In my adult years I basically decided to give cutting out milk a bit of a whirl. Never in an extreme, ‘vegan’ way, but in a “a bit of a clear-up is needed” thrust of pseudo-detoxification. I never really mentally joined the dots in terms of my dairy consumption and my sluggish physical eliminatory responses but my body must have felt under assault, stressing eliminatory organs (skin, intestines) and triggering inflammatory responses in my mucus membranes. Hands up, I am not a doctor nor nutritionist. I am however very body aware and well-read when it comes to health, diet and nutrition, albeit as a layperson. Will we one day revise our view of dairy, in the way we have come around to understanding the roll sugar has to play on our systems? Who knows, maybe it is just another fad. I always think of the fabulously deflating Christ Rock sketch about allergies: Chris Rock – Allergies. Anyway for me, as a half Italian with regular stints in the homeland, I find it hard to reconcile my urban, cleaner, London eating style with the traditional, milennia-old grand culinary traditions of my roots which happily incorporates plenty of white wheat pasta, milk etc. I have yet to find a convincing replacement for milk in the perfect caffe-latte coffees that I love more than anything when I return home. My mind is willing to eliminate but my body is weak. It is my Italian Paradox.
Anyway, ever since my early twenties really, (following a gut-wrenching break-up with my First Love and the stress-hormones that set me into tailspin), I have suffered solid stretches of unbearable skin-spottiness. Although friends assure me that they have no recollection of my bygone acne bouts, to me the overriding memory of my twenties is one of self-conciousness and inhibition due to a decade of licking the wounds of my personal life while trying to ignore the fact with 16-hour work days I spent (paradoxically) in the beauty industry while sporting a blemished face. It wasn’t the sort of stand-out pizza-face acne (excuse the term, but you get the picture) but an angry, half-concealed, seething just beneath the surface affliction that migrated between my chin and around the mouth / neck / back. My layperson’s take was that it was probably hormonally-induced and I never quite managed to shake it off until after the nadir of my complexion misery: my first pregnancy in which I not only blew up by 30kgs, but sported a water-retentive full-moon face decorated in a Pollock-smattering of scars and new spots for a FULL 9 months. If I go back even further in time I also had terrible breathing difficulties as a baby and child: congestion, terrible night breathing, catarrh, you name it, all the way up until puberty. My parents dragged me to specialists and tried various medicines etc. they even burned a hole into my pine desk with a camphor candle one 70s night, all in the attempt to alleviate my clogged airways… Nothing actually worked so basically I was a phlegmy little mouth-breather. Yeah I know, a real treat. Now when my kids have colds or are snotty I dial back the dairy, absolutely. I know it makes it worse. I sense that after downing a milkshake or one-too-many flat whites, that I feel bunged up with a clogged throat and gluey mouth and I see it in them, in how they breathe, in what comes out of their noses. That is really all the evidence I need, as statistically insignificant and unscientific as that is, so I eliminate it when I can. My middle child has had his tonsils out this year due to sleep apnoea preceded by years of recurrent ear infections and gromits, the full works. In my de-dairifying we have tried:
- Brown rice milk by Rude Health (Ocado) – too much sugar but quite palatable to a child, albeit very thin in texture
- Coconut milk (coconut taste not appreciated by the under 10s in our house)
- Soya milk (hormonally disruptive due to oestrogen content therefore not ideal in children, especially boys)
- Oat milk (too thin, dusty sediment and curdle-prone in hot drinks)
- Goats milk (too caprine a flavour for my little conoisseurs)
- Buffalo milk (this being the most widely appreciated chez nous, it seems to manage to combine both lightness and mild creaminess…
UNTIL: RAW MILK. I was introduced to Raw Milk only a month or so ago by a fellow mum during school pick-up. She is ace. We first met in the Yoga Years (those 20-something years when one is young, free, single and able to dedicate much more time to navel-gazing and one’s overall wellbeing) as she was actually my yoga teacher. This mum was always hardcore vegan, for maybe over a decade, and then finally, by the time we reconnected in our new iterations of ourselves she was trying to rid herself of anaemia and chronic candida, reading around the subject and was reintroducing classic food-groups such as ANIMAL PROTEIN and MILK to her diet! Yeah I know. I never thought that would be her thing but she was so evangelical about milk that Friday afternoon that I had to investigate. She makes it very clear that it is not just any bog standard milk, full of hormones and antibiotics and all that, not even your middle-class whole organic milk delivered by ocado that so many of us have no converted back to now that we realise fat is not evil and that skimmed milk is a white, synthetic-tasting water substitute. Raw Milk is the real deal, the original product which is what our ancestors have been drinking since animal rearing began, and curiously, before we complained of allergies. Intensive farming, the need for reduced perishability, transportation and health and safety have gone hand in hand with pasteurisation and with it, the blanket elimination of all the healthy bacteria and delicate nutrients found in fresh milk.
