Milk is a universal food substance. Milk represents the basic food, which may serve as a universal creator energy in people of all ages and positions in life. Throughout all cultures and all of history, milk has been consumed – animal and human milk, for the nutrition of people. However, too many people become ill through the inappropriate use of modern milk and milk products.
The Mystery of Milk Formation
Many consider milk as an animal product and so the lacto-vegetarian diet is regarded as not true vegetarian. The mystery is that milk is between that of the animal and plant. Milk formation occurs in animals (and humans) with warm blood as [syntax not clear] a phenomenon in earthly animal and human life. It is a metamorphosis, a transmutation of the process of blood formation.
The soul ‘lives’ in the blood and so strongly manifest in the production of blood. Animal soul forces are consumed with eating of their flesh. These soul forces are not allowed to partake the formation of milk. Instead, the inner world of forces in milk formation is led to the periphery, the outside edge of the body to the mammary gland. Here it is only the weakest expression of the animal process. Milk therefore comes close to the same kind of process expressed by green plants, which are devoid of inner nature. Yet in plants too, we also see a number a species, which produce a milky liquid that flows through the entire plant
The female organism accomplishes milk production by special organs – the mammary glands. From the anatomical point of view, the mammary glands appear as a complex of modified sweat glands. As with sweat formation, there is always a sense process preceding production, such as fear in the production of perspiration. This reveals an inner process which is made into something outwardly visible. One can say that the whole mother lives in the mother’s milk.
Breasts in both boys and girls develop similarly until puberty; they are retarded in the boys and undergo a significant development in females. Nonetheless, their final development is not reached in females until pregnancy and childbirth.
Milk in foetal nourishment
Milk production does not magically arrive at the birth of the child. We have here something that has merely changed its location within the human organism. The nutrition processes in the mother’s organism which went to the foetus before birth through the placenta, afterwards go to the breasts.
But milk formation does not happen with the leaving of the foetus at birth, but rather with the expulsion of the placenta. If even part of the placenta remains in the uterus, proper milk production hardly comes about. That is to say, only when the mother’s appendages have ceased their ‘milk-forming function’ in the womb – when they are physically eliminated – can milk formation ‘move up a level’ to the breast. How often is the incomplete expulsion of the placenta a consideration in the inability of the mother to produce of milk? Sadly, rarely.
The Milk of Human Kindness
Humans differ from animals in the location of the breast, in the upper part of the body – the region of the heart and the centre of rhythmical breathing. In animals the mammary glands are in the lower regions. Breast milk in the female human is thus linked to the love of the heart – the milk of human kindness.
James Tyler Kent (1849-1916), the eminent homoeopath, comments on the remedy made from canine milk Lac-c, that mother’s milk awakens the sleeping forces in children. In other words, in addition to the nutrient of milk for growth, the forces in milk awaken the consciousness (the sleeping spirit) in the child. Mother’s milk is the only substance that does this.
Bunge’s rule
Gustav von Bunge in 1874 published the first analysis of human milk and of animals. This led to Bunge’s rule – that nutrients in milk are proportional to the growth of the offspring – fast growing animals have a high concentration of protein and ash (minerals). We have come to know of this rule in the saying– cow’s milk is for calves and mother’s breast milk is for babies.
Bunge concluded early in his research “One cannot replace mother’s milk with an artificial formula without harming the infant.” He saw in such ‘artificial nutrition’ a sign of degeneration and lack of conscience in many mothers. Many a time I have met a young mother who has presented an ill child and upon asking whether the baby was breast-fed being given the reply: “I chose not to.” How I weep for modern humanity!
The bottle is an ever-popular solution. Equally for the mother who has insufficiency of milk, since little is ever written about the matter of how to improve, or the factors which influence, the flow of breast milk.
The rate of growth of children fed on artificial nutrition is higher than breast fed babies. But this growth rate comes at a price. Educators observe that accelerated physical growth is at the expense of psychological/mental maturity.
What also needs to be taken into account is the observation ‘a child raised on mother’s milk will still be vigorous later, when 65, 66 years old. A child raised on cow’s milk will be calcified when 65, 66 years old.’ The hardening (sclerotic) degenerative processes of disease we are now seeing, the major health crisis of circulation and arthritis in the population, will grow even more markedly as the formula-fed babies reach this age.
