a healthy you. It's all connected. But why is grass-fed milk more healthy? I'm glad you asked, hypothetical person. Cows that eat a diet of grass have roughly five times the CLA of cows fed corn and other grain feeds. So, who cares? Everybody should, hypothetical devil's advocate.

According to scientists a lot smarter than me in this field, "Despite the high saturated fat content of dairy products, no clear association between dairy product intake and risk of myocardial infarction (MI) has been observed. Dairy products are the main source of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA; 18:2n−7t), which is produced by the ruminal biohydrogenation of grasses eaten by cows. Pasture-grazing dairy cows have more CLA in their milk than do grain-fed cows. Some animal models have reported beneficial effects of CLA on atherosclerosis. 9c,11t-CLA, which is present in meaningful amounts in the milk of pasture-grazed cows, might offset the adverse effect of the saturated fat content of dairy products". What this essentially means is that avoiding whole milk because of the saturated fat content is not necessary. The CLA offsets any potential damage the saturated fat may do.

Grass-fed milk was found to have higher concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids in another scientific study. Hopefully I don't have to go into detail about why we need more omega-3 fatty acids in our diet (but if I do that's a post for another time), but most of the diseases found today can be attributed to a poor omega-3:omega-6 fatty acid ratio. Having too few omega-3s and too many omega-6s is essentially the same as spinning one of those game show wheels and hoping it lands on the small pie-shaped sliver labelled "healthy".

Natural By Nature grass-fed milk, while not the ideal choice for everyone, is still a superior product that can be found at Whole Foods. While I would rather have access to raw grass-fed milk from cows that are also able to eat dandelion greens, berries, and the like, it's not easy to come across in New Jersey. Raw grass-fed milk is healthier, as the less processed something is, the healthier it is, but it isn't without its risks due to bacteria. So if you want to drink raw milk, do so knowing you may get sick. That's why I'm advocating Natural By Nature grass-fed milk; it has all of the benefits of grass-fed milk, tastes absolutely delicious, is the cheapest option at Whole Foods for grass-fed milk, and won't make you sick (unless you're lactose intolerant). So grab a glass of grass-fed milk and toast to the healthy liquid you're about to pour down your throat!

Eat healthy, stay happy!

-Ben

Butter, Healthy?

I know I know, this is some kind of belated April Fools day joke of some sort. Surely I must be out of my mind! Even the government has said that butter is bad and has endorsed a low-fat diet, and butter is full of death-friendly fats right? There's no way that delicious, golden fatty food could be of any nutritional benefit to me, is there? Well I'm glad you asked, kind reader. As it turns out, butter is healthy and does play a role in improving a person's nutritional profile.

The fats in butter are stearic acid, lauric acid, and palmitic acid. Stearic acid is converted to oleic acid in the body, which you may recall as being the heart-healthy fatty acid found in olive oil that so many nutritionists and health experts have been recently praising. Lauric acid and palmitic acid do in fact raise your LDL (bad cholesterol), but interestingly they also raise your HDL (good cholesterol). Not only do they raise your HDL, they raise it to levels equal or greater than the levels they raise your LDL to. This of course means that you are increasing your blood cholesterol. Butter also contains CLA (conjugated linoleic acid) which has possible anti-cancer properties and plays a role in weight management and fat loss.

Wait, wait, wait! Am I telling you that butter can actually help you LOSE weight? Short answer? Yes, yes I am. But that's not all! Butter does increase LDL, though not as much as it increases HDL, so your cholesterol is already better, but the LDL it increases is large and fluffly LDL, which makes it benign (it has no adverse affects on the body) and is not the small, dense LDL that is malignant (it has adverse affects on the body). This of course means that the HDL increase is even more dramatic. When the government and every health expert/nutritionist was telling everyone to eat margarine instead due to its low fat, they were basically telling the general population to ingest poison, as margarine contains trans-fats, which UNLIKE butter, do cause heart problems.

There are, however, some specific guidelines to follow when consuming butter. They are the following:
1. Do not eat a lot. Just because it is not bad for you does not mean it is not calorie dense; it is, so eating a lot will cause weight gain, just like it will for any other food.
2. Always buy grass-fed butter, and as a matter-of-fact, always buy grass-fed dairy, period. Grass-fed dairy will have more beta-carotene (antioxidants), more omega-3 fatty acids (decreases chance of disease), and more CLA.
3. That's it. Simply follow those two rules when eating butter and enjoy.

Now, I feel as though I must end this post with a reputable brand of grass-fed butter, along with a delicious meal to spread said butter on. When buying grass-fed, I exclusively purchase Kerry Gold unsalted butter, which is made in and imported from Ireland. Another brand I know of that is reputable, but that I have never had the opportunity to purchase is Natural By Nature. There may be more that I am unaware of or have simply not tried. If there are and you know of them, feel free to tell me about them in the comments. I also want to state outright that I do not receive any compensation for endorsing any brands of food and that I will only ever endorse brands that I trust, have done research on, and personally consume myself.

Finally, how to eat your butter. I buy Ezekiel sprouted grain bread (low sodium variety) to spread my butter on as it is the healthiest bread I have found. After spreading the butter on, I also put a very generous amount of cinnamon on top of the butter because, well for one cinnamon is just plain delicious and two, it helps prevent spikes in blood sugar, which causes weight gain and diabetes. I urge you to start eating butter if you have been avoiding it (like I really have to urge you to right?) and I urge you to only eat it under the two guidelines I have given. Also, try my simple, but delicious snack idea if you like cinnamon dusted buttery toast. Happy eating!