I come from the land of milk - Vrindavan. I have grown up with tales of Maakhan Chor and the great Gwaala - The Lord Krishna. The place is also famous for its delicacy like Pedas. So when I learnt that milk is bad for diabetes, it came as an unpleasant surprise to me. Absolutely, I was not ready to accept it. This led to some study and I searched the Internet intensively. More then it's genesis what surprised me the most was the scientific study. The prime cause of Type I Diabetes in India is Cow's milk. The advertisements proclaiming that calcium present in milk is good for health turned out to be a malicious deception. Patanjali Sutras and Ayurveda Writings too state that only children below three years have the imperative macro-molecular biological catalysts to break down milk wholly. Barring for a few regions in the globe, milk is predominately difficult or impossible to digest for the greater number of adults. The undigested milk is mucous-forming and causes lassitude. Yes, milk has traditionally been believed to be a good source of calcium, but there are several other good sources as well.
Genesis: World War II
We've become so far removed from the source of our food that many Americans are oblivious to where most of what they eat is actually coming from, dairy included. Yes, milk comes from cows. And how do cows get milk? Like other female mammals, they produce milk to feed their offspring. In the business of raising cows to produce as much milk as possible, which is the goal of most of the U.S. dairy industry, cows are kept in perpetual states of lactation and impregnation.
While a small number of dairies are bucking the industrial trend, the vast majority of dairy products we eat come from factories that are nothing short of horrific in many cases.
Under healthy conditions, it's not uncommon for a dairy cow to live between nine and 20 years while being productive in the herd, said Halverson. While many cows can even live to 25 years, today's dairy cows don’t even come close to that. "They are living two or three years and being culled," she said. The next stop from there is to live out the remaining days alongside beef cattle awaiting slaughter at a feedlot.
But the largest surge in so-called productivity came decades after WWII. "It was the 1970s when the dairy industry really started ramping up milk production. Cattle before the 1970s were healthy, normal dairy cows, they didn't have issues with lameness, mastitis (a painful udder infection), and reproductive problems in huge amounts. All that selective breeding and milk demand has made the Cow a much more fragile animal.
Infant formula was invented by Henri Nestle in 1860, but it didn’t actually become popular until the 1940s. The main cause for this sudden increase in popularity was World War II. Before the war the vast majority of women were homemakers who stayed home with their children and left the jobs to the men. As the war continued, women were called to the workforce to support their country by doing the jobs that men who went overseas to fight had left behind. In fact, the number of women in the labor force increased 210% from 1940 to 1985. It was this sudden desire and ability for women to leave the housewife life behind that formula companies saw and capitalized on by starting huge advertisement and free sample campaigns to normalize bottle feeding and, of course, get rich in the process.
World War II is Responsible for the Decline of Breastfeeding in the US
Improved communications, especially printing, enabled intensive commercial promotion of artificial milks. Financial support of hospitals and physicians by manufacturers also hastened the decline in breastfeeding. Milk manufacturers also began campaigns in other countries to bring our “better” and “safer” method of feeding babies.
Once women were proving themselves in the workplace as equals to men feminism was born. Especially in the 1960s feminists encouraged women get away from their babies and start living their lives. It’s ironic that feminism, the concept of women supporting each other, actually created a situation where women who chose to stay with their babies and feed them naturally were looked down upon and even shamed for being anti-progressive to women’s rights. As a consequence, we ended up with a widespread loss of understanding of its importance and a declining ability of health professionals to support it. It was the perfect opportunity for formula companies to aggressively advertise and slip money into the pockets of doctors.
If a diabetic person is offered a cup of milk and a cup of sugar, with a rider that he/she may choose either of them. The myth is that he/she will pick up milk, I will advise sugar. Milk and milk products are more harmful to a diabetic person than sugar.
Milk has a protein - Casein, which naturally is animal protein. This makes it complex and has a structure which has an odd pair of DNA. The plant based proteins are even pairs of DNA. This complexity leads to a situation when body is unable to break down this protein in stomach and it enters the intestine. Here due to this it start inflammation in intestine. This manifests to a mortal situation and body auto immune system gets activated thus producing an antigen to breakdown casein. This antigen is is programmed by the body to breakdown odd number of DNA configuration of casein. Unfortunately insulin which controls sugar level in our body is also odd pair DNA configuration. This causes insulin also to breakdown.
If you recollect from experience, when an infant is introduced to milk other then breast milk the first reaction is that infant throws up everything. So it means everyone drinking milk should be diabetic. No. What happens is that pancreas increases production of insulin. A stage comes when pancreas gives up. This stage varies from person to person. The primary cause of Type I diabetes in India Cow's Milk.
Suppose if the entire domesticated population of India which produces milk is taken into account and their daily production is one liter of milk; you will be surprised to know that that the daily milk production of India stands at four liters a day. Hence 75℅ production of our country's milk is artificially made. Secondly the fodder today is contaminated and each animal is heavy injected with chemicals to increase milk production. The choice is yours whether you want to drink chemical or avoid it. Animal milk substitution - Peanut milk, Almond milk.
To Sum Up
Milk (A Systematic Review of the Clinical Evidence) is poison number one for diabetes.
