OM,

Stuff I didn't know there. I have taken vitamin C supplements since Linus Pauling wrote about it decades ago. That would explain why I could be told my cholesterol was high, fixed by increasing fiber instead of an expensive medication, but had no sign of the cholesterol deposits. Not having a C deficit explains this. I have observed the other advantages to C supplements directly, such as curing colds and dealing with stress.

Ted

Milk in general are quite nutritious, of course others species milk is not optimized for human consumption, but we share many biological traits.

Cow milk do have some drawbacks, but the beneficial side is larger than the drawback. Drinking 1 or 2 glasses have a net plus for the body.

I don't know why you think cow milk is filled with puss and blood, that would seem strange, and even if they were the milk is cleaned through several processes.

Milk have been vital for many societies in thousands of year, the milk could have been from an ox, yak, buffalo, sheep, cow, camels or goat. It has provided much needed nutrition in harsh living conditions. It is a symbiotic bond, the animal is cared for and the humans drink the milk.

The biggest problem may be ethical concerns regarding milk from cows in industrialized countries, the living conditions of the dairy cows may be bad, or that the bulls are killed as they are of little use. Other problems is the use of hormones, and possibly pesticides. But there is always organic or raw milk, but there is still some potential problems with that.

There is also lactose intolerance, but that is a problem of the individual.

I think it's situational, there are many factors regarding milk in the diet, I think the most important is if one lives in a rich country with plenty of food or a society where it has a special use.

Tom mentions unsweetened soymilk, that could be a great alternative.

Tom:
"[...] For dinner I will eat perhaps 2 or 3 Wasa (oats) crackers and drink some more soymilk and maybe a few more grapes."

"[...] Look for the plain and unsweetened version of foods -- like plain yogurt and unsweetened soymilk. "

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2694&p=3307

This is going to be a long, slow, difficult process because of my BS. I believe that I am "in the right track" as Claudio is so fond of saying. I'm here, aren't I? I'm here, in spite of, or is it because of, the life choices I've been making up to this point. These choices include putting a lot of junk into my body that Tom wouldn't recommend, and yet, I've heard my intuition loudly and clearly on several occasions, and for the most part I fit the description of an evolved being in his Workshop Questions video on Emotions. So where is the disconnect? If I'm addicted to coffee, sugar and cigarettes, and I eat meat and milk and used to drink a ton of Diet Coke up until last summer, and these decisions are causing my window to be filthy, why does all this TOE stuff seem so clear to me?

No one is asking me or telling me to change my lifestyle but the message is loud and clear nonetheless. I guess my question is, to what end? For what goal?

Well, this is similar enough to what I have been pondering for a year to tell you what I have come up with as an answer to that. My first response was to say, "It all depends on what is motivating you", but upon further reflection (inspection) it boils down to, for me, "to be more useful to the system." Because I had to inspect to get to that it might be a hint that "really" knowing that was the reason to make lifestyle changes that really are better for our physical meat puppet, but that also clear minds, still is not "on top" in my quality of consciousness, but the potential is there I feel. You a part of the system so "for yourself" is the same as "for the system", so there is that. Tom and/or Ted has said something somewhere about a probable scenario with a bunch of IUOC having made plans in NPMR (I believe) to do something useful for the system, and that there were like back-ups in case some of the intended players couldn't pull their heads out of PMR, to paraphrase. You could think about that scenario, it kind of makes you think, like "wtf am I doing to self (as part of the system)?", if you let it. How's that? :)
Love
Bette

I came back to add that I just keep doing that every time I notice what I am putting into my body (or those I am responsible to), or out "there" so even my thoughts fall under this checking of myself, this asking of self "wtf am I doing?" habit. It beats not giving it a second thought I suppose, but isn't where I'd like to be. Practice, practice, practice....

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

Specialis Sapienta, et al


I am compelled to offer this information to you and anyone else who feels that Milk is a viable and nutritious food to be consumed on a regular interval.

