Podcast Episode #215: All about dairy (and the recent bacon “news”)

Topics:

1. What’s new for you from Diane & Liz [1:49] 2. This week in the Paleosphere: Our take on the meat causes cancer issue [15{31] 3. Let’s talk about dairy [30:35] 4. Dairy elimination; symptoms of intolerance and can it ever be reintroduced? [34:22] 5. Is grass-fed dairy the gold standard? [38:06] 6. Nutritional difference between animal species and milk [49:45] 7. #Treatyoself: Partially defrosted fruits [53:04] [smart_track_player url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/balancedbites/21520final.mp3″ title=”#215: All about dairy and the recent bacon news” artist=”Diane Sanfilippo & Liz Wolfe ” color=”00AEEF” social=”true” social_twitter=”true” social_facebook=”true” social_gplus=”true” ]

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Balance Bites: Episode #215: All about dairy (and the recent bacon “news”)

Welcome to the Balanced Bites podcast with Diane Sanfilippo and Liz Wolfe. Diane is a certified nutrition consultant, and the New York Times bestselling author of Practical Paleo, The 21-Day Sugar Detox, and co-author of Mediterranean Paleo Cooking. Liz is a nutritional therapy practitioner, and the best-selling author of Eat the Yolks and The Purely Primal Skincare Guide. Together, Diane and Liz answer your questions, interview leading health and wellness experts, and share their take on modern paleo living with their friendly and balanced approach. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content within this podcast are intended as general information only, and are not to be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

Liz Wolfe: Hey everyone! It’s me, Liz, here with Diane.

Diane Sanfilippo: Hey!

Liz Wolfe: Hi friend, how are you?

Diane Sanfilippo: Great. How are you?

Liz Wolfe: Fantastic. And excited to hear a little word from our sponsor.

Liz Wolfe: We are thrilled to have Paleo Treats back on our sponsor roster. We love their treats, from the Mustang bar to the Bandito and everything in between. They have been serving the paleo community since 2009, and were recently recognized by FedEx as one of the top 10 small businesses in America. Which of course, speaks to how much paleo and healthy eating is growing, but it also speaks to how passionate our friends Nick and Lee and the Paleo Treats team are about what they do. Use the code BALANCEDBITES one word, no space at http://www.paleotreats.com/ for 10% off.

1. What’s new for you from Diane & Liz [1:49]

Liz Wolfe: Do you like my radio voice?

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} It’s awesome.

Liz Wolfe: I can’t hold it together for more than 30 seconds.

Diane Sanfilippo: No.

Liz Wolfe: But it’s good. It’s all good. I’m in the process of recording the Baby Making and Beyond stuff to audio, and I find myself feeling like I need to be a little more official, obviously, than we are with the podcast, and it’s kind of a throwback to the audio book recording days when I recorded Eat the Yolks on audio, and I had to be just so; I mean, it was nerve wracking, you know.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, to speak perfectly. I mean, on the podcast {laughs} we like to be more casual. I mean, I think when I’m listening to other peoples’ podcasts; when I listen to OPP; {laughs} when I listen to other peoples’ podcasts, I don’t like when they sound too scripted. You know, I like when it’s a little bit of a stream of consciousness, but maybe that’s me.

But yeah, when we did, I think what are we, is it going to be called the Balanced Bites Master Class? When we were working on those recordings, that’s how I felt. I would stop and go back a lot. Yeah, that was really stressful.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. And there was no #drunkpodcasting.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: That’s for sure. I’m just kidding; I totally am not drunk podcasting. I just posted an Instagram; I have a little O’Mission gluten free beer sitting here, but I can’t; I’m about 4 sips in, and it was really good when it was super cold, but it’s like that on top of the chicken soup for dinner, it just doesn’t match. It doesn’t go together.

Diane Sanfilippo: Plus I think drinking something carbonated and trying to speak a lot in podcasts, you’ll just start belching, basically.

Liz Wolfe: Do you want me to?

Diane Sanfilippo: No. {laughs} Is this a challenge?

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} Challenge accepted.

Diane Sanfilippo: So, quickly before we get into some other updates I want to tell everyone listening, as you mentioned an Instagram post that you just made with your picture of your whole little set up over there. We have a new Instagram account for the podcast, which I’m really excited about. Because I feel like it’s hard for us to post the new episode information every week on our own accounts. If I post it, I’ve got so much other stuff going on; so this is also a really good place for you guys to come ask questions a little bit more quickly, as well as give us feedback on different episodes, if we throw out a question, or tell you a new thing we’re into, or treat yoself or something like that.

So it’s @BalancedBitesPodcast, just all spelled out, and I believe I linked to it a couple of days back, but you guys can just find it on Instagram, @BalancedBitesPodcast. And we’ll be checking it; I have someone from my team who is helping to load everything, but I’ll be in there checking and responding and all that good stuff.

You can check out; I think we loaded archives back for the year, so if you just want to quickly scroll through and look at some of the images of topics that we’ve talked about, guests that we’ve had, I think since the New Year. The first one we went back to was 172. So there you go.

Liz Wolfe: That was a good idea. Very good idea.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: Because some people don’t care what else we have to say in our daily lives. {laughs} A lot of people don’t care that I think my kid has really cute hands. You know?

Diane Sanfilippo: I mean, I just really wanted a place for our listeners to be able to know that they’re seeing the update about each episode, and you know what really spurred it; this is it, and then I’ll stop talking about the Instagram account. But a couple of weeks ago when I had the episode with Jessica Flannigan from the Loving Diet, which that was just she and I, so you weren’t in on that one, but I posted the graphic about the episode, and then I posted the topics in the caption. And there were so many people who said to me; I’m so glad you posted all of the details of this because I didn’t think I wanted to listen to this episode, but when I saw the caption and I read what I was about, I listened to it and I really loved it. And I was like, ok great.

