Harvard Food Law Society Raw Milk Debate

The Harvard Food Law Society raw milk debate: Sally Fallon Morell (President, Weston A. Price Foundation) and David Gumpert (Author, The Raw Milk Revolution) representing the "pro-raw milk" side, vs. Fred Pritzker (Pritzker & Olson Law Firm) and Dr. Heidi Kassenborg
(Director, Dairy & Food Inspection Division, Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture) on the "anti-raw milk" team.

How safe is raw milk, compared to other foods like cantaloupe, spinach, ground beef, etc.? Should we have the right to choose what we eat based on what we believe?

The pace of the debate may be a little slow for folks new to the issues, but it is an interesting point of contact between the two sides, to be sure.

We can buy tobacco without having to drive to a farm, we can buy alcohol without driving to a distillery, and we can buy both without having to sign waivers. Surely these are more dangerous than raw milk--and yet raw milk is more difficult to buy in most of the US, and not available nearly as widely as cigarettes and alcohol.

How many deaths can truly be ascribed to raw milk, vs. alcohol and tobacco? Is it possible that raw milk regulations, and prohibitions in general, are motivated by something other than concern for public safety?

Fred Pritzker even said it--the regulatory status of raw milk is ultimately a matter of politics, not of science. The more we demand access to raw milk, the more we tell our politicians and regulators that it's important to us, and the more willing we are to defy ridiculous ordinances, the better our prospects for reasonable food laws.

Fourfold Path To Healing Conference, post 1

This past weekend, I attended the Fourfold Path To Healing Conference near San Francisco.


Sally Fallon Morell quoted Schopenhauer:

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

She observed that with respect to raw milk, we're well into the second stage.

The Case Against Dogmatic Veganism: A Short Reading List

I do not condemn vegans. As far as I'm concerned, people can eat what they want, and what they believe works for them.

But if someone tells me that they are vegan and I'm a bad person because I am not, I will ask them to consider some of the following:

• The Ethics of Eating Meat, by Charles Eisenstein [UPDATED: outdated link fixed]
  
  Charles Eisenstein, author of The Yoga of Eating: Transcending Diets and Dogma to Nourish the Natural Self, explains why he eats meat in a short and beautiful essay.
  
  
• The Vegetarian Myth, by Lierre Keith
  
  With lyrical and heartfelt prose, the author, who was vegan for 20 years, methodically deconstructs the notion of vegan virtue. Eisenstein's essay probably influenced her book, directly or indirectly. (I don't have the book handy to check the bibliography.) See my review of The Vegetarian Myth here, in which I explore her arguments. Some book excerpts on her website here.
  
  
• Eating Animals, by Jonathan Saffron Foer
  
  A nuanced and flowing exploration of some of the ethical issues around eating meat, and how some people navigate them.
  
  
• Twenty Two Reasons Not to Go Vegetarian, by Sally Fallon Morell
  
  Sally Fallon Morell is eloquent and prepared, as usual. Among other things, she points out the impossibility of living in industrial society without benefiting from the slaughter of animals. For instance:
  

  Not only the steak on your plate, but a myriad of other products come from slaughtered cows, including components used in the manufacture of cosmetics, plastics, waxes (in crayons and candles), soaps, cleansers, shampoos, modern building materials and hydraulic brake fluid for airplanes. The membrane that vibrates to make a telephone work is made from beef gelatin. Epinephrine, a widely used drug for asthma and allergic reactions, is made from beef adrenal glands.

  She includes an excerpt from a letter that Rich Latimer of Falmouth, Massachusetts, had in the January 7, 2008 New Yorker, reminding us of the animal slaughter involved in growing plant foods (even organic ones):
  

  Countless millions of wee furry beasties, mice, moles and voles, as well as ground-nesting birds, are killed outright or die off from habitat destruction annually, when vast acreages are tilled by huge, mindless machines to grow “ethical” grains and vegetables. More are killed during the growing season by rodenticide grain baits, including zinc phosphide. Small mammals and birds are killed by machinery again at harvest time, and even more are killed by pest-control practices in granaries and processing plants before vegetables get to market. There’s no such thing as a guilt-free lunch.

Pictures From Weston A. Price Wise Traditions Conference 2009

Some sourdough pancakes with your butter? Breakfast, Sally Fallon-style! A bit of an exaggeration—she says she has a mere 4 tablespoons of butter (half a stick) with her oatmeal in the morning.

Cod liver oil gummy fish. By far the best-tasting cod liver oil I've found (and the worst-tasting gummy fish).

Scott Gryzbek and his new line of Zukay lactofermented vegetable juices. They are much less salty than typical beet kvass, for example.

Weston A. Price lunch: Organ meat sausages, local raw milk cheddar, chicken cacciatore of known origin (MOKO), lactofermented carrots, and sourdough garlic bread. Deeelicious. (There was other stuff, too...)

