The Better Baby Book (7 page)

Other mushrooms, like portobello mushrooms, taste good and appear to be harmless. Still others are hallucinogens, and some are deadly poisonous. We think it's okay to use medicinal mushrooms to build up immune support before pregnancy. However, we avoided all mushrooms during pregnancy because there are so many unknowns.

Pasteurized, Homogenized, or Conventional Dairy (Except Butter)

When we say
dairy
, we mean anything made from milk from cows, goats, and sheep, except butter. This includes milk, cheese (including cottage cheese and cream cheese), yogurt, sour cream, half and half, light cream, heavy cream, buttermilk, and ice cream. “Conventional” dairy is any dairy product that has not come from grass-fed, organically raised animals.

Pasteurization

The sale of raw dairy products is illegal in all states except California and Washington at the time of this writing because raw milk is, on rare occasions, contaminated with harmful pathogens that can compromise health. As a result, all dairy you'll find in any grocery store in the United States (except California and Washington) is pasteurized, or “cooked,” dairy, including organic products from grass-fed cows.

Pasteurization, in which milk is heated to 150 degrees Fahrenheit for about thirty minutes and immediately stored at temperatures lower than 55 degrees Fahrenheit, is intended to reduce the risk of milk contamination substantially. But it also destroys most of the nutritional value of the milk, killing beneficial probiotics, denaturing (deforming) milk proteins, and transforming milk into an unhealthy substance that behaves like a clogging, irritating glue inside the body. The result is that what most Americans call “milk,” and mistake for a healthy source of calcium and vitamin D, is actually linked to a host of health risks.

Pasteurization Destroys the Nutrients in Milk

Research has found that pasteurization reduces the vitamin content in milk, including vitamins C, A, and B complex. It transforms the lactose sugars found in milk into beta-lactose sugars, which are far more rapidly absorbed into the body. This rapid absorption causes sharper spikes in blood sugar and insulin and stronger swings in energy levels. Much of the calcium in pasteurized milk is useless to the human body; this might explain the observations in the mid-1930s that children fed raw milk had no tooth decay while children who drank pasteurized milk did have tooth decay. Pasteurization also destroys 20 percent of milk's natural iodine content. Considering that this has been known since the 1930s, it's a little surprising how few people know it.

Pasteurized Milk Can Cause Health Problems

The consumption of pasteurized milk has been linked to neurological disorders like autism. Casein, the primary protein found in milk, is permanently altered during the pasteurization process and becomes very difficult for the body to break down and digest. It is neurotoxic when present in high quantities.

Homogenization

Homogenization is a process that chemically alters milk so the cream no longer separates. Milk naturally contains xanthine oxidase (XO), a harmful enzyme involved in the production of uric acid that has been linked to oxidative stress. When nonhomogenized milk is consumed, the body is typically able to break down XO and prevent it from entering the bloodstream. Homogenized milk, however, contains XO that is surrounded with fat globules. In this form, XO makes its way into the bloodstream, and when this happens, it promotes cardiovascular disease.

Opium in Milk?

If you choose to consume raw milk products, be aware that the breed of cow is an important factor in milk selection. Milk from Holstein cows (“A1” cows) contains significant amounts of a dangerous protein called beta-casomorphin-7 (BCM-7), which is an opiate and can pose health risks. BCM-7 has been linked to autism, diabetes, and other diseases. Jersey, Asian, and African cows (“A2” cows) produce milk that contains only negligible amounts of BCM-7. It's entirely impractical to find this kind of milk since manufacturers don't tell you what cows made your milk, unless you're shopping at a small, local dairy. The vast majority of cows in the United States are A1-producting Holsteins.

If You Must Have Milk, Choose Organic Milk from Grass-Fed Cows

If you are simply unwilling to give up your dairy products during pregnancy, we strongly suggest that you find and use raw, organic milk products from grass-fed cows and consume them only when they're very fresh. If milk isn't from grass-fed cows, it's surely from grain-fed cows and thus poses all of the usual risks of grain. For example, mycotoxins are found in more than 10 percent of conventional creams. In the United States, milk that isn't organic usually comes from cows that were given recombinant bovine growth hormone, which has been linked to health problems, including cancer.

Is Milk Worth It These Days?

Because of the risk of contaminated raw milk and the health problems that pasteurized milk causes, we avoided dairy products during both pregnancies and continue to avoid them now. Our primary reason, aside from the research, is our own experience: we've enjoyed great health and have had wonderfully healthy babies without a drop of dairy products (except butter). Raw milk certainly has its health benefits, especially probiotics. But in the United States these days, raw milk is usually expensive (eight dollars per gallon is standard), it's hard to find, and it spoils quickly.

Why Is Butter Healthy, but Not Milk?

Milk proteins (including casein and BCM-7), which are the most harmful parts of milk, are present in butter only in very small quantities. What little milk protein remains in butter has been enzymatically modified during the butter fermentation process and isn't so unhealthy anymore. Dave is allergic to dairy protein but can eat butter without a problem. If people are sensitive to butter, they can often eat ghee. Butter is also low in mycotoxins—less than 2 percent of conventional butter is contaminated with mycotoxins. Some butters are much healthier than others. Organic butter from grass-fed cows is the healthiest. We cover it in the next chapter.

Cheese

Cheese is high in toxins and contains lots of denatured (cooked) casein, and some cheeses pose a risk of listeriosis. This is especially true of soft cheeses like brie, camembert, and feta; blue-vein cheeses such as Roquefort, Gorgonzola, and Stilton; and Mexican-style queso fresco, queso blanco, and panela.

