Dairy products and their relation with food allergies

Food allergies affect more and more people and many of them turn out intolerants to milk. This is not surprising as it is known that dairy products are very fatty and hard to digest. Moreover, they contribute to the apparition of respiratory diseases as bronchitis, sinusitis, asthma…

Is cow milk optimal for humans?

Cow milk is designed by nature to make calves grow faster, not for human babies. There are several studies that prove that the quantity and quality of amino acids of cow milk are very different than the ones of maternal milk. That’s why babies can’t metabolize some of the amino acids found in cow milk.

Some researchers defend that casein, a protein contained in milk, is very difficult to assimilate because of its big size. This can produce allergies and diarrheas or lactose intolerance. Its sugar, the lactose, produces mucus in the intestine because it is not correctly assimilated and also recovers internal lining of the intestine, which avoids the assimilation of the rest of the food nutrients that our organism tries to digest.

Useless calcium’s contribution

For many decades, milk has been considered a great source of calcium, but I think this is a food that involves many clichés and calcium is one of them. Obviously dairy products are very rich in calcium, but the body needs other elements as magnesium to correctly assimilate it, and milk is really poor in magnesium.

It seems that our body does not assimilate calcium very well. Otherwise, there would not be so many cases of decalcification and osteoporosis among people that have drunk milk during all their lives. In oriental countries where people don’t drink cow milk there is way less cases of osteoporosis. So it is obvious that calcium is not as important as dietetic balance is.

Others calcium sources

We can find calcium in a lot of other foods. We can stand out seaweeds (hiziki, wakame, kelp, kombu, arame), whole grains, seeds, especially sesame, that are also very rich in magnesium, pulses (lentils, beans…), vegetables, dried fruits and nuts as almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts…

Knowing if we ingest enough calcium is just as important as know if our kind of diet is consuming our calcium and minerals stocks. We have to know which foods acidifies our blood and tissues and try to avoid them: red meat, cold meat, soft drinks, fats, fried food, simple sugar and alcohol.

Alternatives to cow milk

If we really want to have milk, we can choose a vegetable one as oats, rice or almond milk. For me, these three milks are the healthiest, but they will be more digestible if you boil them for at least, 3 or 4 minutes. You can add a pinch of salt to highlight the flavor. If you heat a big quantity, just keep it in the fridge.

If you have allergy symptoms and you don’t know where they come from, I recommend you to stop drinking milk since most of allergies and food intolerances disappear when sugar and dairy products are removed from diet.