You know, I do that most of the time; I’d been doing that on a weekly basis with the podcast episodes. But this way, we’re going to have a little bit more information. A few of the quotes coming from the episodes, and just to remind people too. I think what’s important for everyone to know is that if we have an interview, and you’re not sure that you’re interested in that guest, I’m aware that not everyone who listens to this show has an autoimmune disease, not everyone who listens is interested, necessarily, in every unique topic, but when I interview someone, and lately I’m doing most of the interviews, I do my best to make sure that there’s kind of something for everyone.

Because I don’t have an autoimmune condition, but when I have a conversation with someone about that, I find a way to contextualize it for all of us, and have everybody get some kind of lesson from it or something that you can take for your own life. So I just wanted to throw that out there, because I think that’s one of the fun parts about the show is that we do get to talk to so many different people and bring new information and new folks and what they’re doing to our listeners. So there’s that.

Liz Wolfe: So what else is happening in your life, besides new Instagram profiles?

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} What else is going on? I don’t really know. I don’t know.

Liz Wolfe: Yes you do.

Diane Sanfilippo: Am I supposed to have something going on? I have; you know I want to remind people about Practical Paleo Holiday. It’s not new this year; I loaded it last year to Amazon. It’s on the Kindle store, and it’s $2.99. That’s the cheapest Amazon would let me make it because it’s a really big file. I think I’ve got 40 or 45 recipes in there, and I think it’s at least 15 that are totally unique to that eBook. But I also pulled together a bunch of recipes that are in all of my different books that are great for the holidays.

So if you don’t have all of my books; or if you do and you just don’t want to have to thumb through Practical Paleo to get the butternut squash soup that’s going to be great for Thanksgiving; you have everything in one place. So it’s $2.99, you don’t have to have a Kindle to use it. You can use your iPad and use the Kindle app. You can use your phone and use the Kindle app. But yeah, that’s it. You guys can check that out.

I think the only other thing, which I’ve said this a bunch of times on recent shows, but Periscope. I know you’re anti; that’s cool, but I think for a lot of people listening to this show, if you like listening to the show, I’m doing a ton of live Q&A episodes or broadcasts on there, and I’ve had lots of podcast listeners come on, and they’re asking questions, and sometimes I’m going to let you guys know that we’ve talked about it a ton of the podcast, but a lot of the quick questions I’m able to just get back into it or answer it again.

Today I talked a little bit about leaky gut, just live on there, and it’s fun because you can ask a follow-up question, so if you’re just not clear on something or you want more information, it’s a really fun way for me to be able to interact with you guys, answer your questions, and for a lot of you guys, I’m kind of pointing you back to parts of Practical Paleo that you maybe didn’t read. {laughs}

I’m kind of calling everyone out on owning the book and not reading the first 120 pages. Which is fine. I think Liz did this to me with your book; you’re like, did you read my book? {laughs} But I’m like; I traveled the country with you for how long, I feel like I heard your whole book when we taught seminars, so. Anyway. That’s really it.

And the Balanced Bites Master Class that I mentioned, it is still in production. Our designer who works on it is independent from my normal team, and she was moving, and she was really on hiatus, but she’s back and we’re going to be wrapping that up soon, and I don’t know exactly when we’ll be able to launch it, but I know our podcast listeners are going to absolutely love it. Because it will take everything that we always talk about and just expand on it completely with graphics and all that fun stuff. So that’s it. What about you, my friend?

Liz Wolfe: Well, here at the farm we killed our first turkey; we butchered our first turkey. Which was hard.

Diane Sanfilippo: Was that super sad.

Liz Wolfe: It was really; it was terrible. I mean, it really did. I’ll talk about it more, I’m sure, on Modern Farm Girl so I don’t have to clog up the Balanced Bites podcast with this, but I posted about this on Instagram. And this is no joke; the way we eat, I think I said something like every calorie is a blessing, and I really have never been more cognizant of that than I am right now because, I mean my husband did it, but we very intentionally took another life, and I watched the turkey die. And it wasn’t fun, and really I totally understand people that just can’t deal with the concept of something else dying so they can live. Something else with a face and two eyes and a brain, to not be able to eat meat because of that. I totally get it, because it’s a terrible thing to watch.

But then again, so much of what I talk about in Eat the Yolks was we can’t just opt out of the food chain without causing ripples elsewhere.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mmm. Not only within ourselves and our own health

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: But on the entire ecosystem.

Liz Wolfe: Exactly. And it’s just one of those things where; yes, I could give up meat, but I could never claim it was for health reasons or environmental reasons, because at this point we know those arguments are specious. But I could definitely say I just can’t deal with the death. I can’t kill my own meat. And people that hunt, they do this all the time.

Diane Sanfilippo: Do you think that it’s harder because we’re so sensitive to it because we haven’t been doing it since we’re little kids?

Liz Wolfe: Oh yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: Like we did not grow up on farms. Like, for example, Diana Rodgers, her kids, do you think they would feel the same way when they’re older having grown up on the farm where that’s part of the cycle and that’s what they learn; you know what I mean? Just like anything else that we learn. I don’t know, I’m curious about that.

Liz Wolfe: I got a lot of responses on my Instagram post from people that did grow up on farms or grew up hunting, and it was very much that sentiment where; this is something that I’ve always done, and it’s never easy but it does become, it’s just a part of you. You understand that to eat you have to kill something. And yeah, I think that’s 100% accurate. The longer people have done it, if they’ve grown up with it, they’re just more familiar with it.

