CrossFit NYC: The Black Box

Well, I guess I'm on defense. I'm the president of one of the only two dairy processing facilities in New York State south of Albany.

As me a question, and I'll give you as honest an answer as I can.

Let me start by saying, no, you don't need to drink milk. You also don't need to drink juice, or coffee, or anything else, other than water.

If you read the article, and you believe the author, you may as well also stop eating beef, since virtually every single thing she writes scaring you off of milk is equally applicable to beef.

Hey Hari --- out of interest whose responsibility it is to add the "vitamin" D to milk? Is it the dairy processing facility?

I'm not too much of an activist when it comes to hormones in cattle feed, but in human feed I'm wary, and tend to avoid commercial milk for this reason (and since I worry about how well controlled the concentrations are). Perhaps you could set my mind at ease (or otherwise!)?

(I've heard that only full fat milk is allowed by the FDA to skip adding vitamin D, and only the organic brands tend to actually leave it out --- I like Ronnybrook milk for this reason...)

Beef?

http://www.westonaprice.org/mythstruths/mtbeef.html

In today's NY Post:
QNS. COW CORRALLED
By ERIN CALABRESE
September 19, 2007 -- It was a case of NYPD Moo last night as cops roped a cow that ran through the streets of Queens. The animal was first spotted on Parsons Boulevard near Union Turnpike at 9:43 p.m. Cops spent 90 minutes chasing it through Hillcrest and Briarwood before they saw it cowering in a back yard on 144th Street.

"I feel like I'm at the farm, and I'm in Queens," said Eli Rowen, one of dozens of residents who cheered as cops led the cow onto a trailer. It appeared to be in good condition and was taken to a police horse barn until a proper shelter could be found. "She went peacefully," said a police source, who said cops had no idea where the cow came from.

"She's not talking."

"The fuzzy-headedness that vegetarians mistake for heightened consciousness is really the fog of zinc deficiency."

It's sad when it takes New York's Finest 90 minutes to catch a cow. A horse I could understand, but a cow! How well could the cow have been hiding? How fast could it possibly have been running?

I am personally effected by milk. When I have dairy I get sinus infections etc. I gave it up prob 15yrs ago with occas relapses. Even now I notice sinus problems starting when I have zone bars a few days in a row.

Yes the same situation occurred when I used raw milk and raw yogurt. I have a local coop that sells and could probably bring it in for anyone who might be interested. Its costly but its def the real deal!

As a matter of fact, I remember my childhood full of allergy meds, shots and antibiotics from sinus infections well into my 30s!

The best thing about the whole cow in queens, is the reaction of the people who lived around there... You would have thought it was a damn Sasquatch or Frankenstein coming to eat their children.

Sorry, Hari. Didn't mean to put you on the defensive. Just providing interesting reading for today.

Like this article on Grass Fed livestock.
http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/splendor.html

Sarena-it actually sounds like you are allergic to milk protein. I don't think its the dairy that is "bad". It is just your body's immune system that treats it as if its bad. I bet if you got tested you would test positive for milk allergy (caesin and whey).

Hari-do you see any support for the author's claim that the processing of milk causes dairy allergies? I do not see how she gets from point a to point c. The allergy to dairy is to the milk protein-wouldn't you have the same issue with raw milk? if the author were corrent-wouldn't every pediatric allergist tell the mother of dairy allergic kids to feed them raw milk to solve their problems? And the links to asthma are not because of the milk-they are because people who tend to have food allergies also tend to be asthmatic as part of their genetic profile. You don't get asthma from drinking milk. Sorry but as a mother of two severely allergic kids-one to dairy-stuff like this just bugs me.

Allan E,

The dairy processor is required to add Vitamin D. This is true of all milk, including whole (3.25% butterfat) milk. It may not be true of half & half (about 10% butterfat). I am not aware of a waiver for organic milk or milk processed on small farms, but you may be correct. I'll check. Ronnybrook is a great little company, but I do not believe it is certified as organic.

The hormone you are probably concerned with is rBST, an artificially created hormone that some farmers inject into their cows. rBST occurs naturally in cows. The injection increases the amount of milk the cow produces. There is literally no detectable difference between milk from a cow that has or has not been injected with rBST. There is no way to put two samples of milk in a lab, no matter how well equipped, and determine which is which.

Michelle,

I agree. Milk no more causes people to be allergic to milk than pollen causes people to be allergic to pollen.

The only processing that is done to milk is pasteurization and homogenization. Drinking unpasteurized milk is as rational as eating uncooked eggs. Homogenization is simply shaking the milk to evenly distribute the butterfat. People instinctively do the same thing before they pour orange juice.

