In a message dated 4/3/01 3:01:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:

<<
 1) Dairy.  I have posted on this topic previously; I won't rehash in gory
 detail, but how do you feel about butter
 and cream?  Are cultured products
 such as sour cream and yogurt truly beneficial for the digestive system?
 Are fresh cheeses a significantly better choice than natural, aged cheeses
 or is all cheese bad news?  What is the threat of the foreign proteins?
 Are the non-dairy sources of calcium as efficient for our bodies (in the
 same way that Vitamin A in betacarotene < Vitamin A in eggs and butter),
 and is this actually important?
  >>


The fact is that dairy products are non paleo, period. They simply did not
domesticate animals of any kind. Now, if you are interested in your health,
which is presumably why we are doing this, then that's different.

The problem, as we all know, is excess carbohydrates in our diets. Milk is a
prime source of this because of its high sugar (lactose) content -- half as
much as a soft drink. So forget milk, except perhaps in tiny quantities in
tea, or as half and half in coffee. Remember that Seely found a 91%
correlation between milk consumption and heart attack deaths. This suggests
that milk is poisonous.

Fermented dairy products are another matter, however, because the lactose is
destroyed in the fermentation process, so cheese, and butter are ok.
Coagulated dairy products, like cottage cheese, are not ok, because the
lactose remains. Yogurt I'm not sure about -- the labels seem to suggest that
it does contain sugars, even the plain. Cream would still contain lactose, so
that's out.

The French, who know how to eat, and who have 1/3 the heart attack deaths of
Americans, consume plenty of cheese, but generally do not guzzle milk the way
Americans do.

Calcium is the big red herring in all this, and you can find plenty of
discussions on the role of dietary calcium. Paleo peoples did not drink cow's
milk, and they were tall and robust peoples. They got calcium from the same
place cows do, but more importantly, they kept themselves physically fit, and
that's more important than anything.

Charles
San Diego, CA