And I’m sad, but I’m also glad that we will be raising our child with these kinds of experiences. Because I keep thinking, for example, we need to raise meat chicken. Because if I want chicken; particularly chicken breast or something like that, those ridiculous things we buy at the store like a chicken is made up entirely of breast, and where does the rest of it go. But it just takes so much just to get one tiny little chicken breast.

And this turkey that we butchered; I mean, tiny amount of breast meat for months and months of raising this turkey out here, free range, and taking care of it and all that stuff. Like the return on that is not huge. So it’s just one of those things where; wow, you just don’t get a whole lot out of these birds. And I feel like if want to eat this type of meat as much as I do, I feel like we’re going to have start almost dispatching a chicken or a turkey every week.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mm-hmm.

Liz Wolfe: And I don’t know if I want to do that, quite frankly.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, I mean I think that’s probably a lot more traditional. I feel like those, like yourself who maybe started the little farmstead as; I’m not saying as a hobby, as like to take it lightly. But it wasn’t meant to be anything commercial, it was meant for your own family and to have eggs from the chickens, and then kind of go from there, and then you’ve got the goats and more kind of evolved from there. But I do think that people who had a farm, it was probably a bit more active and prolific in terms of more animal species and quantity-wise, you know what I mean, knowing that.

I’m sure people just did not eat quite as much protein as we do now, because we can just buy a pack of chicken breasts, as you were saying, which we do it. We do it here. But I bet they did raise a lot more animals at a time; because if you’re feeding a family, killing a chicken a day probably wasn’t crazy. You know?

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Absolutely. So other than that; how about in happier news. So I would like to share a little review that I just got of C-ex, my vitamin C skin care project with Primal Life Organics; head over to PrimalLifeOrganics.com to find out more. This is from my friend Kristine, who is a restorative exercise specialist in training, and she’s just fabulous. She said; “girl, I’ve been struggling to find a foundation that I liked, because all the minerally ones make my skin look dry and wrinkly, so today I added some C-ex to the Jane Iredale I’ve been using; AMAZING! I glowed all day long, seriously fab. I’ve been using it at night, but just thought I would give it a whirl with the foundation. So wonderful!” Yay!

Diane Sanfilippo: Interesting. Did she mix it with the mineral powder, or with the liquid?

Liz Wolfe: I believe she did, I don’t know, she didn’t say which kind of Jane Iredale she was using. And I actually, in the Purely Primal Skincare Guide, I recommended mixing a little bit of serum with mineral makeup to make it a little bit more glowy and make it go on a little bit more evenly, and that’s basically what she did. But yeah; she hasn’t been using it for too long. But people seem to really love it. Which makes me really, really happy, because as we know, it’s not; it’s a top shelf product.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: So I’m glad it is fulfilling expectations.

Diane Sanfilippo: But it goes slowly, not like a jar of ghee that you use up in a week or two. Or at least we do.

Liz Wolfe: Oh my gosh. Well, yeah. Yeah. {laughs} I use that quickly, too. And, I think that’s about it on my end.

2. This week in the Paleosphere: Our take on the meat causes cancer issue [15{31]

Liz Wolfe: Ok, so this week in the Paleosphere. We have not done this segment in quite some time, because quite frankly, there wasn’t anything really worth talking about for a while. But this week in the Paleosphere, we have a study released by the World Health Organization called “Carcinogenicity of Consumption of Red and Processed Meat.” I believe this appeared in where; the Lancet?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes.

Liz Wolfe: Ok. So; do you want to summarize what you know of this study?

Diane Sanfilippo: Well, I mean looking through as much as I could look through, because I could not download the study. But I’ve kind of looked at a few of the articles that came up, and a couple of analyses. Honestly; what I’m seeing is pretty much the same story that we’ve seen a million times before, and this is…

First of all, whenever we have people who; and this is not directed at anyone specifically who may have come and asked me a question about this, because I know everyone is at different stages of their whole real food eating life cycle, for example. And you see this kind of thing, and it probably upsets people more, because now they’re worried that their family is going to say that they’re going to die tomorrow because they ate bacon for breakfast for a year.

But I think, we’ve probably said this before; if this kind of “news” makes you freak out about eating red meat or bacon, then your choice to eat it; you haven’t fully studied and make that decision to eat it consciously yet, if that makes sense. I’m well aware that these; I’m just going to keep saying these “studies”.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: Are done, but what happens is; this is an epidemiological study. So I think it was 22 scientists looking at 800 different studies, and what they do, as I know you’ve talked about this a bunch on our show before as well as in your book and Eat the Yolks, but they’re looking at 800 studies that already exist that are done on a lot of different things. This one, I think, I don’t remember if this was a specific compound that they were looking at in particular, but I know this was looking at any kind of relationship between consumption of processed red meat, bacon, etc., and finding any kind of connection in anything, across 800 different studies.

This is not a study of; ok, we’re going to see X number of humans eat this type of diet for this amount of time; do more of them develop a certain type of cancer than others. That’s not what this is. Now, granted, we can’t have human studies that some people think might cause harm, and I do know that there are some talks of studies on the paleo diet actually starting to happen; I think Robb Wolf probably has more information on that. But, that’s not what this is. At best, if there is a study of a cause and effect relationship of a certain compound that might be present in red meat, typically what’s done is a rat study.

So they’ll take a specific compound, they might inject it into the rat, they might inject it directly into an organ. I believe there was one where something was directly injected into the rat’s liver. They may feed the rat something very specific that’s highly concentrated in a specific compound that may be found in red meat or bacon, or any other processed meats. And watching what the results are of that. And what it doesn’t take into account is; is this diet that the animal might be eating, does it include anything else? Does it include things that might counteract the effects of this isolated compound? Takes it totally out of context, and I think we know that everything with diet and health needs to be contextualized. And that’s somewhat unfortunate for science, because the human animal is unfortunately filled with so many variables that proving any of this stuff is super hard; you know what I mean? Just proving that any of it could be healthy or unhealthy is really hard.