Wise Traditions 2009 Conference

The annual get-together of Weston A. Price fans, a few weeks from now, outside Chicago, IL.

http://www.westonaprice.org/conferences/2009/index.html

Approximately 1000 folks registered so far. The cap is 1300.

I am greatly looking forward to it. Aside from anything else, it's going to win the prize for "Best Conference Food Ever". Click here for the menu.

More details on the blog of the WAPF publicist:

http://hartkeisonline.com/2009/10/27/yummy-details-about-wise-traditions-chicago-conference/

Or ask me and I'll tell you what I know.

Tri-Tips

This post was inspired by a conversation with a high-school friend. We had been out of touch for decades. One of the reasons he contacted me was that he was planning to do a triathlon, and he knew that I had done one. In fact, I've done exactly one. I don't believe that this qualifies me to say anything at all about triathlons; nonetheless, I plan to do just that. Originally I was going to send him my thoughts in an email, but I decided I would post them here, so that others could benefit from them (or not). Here goes, roughly in order of importance:

1. Get lots of sleep. People need different amounts of sleep, but if you don't get enough sleep, you'll be tired and achy, and it will take you longer to recover from your workouts.
2. Eat healthy food. If you are working out regularly, you will burn thousands of extra calories per day, and you will be building muscle mass, so I grant you free license to eat however much you want. But definitely not whatever you want. I try to eat according to the guidelines in the book Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon. This book provides the best nutrition information of any resource I've encountered. In particular: I try to eat coconut oil, butterfat, fats from well-raised animals, and olive oil; avoid most other oils and fats, including vegetable oils (eg., canola, safflower, soy); consume unpasteurized milk products; eat raw, fermented foods, like traditional pickles and sauerkraut; make bone broths and use them as the basis for soups and sauces; and avoid grains that have not been fermented, soaked or sprouted. If this doesn't make perfect sense to you (which it probably doesn't, out of context), or if you want some explanation, with assiduous footnotes and references, plus delicious recipes, then please buy the book and read at least the first 80 pages.
3. Find training partners. Personally, I find this especially helpful for the biking; biking with folks who are a bit faster than you can help you to get stronger, and can also keep you from getting bored or restless. (I have found a great group for me: the Harvard University Cycling Association. These are the kinds of folks who will never leave you alone to change a flat tire. And I do not have enough kind words for the three team coaches—they are a gift. I feel a lot of gratitude toward HUCA.) Running is less social for me: I usually have a specific idea of how fast I want to run, and being pushed to run faster is not generally helpful; nevertheless, it can be nice to have a running partner. The social aspects of swimming seem quite limited to me. But no matter what the sport, commitment to a group of people will often get you off your couch. I did my first (and only) triathlon as part of Team In Training. Another super, super bunch of people. I recommend it very highly, especially for a first triathlon.
4. Instrument yourself. I have a Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS (with cadence sensor). The Forerunner is inexpensive right now. It displays and/or records pace, heart rate, location, and elevation, for both biking and running, plus pedal cadence for biking. When I get home, I can review the entire session in conjunction with a street map, compare it to previous sessions, and so on, using third-party software called Ascent. Most importantly, while I'm biking or running, I can monitor my heart rate for a quick read on how much effort I'm exerting, and I can pace myself accordingly. (Fancier cycle computers can show instantaneous power output in real-time. But they cost several times as much as the Garmin.)

Oh, is anyone out there looking for an occasional, slow running partner around Cambridge, MA?

Yet More On Raw Milk

Sally Fallon refutes claims by Toronto newspaper columnists who argue pasteurization kills only pathogens (an op-ed by Sally Fallon).

The Fourfold Path to Healing Conference, part 3: Milk: The Raw Story

Let's talk about raw milk. The "experts" have told us confidently that raw (unpasteurized) milk is bad. Just like they've told us confidently that butter is bad, and margarine is good...um, I mean, bad. (They change their minds every so often.) So what is the real story of raw milk? The short version: Once upon a time, all milk was "raw milk". That's how it comes out of mammals. As the industrial revolution surged forwards, and milk started to be produced on an industrial scale, it became uneconomical for large dairy conglomerates to maintain hygienic conditions. So they stopped trying. After selling unhygienic milk for a while, sickening and killing people, they decided to start pasteurizing their milk to kill off pathogens. Due to their political clout, they were able to convince governments and the medical establishment to support compulsory pasteurization for all milk producers. This put all dairies, large and small, on basically an even footing. So what's the problem? Who needs raw milk, anyway?

