This post is probably more important for those of us who follow Peat's work in a more strict sense, of PUFA avoidance, etc. As many know, I have been low PUFA/peat since 2012, but very low PUFA (under 1 gram per day) for a few years now. And this past year, I have been shooting for around 0.5/0.6 grams of PUFA per day as I experiment with a 'PUFA depletion' type of diet. So for those like me, foods such as skim milk have been a very big staple as skim milk, being only around 0.1-0.2% fat content, is almost void of PUFA. I have been using hydrogenated coconut oil as my main fat source to replace milk fat and keep PUFA low.
Anyway, until fairly recently I have decided to look into giving goat milk a try, providing I can find a low PUFA source of it (skimmed goat milk). Normal goat milk averages about the same fat content as cows milk does, give or take a few grams or less of fat depending on the breed of goat and, more importantly, the diet. But providing the goat isn't poisoned with high PUFA supplements from the farmer, and it sticks to mostly greens/herbs, and some non-soy grains and added vitamins and minerals, then it should be similar to cows milk in PUFA content, and possibly have a little less, according to the research I have done.
My reasoning for giving goat milk a try is that, I must admit, I am a little worried about the long-term effects of folate auto-antibodies from drinking cows milk, as the late forum member @Travis pointed out many months ago on this forum. I have been doing more research on this subject, and while I do think much of the science isn't as clear-cut on this problem in humans as I would like it to be, and therefore it will take more time for the science to make clear of this problem and whether we fully understand the implications, I think it is better safe than sorry in switching to Goat milk. Now, to be clear, I am not anti-dairy and I am at best skeptical of the many criticisms anti-dairy groups have thrown at milk, since many of them could be worked around (for example, switching to A-2 milk to get around the BCM-7 casien issue). And I have done my best to do that, but sadly, there is no practical way to get around the possible auto-antibody issue with cows milk long-term if our understanding on this is correct, short of perhaps expensive folate supplementation in larger doses which may or may not have it's own effects over the long run.
For this reason, I have decided to play it safe and switch to Goat milk, since goat milk does not have the casien or auto-antibody problems cows milk does or may poses. I do not expect any food to be perfect because truth is, no food is perfect. ALL foods give and take, and it is my motto to choose the foods that give the most and take the least, and I think milk is one of those foods, if one can handle it correctly (and that depends on health and metabolic state in my view). That said, I think goat milk is probably closest to healthiest of all the animal foods, or at least is up there, with having the most give and least take. And while I handle cows milk just fine, I do find that I handle goats milk even better, after trying some low fat goat milk for a few weeks.
So that was a brief summary of why I am looking to switch to goat milk from cows milk. Now for the fun part.
Using www.RealMilk.com, I was able to find a good local farmer in my area to source me with high quality raw goat milk. Farmer doesn't feed them PUFA supplements like fish or flaxseed oil --- just corn, barely, greens/herbs/pasture, and vitamins and minerals added to grains, for the most part. So already, it is likely to be closer to cows milk in PUFA content. So now, I must ask myself: is there any way possible to get skimmed goat milk or skim it in a way where it is as close to store-bought skimmed milk as possible?
Well, yes. Meet the cream separator:
These brands of cream separators are popular in Europe, especially eastern/central Europe. They are mostly used by medium to small scale dairy farmers. The company that sells these produce lower tier machines which are built very well and last long, and are made to skim cows, goat, and sheep milk.
I spoke to the company/manufacturer and they verified this information to me, and also verified what they claim, which is, that the machine was built to skim cows/goat/sheep milk in such a way that very little fat is left. How much fat? 0.02%. That is correct. That is very close to the store bought skim milk which is on average 0.01% fat content in the US.
But I wanted to make sure that this was the case from people who have used it. I looked at some reviews from an inferior cream separator, which boasts it can produce milk with 0.05% fat content, which is more, and I saw one person who bought it give it a review and they even went to the lengths of getting their goat milk tested at a laboratory using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, and they said it gave a result of 0.22% (less than one-quarter of one percent) fat! That is not far from the 0.1% fat content of skim milk in the US! The persons Amazon review:
Oh, and by the way, I researched this person and they are a real person and it is most likely not a fake/paid reviewer. (I was able to find personal info about them to confirm)
So we have the manufacturer which built the machinery verify that it was made to yield skim milk with a maximum milk fat content of 0.02% (as it also claims on it's website), and we have someone who bought an inferior/cheaper cream separator which leaves a higher max milk fat content of 0.05% (though it is still a decent brand in of itself too), and even with that brand, the milk sample tested for even less milk fat than the max content of it's machine (0.05%), yielding around 0.22%, which is what this better brand is supposed to yield. So even their machine yielded skim milk with a very low milk fat content.
