Dropping Dietary Dairy

Milk

“Is milk good or bad?” asks comedian Lewis Black.

Advertising is more than happy to tell you that milk is not just good, you’re probably a bad parent if you’re not funneling the stuff down your child’s throat.

Diets and online research are equally quick to demonize dairy, quoting facts about saturated fats and caveman diets and that people are not equipped to properly digest dairy.

I am not going to be able to tell you whether or not dairy is bad.

I’ll present a little bit of information on common dairy thoughts, but I’ll finish up with tips for dropping dairy.

Anti-Inflammatory Example

One of the popular medically-recommended diets is the Anti-Inflammatory diet, which was created by Dr. Weil. The information handed out to patients includes the original food pyramid, which suggests low-fat dairy, or limiting dairy altogether.

This is despite the fact that Dr. Weil himself has posted a retraction of his previous assessment of saturated fats on his blog.

Quoting:

In addition, the findings from two other studies conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health on the health effects of dairy products are intriguing. One found that consumption of low-fat dairy foods contributed to infertility caused by failure to ovulate, while consumption of full-fat dairy foods may help the problem. The second showed that drinking skim milk was associated with a higher incidence of acne in teenage boys.

Given the results of these studies, I no longer recommend choosing low-fat dairy products. I believe the healthier choice is high-quality, organic dairy foods in moderation. My personal choice would be high-quality, natural cheese a few times a week. I don’t advise eating saturated fat with abandon, because the foods that are full of it (salty bacon, conventionally raised beef, processed cheese) are often not the best for our health. Try to limit it to about ten percent of daily calories. You may choose to use your “budget” of saturated fat calories on ice cream, butter or high-quality natural cheese, or even an occasional steak (from organic, grass-fed, grass-finished cattle, please). I still recommended skinless chicken and turkey because poultry fat (concentrated just beneath the skin) contains arachidonic acid, which promotes inflammation. I also still recommend strictly avoiding foods that contain chemically altered fats (such as hydrogenated vegetable oils found in many prepared foods), as these do appear to raise cardiovascular disease risk.

Continue to emphasize fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and limit sweeteners and other high-glycemic-load carbs.

So there’s a difference between organic dairy and nonorganic dairy and full-fat and low-fat and it’s enough to drive just about anyone crazy.

Drop the Dairy

It’s easy enough to drop dairy from your diet, though, whether because you’ve found that you DO have an unpleasant reaction when you eat dairy, or because your doctor says you should.

There are five primary places that most folks come in contact with dairy on a daily basis:

drinking a glass of milk
yogurt
cheese
cooking/baking
foods you did not prepare

I’ll start at the bottom, because I’m a rebel like that.

Foods You Did Not Prepare

You have very little control here. That morning muffin? Probably made with dairy. Chocolate bars? Dairy. Creamy soup? Dairy. Sometimes it’s even used as an uncredited “spice” on chips and in marinades.

If you truly need to zero out your dairy intake, you’re going to have to learn how to cook.

If you’re just drastically reducing your dairy, you would probably be fine just avoiding the obvious stuff (like cheese on sandwiches and creamy soups).

Cooking/Baking

For a very large number of recipes, you can substitute alternative milks (almond milk, soymilk, coconut milk, etc) without sacrificing any flavor at all.

Baking in particular is pretty forgiving on the fake milks.

Creamy soups and sauces are a little trickier, but not too bad. We have a fantastic Paleo-friendly cookbook that uses canned coconut milk (unsweetened, and yes, this is different than the coconut milk you buy in cartons next to the soymilk).

The real trick? Cheese.

Cheese

Cheese is not easy to sub. Cheese is a special thing that is proving difficult to replace. One brand, daiya, has a tasty, meltable pseudo-cheese. It’s expensive, and not-quite-perfect, though. It’s just worlds better than most of the fake cheeses out there.

We found nothing close enough to make us happy, so we eat organic, full-fat, strong-flavored cheeses (since we’re not lactose-intolerant).

If you currently eat a lot of cheese and you’re looking to drop dairy, you might want to start weaning yourself off the stuff and finding alternative recipes.

Yogurt

There are alternative yogurts — soy, almond, coconut — growing in popularity.

To my taste buds, they are … mmm, 60-80% as satisfying as my glorious greek yogurt. They’re also a dollar or more per yogurt pod.

My pocketbook cannot afford dairy-free yogurt on a regular basis, even if I got to where I loved the taste.

Drinking A Glass of Milk

Bad news.

Nothing comes close to drinking a glass of milk. (Well, maybe lactaid milk does, I dunno. Buying even-more-processed dairy wasn’t an option for me.)

There are all sorts of milk alternatives: soy, almond, coconut, hemp, etc.

The first thing to realize is that every brand that produces these milk alternatives makes it differently. So if you hate Silk’s almond milk, you might actually love 8th Continent’s almond milk.

You have to try and find out which ones work for you.

Beware of added sugars — if you’re making a bowl of cereal, you probably don’t need to buy the vanilla soymilk. The cereal itself will probably add plenty of sweetener. Even “soymilk” has added sugars. You have to look for the text “unsweetened” if you want to trim back on that.

Personally? I don’t like soymilk. I feel like it has an aftertaste to it. Also, if you’re the sort that cares about this, get organic soymilk if you can. Soybeans are one of the first products that became genetically-modified.

I DO tend to like almond milk. It doesn’t taste like almonds, but it tends to be a little thicker than soymilk (so it’s got a better mouthfeel) and the aftertaste is just a hint of nuttiness. I like it.

Coconut milk tends to be the wateriest of the three, but it’s got some pretty good health buzz behind it. I’ve started picking up an almond/coconut unsweetened mixture for using in my coffee, which is just about the only remaining non-cheese daily dairy in my diet.

Obviously, the sweetened stuff is tastier. A glass of chocolate almond milk is every bit as satisfying to me as chocolate milk.

Experiment. Try. But realize that your days of a tall glass of milk may be past you.

Recipes

I will add some of my new favorite replace-the-dairy recipes in some posts coming up.  Let me know if you have any specific requests … the one that immediately comes to mind for me is a glorious chicken curry with coconut sauce. Mmmm, curry.

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Sounds Gross, Is Awesome – Kefir
Redefining Food
Interview With The Herbivore*