Keith the reason it took so long to catch the cows because the donuts were slowing them down. LOL. I know college frat boys who would have caught that cow in less time and tipped it over in 10 secs.

Have you seen the size of the offensive and defensive linemen in top football universities? Beef and milk got those boys that way so it can't be all bad. I'm pretty sure Soy milk and being a vegetarian didn't get TO into the NFL.

You can develop allergies by moving to a different state or not have them when you're a child and develop them when you get older.

2 sides to every story.

Michelle,

I missed the point that the author thinks pasteurization itself causes allergies.

Pasteurization is simply heating milk to 180 degrees for about 15 seconds and then immediately cooling it back down. Even if you were crazy enough to feed a baby raw milk taken from a refrigerator, surely you would heat the bottle and then cool it down before giving it to the baby.

Hari, A calculus nerd and on the Dairy Board, I think we have a monster!

I do not think the author is saying that drinking raw milk will cure allergies that already exist. Although raw buttermilk is supposed to be more tolerable for sufferers of milk allergies than pasteurized buttermilk due to a lower caesin content. I think the point is that drinking a lot of processed milk while pregnant and breast feeding and using formulas made from processed milk might increase the likelihood of developing allergies and asthma as all of the beneficial pro-biotic qualities of the milk are obliterated. Simply forcing a person to consume raw milk at this point won't necesarily reverse the allergy.

Furthermore, I think assuming that doctors would know and just tell you to do something is part of the misplaced faith that we have in modern medicine. Doctors will tell you to eat a low fat diet and lots of whole grains. Doctors will tell you to stop eating beef. Doctors will tell you to do 30 minutes of cardio 3 times per week and avoid lifting heavy objects or doing anything strenuous. Doctors will tell you to avoid squatting which has never been proven to cause injuries but will give you the okay to let your kids play soccer which has been shown to cause 6 injuries per 100 hours of play.

Doctors generally deal with sick people and, since few people practice any preventative care, only deal with those sick people when the condition is critical. Doctors are concerned with getting you patched up and taking your condition from critical to stable. Most of us here (at CrossFit) are trying to work at the other end of the spectrum where we are trying take the average population that is stable and push them over to the end of the spectrum defined as "Fit." A fit person will have all their markers of good health at an above average level: VO2 max, cholesteral, resting heart rate, blood work, liver function, blood pressure, bone density, etc. Whatever indicator you have of "good health and fitness" we want that number to be well above-average. Doctors rarely get to see that side of the spectrum as those of us that are over here on that side of the spectrum have little use of doctors. On the rare occasion that we see a doctor, they marvel at our overall health. Even then when they ask what we do, they shake their heads in disbelief and tell us to be careful and eat more whole grains because what we do falls so far outside of their realm of knowledge.

I have seen far too many doctors that smoke, drink and eat bagels with cream cheese and never exercise or take care of themselves to be convinced that they are not the ones that I want to put in charge of my day-to-day health. Yes, if I need a surgery or prescription for some serious medications, I'll go to a doctor because the drug companies keep them well-informed of the latest drugs. However, when asking a doctor about the benefits of grassfed vs. grainfed or below parallel squats or partial squats you can be sure to get an uninformed response.

Oh, and since I've been doing CrossFit my asthma has been under control. The only thing that gets me to reach for an inhaler is being around cats and dogs. Exercise no longer triggers my asthma. My high school was located on the upper west side right near the reservoir and we used to have to run that for gym class and I would always have asthma attacks. Perhaps if I start drinking more raw milk and eating more grassfed beef the rest of my allergies will go away.

Hari:

this is what the author says: Considering how modern commercial milk is produced and processed, it's no wonder that millions of Americans are allergic to it.

I don't see any support for that proposition. I was wondering if you knew this to be the case.

I love the Again Faster blog. Here's what they have to say on the topic of beautiful women:

http://againfaster.squarespace.com/articles/you-are-beautiful.html

Hari

I think the point is that pasteurization is unnecessary if you are drinking the milk fresh and raw. There are healthy microbes in fresh raw milk and vitamins which are destroyed by pasteurization. The whole point of pasteurization, to my understanding, is making the milk more stable for a longer time so that it can be shipped and stored. In the old days, milk was consumed fresh, daily and pasteurization was unnecessary.

Much of the current push against using anti-biotics is that they do not distinguish from healthy microbes that live in our gut and the microbes that are making us sick. They take the baby with the bathwater. People today are supplementing their diets as much as they can with healthy microbes in yogurts and pro-biotic supplements. In our grassfed, raw milk days, the legend goes, we didn't need such supplementation because our guts were crawling with healthy microbes that kept us strong.