I have another friend, who recently provoked further musings on my part by saying that she had opted for goats milk for her daughter, as she could not believe that milk intended for calves who are meant to turn in to huge slabs of bovine tissue, could be an optimum match for a human, simply going on physical scale. Interesting if unfounded data-point. Although, look at the Americans (I’m married to one so I can get away with saying this), they are colossal and, as you may have noticed, are sporting ever boxier haunches, not to talk of the Dutch (also toweringly huge) and both nations consume gallons of milk and even drinking it with meals. Is there no correlation?
Then there’s breastfeeding…. I was not breastfed as a child, my mum had told me that she was actively discouraged from doing so in the 70s, and have pondered on whether all that bovine formula had its part to play in my ENT issues? My kids were fed, each for 6months at least, almost exclusively, and I really must say it felt wrong to give them cow’s milk formula thereafter but i had little choice. As I understand it, goat milk formulas are not actually recommended by paediatricians as they often lack the right balance of nutrients to be a dietary staple so I was reluctant to experiment on them and take matters into my own hands.
Anyway, enough. On to the Raw Milk. It is, despite what the FDA has to say about it, supposed to possess myriad benefits. I personally treat it as I would meat and other fresh produce: when sourced from a reputable farm with a great clean track-record, in a healthy organic environment I think the risks are minimal. For my kids who have had reduced milk consumption since toddler-hood (not total cold turkey) it really does feel wholesome and natural to be able to offer them the option of the odd glass here and there and cereal with this lovely stuff. I can safely say that despite being in the prime age-range to be suffering from every type of cold, and bug, they are simply hardly ever ill. Neither of my elder two children took sick days off school in the last two years and the baby rarely gets more than a sneeze, a brief cold once or twice a year and never seems to have (touch wood) those gastro-afflictions that result in multiple vomits and diarrhoea.
We used to get our milk delivered to our door by Hook and Son, until we switched to H G Witt & Son raw milk which we pick up at Parliament Hill Farmer’s Market. They are still in denial about all things cyber, so their link is not yet worth clicking on, however they are knowledgable, courteous and kind, while their milk we found to be much more affordable and far tastier. It is a marvel that this luscious Guernsey milk can keep for up to 10 days (with proper refrigeration) before going sour, so our weekly stockpile sees us comfortably through from market day to market day each Saturday. Apparently the longevity of the milk, which in my personal experience exceeds that of pasteurised milk, is due to the presence of good bacteria (having not been killed in pasteurisation) which work their magic just as they do in the gut, fighting bad bacteria and preserving the integrity of the milk. Hook & Son do provide some Interesting Facts on Raw Milk. There is obviously frightening data from Health and Safety bodies, as you would expect, whose job is it to prevent the worst case scenario, but there is also a lot of compelling positive information on it online. For you to decide. I do have a wobble occasionally, but then I speak to my 80-year old father and he simply comments that in his youth, raw milk was all most people drank. 
As for my beloved caffe-latte, it doesn’t froth and heating kills all-important enzymes and vitamins so I drink mine luke-warm. Depressingly I find the best textured foamed milk comes from hot long-life milk so watch this space as I investigate satisfying milk alternatives.
Where did you buy that milk? Have been wanting to try it….
Ok just saw the rest of the post doah