So, anyway, long story short, it’s the same; honestly, this is the same BS we see probably at least once a year or bacon, red meat, etc. And when I say bacon, and I’m at all maybe encouraging people to not be so scared about bacon, I’m not talking about some of the grocery story bacon that you may find that contains BHA, BHT. I’m not even really talking about CAFO feedlot bacon. I’m talking about bacon that you buy at the farmer’s market, pastured bacon, bacon that you find that’s certified humane, bacon from pigs that you can really know that the source of that meat is clean and the animals are well raised. I honestly don’t think that we should be out there buying 10 packs of Oscar Myer bacon to feed our family for the week. So I do think if people are finding it cost prohibitive to get the higher quality stuff, then it shouldn’t probably be an option. It shouldn’t really be one of the staples of your diet.

Liz Wolfe: Pete’s Paleo bacon, baby!

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Yeah, Pete’s Paleo bacon, man that stuff is amazing, and sugar free, and totally the best possible quality pork anybody can get. But your thoughts? Because I know, we’ve talked about this stuff a lot, and I know you talked about it in Eat the Yolks. What do you want to tell people about understanding how to break down what they’re seeing when “news” comes out, and everyone freaks out, and every vegan/vegetarian website, even people sharing it on Facebook are like; you know, no one ever believed bacon was healthy. And it’s like; everybody is just perpetuating these crazy; people are not equating. Whatever; I just get too irritated. But what do you want to tell people about it?

Liz Wolfe: You’re just over it. So, a lot of people don’t know that there are different types of studies. {laughs} I mean, that’s just one of the most basic things. People just need to; you read something in the Examiner, or Telegraph.co.uk, and this is a news outlet that’s reporting on a summary from another outlet that reported a sentence or two on a trial that the journalists didn’t even have access to.

So first of all; most people can’t even access the full text of these studies, and it’s just really important to reserve judgment until you’ve either paid the $40 to see the study itself to find out who funded it and what they actually looked at; or until you find somebody else that has access to the study {laughs} and you don’t have to pay the $40.

But, if you’re not looking at a randomized controlled trial, which is the gold standard of scientific inquiry, you really cannot be sure of what you’re looking at or the conclusions that were reached. And generally, when we’re talking about studies like this; when we’re talking about studies on rats, for example, where they sterilize the rat gut and then they observe the effects of different compounds on the gut, what happens to the rats; that’s just, that’s just not super translatable to actual human life, and it shocks me that people don’t see that. It may lead us to something that would be worthy of further study, but it really doesn’t tell us anything right out of the gate.

Diane Sanfilippo: Basically gives us more questions than answers.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah! And that’s what science ideally should do. You study one thing and you gain more questions from that; you do some theorizing and you look at the next thing. The next place that it leads you. It’s a very fluid and constantly accumulating discipline, which is what’s great about it, but is also what’s kind of difficult about it, because you’ve got a bunch of laymen commenting on a commentary of a commentary on this stuff that doesn’t really tell us anything.

The other thing that you want to remember, and I talk about this pretty at length in Eat the Yolks is dietary studies. Right, especially when we’re looking at what this is called a meta-analysis, I believe. And a meta-analysis, when you see that, we know, I think you said it.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: You were cutting out a little bit on my end.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, this is a meta-analysis.

Liz Wolfe: Ok, meta-analysis is basically looking at a whole bunch of other studies and pulling together what we can learn from all of them. But what this was analyzing was a suite of epidemiology; I think. My internet is too slow to pull up the full text, which I do have access to, but will commentate on this further on another episode if we come up with anything else. But when you look at meta-analyses of epidemiology, all you’re looking at is what people reported eating and the outcomes that they self reported.

So it’s like; yeah, I eat a lot of bacon, and I got cancer. Well; what do you eat with the bacon? Is that bacon on a Hardy’s…

Diane Sanfilippo: Is a bacon egg McMuffin? {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: An egg McMuffin, which by the way McDonalds changing to breakfast all day; I’m sorry, just brilliant. I don’t know how they haven’t done that before.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughing}

Liz Wolfe: But, anyway. That burger with the black bun; is that Hardy’s or something?

Diane Sanfilippo: I have no idea.

Liz Wolfe: I don’t know. Is your bacon on a double CAFO cheeseburger with this bun that’s dyed black for Halloween? You know, there are so many compounding factors that you just can’t quite take anything from studies like this. And they also, I believe, engaged in a little bit of that sheisty relative risk type stuff, where 1% suddenly becomes 33%.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mmm.

Liz Wolfe: Which I actually also talked about in Eat the Yolks. It’s just; at this point, we really can’t take anything from this study, I don’t think.

Diane Sanfilippo: And I think the long and short of it is, I think any dietary group who wants to get overly excited; like, oh we told you this, that, and the other thing. Somebody who is anti-meat wants to get really excited, like, see! {laughs} You know, and pointing to this study. Us talking about it now, it’s not even a level of defensiveness; we’ve seen it a million times.

Nothing that would even come out like this would make me question whether real, fresh, whole food is making me sick. There is nothing that would disconnect the common sense of that in my brain that somebody in a lab could figure out; those are human beings doing work, some of them paid by certain companies with certain interests. I don’t have any more faith in these humans the discover something than I do just in the laws of nature and the food chain.

