On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Stacie Tolen wrote:

> Todd,
> The only point that I am making is with regard to bovine (and other
> non-human) casein, which is why I said *foreign milk proteins*, each word
> equally operative, in the sense of "why is the casein in human milk not a
> problem?" and "why it is then ok to eat the flesh/organs of an animal?". I
> have never heard of someone with a meat allergy. Sure, one could be allergic
> to something *in* the meat (antibiotics, hormones, grain) but has there even
> been a case of allergy to meat itself?

Yes.  Some people are allergic to specific meats, or eggs, or
seafood.

The articles that you and Hilary provided had some good
information, especially concerning the risks of exposing an
*infant* to animal protein of non-human origin.  That includes
but is not limited to casein.

I was interested to read the following, in Hilary's
citations:"Antibodies to bovine beta-casein are present in over a
third of IDDM patients and relatively non-existent in healthy
individuals." LANCET, October, 1996, 348

That indicates that although bovine beta-casein is a common
allergen, most people are nevertheless not allergic to it (that
is, about 2/3 of IDDM patients and almost all non-IDDM people).
I wonder if this is mainly a function of how much exposure they
had to the stuff in infancy, and how well they fared.

In short, I think the argument for avoiding exposing infants to
foreign casein, and in fact foreign animal proteins in general,
is stronger than the argument for doing so with adults -- unless
exposure in infancy actually *caused* an allergy to emerge.

> When we were doing GF/CF diet, we used goat milk. Zoe had no trouble with
> it, for the first two weeks. She wasn't drinking it, I was using it in
> cooking. She also had goat yogurt and kefir. She reacted to this just the
> same as the reacted to bovine dairy products. So it's not "foreign proteins"
> that trouble her -she can eat meat-, only foreign *milk* (and grain)
> proteins.

I understand, but this shows that a particular person has a
reaction to particular proteins.  I know someone who is, for some
reason, allergic to duck.  As far as I am concerned, duck meat
protein is no more or less foreign than goat milk protein.  Some
people can tolerate one or the other, or both, or neither.  It's
very hard to generalize from these sorts of cases.

> Even if hunters were using the milk when they killed a lactating beast, it
> could not have been a regular part of their diet under these circumstances.
> You don't kill an animal for it's milk, you kill it for it's meat. To have
> regular access to milk requires domestication.

Actually I wasn't thinking of lactating beasts as typical prey.
I was thinking of suckling calves.  The program that I watched
indicated that young calves and old animals were the most common
prey of the lions, precisely because they were more likely to
fail to keep up with the herd.  The simple rule is that the best
prey is the most vulnerable prey, and that means the very young,
the very old, or the wounded.  The lactating animal is probably
in her prime, and less vulnerable.  The suckling calf is more
vulnerable, and provides regular access to stomach-fermented
milk.  This, I think, is the only form in which paleolithic
hunters would have had access to milk on a fairly regular basis.
Also, the references we just looked at indicate that the
fermentation does indeed alter the protein, by hydrolyzing it,
so this is another respect in which fermented milk differs from
whole milk, raw or otherwise.

Todd Moody
[log in to unmask]