Happy Monday! If you live in or around Seattle, I would like to congratulate you on surviving yesterday’s hotter-than-predicted temperatures. I can’t believe that it almost got to 100. Things were a bit touch-and-go at my house for a while (read: we were both a bit crankypants). If you too were grumbling about the heat and missed my latest On Nutrition column/article, “Sensitive to dairy? A2 milk may help,” check it out.
By chance, I learned about the theory that A1 beta-casein can cause health problems in some people last year (causing me to fall down the “research rabbit hole” and read pretty much everything in the somewhat limited body of published scientific journal articles on this topic). Many of the bigger claims are not well supported and could be qualified as “pseudoscience” at this point (paging Dr. Oz!), but the few small studies that suggest that some people have digestive upsets when drinking A1 milk but not A2 milk is interesting and promising.
That was my main reason for putting A2 milk on my list of topics to write about at some point. When I had the opportunity to visit Cherry Valley Dairy (love their new website!) in April with a group of dietitians, I was impressed with their operation, as well as with their cheese and cultured butter! When I heard mention that they were converting their herd to A2 milk producers, decided to write about it sooner rather than later.
I would just like to reiterate that if you know you are lactose intolerant, than A2 milk won’t help you…it has lactose, too!