What about dairy?

When I go over nutrition with clients one of the most common questions I get is regarding dairy. Typically, I do not recommend that clients consume a lot of dairy. There are several reasons why dairy should be limited especially if you are trying to get leaner. First of all, dairy can be a bit confusing when it comes to the insulin levels that result from consuming things like milk, yogurt, and cottage cheese. For example, yogurt has a glycemic index in the 30's which is fairly low since it is based on a scale from 0-100. The glycemic index measures how much a food raises your blood sugar. This is a a good index to familiarize yourself with but it does not tell the whole story.

If we simply looked at the glycemic index of common dairy foods such as milk, yogurt, and cottage cheese we would conclude that it would not negatively impact on insulin. However, there is another index called the insulin index which measures how much insulin you produce in response to foods. This scale is also from 0-100. On this scale many dairy foods are actually over 100. For example, plain yogurt is about 110, which is the same as sugar and white bread. Keep in mind this is for plain unsweetened yogurt not the sugary yogurts that most people eat.
So keep in mind when choosing your protein sources, that dairy foods will produce much more insulin than meat or eggs.

Another reason why dairy should be limited is because there are proteins in dairy that closely mimic the proteins found in the human body. These proteins can trigger a number of autoimmune conditions such as asthma, allergies, arthritis, psoriasis, etc. Dairy consumption is also linked to acne. I have found that for many people simply removing dairy relieves their allergies pretty quickly.

So is there any dairy that is acceptable? I would say that if you are going to have any dairy that the best choices would be the full fat options such as heavy cream, butter, and hard cheeses. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when consuming these products though. Since these products do contain a lot of fat they can be filled with toxins. When I talk about toxins with most people they completely disregard this topic and think it does not matter but I can tell you that reducing your toxic load makes a huge difference in a fat loss or muscle building program because toxins can disrupt hormones. Just keep in mind that the average person today encouters about 500 different toxins per day. Fat is where toxins are stored so it is important to choose cream, butter, and cheese from organic sources. If you consume butter from a cow that was fed antibiotics and sawdust you are also consuming those things. If you can find dairy from grass fed cows it is even better because the quality of the fats will be better and there will probably be a much lower level of toxins in the food. One special note about cheese is that cheese is one of the most common food intolerances(food intolerances will stimulate a release of cortisol in response to the food). For this reason many people would also get better results if they eliminated cheese as well.

What about my bones? This is usually the next question that comes up. Will your bones become brittle if you reduce your dairy consumption. Consider the fact that in the U.S. we consume more dairy than any other country in the world and we also have the highest incidence of osteoporosis. Calcium is not the whole story when it comes to building bones. Magnesium and vitamin D are just as important for building bones as calcium and people today are much more likely to be deficient in these two nutrients than calcium. The other factor that most people don't consider when thinking about bone health is stress. If you have high stress levels then you are going to release large amounts of cortisol and cortisol breaks bones down. In Chinese medicine the health of your bones is related to the health of your kidneys(which is the same meridian line that produces cortisol). So I would say the best thing you can do for your bones is to relax and get a good nights sleep. For those that are still worried about getting enough calcium I would say that you can get plently of calcium from things like leafy greens and salmon, and the calcium in these foods is actually much more absorbable(without the insulin load).