Cheese

Decomposition Of Milk

     Cheese is made by coagulating milk, usually with the help of an added coagulant such as rennet; stirring and heating the curd; draining off the whey and collecting or pressing the curd.  Then follows a long curing or “ripening” operation, similar to the process of composting leaves, during which the major nutrients undergo a form of decomposition due to the action of bacteria. Factors responsible for nutritional changes in milk used in manufacture of cheese are:

1. The method of curd coagulation

2. The extent of whey removed

3. The conditions of the ripening process,

such as length, maintenance temperature,

types of germs and fungi causing the nutrient

decomposition, etc.

     After the proteins are coagulated by rennet or lactic acid formed during fermentation by bacteria, the whey is separated.  Losses of milk nutrient are greatest in the whey separation stage.  One-third of the calcium is lost, 25% of the protein, 75% riboflavin, 85% thiamine, 90% niacin, and about 100% vitamin C are lost.  These losses occur both in hard cheese and cottage cheese.  Cottage and creamed cheese contain only 20% of the calcium and phosphorous of the original milk.  Any vitamins contributed by the growth of molds is insignificant, since they remain on the surface and are trimmed away.

     During the fermentation or curing of cheese, a mixed group of microoganisms grows in the milk curd, affecting the flavor and firmness of the cheese.  Protein, fat, and carbohydrates are the major nutrients affected during the curing process.  The protein portion of cheese is fermented with formation of peptides, amines, indoles, skatole, and ammonia.  Migraine headaches can be caused by tyramine, one of the amines produced in cheese.  Certain of the amines can interact with the nitrates present in the stomach to form nitrosamine, a cancer-producing agent.  The fat in cheese is hydrolized to irritating fatty acids: butyric, caproic, caprylic, and longer carbon chain fatty acids.  Some of the changes that occur in fats and cholesterol upon aging are of a nature as to render them dangerous to health.  American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition 1979  Three forms of oxidized cholesterol that occur with aging, and cause very rapid damage to artery walls may be found in common foods such as lard, ripened cheese, pancake mix, powdered eggs, and custards.  One infant formula was shown to contain a form of oxidized cholesterol.  One pioneer nutrition writer, E.G. White counseled in 1868, “Cheese should never be introduced into the stomach.”  CDF 386  Nobody would think of spoiling other foods before eating them; Nor does it do anything good for the already questionable wholesomeness of milk to spoil it.

     The carbohydrate of milk, mainly lactose, is converted to lactic acid by putrification.  Most of the products of fermentation are toxic and irritating, including the esters, the acids, and certain of the amines, such as tyramine and nitrosamine.

RENNET AND RIPENING

          Rennet Use in the curdling of milk for cheese making is obtained from the whole stomach lining of calves, lambs, kids or pigs.  The flesh of the animals stomach lining is ground, the enzyme contained with the lining being the active portion.  Since           cottage cheese and cream cheese are not “ripened” it seems reasonable to some that these products can be safely used.  They are safe, however, only if free from disease-producing organisms, heavy metals, detergents, antibiotics, cancer viruses, and other undesirable substances found in milk.  In this day of expanding diseases in animals, and expanding processes of manufacture and marketing it is highly unlikely that rennet is free from the diseases that can be transmitted from such meat items as steak and pork chops.  “Children are allowed to eat flesh meats, spices, butter, cheese, pork, rich pastry, and condiments generally...These things do their work of deranging the stomach, exciting the nerves to unnatural action and enfeebling the intellect.”  CDF 350

     Cheese washer’s disease, a hypersensitivity pneumonia, and “cheese reaction,” a characteristic disease of sever hypertension, headache, palpitations, neck pain and occasional intra-cranial hemorrhage and heart-failure are caused by tyramine and other presser amines which are natural constituents of ripened cheese.  The disease is much more likely to occur in persons taking an antidepressant.  Six patients in which diabetic neuropathy was diagnosed ate cheese and subsequently broke out in severe facial sweating illustrating the influence of the pressor amines on the general body physiology.  Chocolate, alcohol, and pickles may also provoke sweating after eating.