So what I am left with is goat milk of a max milk fat content of 0.02%! So it is very close to skim milk in PUFA content it appears. Again, Wikipedia has goat milk and cows milk very close in nutrition/PUFA content:
I did do some research on PUFA content of goat milk, some of which showed lower and higher PUFA content, but it was on average a very small difference of a little bit more or less PUFA, and in many of those cases where the goat milk had higher PUFA, it was from them being given very large doses of supplemental PUFA so that it bypassed their digestion. So again, if this is the average of higher fat goat dairy, which is not given a lot of PUFA, like my source, I am thinking it is very close to cows milk in PUFA content.
The only downside is that goat milk costs more, and the machine is kind of expensive, but it is worth it to me as someone who relies on low PUFA skimmed milk and money isn't an issue for me anyway, but it may be different for others as everyones situation is different.
The company that sells these machines including the machine itself can be found here:
Electric cream separator Milky FJ 90 PP
I am ordering in the next few days and will update everyone on how well the goat milk comes out when I use it, and I will compare it to skim cows milk in the net-fat/cream content.
But all in all, it seems that my goat milk will have just a little bit more PUFA than skim milk, since it won't be like the 0.1% cows skim milk, but have a max fat content of 0.2%. So that is still very low PUFA. I am thinking I could still drink half a gallon of skimmed goat milk and still stay well below 1 gram or even 0.5 grams of PUFA from the milk alone with this machine. It seems it will take two servings of skim milk to equal one serving of the skimmed goat milk PUFA content.
So now I have a way to get very low fat/almost fat-free, very low PUFA goat milk that digests well and I do not have to worry about the auto-antibody or Folate Binding Protein issues of cows milk, and no issues with BCM-7.
Thought I would share this with anyone else who is looking for a way to consume probably the lowest fat skim goat milk available, since it seems almost impossible to find skim goat milk in most places. Also, if you cannot source raw goat milk, this machine will also work on store-bought pasteurized goat milk just as well!
The machine I linked to and will buy is around $500 after shipping. If one is looking to get a similar machine and doesn't want to spend that much, there are models that are still good but yield milk with a 0.05% fat content, which is a little more fat and PUFA, but they can get those for around 100$ or a bit more. They have ones that are $3000 and $6000 and up, but those are for larger scale dairy farms that deal in larger volume of milk.
All this thinking about goats lately has gotten me into looking at videos and pics of them and longing for a possible day of owning my own pet goats. These cute guys are growing on me.
Anyway, until fairly recently I have decided to look into giving goat milk a try, providing I can find a low PUFA source of it (skimmed goat milk). Normal goat milk averages about the same fat content as cows milk does, give or take a few grams or less of fat depending on the breed of goat and, more importantly, the diet. But providing the goat isn't poisoned with high PUFA supplements from the farmer, and it sticks to mostly greens/herbs, and some non-soy grains and added vitamins and minerals, then it should be similar to cows milk in PUFA content, and possibly have a little less, according to the research I have done.
My reasoning for giving goat milk a try is that, I must admit, I am a little worried about the long-term effects of folate auto-antibodies from drinking cows milk, as the late forum member @Travis pointed out many months ago on this forum. I have been doing more research on this subject, and while I do think much of the science isn't as clear-cut on this problem in humans as I would like it to be, and therefore it will take more time for the science to make clear of this problem and whether we fully understand the implications, I think it is better safe than sorry in switching to Goat milk. Now, to be clear, I am not anti-dairy and I am at best skeptical of the many criticisms anti-dairy groups have thrown at milk, since many of them could be worked around (for example, switching to A-2 milk to get around the BCM-7 casien issue). And I have done my best to do that, but sadly, there is no practical way to get around the possible auto-antibody issue with cows milk long-term if our understanding on this is correct, short of perhaps expensive folate supplementation in larger doses which may or may not have it's own effects over the long run.
For this reason, I have decided to play it safe and switch to Goat milk, since goat milk does not have the casien or auto-antibody problems cows milk does or may poses. I do not expect any food to be perfect because truth is, no food is perfect. ALL foods give and take, and it is my motto to choose the foods that give the most and take the least, and I think milk is one of those foods, if one can handle it correctly (and that depends on health and metabolic state in my view). That said, I think goat milk is probably closest to healthiest of all the animal foods, or at least is up there, with having the most give and least take. And while I handle cows milk just fine, I do find that I handle goats milk even better, after trying some low fat goat milk for a few weeks.
