Dairy/Casein NOT Harmful?

Steffi

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Hi!

What is Ray's or you guys' opinion on the Casein debate? I haven't found much so far.
I have always loved dairy but ever since a teenager I have had great doubts originating from someone who pointed out to me that "milk is made for baby mammals for a relatively short time in life and not for post-puberty grown ups".

Like gluten (which is evidently connected with all kinds of terrible dysfunction), I've come across many similar hints regarding dairy. The only study I have on hand is from the infamous China Study:
A final study was done to observe protein’s effect on actual tumor development. Several hundred rats were studied over the course of their lifetimes (about two years) and were fed a variety of protein amounts. After 100 weeks, all rats on the 20% casein diet were either dead or apparently near death from liver tumors. Every rat on the 5% casein diet was alive after 100 weeks. In the same experiment, some rats were switched from one diet to the other at 40 or 60 weeks. The rats switched from a high protein diet to a low protein diet developed 35%-45% less tumors than the rats on the consistently high protein diet. The rats that were initially on low protein diets began to develop tumors after the switch to a high protein diet.

Not even considering that it is practically impossible to get "natural milk" (from grass-fed non-medicated cows, untreated and without additives) I can easily construct a case against dairy.

Did Ray ever address some of these arguments against dairy? Anyone else?
 

LucyL

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Ray Peat has an article on milk - http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/milk.shtml. This quote might help:
Since milk's primary biological function is to support the growth of a young animal, some of its features make it inappropriate as a sole food for an adult. To support cell division and growth, the methionine and tryptophan content of milk is higher than would be optimal for an adult animal, and the phosphate might be slightly more than needed, in relation to the calcium. Since the fetus stores a large amount of iron during gestation, the iron content of milk is low, and when a young animal has used the stored iron, its continuing growth requires more iron than milk provides. However, for an adult, the low iron content of milk and cheese makes these foods useful for preventing the iron overload that often contributes to the degenerative diseases.

Combining milk and cheese with fruits adds to the antistress effect. The additional sugar and potassium and other minerals allow the milk protein to be used more efficiently, by moderating the secretion of cortisol, and helping to inhibit the secretion of PTH.

Here is another look at the Campbell rat/casein/cancer study. http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/China-Study.html
A quote from that article:
Campbell is aware that casein has been uniquely implicated in health problems, and dedicates an entire chapter of The China Study to casein's capacity to generate autoimmune diseases.17 Whey protein appears to have a protective effect against colon cancer that casein does not have.18 Any effect of casein, then, cannot be generalized to other milk proteins, let alone all animal proteins.

Other questions, such as what effect different types of processing have on casein's capacity to promote tumor growth, remain unanswered. Pasteurization, low-temperature dehydration, high-temperature spray-drying (which creates carcinogens), and fermentation all affect the structure of casein differently and thereby would affect its physiological behavior.

It is worth noting that Ray Peat recommends steering away from dehydrated anything.

Chris Masterjohn also tackled the study on the Weston Price site The Curious Case of Campbell’s Rats — Does Protein Deficiency Prevent Cancer? It is long, but a very good read.

Two things that jump out- in the "low protein" rats, they were basically so protein deficient they had very little growth - nutritional malnourishment (these were baby rats by the way), and so small they were highly susceptible to aflotoxin poisoning, and didn't even get the same amount of aflotoxin that caused the cancer in the "high protein" rats, because that amount would have killed them directly.
 
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Steffi

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Wow, thanks guys, very interesting. This is the most civilized and intelligent forum I have ever seen on the internet!
I always loved all dairy (the sour stuff not so much). Felt pretty tired when indulging in lots - but that always included lots of grains soaked. Ricepudding is one of my favourite foods - but I really crash after eating lots of that.
 
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I'd like to know if the casein was A1 or A2.
 

haidut

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Actually Peat favors casein to whey. He recommends eating strained milk products so that the "acidic whey" is removed. Also, from the same link listed above is this quote:

"...Some amino acids directly stimulate insulin secretion, decreasing blood sugar and leading to the secretion of cortisol in reaction to the depression of blood glucose. The presence of lactose in milk, and of fat, to slow absorption of the amino acids, helps to minimize the secretion of cortisol. The main protein of milk, casein, seems to have some direct antistress effects (Biswas, et al., 2003)."
 

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