Happy Food Day!

It's FOOD DAY! We love growing it in our garden, we love having a family dairy that produces milk to help feed many and we love raising natural beef on our farm, here in northern California.  My life revolves around food; I prepare three meals a day, every day to feed my family, I enjoy blogging about it, teaching 4H cooking is rewarding, I so enjoy my nights out with the girls that always involve eating fabulous food, and I love attending food based events like the upcoming Foodbuzz Festival and the KACF Farm Fresh Tour I recently went on.

Today marks the first FOOD DAY event, sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest {CSPI}.  The goals of the event focus on health and wellness, agricultural and environmental sustainability and food security.

CSPI’s co-founder, Michael Jacobson is known for his favoritism towards plant-based food. But in the CSPI’s July/August 2011 issue of Nutrition Action newsletter, I read a special feature on "Dairy" by David Schardt and was pleased to read and pleasantly surprised a report coming from CSPI actually showed the health benefits of milk. 

Thank you to CSPI for doing some research on dairy and publishing it in your newsletter.

Some of what I read in the newsletter included a study on lactose intolerance by Purdue University’s Dennis Savaiano, who has been studying lactose intolerance for 30 years. His study concludes; many people who believe they are lactose intolerant can adjust to consuming dairy foods without digestive discomfort.

He advises to:

• Limit lactose to no more than 12 grams {8 oz of milk} at a time.

• Consume lactose with other foods to slow down the transit of the sugar through your intestines and give it more time to be digested.

• Eat dairy foods regularly so that your intestinal bacteria remain adapted to digesting lactose.

Another interesting portion of the article was in regard to colon cancer. A panel of experts convened by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research found, “Milk probably protects against colorectal cancer.”

“We don’t know whether it’s the calcium or something else in milk that may be lowering the risk,” says researcher John Baron of the University of North Carolina.

Calcium is most likely the reason, “it’s the only nutrient that has been shown in randomized clinical trials to prevent the development of neoplasms or tumors in the colon,” Baron explains.


As 5th generation family dairy farmers, every day is FOOD DAY. Every day, we take pride that the milk we produce delivers so many essential nutrients for good health, including calcium, potassium and protein. High quality milk begins with taking good care of our cows and from the dairy to you, milk goes through strict quality controls to ensure freshness, purity and great taste.

I was down at the milking parlor yesterday, a beautiful warm, sunny autumn day.   Each of our 200 milking Holsteins take about 8-10 minutes each, to be milked.  This happens twice a day.   Each cow produces approximately four gallons of milk per milking session, eight gallons in a 24 hour period.  As they're being milked, they are offered some grain to snack on to keep them content and satisfied, as you can see in the photo below.

Thank you for taking time out of your busy day to leave a comment. I love to hear from you! Have a fantastic day!

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