Animal milk is for the calf. Calf is ethically the rightful owner.
The artificial insemination of animals to increase the milk production is inhumane practice.
Commercialization of milk has led to unnatural practices like killing the calf immediately after birth.
The production of milk is four times more than the actual production of milk as per existing domesticated animals. We are being fed chemicals.
The chemicals in the fodder and use of injections to increase productivity is Unnatural and thus rendering milk unsafe.
Stop Processed Milk and milk products which include cheese, butter, paneer, curd, ice-cream, ghee, butter milk.
Refined Products
Have you ever seen Amitabh Bachchan advertising the benefits of cinnamon or ginger, No but you see him with Masala. I saw this ad recently while a visit to a friend's office today. All they do is throw garbage in our minds. Just watch ads on TV. They are either about food or beauty care. Every alternate ad is about food. Any food in natural form has a short shelf life and commercially non viable. So to make profit food is refined to increase the shelf life. These businesses increase the shelf life for profit and decrease our shelf life.
If you buy a car and the dealer provides you with a spare wheel. Imagine if he doesn't give you a jack and a spanner, will you feel safe driving this spare wheel around. This is exactly what happens with refined food.
Refined Atta World over the number one reason for obesity is refined wheat. Maida, burger, bread, pizza, noodles, pasta, cakes and suji are refined wheat products.In the market ask for whole wheat bread. Compare the cost and shelf life of this bread.
Refined oil All refined oil are harmful for diabetic patient. Any oil the moment it is heated loses most of the benefits. Fats is a necessity for our body. We can get the required fats by eating nuts, peanuts, sesame and seeds. Flax-seeds are very good. Roasted flax-seeds can be added to fruits and salads.
Refined Sugar Sugar is the primary source of energy for the body, hence is the basic necessity for us. So why does the excess causes problems? The infrastructure of our body is unable to transport this excess and a logistics problem manifests in our body causing Diabetes.
Carbohydrates : It is the most important source of energy found in every food you eat. However all the carbohydrates are not same. To understand, let's take four varieties of food containing carbohydrates or its simpler version i.e. sugar as glucose or fructose. Carbohydrate from different sources dissolves in blood differently as shown in the illustration given below. The sugar from cold drinks or other beverages and breads, cakes, biscuits, shoots into the blood which means it is fast acting. However the sugar/carbohydrate from the fruits, drops into the blood and that from raw vegetables seeps into the blood which means slow acting. 'The slower, the better'. The food are ranked on the basis of its carbohydrate action with the blood. It is called the Glycemic index or Glycemic load. To understand the mechanism and the concept of Glycemic load let's take a hypothetical example. Imagine you have one glass of fresh apple juice (squeezed just now) and one glass of Tropicana packed apple juice and lets further assume both are having same amount of sugar (in reality Tropicana on an average has 8 times more sugar, that too in refined form). Now imagine two persons with exactly same body parameters including BMI, age, fasting blood sugar level, HbA1C and the metabolism rate. The person A drinks Tropicana and person B drinks fresh apple juice.
By now you already know that the blood at any point of time can hold only a limited amount of sugar (glucose), about 1 gm per liter of blood. Beyond that it can additionally have 50% tolerance in either direction. Any uctuation beyond that range will lead to lot of catastrophic effects including formation of AGE, weakening of heart, overload on kidneys and also damage to many sensitive organs, including eyes, brain and even pancreas itself (as it plays a major role in the control of blood sugar in the body). Person A : The moment he drinks Tropicana juice (packed fruit juice), instantly the sugar will shoot through the intestinal wall into the blood vessels irrespective of the amount of sugar already present in the blood stream. The sugar from the packed fruit juice may appear identical chemical-structure-wise in comparison to the sugar from fresh apple juice, but is different behavior-wise. It acts unpredictably and is highly undisciplined. Such sugar is never considerate or friendly to the body. Person B : He is the consumer of the freshly squeezed apple juice. The sugar in this form is highly disciplined and law abiding. Imagine a scene of a law abiding citizen crossing a 62 road. He will take into account the circumstances, understand the traffic ow, consider the distance he needs to travel to cross the road and mentally adjusts his travelling speed with ever changing speed of vehicle approaching him. It involves very minute calculations and no super computer of the world can perform it to the perfection as the human mind performs, that too effortlessly, day after day. This is one of the important skills which we have inherited, a must for our survival. The fresh and living juice also works in the similar manner. They are like a human brain which enters the body and before crossing the internal wall and entering into the blood stream considers various factors including the amount of sugar already present in the body. Conclusion : Broadly speaking, the blood sugar control of the body does not depend much on the amount of sugar or carbohydrates you have consumed, rather it is more dependent on the source of carbohydrates.
Food that needs to be avoided can be remembered with an acronym - MRP.
1. M is for milk and milk products.
2. R is for refined products like oil, salt, sugar, maida, suji, etc.
3. P is for packaged packet food. Such foods are full of preservatives which impede our metabolism. Golden Rule - If you open a packet or tin to eat something don't open it. Biscuits, Haldiram products, ham, sausages, etc.
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January 27, 2024
Pramod Pathak
