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3 Dairy cows' diets
Do the fatty acid profiles or vitamin and mineral levels of milk differ depending on what the cow eats?Answers
+5
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Absolutely! Just as humans are what we eat, so too with animals. "We are what what we eat eats" as Michael Pollen put it in his book "In Defense of Food".
Dairy cows fed grains produce milk with a higher Omega 6 fatty acid profile, while pastured/grass-fed dairy cow's milk is higher in Omega 3 fatty acids. Cows in the sunshine produce their own Vitamin D, while cows/animals deprived of sunshine are deficient. Commercial dairy cows (and cattle) are fed not only grains, but quite frankly, all kinds of crap including bakery waste containing transfatty acids (Fallon; 2005), which I hope everyone here knows are very detrimental to health (so if you avoid transfats, but eat commercial animal products, you are likely unknowingly consuming transfats).
The nutritional status of the animal has a direct impact on the health of the person consuming the animal product. Just as the vitamin/mineral/toxin status of plant foods has a direct impact on the health of the human or animal consuming them.
To take this a step further, refined and packaged foods are intentionally nutritionally depleted to preserve the shelf life. It is the live, life-giving portion of the plant/food that spoils so food manufacturers remove that portion (and hundreds of phyto-nutrients) and add back a handful of chemical nutrients which are a woefully inadequate substitution for the real thing.
We're seeing this "domino effect" big time in the overwhelming increase in chronic and degenerative disease over the past 50 or so years.
Let whole foods be your medicine. For optimal health, eat foods that are whole, seasonal, local, organic and fresh - and make sure the animal products you consume do too!
Dairy cows fed grains produce milk with a higher Omega 6 fatty acid profile, while pastured/grass-fed dairy cow's milk is higher in Omega 3 fatty acids. Cows in the sunshine produce their own Vitamin D, while cows/animals deprived of sunshine are deficient. Commercial dairy cows (and cattle) are fed not only grains, but quite frankly, all kinds of crap including bakery waste containing transfatty acids (Fallon; 2005), which I hope everyone here knows are very detrimental to health (so if you avoid transfats, but eat commercial animal products, you are likely unknowingly consuming transfats).
The nutritional status of the animal has a direct impact on the health of the person consuming the animal product. Just as the vitamin/mineral/toxin status of plant foods has a direct impact on the health of the human or animal consuming them.
To take this a step further, refined and packaged foods are intentionally nutritionally depleted to preserve the shelf life. It is the live, life-giving portion of the plant/food that spoils so food manufacturers remove that portion (and hundreds of phyto-nutrients) and add back a handful of chemical nutrients which are a woefully inadequate substitution for the real thing.
We're seeing this "domino effect" big time in the overwhelming increase in chronic and degenerative disease over the past 50 or so years.
Let whole foods be your medicine. For optimal health, eat foods that are whole, seasonal, local, organic and fresh - and make sure the animal products you consume do too!
+3
Votes
Fresians produce quantity (milk), Jersey produce quality (milk-fat) but less quantity. Farmers breed between the two to create premium product.
Both Fresian and Jersey eat the same grass. This can be supplemented with malt for example, but this is for the health of the cow rather than the final produce.
This does not answer your question re fatty-acid profiles or vitamin and mineral levels, but will assist in an understanding to be added to a final answer by someone.
Both Fresian and Jersey eat the same grass. This can be supplemented with malt for example, but this is for the health of the cow rather than the final produce.
This does not answer your question re fatty-acid profiles or vitamin and mineral levels, but will assist in an understanding to be added to a final answer by someone.
+3
Votes
The expose below indicates that modern processing does affect the health benefits of milk far more than what the cow eats to begin with. It seems that even if a cow produces milky-water, human processing will fix it up !
Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry : By Sally Fallon.
This presentation was given at the annual conference of Consumer Health of Canada, March, 2002.
The minute you start to process your milk, you destroy Mother Nature's perfect food. You can live exclusively on raw milk, especially milk from nature's sacred animal, the cow. We have no sense of the sacredness of our animals today. Instead, we have an industrial
system of agriculture that puts our dairy cows inside on cement all their lives and gives
them foods that cows are not designed to eat�grain, soy, citrus peel cake and bakery waste.