I do think that if somebody has gone paleo, and has decided that they never used to eat bacon but all of a sudden paleo tells them they can eat bacon, and what they’re buying and eating all the time is, as I mentioned, a low-grade grocery store bacon with additive that we really don’t want to be eating, particularly BHA, BHT, I believe sodium benzoate, some other ingredients that may be harmful. That has nothing to do with the demonization of pork, or beef, or something that’s just a real, whole, fresh food. You know? Some of these compounds may be problematic for people, but you can buy these foods without them. Those foods exist in nature without those; do you know what I mean?

So I think that’s kind of the difference. And none of this stuff, ever; it doesn’t shake me, and this is as much of a retort or answer to as I think either of us are really willing to give. It’s just kind of an eyeroll, and an, “ok, here we go again!” {laughs} you know?

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah. So there’s that.

Liz Wolfe: I agree. You what, I did read something recently that got the wheels turning a little bit about the composition of our well constructed real food diets; and I just, I can’t remember if he actually did all of the research and put this together, or if somebody else did, and he was just discussing it. But I stumbled upon, I think Richard Nicolai; I probably said that wrong. But he had a really interesting post about the fortification of iron in our food and disease, and it got me thinking a little bit about the iron in red meat, what different traditional cultures used to eat when they had iron rich diets. And in short, it basically ends up that a lot of these traditional cultures that we like to look at for context for our dietary choices would either balance iron with copper and zinc, and the stuff that makes up the transport proteins, or they would eat a lot of I guess chelating things, like, I can’t remember what he was saying, maybe green tea, or chocolate, or coffee, or something like that.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, there are some herbs that are known to be natural chelators. Cilantro is definitely a natural chelator. Parsley maybe, but if somebody told me parsley was a natural chelator, I completely blocked it out of my mind since I think parsley is the devil, so. {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Do you really?

Diane Sanfilippo: I know cilantro does chelate, though. Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: That’s funny.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah.

Liz Wolfe: But there’s something where you’re like; ok, that’s really interesting.

Diane Sanfilippo: Right.

Liz Wolfe: Maybe we need to keep an eye out for our iron levels, and let’s see how traditional cultures took care of that. But the thing is, we’re eating fairly well constructed real food diets, hopefully balancing iron with copper and zinc, and it’s not going to be a problem. But it’s just one of those things. You have to take a step back, and take a deep breath before we rush to any kind of judgments.

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3. Let’s talk about dairy [30:35]

Liz Wolfe: Alright. Should we move on to questions?

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes, yes.

Liz Wolfe: Sounds goods. Alright, this one I believe is from Instagram. And we’re doing some discussion of dairy for this episode, and this should be fun because this is a topic that I really, really enjoy talking about. And actually, before we start; Diane, how much dairy, if any, do you do at this point?

Diane Sanfilippo: This is the ongoing struggle and battle of my life.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} This struggle is real, yo. I have been trying to eat dairy and think that it’s not going to be terrible for me, because I think we can get such great nutrition from grass-fed dairy, but my skin tells me otherwise. I was working on trying to do some gut healing to see if that would help; I’m not sure it did. I tried recently some sheep milk yogurt to see if that would be different; we do have a question, I think, about that. Really, I think dairy for me is just consistently a no go. The only thing I experience from it is acne, so sometimes I do it because I just for the love; for the love of the goat cheese! {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: And the feta. But yeah. It doesn’t love me back, so there you go. That’s my current status.

Liz Wolfe: But you do some ghee?

Diane Sanfilippo: The ghee, the Tin Star ghee that I’ve been using does not give me any issues whatsoever with my skin.

Liz Wolfe: Very good.

Diane Sanfilippo: So the lack of dairy protein; the butter oil, butter fat is fine. The dairy proteins not fine.

Liz Wolfe: So for me, I’ve always been pretty good with almost all dairy, especially after I got through the acne issues that I experienced years ago. So you know I’ve been a raw milk person, a cheese person, a butter person, all of that stuff. I actually did raw milk while I was pregnant; that is a very, very personal decision; that doesn’t mean I’m recommending that other people do that, because there are risks involved, just like there is with eating cantaloupe and spinach and the other things that have been reported to be contaminated with Listeria. But that’s probably a conversation for another day.

So I’ve done all of the dairy; however, I have, maybe it’s just a paranoia, but it’s just kind of this feeling that as a breastfeeding mother, dairy proteins might be a little bit problematic. And I don’t have any real proof of that; I’ve toyed around a little bit with the elimination stuff, but just not able to isolate any single factor. But I do think that dairy protein might bother my little one’s skin just a little bit, so it’s just not really worth doing the cheese and the butter right now. I’ve just been doing ghee and a little bit of cream, and that’s about it.

Which is kind of a bummer. I talk a little bit in Eat the Yolks about the history of why we started eating dairy in the first place, and how it was actually a pretty genius move because it’s such a concentrated source of, like everything. From minerals, and even iodine, which is really tough to get now a days in natural foods. Fat soluble vitamins, protein, healthy fats, all of that provided it’s from a good source. So much so really in the history of humanity that we actually, populations in certain parts of the world actually had a genetic change to be able to tolerate dairy. So it’s just one of those things that it does, I think, come down to the individual level.

4. Dairy elimination; symptoms of intolerance and can it ever be reintroduced? [34:22]

But let’s answer a few questions about it, all the same. This one, I think came in through Instagram. “Hi Diane and Liz! We have eliminated dairy from our 1-year-old’s diet recently because we noticed terrible gas pains, especially at night while he sleeps. Since eliminating it seems to have improved significantly, can gas be the only symptom of a dairy intolerance, and can you grow out of it?” I’m guessing this one is for me.

Diane Sanfilippo: Go for it.