POLIO VIRUSES AND CHEDDAR CHEESE

     Polio viruses can survive in cheddar cheese throughout the life of the product.  Most cheeses are made of unpasteurized milk.  Salmonella, Staphylococci, and Brucella organisms can survive long periods in the cheese.  A number of outbreaks of disease, as well as food poisoning, have been traced to cheese and milk powder.  Enterotoxin A Staphylococcus aureus persisted for over three years in cheddar cheese made with normal or inhibited starter.  Journal of Dairy Science.

     In 1947, it was felt that attention should be drawn to lack of control of supervision of the manufacture and sale of cheese.  Numerous epidemics in the United States and elsewhere could be traced to it.  In the order of incidence the epidemics were as follows: food poisoning, typhoid, gastroenteritis, diarrhea, and botulism.  The situation is not much better today.  Science News

Hunger And Appetite As Related To Milk

APPETITE IS CULTIVATED

     Hunger and appetite are two entirely different mechanisms of the neurophysiology.  The former is a natural instinct, but the later is an acquired characteristic.  Hunger is painful and can be relieved by eating very, very small amounts of food, especially voluminous foods like milk.  Appetite is a cultivated characteristic, but its correct development must be accomplished by repeated stimulation from hunger.  Occasional hunger is essential to proper development of appetite and its control.  Excessive appetite in later childhood or in adulthood can be developed by excessive milk consumption, prolonged hunger, or by early malnutrition.  It is our belief that excessive milk drinking in childhood initially depresses the appetite, then encourages a rebound appetite of such large proportions that excessive milk drinking often occurs in these adults, the final outcome being an inordinate craving for milk and milk products.

MILK APPETITE MAY BE AN ALLERGY

     The mechanism for the large appetite for milk according to some of the recently developed theories on food allergies, is that cravings can develop for those things which injure one, and, of course, those foods to which one becomes allergic cause injury to the body.  The early feeding of milk is highly likely to be the cause of so much milk sensitivity.  Drinking milk in infancy promotes multicell obesity and may cause the child to have the stage set for his life long fight with overweight.  To help correct these health and feeding problems, the great curtailment of the use of milk seems a reasonable answer.

A.                      & C. Thrash

     In the mid-thirties, a virus discovered by Bitner was found in the milk of a cancer-susceptible strain of mice.  The tumors could be prevented or greatly reduced by taking the offspring of a susceptible strain of mice from the mother immediately after birth and transferring them for nursing to foster mothers of a cancer-resistant strain.  The Bitner mouse factor, a heavy particle with “virus like dimensions” is now recognized to be a cancer virus particle and the cause of the continuing high incidence of cancer in that strain of mice.  It has been shown that males could transmit the virus to virus-free females at mating.

     It has long been confirmed that a particle of virus causes cancer in the breast in mice.  As long ago as 1942 and earlier, investigators have had sufficient evidence to state as follows:  “it has been established that an “influence” contained in the breast milk of mice of high mammary cancer strains is important in determining the development of mammary cancer in these stocks.”   Since the work in 1942, this “influence” has been shown to be a virus.

     Budding “C”-type viral particles have been found in lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) recovered from the blood of normal and leukemic cattle.  similar viruses have been found in the lymphocytes of dairy milk.  Virus-like particles have also been found in milk, in tissue biopsies, and in cell cultures derived from leukemic cows.

DOES THE VIRUS CONTROL THE TYPE OF CANCER PRODUCED?

     Polyoma virus produces many different types of cancers (salivary gland, breast, kidney, thymus, thyroid, adrenal, and stomach), and effects many different types of laboratory animals (hamster, rat, guinea pig, rabbit, and mouse).  The virus can be spread through saliva and body excreta, and is passed vertically through the milk.  Laboratory workers who have worked with the virus for long periods show antibodies in the blood.  The wart viruses (papilloma) of rabbit, dog, cow, horse and man are similar in structure and probably represent an example of one virus infecting different hosts.  Human adenovirus has caused adenovirus-type tumors in newborn hamsters, furnishing evidence of the cancer-producing potential of a human virus.  In fact, at least eight of the 31 known human adenoviruses are tumor-inducing in newborn hamsters.

     Few researchers doubt any longer that viruses are a primary cause of cancer in man, since transmission of cancer viruses to primates and other mammals has been proven.  Virologist Freidrich Deinhardt of St Luke’s Hospital in Chicago said “It would indeed be surprising if the Almighty had made man alone among primates immune to this agent.”  Medical World news   October 17, 1969