A defense for milk products
I can see two reasons to keep away from dairy: ethical, nutritional. The "ethical" argument largely stems from documentaries coming from the USA having to do with factory farms. They would have farms with thousands of cattle housed in feedlots. In Canada, the majority of dairy farming was carried out on smaller farms (less than 100 cows). Now there is a movement toward roboticized farming where there are fewer workers but the cattle are not being neglected or put under undue pressure.
While it really isn't evident unless you are familiar with bovine behaviour but these are very content animals.
The second argument has to do with the nutritional aspects of dairy products. Many people have a specific mutation which evolved about 8 thousand years ago which is specific for dairy consumption. If you have a segment of the population who are evolved to break down and use the nutrients in milk then they should not be confused with people lacking those specific enzymes. The entire concept of nutrition is problematic. All the food we ingest goes into an acid bath which reduces the food into its essential amino acids and minerals. All types of milk, from whole to nonfat contain 18 amino acids: all nine of the essential amino acids: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine; six semi-essential: arginine, cysteine, glycine, proline, serine and tyrosine; and three nonessential: alanine, aspartic acid and glutamic acid.
As an example consider histidine. Histidine, similar to other amino acids, is found primarily in high-protein foods. Meat, poultry, fish, dairy and some grain products including rice, wheat and rye are therefore histidine-containing foods. More good food sources include seafood, beans, eggs, buckwheat, corn, cauliflower, mushrooms, potatoes, bamboo shoots, bananas, cantaloupe and citrus fruits.
An adult requires 8 and 12 mg/kg of histidine daily. For ease of math I will use a person 100 kg (220 lbs) and 10 mg/kg for the daily requirement. Consider that a woman is about 50 kg (110 lbs) one can easily derive an approximation for your own body weight. So a large man needs 1000 (100 * 10) mg or 1 gram of histidine daily. There is 0.13 g amount of Histidine (His or H) α-amino acid in 1 potato large (3" to 4-1/4" dia) (369 grams) amount of Potatoes, russet, flesh plus skin, raw natural. In other words, a large man would need to eat 7-8 large potatoes in one day to get the required amount of histidine. In contrast there is 0.23 g amount of Histidine (His or H) α-amino acid in 1 cup (244 grams) amount of Milk, whole, 3.25% percent milk-fat, added vitamin D. This means that a person would need to drink 4-5 glasses of milk each day for the same benefit. To translate for a 50 kg woman, she would need to eat 3-4 potatoes or 2-3 glasses of milk.
It isn't that I am trying to convince anyone away from being a vegan ... it is just for me who is capable of digesting milk products an easy way of meeting some of my nutritional requirements.
I´m not intolerant to lactose but after abandoning milk and yoghurt for a while now I can see how my body just does´t react well to them now. That being said, I also remember how before my body could function just right with those products and, as a matter of fact, I think I got a lot less sick before than I do now.
The problem with lactase is that as we age we produce less of it. I don't know if it is true but it is possible that stopping all dairy consumption might reduce the capacity quicker. One of the "negative" aspects of drinking milk ... increase mucus production would actually help protect you from environmental factors or disease. Intuitively mucus traps and eliminates those particles or "bugs" before they can attack lung tissue.
For a number of years I have looked at aspects of nutrition mainly because I don't understand it. My greatest concern is that aging has negative effects on cognition. I am not worried about Alzheimer's Syndrome (although if you google it in conjunction with coconut oil you can go down some interesting rabbit holes) but just the steady decline that everyone experiences. Of course one thing common with everyone is that our diets change and our ability to absorb nutrients decline. This isn't anything that you need to worry about @anacristinacaru as I see by your latest post that not only are you intelligent but resilient enough do deal with your crisis:
Without being really creepy I congratulate you on being a pretty enterprising young woman ... pity about the silly walk...
