E148 Matthew Evans - Milk Marvellous Milk

Futuresteading

MILK…despite the fact that 6 billion people on the planet drink it and we have been for 10,00 years, most of us rarely give it a moments thought. Todays conversation with Matthew Evans takes us swimming in vats of the stuff.
Milk looms large in our culture and it's complex, layered, nutritionally interesting and culturally rich. Milk doesn't just feed us - it affects the very way our DNA behaves, feeds your microbiome, speaks to brain health, beneficial to heart health. Fascinatingly, there's a two way communication between a mother and her baby which is passed through the milk.
Far from innocuous milk is in fact an extraordinarily complex social, political, ethical, environmental, scientific and fashionable elixir. So make yourself a milky coffee and settle in with Matthew while he unpacks all of this with his trademark capability to weave a story while teaching us fascinating things.

Links You'll Love
Bruny Island Cheese
Milk - Matthew Evans

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We talked about:

Mammals giving birth is wonderful but traumatic and fraught
The intimate relationship you have with your milking cow - you’re the midwife, boss, trusted friend, child
We began to milk animals about the same time as we started planting grain
10,000 years worth of accumulated knowledge and reciprocity from an animal
Milking animals take the things a human can’t eat and turn it into high quality protein that we CAN use = the original alchemy
Humans have thrived quite well with dairy in our life.
Why milk ended up at the end of a political and public beating stick
When we expect to buy one of the most complex lipid fat substances at less than bottled water - we’ve lost our way.
It’s fashionable to put the boot into milk but 98% of Australians have cow dairy in their fridge
The Whitlam years of 300ml milk bottles at playlunch ruined a generation of potential milk drinkers
There’s not actually much to say about plant milks - they are ultra processed, nutritionally minimal and our bodies have not evolved to recognise any nutritional benefits. A fan of the tim-tam - but this is how you should think about MYLK - it’s a sometimes food that offers little value.
Homogenisation and pasteurised processing and the impact it has on how we digest it - faster and earlier in the gut’ despite knowing that this is not beneficial to humans
The disservice the dairy industry has done to itself with the introduction of skim milk - deconstructing the amazing product that it actually is. Losing quality
Hippie nirvana of reintroducing us back to our local dairies - its incomparable with anything you can buy in the shops
1 in four farmers in the world have a dairy cow
Raw Milk - forbidden in Australia, it requires licenced dairy processor permits.
When you kill the bad bacteria you also kill the good bacteria.
Cheesmakers will always choose unpasteurised milk
Raw milk is the new moonshine
Think of raw milk as a living thing
Raw milk swaps in a McDonalds carpark for baristas
Transformation of dairy into everything it becomes
Whey makes a great antifungal and puts ALL the resources to use.
He now looks at a bottle of fresh milk diff

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