These modern cows produce huge amounts of watery milk which is very low in fat. Milk from these industrial cows is then shipped to a milk factory.
Emily Green wrote an excellent article in the LA Times, August 2000 about milk processing. Milk processing plants are big, big factories where visitors are not allowed. Lots can go wrong in these factories.
The largest milk poisoning in American history occurred in 1985 where more than 5,000 people across three states were sickened after a "pasteurization failure" at an Illinois bottling plant. Inside the plants all you can see is stainless steel. Inside that machinery, milk shipped from the farm is completely remade. First it is separated in centrifuges into fat, protein and various other solids and liquids. Once segregated, these are reconstituted to set levels for whole, low-fat and no-fat milks; in other words, the milk is reconstituted to be
completely uniform. Of the reconstituted milks, whole milk will most closely approximate original cow's milk. The butterfat left over will go into butter, cream, cheese, toppings and ice cream. The dairy industry loves to sell low fat milk and skim milk because they can make a lot more money from the butterfat when consumers buy it as ice cream. When they remove the fat to make reduced fat milks, they replace the fat with powdered milk concentrate, which is formed by high temperature spray drying. All reduced-fat milks have dried skim milk added to give them body, although this ingredient is not usually on the labels. The result is a very high-protein, low-fat product. Because the body uses up many nutrients to assimilate protein�especially the nutrients contained in animal fat - such doctored milk can quickly lead to nutrient deficiencies. The milk is then pasteurized at 161 degrees F by rushing it past superheated stainless steel plates. If the temperature is 200 degrees the milk is called ultra-pasteurized. This will have a distinct cooked milk taste but it is sterile and can be sold on the grocery shelf. In other words, they don't even have to keep it cool. The bugs won't touch it. It does not require refrigeration. As it is cooked, the milk is also homogenized by a pressure treatment that breaks down the fat globules so the milk won't separate. Once processed,
the milk will last for weeks, not just days.
Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry : By Sally Fallon.
This presentation was given at the annual conference of Consumer Health of Canada, March, 2002.
The minute you start to process your milk, you destroy Mother Nature's perfect food. You can live exclusively on raw milk, especially milk from nature's sacred animal, the cow. We have no sense of the sacredness of our animals today. Instead, we have an industrial
system of agriculture that puts our dairy cows inside on cement all their lives and gives
them foods that cows are not designed to eat�grain, soy, citrus peel cake and bakery waste.
These modern cows produce huge amounts of watery milk which is very low in fat. Milk from these industrial cows is then shipped to a milk factory.
Emily Green wrote an excellent article in the LA Times, August 2000 about milk processing. Milk processing plants are big, big factories where visitors are not allowed. Lots can go wrong in these factories.
The largest milk poisoning in American history occurred in 1985 where more than 5,000 people across three states were sickened after a "pasteurization failure" at an Illinois bottling plant. Inside the plants all you can see is stainless steel. Inside that machinery, milk shipped from the farm is completely remade. First it is separated in centrifuges into fat, protein and various other solids and liquids. Once segregated, these are reconstituted to set levels for whole, low-fat and no-fat milks; in other words, the milk is reconstituted to be
completely uniform. Of the reconstituted milks, whole milk will most closely approximate original cow's milk. The butterfat left over will go into butter, cream, cheese, toppings and ice cream. The dairy industry loves to sell low fat milk and skim milk because they can make a lot more money from the butterfat when consumers buy it as ice cream. When they remove the fat to make reduced fat milks, they replace the fat with powdered milk concentrate, which is formed by high temperature spray drying. All reduced-fat milks have dried skim milk added to give them body, although this ingredient is not usually on the labels. The result is a very high-protein, low-fat product. Because the body uses up many nutrients to assimilate protein�especially the nutrients contained in animal fat - such doctored milk can quickly lead to nutrient deficiencies. The milk is then pasteurized at 161 degrees F by rushing it past superheated stainless steel plates. If the temperature is 200 degrees the milk is called ultra-pasteurized. This will have a distinct cooked milk taste but it is sterile and can be sold on the grocery shelf. In other words, they don't even have to keep it cool. The bugs won't touch it. It does not require refrigeration. As it is cooked, the milk is also homogenized by a pressure treatment that breaks down the fat globules so the milk won't separate. Once processed,
the milk will last for weeks, not just days.