Numerous research studies have documented the bad effects already. Be that as it may, Dairy farming is a Multi-Billion dollar Government Subsidized industry that launches advertising with celebrities proclaiming, Got Milk! etc trying to convince people that we can't live without Milk. Hmmmm. Dieticians, Doctors ect claim you need milk, "it is the best source of calcium, where else will you get it?" I actually had a doctor say this to me not to long ago to my absolute astonishment of his ignorance regarding nutrition. Schools and Hospitals include them with every meal subsidized by the government.
Do I hear registers ringing $$$$....

Whites are the largest race of people who drink milk, yet the majority of the human population on earth does not drink milk because it is not tolerable in the digestion system. Once we leave the toddler stage we no longer have the ability to digest or use human milk in the body at a profitable level let alone other species milk.

Our ancestors were hunter gatherers and their diet was milk free, they had bigger and stronger bones and no evidence of osteoporosis, ever. This is going back say 100,000 years so our genes are the same. Yet we are told to drink milk for healthy bones? They didn't?

Studies have showed that people who drank Milk for their calcium compared to those who drank little to no milk had more broken bones and twice the hip fracture rate and milk has been linked to asthma, allergies among many other things.

Cows are forced to produce 20x more milk now than they did 50 years ago with the introduction of growth hormones
Lactating mammals release toxins through their milk including pesticides, antibiotics, chemicals and hormones and Cows milk does have blood in it. Health Inspectors check that is stays below certain levels. The USDA allows milk to contain about 1 million white blood cells per milliliter (white blood cells are pus when not in your body) on top of that Inspectors only test for a small fraction of the approx 50-100 possible drugs found in dairy cows.
Milk is loaded with less than needed items, it is highly processed and this ruins the calcium content and the casein (as wayno mentioned) prevents proper absorption.

Fruit, Green leafy veggies, raw nuts and seeds and a balanced diet will give you all the calcium the body requires.

As far as cheese, yogurt etc these are processed differently and are easier to digest. Just buy a very good quality product when doing so free of chemicals, hormones, etc

Nothing wrong with Organic eggs either. Organic soy or rice Milk, I guess they are ok.
My kids use organic milk for their buckwheat pancake mix.

Personal note, I used to drink a lot of milk as a kid. I would come home from playing sports and guzzle down tons of it, tasted great. In my opinion there is an addictive quality to it, eat some cake, have a cookie and your body wants/needs that milk!

I would not drink milk, but if you are going to drink and/or use it only buy organic milk and consume it as a very very small portion of your overall diet.

P.S. (S.S) If you are only 18 as your profile states, I wanted to say that I find you to be a very promising and intelligent young individual with amazing potential for substantial IUOC entropy reduction within your current PMR experience packet.


TED : You have your own proof of Vitamin C as an Aterial wall builder preventing Atheroscleroisis. Awesome.



OM

I have a container of "Hemp Dream" in my fridge, it is fine for me. That's right, milk substitute from hemp probably from the seed oil so it's still got Omega 3s. My son, on the other hand, is finishing his cuppa cow juice, hmm. He's a brave soul, why don't I have him drinking Hemp Dream, jeez.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I have read about those research studies, there is a summary here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#Medical_research and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk#Controversy

I think there is a slight difference between USA and Denmark regarding milk. The attitude to milk here is quite neutral/ignorant, I am not sure if we have the same propeganda as you describe, probably a little. Though some families might be using much milk it's a question of habit and practicality. Though children are influenced easily, as there is a general belief of the calcium benefit. Of course the awareness of health risk or toxicity from industrialized methods used are dim in our western culture. That is a problem.

Our serious problem with subsidising is about sugar production, it is a quite controversial thing EU is running. (50% of the total EU budget goes to subsidising agriculture, keeping them alive artificial. Nasty stuf..)



Yeah, actually there is a great difference in the lactose intolerance around the world, Scandinavians have as low as 5% of our population being intolerant. While whites generally are low too. Much of the world have a much higher percentage.