Liz Wolfe: Ok. No, gas isn’t necessarily the only symptom of a dairy intolerance. So, if one day your kiddo suddenly gets into a gallon of raw grass-fed dairy and doesn’t happen to have gas pains that night, but has eczema the next morning, that can definitely be a symptom of dairy intolerance. And I would say, yeah you can grow out of it, and you can also grow back into it at different points in your life depending on what’s going on.

Dairy can become your friend or your enemy; it really kind of depends on, I think, the state of your gut. The kind of double edged sword about it is that dairy actually seems to be pretty good for the metabolism over all. And when your metabolism is humming away, that means your thyroid is humming away, and your thyroid kind of governs how well everything else works in your body, including digestion, which is why a lot of folks that are hypothyroid have digestive issues. It’s all interconnected.

So, I think; and I begin to believe more and more over time, that you really do need to be conscientious about getting good dense sources of nutrition that fuel your metabolism in the absence of dairy. I think we’ve taken that for granted, just as people over the last 10-15 years have just given up dairy, just kind of a blanket. Dairy became really crappy; I talk about this in Eat the Yolks too, how dairy became this huge commercial industry with the whole “got milk” campaign and all that stuff. Dairy exploded, but dairy also became a lot less healthful, I believe, in the same period of time. So, I do think having eliminated that, folks need to make sure that they’re supporting their metabolism.

And it’s just the same; you go on this paleo diet, and you get rid of a whole bunch of easily digested, immediately thyroid fueling type of foods; you just have to be careful of your nutrition if dairy was making up a big part of it previously. So I mean, they’re doing the right thing of course, eliminating something that causes this little one gas pains; but I’d also be curious as to the quality of the dairy, if it’s local, grass-fed, organic, all of that stuff. You could certainly play with that, but it’s also, I understand, one of those things where you don’t want to play with something that could potentially cause terrible pain for their kid during the night. So that’s my answer. This be my answer.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Sounds good to me.

Liz Wolfe: Anything to add?

Diane Sanfilippo: No, I mean I definitely think we go through periods where we tolerate things better than others, and it could be stress related or not, but I think with an infant, it’s kind of like, I don’t know that I would want to keep testing it at that point. But it doesn’t mean that it’s forever, because as we know, our bodies are changing pretty consistently, so it’s something that baby may be able to eat later, without much issue.

Liz Wolfe: Give him some sardines for micronutrients, calcium, and vitamin D and all that good stuff.

5. Is grass-fed dairy the gold standard? [38:06]

Liz Wolfe: Alright, this next one is from Holistic Hunger. “I know for good quality dairy to look for grass-fed, but what else should I be looking for? Or is there anything else?”

Diane Sanfilippo: Alright, so this is my breakdown. I know we’ve talked about this before, Liz, on the show, so if people want to go back and look at the archives, I’m sure we’ve talked about it with similar viewpoints, as we still have today, I believe. But I do talk about this in my guide to food quality. So, in Practical Paleo, if you have it, you can check this out in there in that one-page guide.

But I think the very best type of dairy you can get would be 100% grass-fed. So I think grass-fed right now is becoming such a hot trending thing that a lot of companies are putting grass-fed on the label, and I don’t know if people are aware, but cows are all fed grass for a portion of their lives, and if they’re going to not be 100% grass-fed, they’ll be fed anything else after that first period. I want to say it’s about 6 months, and if you know otherwise you can let me know. But cows are fed grass at some point in their lives always. So sometimes that grass-fed label could be a bit of a misnomer. If it says % grass-fed you’re definitely better off, and if it’s raw and unpasteurized, then that’s going to probably be the most ideal.

The reason I say that is for a farm to be selling raw, unpasteurized milk, the level of care they have to take in cleanliness, and keeping everything on the up and up is so high because the laws are typically really, really stringent around raw milk and making sure that there aren’t too many issues that come out of any type of food borne illness or something to that effect with people consuming it. So I think that being able to trust a farm that is selling raw milk; I would definitely, if I could, drink it. I would be drinking 100% grass-fed raw milk.

From there, I honestly think getting it raw unpasteurized is probably your next best bet, and it’s partially for the reason I just stated. I think that a farm you can get it raw from is probably doing things really well. If it’s not 100% grass-fed, if they had to supplement the diet at all. Those animals are not going to be sick, then passing on milk that’s not the best quality to you, because they just can’t sell that and stay in business. If they have issues with people getting sick from their milk, those farms are going to be shut down. So just by virtue of how critically these farmers are going to take the health of their product, I would go for that next.

Then from there, the grass-fed option. So if you see something that’s just grass-fed, and the baseline being a commercial or organic milk; I think organic is probably better than non-organic commercial, but I don’t believe even organic milk, unless it’s grass-fed, I think you’re missing out on a lot of the nutrition. I don’t know what the point is, really, of consuming that.

The point of consuming dairy for the most part it really should be; obviously it tastes really good, but there’s great nutrition in high quality dairy, so if you tolerate it well and you can get a good quality, then that’s amazing. But if you’re getting something like milk, for example, and you can’t find grass-fed, and you can’t find a higher quality, I think I would opt out at that point.

I don’t know, Liz, do you know if goats are always fed grass?

Liz Wolfe: No, they’re not.

Diane Sanfilippo: Like, if we buy goat cheese. Ok.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah; for goat’s milk. Goat’s milk really takes on the quality of whatever it is that they’re eating, so to keep goat’s milk pretty neutral in flavor, and you know kind of that sweet goat’s milk flavor that people like, they’re probably fed pretty much exclusively grain. By my understanding. And it could be the most high quality organic grain ever, and the goats love their lives and they have a wonderful time, but it’s definitely you cannot rely on the fact that it would be grass-fed. And I would love to be corrected, but that’s the impression that I’ve gotten, even from the wonderful goat dairy’s I’ve been to.

