Whenever I’ve read that milk should be avoided as part of a healthy diet, it has always come down to the same thing: milk produces mucus, and the mucus that milk produces is the cause of allergies and frequent colds and all kinds of other evil. This “fact” was really getting on my nerves a last week, as I was trying to plan dinner and kept thinking I’d like to make a salad with raw cheese.
This normally isn’t a source of consternation for me, as we consume only raw milk and raw milk products and are convinced of their health benefits. But last week, we were all in various stages of a cold, and up until then most every nutrition book I’d read, if it didn’t condemn milk outright, at least said that milk should not be consumed during illness because it will make the mucus output worse.
Photo of cheese
So I got online and did a search. And found out about a book written in 1971 entitled Milk: Friend or Fiend by a naturopathic doctor named Paavo Airola. After agreeing that modern pasteurized milk from factory dairies should be avoided at all costs, he reminds his readers that humans have been drinking raw milk for millenia and that raw milk from happy and healthy animals is good for you.
Then he addresses the mucus question. “The mucus scare again!” he says. “…the harm of mucus-forming foods is overemphasized and exaggerated.” A healthy body with no milk sensitivities or allergies, he goes on to say, easily handles any extra mucus caused by milk.
Then he gives a tidbit of information that is grossly overlooked by most nutrition and diet books today: that our body needs mucus in order to keep the linings of our internal organs lubricated, and in fact produces its own mucus for that reason. I kept reading. What came next made me almost fall out of my chair.”Mucus is also needed in great quantities during all acute conditions of infection, such as colds, for example.” [emphasis mine]
I stopped right there. “Sweetheart!” I called to my husband, Jerry. “Listen to this.” I read him what I’ve quoted above.
When I finished, Mr. Analytical and Logical remarked, “Well, and it would make sense that your body would need to replace all the mucus coming out.” As if to prove a point, he sneezed and blew his nose.
My husband, the genius.
We had cheese for dinner that night. And for the record, two days later our snot and phlegm output went down considerably.
Want more information about the health benefits of raw milk? Grab a copy of one of either The Untold Story of Milk, Revised and Updated: The History, Politics and Science of Nature’s Perfect Food: Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows
And if you can’t figure out how to eat healthy on a tight schedule, be sure not to miss my e-book, Weird Eating.