So that was a brief summary of why I am looking to switch to goat milk from cows milk. Now for the fun part.
Using www.RealMilk.com, I was able to find a good local farmer in my area to source me with high quality raw goat milk. Farmer doesn't feed them PUFA supplements like fish or flaxseed oil --- just corn, barely, greens/herbs/pasture, and vitamins and minerals added to grains, for the most part. So already, it is likely to be closer to cows milk in PUFA content. So now, I must ask myself: is there any way possible to get skimmed goat milk or skim it in a way where it is as close to store-bought skimmed milk as possible?
Well, yes. Meet the cream separator:
These brands of cream separators are popular in Europe, especially eastern/central Europe. They are mostly used by medium to small scale dairy farmers. The company that sells these produce lower tier machines which are built very well and last long, and are made to skim cows, goat, and sheep milk.
I spoke to the company/manufacturer and they verified this information to me, and also verified what they claim, which is, that the machine was built to skim cows/goat/sheep milk in such a way that very little fat is left. How much fat? 0.02%. That is correct. That is very close to the store bought skim milk which is on average 0.01% fat content in the US.
But I wanted to make sure that this was the case from people who have used it. I looked at some reviews from an inferior cream separator, which boasts it can produce milk with 0.05% fat content, which is more, and I saw one person who bought it give it a review and they even went to the lengths of getting their goat milk tested at a laboratory using Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, and they said it gave a result of 0.22% (less than one-quarter of one percent) fat! That is not far from the 0.1% fat content of skim milk in the US! The persons Amazon review:
Oh, and by the way, I researched this person and they are a real person and it is most likely not a fake/paid reviewer. (I was able to find personal info about them to confirm)
So we have the manufacturer which built the machinery verify that it was made to yield skim milk with a maximum milk fat content of 0.02% (as it also claims on it's website), and we have someone who bought an inferior/cheaper cream separator which leaves a higher max milk fat content of 0.05% (though it is still a decent brand in of itself too), and even with that brand, the milk sample tested for even less milk fat than the max content of it's machine (0.05%), yielding around 0.22%, which is what this better brand is supposed to yield. So even their machine yielded skim milk with a very low milk fat content.
So what I am left with is goat milk of a max milk fat content of 0.02%! So it is very close to skim milk in PUFA content it appears. Again, Wikipedia has goat milk and cows milk very close in nutrition/PUFA content:
I did do some research on PUFA content of goat milk, some of which showed lower and higher PUFA content, but it was on average a very small difference of a little bit more or less PUFA, and in many of those cases where the goat milk had higher PUFA, it was from them being given very large doses of supplemental PUFA so that it bypassed their digestion. So again, if this is the average of higher fat goat dairy, which is not given a lot of PUFA, like my source, I am thinking it is very close to cows milk in PUFA content.
The only downside is that goat milk costs more, and the machine is kind of expensive, but it is worth it to me as someone who relies on low PUFA skimmed milk and money isn't an issue for me anyway, but it may be different for others as everyones situation is different.
The company that sells these machines including the machine itself can be found here:
Electric cream separator Milky FJ 90 PP
I am ordering in the next few days and will update everyone on how well the goat milk comes out when I use it, and I will compare it to skim cows milk in the net-fat/cream content.
But all in all, it seems that my goat milk will have just a little bit more PUFA than skim milk, since it won't be like the 0.1% cows skim milk, but have a max fat content of 0.2%. So that is still very low PUFA. I am thinking I could still drink half a gallon of skimmed goat milk and still stay well below 1 gram or even 0.5 grams of PUFA from the milk alone with this machine. It seems it will take two servings of skim milk to equal one serving of the skimmed goat milk PUFA content.
So now I have a way to get very low fat/almost fat-free, very low PUFA goat milk that digests well and I do not have to worry about the auto-antibody or Folate Binding Protein issues of cows milk, and no issues with BCM-7.
Thought I would share this with anyone else who is looking for a way to consume probably the lowest fat skim goat milk available, since it seems almost impossible to find skim goat milk in most places. Also, if you cannot source raw goat milk, this machine will also work on store-bought pasteurized goat milk just as well!
The machine I linked to and will buy is around $500 after shipping. If one is looking to get a similar machine and doesn't want to spend that much, there are models that are still good but yield milk with a 0.05% fat content, which is a little more fat and PUFA, but they can get those for around 100$ or a bit more. They have ones that are $3000 and $6000 and up, but those are for larger scale dairy farms that deal in larger volume of milk.
All this thinking about goats lately has gotten me into looking at videos and pics of them and longing for a possible day of owning my own pet goats. These cute guys are growing on me.
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