Free Real Food by Nina Planck Page A

digestion; and to prevent heart disease
    • Pantothenic acid to turn carbohydrates and fat into energy
    • Folk acid to promote the formation of red blood cells and prevent birth defects and heart disease
    • Calcium to make strong bones and teeth; also aids heartbeat, muscle, and nerve function
    • Magnesium for strong bones and teeth
    • Phosphorus for strong bones and teeth
    • Zinc for tissue repair, growth, and fertility
    Critics charge that milk is indigestible for people who don't make enough of the enzyme lactase to digest the lactose in milk.
     This important argument deserves a full discussion. Lactose plays a large role in the history of milk.
    The milk sugar lactose is found in no other food— unless you eat yellow forsythia blossoms in the spring. Without the enzyme
     lactase, drinking milk causes nausea and diarrhea. Raw milk contains lactase, but the enzyme is damaged by pasteurization.
     Babies, who drink nothing but milk, produce a lot of lactase; this declines steadily until they reach the age of three or
     four, and then levels off. The logic of this efficiency is clear. Stone Age mothers nursed babies for three or four years.
     Unless the child drank milk after weaning, lactase production gradually tapered off. The result is that some adults lack sufficient
     lactase to digest fresh milk easily. The condition is often known as lactose intolerance, but low lactase production is more
     precise.
    Climate explains the evolution of lactase production. Low lactase production is most common in people whose ancestors came
     from hot climates, such as East and Southeast Asia and parts of Africa. Where fresh milk could not be kept cold, adults never
     developed the capacity to produce lactase, simply because they didn't drink fresh milk. In colder climates such as northern
     Europe, however, where fresh milk could be stored for a week or more, people gradually developed the ability to produce lactase
     as adults. Genetic analysis shows that milk proteins in seventy European cattle breeds evolved along with human genes for
     lactose tolerance near northern European dairy settlements in the last eight thousand years, a rare example of cultural and
     genetic coevolution between humans and another species. 11 The genes show that early northern European shepherds were dependent on milk, unlike southern Europeans.
    In hot climates, adults with low lactase production didn't forgo dairy foods entirely, however. After all, Italy, Greece,
     and Israel are but three sunny countries with dairy traditions. Instead they ate cultured or fermented milk products, particularly
     yogurt, which is easy to digest because it contains little (if any) lactose. Beneficial bacteria have already consumed the
     lactose and turned it into the lactic acid that imparts the distinctive tangy taste to yogurt. Thanks to these tiny bacteria,
     almost everyone can digest cultured milk. In cheese making, lactose is also transformed into lactic acid, but more slowly.
     The longer the cheese has been aged, the less lactose it contains.
    This "solution" to the problem of drinking fresh milk was no doubt accidental. Recall that fresh milk left to stand overnight
     rapidly becomes yogurt with the help of whatever bacteria happen to be about. Quite by chance, shepherds devised many local
     variations on yogurt— the word is Turkish— including Armenian matzoon, Bulgarian naja, Egyptian laban, and Balkan kefir, traditionally made with fermented mare milk.
    TRADITIONAL VERSUS INDUSTRIAL FOOD PROCESSING
    Yogurt and cheese are processed foods. Processed foods have a bad reputation, often justified. But industrial and traditional
     methods are different: industrial food processing diminishes flavor and nutrition, while traditional food processing enhances both. When whole wheat is refined into white flour, flavor, fiber, and B vitamins disappear. Cold-pressed olive oil keeps
     its vitamin E and antioxidants. When grape juice turns into wine, antioxidants