Am I right that the people who are not lactose intolerant have kept some of their lactase enzymes, and thus enables them to break the lactose down to galactose and glucose to be absorbed by the body? The digestive problem is then mostly dealt with. Of course most people are unable to do this, and thus the problem is more real.



I agree that milk is completely unnecessary for strong bones. We get stronger bones by physical activity, and the building blocks required for stronger bones are in diets that has nothing to do with milk.



Yes I know, that is the big problem of the general industrialized meat factories. Pesticides, antibiotics and hormones are rampant in use.

I just found this: http://www.e-pages.dk/raskmagasinet/15/26 , it seems quite enlightening on the problems.

It says 90% of the Danish milk is under the EU limit of 400'000 white blood cells, which is bad, as we was the 3rd highest in cell-count in year 2000. There is also something about infections in the udder caused by wrong fodder. That the average lifespan is 3.5-4.5 years instead of 20-30 years. Nice, it also states that raw milk contains plenty of lactase which is destroyed when processed.

It also confirms that many primitive societies are dependent on raw milk all over the world, for example those in the Tibetan highland which I have read about before. It also describes healthy raw milk from cows in a natural environment. It also mentions all the health problems you mentioned. The conclusion of that paper is:

The milk is healthy if:

• It comes from healthy cows
• The cows nutrition is natural
• If the hygiene is good
• If the milk is non-homogeneous
• If the milk is non-pasteurized
• If the milk is not getting sugar additives

I concur with that, and keep it in mind the next time my mother sends me away to buy some milk :p



Actually, I almost never drink milk. I drink ~ 2 glasses per week. Otherwise I get some milk when I eat breakfast when it's mixed with rolled oats or something similar, but I don't do that regularly anyway.



Thank you very much, it warms my heart. I am indeed 18 years old. My purpose here is decreasing my entropy, or in other and more vivid words; Becoming love. I hope to succeed.

Until next time! :)

To All,

I have mostly been ignoring this discussion. What I can contribute, since the discussion has turned this way, is that I raised a herd of goats for meat and milk for something like 20 years. We drank the milk raw other than being filtered. We kept milk, raw and unpasteurized as it was, for 3 to 4 times as long as it would keep from the grocery store after processing and pasteurization. The same applied to goats milk from the grocery store. We sold that milk, in addition to drinking it ourselves, to a few people with health problems that needed a source of raw, non cow originated, milk badly for various reasons. This was illegal, but they needed it badly. The usual problem was severe allergies and bad reactions to milk of any kind after processing.

The worst case was referred to us by our children's pediatrician and the child was barely a year old when they first started getting milk from us. The child had no hair or eyebrows, tissue thin finger and toe nails, was clearly severely mal nourished and the doctor said that she would not live much longer if they did not find some food that it could eat. It was being fed on a chemical protein based milk replacement, carrots and supposedly on one other vegetable that it could supposedly eat, but it's mother said it became sick if it ate it. The artificial chemical milk replacement was never intended for use more than a month or so and it had been subsisting on it for a year. But this gave it no trace minerals or other things in real milk. Within a month of starting to live on our milk instead, with no other changes in its diet, the child had hair, eyebrows, toenails and fingernails and the doctor said that it was doing well. Our goats ate very well with high quality feed and hay plus mineral supplements and free range browsing as well so the milk was of very high quality. At about 2+ years of the child's life, it started to be able to expand it's diet and when we could no longer deal with our goats and provide the milk, the child could live on enough regular food to continue to thrive.

There is much more to quality food than that which comes out of industrialized agriculture. As a species, we should still be hunter gatherers with some subsistence agriculture thrown in. We should still be part of the natural environment instead of part of the artificial environment of 'civilization'. Perhaps we can recover somewhat once we reach the point of understanding this. But VR as it is, it is all experimental and for the interaction resulting.

Ted

Excellent response, Bette, thank you! Yes, there is that. Mindfulness. I like your idea of asking myself wtf am I doing, when I put my hand to my mouth containing any of those aforementioned substances. Asking the question sounds like a definite step in the right direction. Becoming more mindful of what I'm doing also sounds good and appropriate.