Diane Sanfilippo: Do goats have problems eating grains the way cows do?

Liz Wolfe: It doesn’t appear to me that they have issues with it, but I really am not; I mean, they have the same kind of digestive set up, you know like the rumen and all that stuff.

Diane Sanfilippo: We’ll probably have to ask Diana; yeah.

Liz Wolfe: Yeah, we’re going to have to ask Diana Rodgers about that. She might now. Well; she doesn’t do goat dairy at her farm.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh, no?

Liz Wolfe: But maybe somebody out there who is familiar with goat dairy can help us out.

Diane Sanfilippo: But she raises goats, right? So she would know about how they do on different types of food or if they just have them on pasture, so.

Liz Wolfe: Yes. So maybe we can update in the next episode.

Diane Sanfilippo: Ok, so then the only other thing, what to look for. I mean, I do think it’s nice if you're going to buy dairy to really keep the quality high, look for some locally made cheeses or yogurts. Look for, if you’re buying a yogurt, look for something that doesn’t have anything added to it, that’s plain. If it does have; I think Maple Hill Creamery is a good brand; Trader’s Point Creamery is a good brand. Most of your Greek yogurts out there, unless they’re from those brands; I think Maple Hill started making a Greek yogurt. But the Greek yogurt industry is a gigantic; what’s the word you use? Kerfluffle? {laughs} Is this a word?

Liz Wolfe: I don’t think I’ve ever used that word, but sure.

Diane Sanfilippo: Kerfuffle? Some kind of; it’s a cluster. It’s a giant cluster, the Greek yogurt industry. It’s something that we’ve been sold because it’s high in protein, but the way that they strain it, I believe it’s; I don’t know if it’s the whey that comes off, or whatever comes off of it as a byproduct is, there’s massive over; I don’t know.

Liz Wolfe: Over saturation.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, there’s like a massive byproduct industry, just like when we had issues with grain and soybeans and creating soybean oil and all of that. So there’s a huge byproduct issue with the production of Greek yogurt. I did an interview, I want to say it was now maybe 2 years ago, because {laughs} I started writing a post on Greek yogurt that I just did not finish, interestingly enough. Shocking. One day, maybe I will.

But I spoke with someone from Maple Hill Creamery who was telling me that they were, at the time, they were working on their Greek yogurt, and one of the big concerns that they had that they wanted to make sure that they were taking good care of what was happening with what was not being used from the yogurt. Because when you strain it to make it Greek style, you’re getting more liquid out of it; there is some protein in that liquid, but you can’t just throw that away. {laughs} You know, this isn’t trash it’s a byproduct.

So I believe that they found a way to repurpose it as feed for some other type of animal, I can’t remember exactly.

Liz Wolfe: Probably pigs.

Diane Sanfilippo: But they have a sustainable way of dealing with it. Yeah, it may have very well been like they had a local pig farm that they found that they could then give that to them, or sell it to them very inexpensively or something to that effect.

I think, honestly I think that is a big issue. We were talking about meat earlier and meat quality and this whole study, but I think in the dairy industry, I just wouldn’t buy the industrialized stuff. I wouldn’t buy the Dannon, the Oikos; any of these big brand Greek yogurts. I would buy the small manufacturers that the price is a little bit higher, but you can go on their website, you can read about their company, you can email them, you can find out more, and it’s not like this big agribusiness type food company.

I still think that matters; I still think supporting these smaller, though nationally available brands, like Maple Hill and Trader’s Point; I think it’s important to support those, because if you can’t find the stuff completely locally and on a very small basis, these are the companies that I think are that kind of in between, where they’re really doing it right and they’re scaling their operations, but they’re continuing to scale them in sustainable ways. So I do like to support them. I hope that they don’t eventually sell out to the big guys, because I do think that ruins those values, like we’ve seen with Applegate Farms and other companies.

But anyway. I just would avoid those types of products, and I would even avoid; I honestly would avoid the big companies trying to sell you on the sexiness of grass-fed. So if you start to see Dannon selling a grass-fed whatever; I just don’t buy it, you know what I mean.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: The values of that company are so far detached from the values of what we’re talking about of a grass-fed farm, it’s just at that point, they’re using it for marketing. And those words hold weight, and I want to support the companies who really are backing it up, 100%. You know what I mean? Not just because oh, this niche of people are going to buy it. No, that’s what the company stands for. So, end rant.

Alright, I think we have one more dairy question today.

Liz Wolfe: One mas. And since we’re not covering a huge amount because the time went really, really fast, I would definitely point people to my book, Eat the Yolks, for more on dairy or Practical Paleo or The Untold Story of Milk, which is by Dr. Ron Schmid.

Diane Sanfilippo: Mmm.

Liz Wolfe: All very good resources.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think also Organic Pastures; shoot, his name escapes me right now.

Liz Wolfe: Mark McAfee?

Diane Sanfilippo: Mark McAfee, yeah. So I heard him speak; I mean it feels like 100 years ago {laughs}, at a local gym all about raw milk and just how he runs his farm and whatever, and I think he’d be a good person to read up on and check out information that he’s put out there and talks he’s done; Mark McAfee. I think you could probably find stuff from him on YouTube, too. It’s really interesting to hear a legit pastured dairy farmer talking about it, and I don’t know, I just found him to be really interesting.

Liz Wolfe: YouTube it baby!

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6. Nutritional difference between animal species and milk [49:45]

Liz Wolfe: Alright, this last one. Oh man, I’m not even going to try the name.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs} Ok.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} “Hello!

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh wait, her name is there at the end! Her name is at the end.