• First of all, nowadays, it is now quite easy and practical to deliver healthy raw milk from animals to consumers.
• Raw milk contains vitamins, enzymes, and other bioactive components destroyed by pasteurization which are very likely to confer benefits to the immune, reproductive, and digestive systems [reference]. (Lactase is one example. Lactase is the enzyme necessary for the digestion of lactose, a component of milk. Roughly 75% of adults worldwide [reference] are not able to produce adequate lactase on their own. Thus, for most people in the world, raw milk is more digestible than pasteurized milk.)
• Raw milk contains a dynamic balance of bacteria that actually makes it less prone to spoiling than the sterile pasteurized milk, which is like an unpeopled frontier waiting to be overrun.
• Because of this balance of bacteria, raw milk is more versatile when making cultured milk products (cheese, yogurt, kefir, etc.).
• etc.

For more of the story, visit http://realmilk.org/. In particular, check out the various reports they have linked there. I don't normally recommend or even condone the use of Microsoft PowerPoint, but it's worth it to view this excellent and well-researched presentation. See also: Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon; The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, by Sandor Ellix Katz; and Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages, by Anne Mendelson. The "raw milkists" don't want to take away anyone's right to drink pasteurized milk. They simply want everyone to have access to healthy raw milk, and to unbiased information about it. Is that so much to ask?

The Fourfold Path to Healing Conference, part 2: Tom Cowan

Tom Cowan's health, healing, and wellness landscape is dominated by anthroposophical medicine and other holistic health paradigms. He is also comfortable navigating among allopathic (orthodox "Western") medical models and tools, and uses them when appropriate and/or necessary. His nutritional thoughts are in line with those of Sally Fallon, and ultimately with those of Weston A. Price. To this rich, bone-broth-based stew, Cowan adds bits and pieces of other things he has picked up over the years via his unconventional, inquisitive, and open mind (for example, the SuperSlow workout). Here is an example of his iconoclasm. He quotes Rudolf Steiner, who says, "The heart is not a pump," and then goes on to make a pretty good case for this claim. In brief, as I understand it, he believes that rather than causing the blood to flow, the main function of the heart is stopping the blood, thus creating the pressure necessary to keep veins from collapsing, and creating the pressure to force the blood up to the head, among other things. Water is a by-product of cellular metabolism throughout the body, and especially in the large muscles of the lower body; as this water enters the circulatory system, it increases venus volume and pressure. This metabolic consequence is the actual "pump" that causes blood to flow. Cowan considers the case of a house with a pump in the basement and a shower on the third floor. If you are not getting enough water flow at the shower, how do you address it? Widening the pipes will decrease the pressure, and increase the weight of the water column that must be moved, thus resulting in less water flow. If you can't get a more powerful pump, then narrowing the pipes may be a viable short-term solution. Cowan continues: When your body has high blood pressure, it is evidence that your body has narrowed the pipes, trying to get your blood circulating better. In this scenario, conventional medical wisdom would have us take medication to dilate the blood vessels, "making the pipes wider", thus lowering the blood pressure. But in fact, in the context of the pump/shower metaphor, the high blood pressure is the body's stop-gap solution, rather than the problem. Cowan claims that decreasing blood pressure through medication is in this case the wrong approach. The right approach is to strengthen the pump. One does this by increasing cellular metabolism, and in particular by eating foods that create more water as a by-product of metabolism. It turns out that fats create much more water in this way than do carbohydrates or proteins. And the fats that promote health the most are animal fats and coconut oil. To summarize: If you have high blood pressure, eat more animal fats and coconut oil! (Isn't that what your doctor tells you?) For a longer, more complete exposition of this theory, check out Chapter 3 of The Fourfold Path to Healing.

The Fourfold Path to Healing Conference, part 1: Overview

Folks,

This past weekend, I attended the Fourfold Path to Healing Conference in Westford, MA. I heard about the conference last week when I attended a dinner at Haley House at which Sally Fallon was the featured speaker. I'm very glad I went.

The Fourfold Path to Healing is the name of a book co-authored by Tom Cowan, a San Francisco-based MD; Sally Fallon, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation; and Jaimen McMillan, creator of Spacial Dynamics. All three authors were at the conference, along with perhaps 200 attendees and 10 or so vendors.

Each author presented to one tutti session; for the rest of the weekend, all three presented simultaneously in different rooms. I won't say much about Jaimen's work here, because I didn't go to any of his individual sessions—I was too interested in what Tom Cowan and Sally Fallon had to say. You can read about Jaimen's work in the book or on his website.

As a starting point, I'll say that Rudolf Steiner's work has provided a grounding for much of Tom, Sally, and Jaimen's thinking. Steiner is well-known in some (small) circles for having founded the biodynamic agriculture movement. Biodynamic agriculture is sort of like organic agriculture on steroids (!). Beyond that, Steiner founded several other movements, including anthroposophical medicine, a holistic paradigm which is part of Tom's practice; and Eurythmy, a movement system that informs Jaimen's work.