Bashar has mentioned that once you recognize a "habit" it is no longer a habit, it becomes a choice. Neale Donald Walsch has quoted Ken Keyes (Jr?) 's Handbook to Higher Consciousness where it advises you "elevate your addictions to preferences".

Clearly I have some heavy thinking to do on this subject, thank you for helping me think more clearly about what it is that I'm thinking about :)

SS,

OM :There is certainly something being done right in Denmark with education and way of life.
I met an 18 year old girl, an exchange student living with some friends and she was the real deal, respectful, thoughtful, very mature intellectually and spiritually for her age. A delight to converse with on a number of interesting topics. I found it quite amazing. She is off to South America now to help unfortunates there at her own inconvenience, no electricity, no running water, etc.

Other western societies should take notice of their structure. Although, this could just be an aberration, but that seems unlikely.



SS :The milk is healthy if:
* It comes from healthy cows
* The cows nutrition is natural
* If the hygiene is good
* If the milk is non-homogeneous
* If the milk is non-pasteurized
* If the milk is not getting sugar additives
I concur with that, and keep it in mind the next time my mother sends me away to buy some milk :p



OM : That would be a more sensible way to ingest milk if one chooses to do so if it can be done safely.


OM

Thank you Lynda. That Bashar said something that is sticking with me hard. Abundance is being able to do what you need to do when you need to do it. Abundance and diet and the way this thread of consciousness flow flows towards this new old way of living that is being generated here. I adore this place.
Love
Bette

_________________
All That Is
what is?
Consciousness.

I'm glad you're open to his teachings. Bashar rocks. I really like it here too. And you may as well know, usually whenever I say that I mean it on multiple levels. I like it here in these forums, I like it here in the MBT community, I like it here online, I like it here in my office with my spaceheater warming my knees, I like it here in my sweats with my cat up on my desk, I like it here on planet earth, I like it in this PMR, the list goes on and on...

Since there's been a good deal of talk about milk, here are some links from another forum:

6 Reasons to Avoid Dairy

The Perils of Dairy

Udderly Amazing, Part 1
Udderly Amazing, Part 2
Udderly Amazing, Part 3
Udderly Amazing, Part 4
Udderly Amazing, Part 5
Udderly Amazing, Part 6
Udderly Amazing, Part 7
Udderly Amazing, Part 8

Milk is a "good" source of calcium
Skeletal/Mineral/Milk/Fruit studies
Why Milk Won't Prevent Osteoporosis

Milk has opioid-like peptides in it, so it can be addictive. I believe this is so that a mother's baby will be sure to come back for more of her breast milk.

Here is a link to a website by a fellow that his done his homework on the whole meat, milk, polluted food issue.... "The mad cowboy" is the Montana Rancher that fought it out with Oprah against the Texas cattle industry some years ago. He's written at least one book and appears as a guest on radio and TV shows doing consumer education.

Worth having a look through:

http://www.madcowboy.com/

Here's a good response from Tom in the post called "Are my guides playing poker?"

viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3102



I figure Tom's use of the term "drugs" includes nicotine, caffeine and sugar, those "drugs" I was asking about before. Someone please correct me if I am mistaken.

Edit: Here is another very useful tidbit from p. 397 in the version available on Google: "To eliminate recreational drug abuse, a culture must raise its collective consciousness quality. This can only be accomplished at the individual level. Any improvement by individuals within the culture raises the quality level of the whole and begins to solve the problem. You personally must solve the problems of your culture. No one else can do more than you can. To believe it is someone else's problem to solve more than yours simply makes you a part of the problem. You can do nothing more than improve yourself. Fortunately, that single accomplishment constitutes your optimal contribution."

Yikes. Who was the comedian who saw Smokey the Bear on TV tell him, "Only you can prevent forest fires" and the comedian got this shocked look on his face, pointed at himself and mouthed "me??!?"