Yesterday my wife was complaining about a bad reaction after drinking "red cap" milk, it's not the first time I must say. So I finally got tired of it
and decide to share my thoughts here and try to investigate it at the same time. Let's see what we got here.
Even if it's been discussed a few times, it doesn't seem to be clear and no further conclusion has been reached, maybe because there are too many
factors to consider.
Before we go deeper, we must make understandable for members in other countries our milk classification (USA), since we are not sure if all other
countries follow the same standards. Probably it's where all the polemic starts.
CLASSIFICATION AND GRADING OF MILK.
Everything starts here. Originally, milk pricing was defined by the volume. But raw milk is not uniform and the amount of butterfat and other elements
varies constantly. For example, in summer cows produce less milk and also their diet is different than winter lowering the butterfat and protein in
Milk was priced, like most liquids, on the basis of simple volume until the very late 19th century.
However, anyone making dairy products knew that milk was far from uniform. The composition of milk
varied by producer, individual cow, stage of lactation, season, and other less explainable factors. Even
today, some milk can easily contain twice as much fat as some other milk. The Babcock test, developed in
1890, was a simple, fast, and accurate way of measuring the milkfat content of milk. It fairly directly
established the amount of cream or butter that could be produced from milk and also provided a fairly
accurate means of predicting cheese yields. The Babcock test revolutionized milk pricing and was rapidly
adopted by plants buying milk.
As the commercial dairy industry developed, measurement of the quantity of milk shifted from a volume
basis to weight because accurate determination of weight was generally easier. The use of the Babcock
test and the change to weighing milk led to the milk pricing method that would dominate throughout
most of the 20th century: dollars per 100 pounds, adjusted for milkfat content with a butterfat differential.
Another pricing method, dollars per pound of milkfat has been used for cream and was sometimes
used for milk. It never was a satisfactory pricing method for many uses of milk and fell entirely out of
favor as skim solids became more valuable.
In other words, establishing standards for milk permited to improve the commercial benefits of the milk. Extracting excess of butterfat in order to
acomplish these standards, expanded the business with other products to offer, like heavy cream and skim milk. A gold mine was discovered.
Articles from American Journal of Public Health (New York, N.Y. : 1912) are provided here courtesy of
Then we also had milk powder, an incredible way to storage milk for longer periods of time which allowed shipping to further territories.
To impove efficience skiming milk, technology started to develope methods based in cetrifuge force, instead of let the milk separates by natural
At this point we can confirm without a doubt, the milk that people used to drink and used for other products like butter or cheese long time ago was
richer in its elements, it wasn't altered as it is now. The milk on the bucked was the final product, as the milk we all got from mama when we were
Now we have a cap color system that tells us what type of milk is supose to be inside the bottle.
Red Cap: Whole Milk
Purple Cap: Reduced-Fat (2%) Milk
Green: Low-Fat (1%) Milk
Light Blue: Skim Milk
Brown Cap: Chocolate Milk
Pink Cap: Strawberry Milk
Yellow Cap: Buttermilk
Orange Cap: Half and Half
Magenta Cap: Whipping Cream
Well, I think that covers well that point, now it's time to talk about hormones. I promise it will be controversial.
HORMONES AND MILK
I personally believe that there is nothing we need to add to milk, Mother Nature already did all and her designs are always perfect. Anyway It's also
neccessary to consider other points of view. Like this one from Canada:
Myth – Milk contains hormones that are harmful to humans
Fact – Canada does not allow the use of growth hormones to increase milk production in
cows. Therefore, no added growth hormones are found in any Canadian milk or milk
products. There are also no antibiotic residues in any Canadian milk or milk products.
Natural hormones from the cow do pass into the milk - however they have no effect on
humans when consumed and are digested like any other protein. Bovine Growth
Hormone (BGH), also known as recombinant Bovine Somatotropin (rBST), is currently
used in the United States to increase milk production in cows. rBST is not present in
milk that is produced in Canada.
Once again, it's all about money and we were considered as collateral damage. Pay attention to the word "UNNATURALLY" here.
The FDA approved the use of rBGH, a synthetic version of BGH, in 1993. The injection of rBGH into cows has become standard practice on many dairy
farms, as it has the ability to unnaturally increase a cow’s output of milk by up to 20% (according to the rBGH manufacturer).
Also, if it's not good for the cows, it's not good for us neither right ?
Cows treated with rBGH were found to have a 25% increased risk of acquiring an udder infection (mastitis). Other major side effects (as noted by
the manufacturer of rBGH) include infertility, lameness, cystic ovaries, uterine disorders, digestive disorders, lacerations, and calluses of the knee
Remenber, it's not me saying all this :
Even more seriously, rBGH milk is contaminated with high levels of the natural Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), which regulates cell growth,
division and multiplication throughout life, particularly in infants and young children; Eli Lilly, in its application for registration of rBGH,
admitted that IGF-1 blood levels of injected cows are increased up to ten-fold. IGF-1 is resistant to pasteurization and digestion, and is readily
absorbed from the small intestine. Monsanto's own data revealed that feeding IGF-1 to adult rats for only two weeks significantly increased body and
liver weights, and bone length.
More critically, increased IGF-1 blood levels have been incriminated as a major cause of cancer. IGF-1 induces uncontrolled growth of normal human
breast cells in tissue culture, and has been incriminated in their transformation to cancer cells.
Continue next post....
edit on 24-3-2012 by Trueman because: (no reason given)