Weston A. Price has been another inspiration to Tom and Sally, particlarly his 1939 book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. In fact, he has been enough of an inspiration to them that they have started the Weston A. Price Foundation, of which Sally is the president and Tom is a founding board member.

In his book, Price advances the hypothesis that a traditional diet plays a key role in physical development and health, and that the modern "white man's" diet leads to underdevelopment and disease within one generation. He supports this claim with impressive evidence taken from his travels to hundreds of cities in fourteen countries, in which he compares the physical health of the "natives" eating their traditional diets with the physical health of offspring of the same peoples whose mothers ate a "modern" diet during pregnancy. In every case, he finds among the latter group increased cavities, crooked teeth, arthritis, deformed facial structures (sometimes to the point where nose-breathing becomes impossible), and a low immunity to tuberculosis. He documents all of this with, among other things, extensive photographs of people with their mouths wide open. (Price goes further, in fact, and makes connections between facial structure and moral development; these claims were not discussed at the conference.)

In the context of the work of Fallon and Cowan, building on the work of Price, a traditions-based diet is one that is rich in:

• saturated fats, including animal fats, eggs, butter, ghee, and coconut oil
• coconut, in any of its other forms
  
• organ meats, including cod liver oil
• shellfish and fish
  
• full-fat, raw and/or fermented dairy (yogurt, crème fraiche, kefir, buttermilk, etc.)
• lacto-fermented vegetables (lacto-fermented types of sauerkraut, pickles, relishes, salsas, and so on)
• pretty much anything else fermented
  
• broths from animal bones, fish bones, and shellfish
  
• soaked, sprouted, and fermented grains (including sourdough bread)
• vegetable and fruits
  

and that avoids:

• vegetable and seed oils, hydrogenated or not
• industrially-processed foods and ingredients of all kinds
• white sugar
• unfermented soy, and soy of any kind in large amounts (eg., soy milk)
  
• white flour and whole wheat flour (unless soaked, sprouted, or fermented)

(to be continued)

Sally Fallon

I just got home from the Haley House Bakery Café in Roxbury (Boston), where I attended a dinner to benefit their Youth Cooking Program, a fabulous program that helps teens learn to cook and to broaden their outlook on the world. To quote the website:

Food can teach us to overcome resistance and negativity to something new (which is our inclination) by yielding to exploration or curiosity so that the truth can reveal itself…Learning to overcome pre-conceptions of unfamiliar foods and dishes through cooking is an excellent tool in learning how to overcome or shed resistance and prejudice in other parts of one's life.

Fabulous as that program may be, what got me there tonight was not this program, but the speaker, Sally Fallon. Every so often, I have an experience that fundamentally changes how I look at some part of the world. Reading Sally Fallon's first book, Nourishing Traditions, was such an experience for me. "The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats," says the front cover. In it, she claims that much of what the "experts" tell us about nutrition is wrong. Vegetable oils are bad—animal fats are good—pasteurization is bad—meat is necessary—and more. One giant difference between her book and any of the "diet" books of the last 20 years is that her arguments are airtight and backed up by copious unimpeachable references. Perhaps even more importantly, her ideas simply MAKE SENSE and ring true, in a way that the claims of the one-trick-pony diet books really don't. And what she describes is not a "diet" in the modern, punitive sense of the word, but rather a way of eating. I recommend her book to everyone who will listen. Are you listening? (I learned about her book when I read The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved by Sandor Ellix Katz, another great book about food, another book that catalyzed a fundamental change for me.)

---

I had arrived at the dinner early, and taken a seat at the table closest to the microphone, so that I wouldn't miss any of the action. I was very pleased when Sally Fallon and two of her cohorts joined me at my table for dinner. SF is the president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and her cohorts are leaders of local chapters of the same foundation. (Weston Price was a health researcher in the first part of the 20th century whose work provided a starting point for Sally Fallon's. In creating his masterwork, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, after visiting hundreds of cities in fourteen countries, Weston Price found that groups of people eating "traditional" diets were healthy, and those same groups of people eating "modern" diets were not. Obviously the story is much longer, but that is the gist of it.) Our dinner conversation centered around the day's business: Sally's book, nutrition, food-related problems in the world, etc. We spend some time on the subject of raw milk, and came to the subject of the trial of Michael Schmidt in Canada for the crime of selling raw milk. One of us, perhaps I, had the idea of starting a religion that required the consumption of raw milk, as a defense against some of the legal impediments to the production and distribution of raw milk. SF thought that this was a great idea, and that I should do it. And in fact, when later during the night I asked her to sign my copy of her book, she said she would do it on the condition that I start a religion that required consuming raw milk. After thinking about it a little bit, I agreed. After all, I am already an ordained minister; it is only fitting that I have a religion; and it should certainly have something to do with food.