The Unique Quality of Milk
Bunge concluded ‘that the composition of milk is one on the greatest wonders of nature’. With breast milk the mother passes on to the child only that which the infant can utilise. Additionally breast-feeding is an instinctive regulator of the child’s intake. Milk is unique in the ability to provide warmth through the nature of its fat. Milk fats are globular. There are 1.5 – 3 billion fat globules per millilitre of cow’s milk - an enormous sum. The fat globules of human milk are smaller than that of cow’s milk. This is significant for its digestibility, for even in the small intestines, fat must be in the smallest droplets in order to be digested.
The nature of milk fat – butter – is unique and has been employed in the nutrition of all peoples – but particularly in the colder regions of the globe. For the Europeans, dairy produce has been used as an adjunct to the diet for centuries. The warming nature of butter, the ease with which it enters our organism can be illustrated with reference to the use of butter by arctic explorers. An intrepid explorer in a television documentary told of the effects of eating a bar of butter. He could immediately feel the butter warming his entire body – most comforting in the artic temperature.
Butter has uniqueness beyond chemistry – butter making is an ancient process, once an art – now a manufacturing technique. In the light of the modern ‘scientific’ development of spreads from oil seeds, and the synthetic, overstated nature of these products, one could well (or one must) rely upon the most traditional and universal of foods – butter.
Modern Milk and allergies
Ancient humanity inspired the breeding of dairy cattle for the universal food of milk, but not for meat. The breeding over the millennia has altered the nature of the animal more in alignment with the human form. This is why the cow is revered as a holy animal in old India and still today. The milk does take on the character of mother’s milk but not to the same degree and perfection.
However, the dilemma of modern dairy milk production is in the treatment of the animal – the keeping and the feeding. Cows must be free to move to stimulate the limbs and be given enough herbage to stimulate the natural forces in the animal and then quality milk is produced. The many allergies and intolerances now experienced by children and adults alike is not a problem of milk in no longer being a universal food supplement, but a problem of agriculture and milk treatment processes. Unhealthy cows in confined spaces, fed poor quality food, produce unhealthy milk. Modern cows do not even see the light of day, being confined to barns on concrete floors. Hay, as of old, is not even given as bedding.
Modern animal milk has nearly 400% more pesticides than an equivalent sample of grains or vegetables. Human milk too, especially of women who eat meat, contains considerably more pesticide residues than the milk of other animals, plus heavy metals, steroids and antibiotics.
Homogenisation of milk makes the fat in milk nearly indigestible. Some researchers now feel that homogenised milk may play a role in vascular degeneration. Children as young as three, are exhibiting fatty deposits in their arteries. We must also consider other factors in the diet – excess sugar, excess proteins, poor quality fats (hydrogenated fats, processed oils) and poor quality denatured foods, universally known as junk but still eaten by all.
One myth used to promote the consumption of dairy milk is that of the calcium factor. Indeed, the presence of calcium in breast milk is a vital importance for the growth of the infant. But for the weaned and growing child and adult, abundant calcium comes from the vegetable and grains of the natural whole foods diet. See The Spirit of Calcium, part two, this issue and Babies, Breast Feeding & Nutrition Guidelines for Growing Children, issue #6, Autumn 2005.
Numerous researchers have found that the formula fed child is unable to digest the foreign proteins of these ‘milks’ (this includes soy based ‘milks’) and intimate that this is the cause of allergy problems in children. “Most formula fed infants developed symptoms of allergic rejection to cow milk proteins before one month of age. About 50-70% experienced rashes or other skin symptoms, 50-60 percent gastrointestinal symptoms, and 20-30 percent respiratory symptoms. The recommended therapy is to avoid cow's milk.”
According to the USA meta-study Milk Allergies, “Cow’s milk allergy, mainly a disease of infancy, is usually manifested within the first two or three months of life. … No age, however, is exempt, and milk allergy may be first detected during adolescence or adulthood." A 1997 report on food allergies in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that cow’s milk allergies tend to manifest in children in their infancies. Recommended therapies for food allergies include "strict removal of the offending allergen" or "possibly a diet centred on human breast milk”
Possibly? Medical science will never replicate the milk of human kindness.
©Cornelis van Dalen 2001 revised 2006
References:
Paul Pitchford, Healing with Whole foods, North Atlantic Books, USA
Udo Erasmus, Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, Alive Books, Vancouver, Canada
Gerhard Schmidt, The Essentials of Nutrition, Bio-Dynamic Literature, Rhode Island, USA
Robert Cohen, Milk the Deadly Poison, www.notmilk.com