Homogenization is more than mere shaking. Milk that is not homogenized would separate and then have to be re-shaken. There is nothing wrong with that except that people found it weird. If you buy natural peanut or almond butter it separates and people think that's gross so they buy jiffy which has the natural and profitable peanut oil taken out and replaced by hydrolized and homogenized soy/vegetable oils so it appears creamy no matter how long it stays in your cupboard.

People are only in habit of shaking their orange juice because it would naturally separate too. Nowadays orange juice has undergone much of the same treatment so it stay homogenized and doesn't need shaking.

Notice how even the most mild form of exercise, shaking our juice, has been obviated by modern science.

mmmm, pig roast!

http://edlevineeats.seriouseats.com/2007/09/best-public-pig-roast-in-new-york-coming-this.html

Let's focus on the only thing that really matters, people: ridding the world of the abomination called "processed cheese".

Fight the good fight!

Exactly, Ewen! Anything described as "processed cheese food" is neither food nor cheese. I have to admit, though, I ate so much of that crap when I was a kid. Thank God my tastes changed and I learned about what was healthy and what wasn't.

Speaking of junk food, here's an extremely depressing news story:

"Immigrant children struggle with America's junk food"
http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/09/05/kd.adrians.story/index.html

Mmmm, Pig Roast!

I'll have pork on my fork and swine on my mind! I loves me some pig. mmm mmm mmmmmm!!!

"We really would like to encourage immigrant families to continue the kinds of eating that they ate in their country of origin because our studies show that the longer they've been in this country the more likely that their children are going to get fat," Crawford says.

Perhaps people are just allergic to America. Prolonged exposure results in weight gain and diabetes.

cfwu x 3, subbed 5x3 hspu for pushups, foread to floor each rep

22:31, new PR by 3sec.

feet anchored situps, BE done on a big ball w/feet anchored

Non sequitur

Check out August 10, 2003. The progenitor of The Beast.
http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/2003_08.html

For some anatomy fun, set your Tivos for Thursday.
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-09/pl_screen

Hey everyone getting over my cold here. Its a head cold with some throat iritation at this point. Do you guys think I can do Michael since its more of a cal/endurance bodyweight WOD. Or should I wait to get better.

Keith,

"I think the point is that drinking a lot of processed milk while pregnant and breast feeding and using formulas made from processed milk might increase the likelihood of developing allergies and asthma as all of the beneficial pro-biotic qualities of the milk are obliterated."

If the point is that mothers shouldn't drink "processed" milk while breast feeding, then I'm doubtful that there is a shred of evidence to support that conjecture. "Processed" milk is raw milk that has been shaken and briefly heated, before cooling. I can think of no reason that this would make the milk any different than raw milk, except that it is all but guaranteed not to be taitned by, say, e coli or worse.

If the argument is that children who are fed infant formula are more likely to develop health problems then those who are breast fed, then there is little debate. Why this is true may have to do with a host of reasons, many of which may be correlated with rather than caused by the method of feeding (e.g., more affluent mothers are more likely to have the time to breast feed).

I's luv me so po'k! Pass the rib!

Great Article about beautiful women Allison. Think women like the Nasty girls are severely underappreciated. Muscle can be feminine despite popular convention. Jessica Biel and Angela Bassett do it very well.

People made a big fuss about Britney being fat but she was "fat" for what they were Used to, but pretty normal looking for a woman who popped out 2 kids. We got little girls vomitting lunches in school because of that negative skew. Not cool.

And if I hear another person tell me to light light weights for reps to "tone" I am going to hurl processed cheese!

From http://www.realmilk.com/asthma-brucellosis.html

"The second article describes a study carried out by scientists in Salzburg, Austria. Researchers examined the history of allergy, asthma and "atopic sensitization" or skin problems in 812 children, 319 of whom had grown up with a "regular exposure to a farming environment" including the consumption of "farm milk," that is, raw, whole, unprocessed milk.2 The remaining group of 493 non-farming children acted as a control. Frequency of asthma was reduced from 11 percent found in the control group to 1 percent among the farming-exposed children. Similarly, hay fever occurred in only 3 percent of the farming-exposed children, compared with 13 percent of the controls, and atopic sensitization occurred in 12 percent of the farming group and in 29 percent of the controls.

The researchers found that the timing of exposure to the farm environment and raw milk was critical. Those children exposed during the first year of life showed the greatest protective effect. Continual long-term "exposure to stables" until age five years was associated with the lowest frequencies of asthma, hay fever and atopic sensitization."

