eliminated those foods. Even fertility appears to have been reversed with this approach in several instances— not so strange when you consider that in some cases infertility results from the fallopian tubes being blocked by mucus. When the mucus caused by dairy foods clears up, conception is more likely to occur. In addition to its macronutrients, milk, being a product of the reproductive glands, also contains an appreciable amount of hormones, including gonadotropins, thyroid-releasing hormones, ovarian steroids, and an epidermal growth factor. 6
What role the growth factor may have in the development of gross overweight or cancer has not yet been investigated, but I suspect we may be hearing more on the subject in the near future. Although the pasteurization of milk eliminated many infectious diseases, it is not without its drawbacks. In tests with animals, calves given their own mother’ s milk that had first been pasteurized didn’ t live more than six weeks. An increased incidence of problems, including a reduced ability to reproduce, was noted in laboratory animals fed pasteurized milk for several generations. Also, the vitamin C content of milk is reduced by 50 percent during pasteurization, 7 a factor that may lie behind our continued concern about getting enough vitamin C. The homogenization process has come under fire as well. Kurt Oster, M. D., of Bridgeport, Connecticut, has advanced the theory that homogenization, by breaking up milk molecules into smaller pieces, allows some substances to pass through the intestinal wall unchanged by the digestive process. One of these substances is an enzyme called xanthine oxydase, or XO, normally found in milk fat, which helps in the breakdown of protein. After passing through the intestinal wall and being picked up by the lymphatic system, says Dr. Oster, the XO ends up in the bloodstream. As it courses through the arteries, it scratches and corrodes the inside of the arterial walls, causing small primary lesions. As a defense against this, the body deposits fibrin and cholesterol over the lesions to avoid further damage. 8( The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology prepared a critique of the Oster theory for the FDA, called“ A Review of the Significance of Bovine Milk Xanthine Oxydase in the Etiology of Atherosclerosis,” in 1975; some merit was found in the theory, but as usual, the results were deemed inconclusive.) The American practice of homogenizing milk, and then fortifying it with synthetic vitamin D, which encourages calcium deposits, may be among the reasons why very young children in this country already have hardening of the arteries. It may also explain why milk products seem to cause so many more health problems here than elsewhere: In other countries the milk is used raw, or at most is pasteurized. A 1960 study of ulcer patients in the United States found that those on a high milk diet( the Sippy diet) had more than twice as many heart attacks as patients who did not follow a milk-diet therapy. At the time of the study, milk in the United States had been homogenized for about ten years. A similar study conducted in Great Britain( reported in the same paper), showed that British ulcer patients on the high milk diet had 50 percent fewer heart attacks than their American counterparts.( They still showed up with almost twice as many attacks as patients who were not on the milk diet.) 9 The paper was written in 1960; as late as 1967, only 7 percent of the milk in Great Britain was homogenized, as compared with 95 percent in the U. S. According to systems theory, a system is disturbed by the addition or subtraction of a single element; this allows other elements within the system, suddenly unbalanced, to cause trouble they normally would not. With that in mind, we can be suspicious of the removal of fat from milk. What is worse: A whole food that is an excess, or a partial food— low-fat milk— that is a relative excess? Both will cause trouble, but there is always a good reason for the natural proportion of elements within a food system. Butterfat may help in the assimilation of calcium from milk; 10 hence, low-fat milk could create a relative calcium deficiency, even in the face of the apparent calcium excess in cow’ s milk. Also, because, as Oster pointed out, butterfat contains a protein-splitting enzyme( XO), by removing that fat we could be making digestion of milk protein more difficult. In addition, removing the fat from milk results in a 20 percent relative increase of protein, which makes the kidneys work harder. One mother I know found that her baby developed diaper rash after she started giving him skim milk and powdered milk. As diaper rash is often the result of excess ammonia in the urine, and ammonia is a by-product of incomplete protein metabolism, I thought there might be a connection. When she eliminated the skim milk and increased breast feeding and fresh vegetables, the rash disappeared. Lactose— the carbohydrate in milk— has come under scrutiny lately. The healing professions have finally noticed that many people have acute reactions to milk, including cramps, bloating, intestinal gas, and diarrhea. These symptoms are caused by a lack of lactase, the enzyme needed to digest lactose, a condition called lactose intolerance. It sounds like a disease, and people who are diagnosed as lactose intolerant think there is