Liz Wolfe: Oh, it’s Ann. Ok.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: “Hello! I’d love to hear about the difference between dairy from cow, goat, ewe,” ewe as in E-W-E, not me as in L-I-Z. Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} “Is some better for the body and why? Thanks in advance.” Well, I guess it just kind of depends. It also depends on what species of cow, goat; not species, but what, you know, kind of cow, goat, or ewe. Is it a Nubian goat, or an alpine dairy goat; is it a jersey cow versus a Holstein? It kind of changes how much fat is generally in the milk and things like that.

I actually really like sheep’s milk, from a nutrition standpoint. I would probably put cow and goat kind of on the same level. It kind of depends on individual tolerance, but a lot of people do tolerate goat or sheep’s milk better than they do cow’s milk, so that’s something to think about.

We’ve also had the discussion about A1 A2 dairy; which I think the jury is a little bit still out on that issue, but if you wanted to delve a little bit more into A1 A2 cows, that might be something to look into. It’s just hard to say.

Diane Sanfilippo: I think at the end of the day, whatever you tolerate, if you don’t tolerate cow dairy, but you tolerate goat dairy, and you can find a really good source of goat milk or goat cheese; I really do think if people can find a way to get a dairy product that they do well with, I think it’s a great part of your diet. You know? We are getting some really amazing things from dairy products; nutritionally, vitamins that we don’t get in a lot of other places. But yeah, we just have to see what’s working for us.

I mean {laughs} I keep trying. I keep trying every different kind. But I don’t know.

Liz Wolfe: Sorry friend. I’ll eat your dairy for you. We can share the charcuterie plate, and I’ll eat the cheese.

Diane Sanfilippo: What I need right now is a charcuterie facial {laughs} because I’ve got all this acne. I will be probably pretty heavily applying my C-ex tonight. I’m trying to be super consistent about it. I’m just not super consistent about anything, ever. Ever. I’m extremely inconsistent about most things. Except this podcast! {laughs} We’ve done this podcast for more than 4 years.

Liz Wolfe: And I have no idea how that was even remotely possible between the two of us.

Diane Sanfilippo: I know.

Liz Wolfe: But high five. Remote high five.

Diane Sanfilippo: We committed.

Liz Wolfe: Yes we did. And by the way, charcuterie facial that’s an inside joke among us and anyone that was listening to the podcast back in the day when we made that joke.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes.

Liz Wolfe: So if you’re still with us…

Diane Sanfilippo: Yeah, if you’re with us, we love you. We did that episode, legit together.

Liz Wolfe: Yes we did.

Diane Sanfilippo: In Arizona.

Together: At the Poliquin Biosignature.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh! Oh the days! The days before Liz had a young one.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs} A farm and a baby.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh gosh.

7. #Treatyoself: Partially defrosted fruits [53:04]

Liz Wolfe: Yeah. Alright, so that’s it for today’s episode. We want to do #treatyoself of this week?

Diane Sanfilippo: I think we should, just to really; let’s just do a quickie treat yoself.

Clip: Three words for you; Treat. Yo. Self.

Liz Wolfe: Alright, so my treat yoself.

Diane Sanfilippo: What’s your; yeah.

Liz Wolfe: And I think you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about, is partially defrosted frozen fruit.

Diane Sanfilippo: Yes.

Liz Wolfe: I love me some partially defrosted frozen strawberries.

Diane Sanfilippo: I would love those if I could eat them, if I weren’t allergic to them. If I wasn’t allergic to them? Cherries. I do this with cherries and also peaches when I feel like having peaches.

Liz Wolfe: Mm-hmm.

Diane Sanfilippo: Partially defrosted.

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: Love that. Yep. I’m a big fan. I actually have a picture sitting on my phone waiting to post somewhere of a bowl of…

Liz Wolfe: You’re going to latergram it?

Diane Sanfilippo: I’m going to latergram a bowl of half defrosted frozen cherries.

Liz Wolfe: It’s better than sorbet. It’s so good.

Diane Sanfilippo: Oh yeah!

Liz Wolfe: Sherbet.

Diane Sanfilippo: I actually think some people are taking frozen banana and frozen strawberries or whatever the frozen fruit and doing the blender processor kind of deal and basically making a soft serve fruit ice cream type deal. Like the banana makes a really good, makes a nice creamy texture and you actually get kind of an ice cream feel from it. I mean, I know you can eat dairy, so you’re eating the ice cream. But for those of us who can’t.

Liz Wolfe: I hate bananas. I’ve hated them since I first tasted them when I was a wee one.

Diane Sanfilippo: Well then.

Liz Wolfe: Plus, plus that’s too much work.

Diane Sanfilippo: {laughs}

Liz Wolfe: I mean, I just kind of get this really unique satisfaction from eating the strawberry at the exact perfect point of defrostation.

Diane Sanfilippo: Liz, I hate to tell you how insanely similar my experience with the cherries is.

Liz Wolfe: {laughs}

Diane Sanfilippo: I literally will go through the bowl of cherries, and try to get the one that’s at the right moment while other ones are on their way.

Liz Wolfe: Yes.

Diane Sanfilippo: You know? I’m like, that one’s not quite soft enough yet, let me eat this one. And then by the time I get back to that one {laughs} it will be softer.

Liz Wolfe: All day!

Diane Sanfilippo: We are so weird. Alright you guys, head over to @BalancedBitesPodcast on Instagram. Leave us a comment. Let us know when you see this episode graphic posted, let us know how you treat yoself, something that you’re enjoying. And we would love to read about it.

Liz Wolfe: Awesome. So that’s it for this week. You can find me, Liz, at http://realfoodliz.com/ and you can find Diane at http://dianesanfilippo.com. Join our email lists for free goodies and updates that you don’t find anywhere else on the website or on the podcast. While you’re on the internet, please leave us a nice iTunes review. We love you. See you next week.