Interesting

Read the beef article I linked to above to start another debate on E Coli.

Yo where are you getting this stuff from? LOL. Don't post stuff during Thanksgiving! I'm not giving up my sweet potato pie for no one's research!

International talk like a pirate day.

"Subsequent comments on this article3 stress "exposure to stables" as the determining factor but we wonder whether this is any different than exposure to pets in the typical urban home. It is much more likely that consumption of raw milk is the determining factor because this variable can be uniquely determined."

How the authors of the article come to this conclusion is puzzling, since this variable was in fact not studied separately. Exposure to cow dung can also be uniquely determined, but that was not the object of the study. "Much more likely" is convenient when trying to reinforce a prior conclusion.

The article also mentions the risks of raw milk, which like many risks can be mitigated using appropriate means.

Just hand me my bottle of rum and yo-ho-ho I'll be on my way, thankyouverymuch.

There is an almost magical quality that some people associate with things that are “natural.” A previously common and natural cause of death used to be natural childbirth. Nobody misses those days. Modern medicine, cell phones, the Internet, and airplanes are all unnatural, but we can’t live without them.

At some level, there is a backlash. Not one percent of society has the slightest idea how their cell phone works. For most people, the process is basically magic. And if cell phones work by magic, then maybe their transmissions cause brain cancer. Remember that scare?

We live in a world where the rate of technological change is overwhelming, especially when we have to depend on a tiny segment of society to create all this technology. It just keeps getting thrown at us. There is a sequence of fear, acceptance, and finally dependence on each new round of technology. But there is also a desire to draw the line somewhere. To have something that is pure, simple, uncomplicated, and controlled. For that, many people have turned to their food.

I may not be able to survive without my magic Blackberry, but I’ll be dammed if I’m going to have unnatural foods. There is nothing really wrong with this, if it makes people comfortable. It’s extremely profitable for the businesses that are rapidly cornering the organic market. Honestly, do you think Horizon Organic Milk comes from one nice little organic farm somewhere? There is no Horizon Farm.

My reaction to the argument that pasteurization is harmful or takes out some of the goodness in milk is to first try to explain that this is simply not true, but that doesn’t always work. I’m okay with that. People get violently sick from drinking raw milk (how do you really know how fresh it is? You can get sick from listeria in fresh milk. You can get sick from apples eaten a day after they fall of the tree, if they are unwashed. To me the idea of drinking raw milk is indistinguishable from the idea of eating raw eggs. People rebelled against fluoridated water.

If you’re Crossfitting, odds are you’re pretty healthy. You’ll do fine drinking regular milk, raw milk, organic milk, or no milk.

Michael in Warsaw, Poland... on treadmill:
30:11m (first time, so PR!)

Got some funny looks in the hotel gym, but fun nonetheless. Was tough to find space to do situps, too many machines crowded the place.

Don't worry, I'll be back soon. I arrive back in NYC on saturday.

Well I'm pondering the same thing Kevin. Getting over this cold as well (I dont see why we are both sick at the same time, maybe its a Queens thing) and trying to decide to take a few more days off or just push through.

And I'm so glad I don't like milk... Now pork and beef I'm all over, just would be nice to get some good BBQ up here. And sorry Jack, I have yet to have a decent taste of sweet potato pie since I've been here sadly.

pasteurized processed cheese food product is my favorite food group.

cheese whiz!

Justin that just ain't right. We need to find a spot with some damn good sweet potatoe pie somewhere. It must be a Queens thing-didn't come through yesterday because of a stuffy nose, sore throat, and cold sweats! Damn.

Good point Hari-give me my fluridated water and pasteurized milk any day. Doing Crossfit will make you throw it all up at some point anyway.

Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?

Good post, Hari. Reminds me of one of my favorite Simpson's exchanges:

Marge : We're just going to have to cut down on luxuries.
Homer : Well, you know, we're always buying Maggie vaccinations for diseases she doesn't even have.

Came into see if I could do a "lighter" version of "Michael" and that wasn't happening. warmed up with some jump rope and did a set of DU's (did get 47 unbroken)only to run to the bathroom and hack up part of my lung. Painful. If I'm feeling like this from a set of DU's then there's no way I'm getting through an entire WOD.

33:39

2 round sub with back extention and good mornings
remainder as rx'd

third run was super slow due to failing legs

couldn't move for about 20 min after. this sucked.

but i love torture!

I'm dieing a slow death in the mountains of west virgina....