All cheeses are made with yeast, other fungi, or bacteria, or all three. These organisms form toxins in the cheese that kill other organisms and prevent them from competing for the food source. These toxins also pose a threat to people. For instance, Roquefort cheese, made with the
Penicillium roqueforti
fungus, has a toxin in it called roqueforticin. Each brand of cheese and even each batch can have a different mix of fungi from the environment. This makes it very difficult to know if any particular cheese contains harmful amounts of toxins from bacteria or mycotoxins. Mycotoxins are found in more than 40 percent of conventionally produced cheeses.

Soft cheese and blue-vein cheeses are susceptible to contamination with
Listeria monocytogenes
, a harmful strain of bacteria found in water and soil. On occasion,
Listeria
is found in raw foods, especially raw meat and dairy products. Cooking or pasteurization kills
Listeria
. In the case of pasteurized soft and blue-vein cheeses,
Listeria
may actually be reintroduced between manufacturing and packaging. This is also a common threat with deli meats and reheated cooked foods, which we also discuss in this chapter.

Caffeine and Decaffeinated Products

There's lots of research showing that caffeine is unhealthy for mother and baby. When a pregnant woman consumes caffeine, even if not in excess, it has a noticeable effect on her fetus. Although an adult can break down caffeine rather quickly, a developing fetus has a much harder time. Since caffeine easily crosses the placenta, this means that caffeine easily builds up in the baby's body over time, even if the mother isn't consuming very much every day. Sustained exposure to excess caffeine can upset a fetus, raising the heart rate and causing squirming and discomfort in the womb. Caffeine also decreases blood flow to the placenta and causes the mother to absorb less iron and calcium from the foods she eats.

The risks of caffeine for a baby extend beyond pregnancy itself. It's suspected that women who consume more than 300 milligrams of caffeine (three cups of coffee) per day have more trouble conceiving. Caffeine also makes its way into breast milk and can cause the baby to become irritable and have trouble sleeping.

Decaffeinated coffee has also been linked to birth complications. We believe that mycotoxins are responsible. Coffee and tea (especially black tea) are commonly contaminated; one study found mycotoxins in more than 90 percent of tested coffee samples.

It turns out that caffeine is a natural antifungal. When caffeine is removed from coffee or tea, mold is able to grow more easily. Tests done on decaffeinated coffees found them to be much higher in mycotoxins. From this perspective, the Swiss Water Process of decaffeination isn't any safer—when it comes to avoiding mycotoxins, the removal of the caffeine
is
the problem!

Garlic and Onions

Garlic and onions are known to desynchronize brain waves. A person's reaction time after eating garlic has been found to be two to three times slower than beforehand. For this reason, doctors recommend that pilots avoid garlic before flying. James Hardt, a psychologist who is a pioneer in EEG brain study, found that eating garlic and onions caused his study subjects to have lower levels of alpha brain waves. Alpha waves create the relaxed, alert, “in the zone” state that's associated with meditation and easy learning. In addition, a wide variety of Eastern medical traditions stress using garlic only for medicinal reasons, as regular use leads to anxiety.

Garlic does have health benefits; for example, it boosts immune function by killing unhealthy gastrointestinal microbes and is known to have cardiovascular benefits. Most of these benefits are available only in fresh raw garlic that has been finely chopped or crushed recently. This means that other forms of garlic—including dried, bottled, pickled, roasted, and in the form of supplements aren't very useful, yet they still contain neurotoxins.

We found it easy enough to get these benefits from other foods and avoid the neurotoxins at the same time. For example, vitamins D3 and C boost immune function, iodine combats infection, and ginger and hawthorn berry extract promote cardiovascular health.

Most Seafood

Before industrialization, fish was one of the healthiest things you could eat for your baby. Most fish is rich in protein, vitamin D, and omega-3. Because of modern pollution, however, most fish now contains dangerous levels of mercury.

Coal power plants across the United States expel about forty tons of mercury into the air every year. It settles on bodies of water and gets into the fish. If a pregnant woman eats even one serving of contaminated fish, her baby can suffer neurological damage. If you've eaten a lot of fish in the past, we recommend getting your mercury level measured and following our techniques for detoxing heavy metals (see chapter 13) before, not during, pregnancy.

Wild Caught Fish to Avoid

The FDA recommends avoiding shark, swordfish, tilefish, and king mackerel during pregnancy. Other studies have found unsafe levels of mercury in catfish, cod, crab, Great Lakes salmon, halibut, lake whitefish, largemouth bass, mahi mahi, marlin, pike, pollock, sea bass, tuna (steaks or canned), walleye, white croaker, and all shellfish (lobster, clams, oysters, mussels, squid, scallops, and shrimp). The studies also found mercury in the following species, though at a lower level: black or red grouper, bluefish, bonito, flounder, lake trout, orange roughy, perch, porgy, red snapper, rockfish, sole, and yellowtail.

The Truth about Farmed Fish

Like commercial beef, farm-raised fish is often raised on grain feed. This results in the omega-3 fatty acids becoming malformed and mostly devoid of benefit. Farm-raised fish are also fed conventionally grown grains that contain harmful pesticides and mycotoxins and might be GMOs. Farmed salmon in particular is fed soy and rendered poultry litter (that's used henhouse bedding, complete with chicken manure!), given high doses of pesticides and antibiotics, and dyed so it looks more pink.

Unless the package says “wild,” a salmon product is probably farmed using these methods (note: “fresh” is not “wild”). Farmed GMO salmon is being considered for approval by the FDA, and even though there haven't been any studies done on the health effects yet, we'd certainly recommend avoiding it.

If you know a local fish farmer who raises fish the exact same way they grow in the wild, then farmed fish can be a good, mercury-free way to enjoy fish and get the health benefits. Unfortunately, we haven't yet found a fish farmer who does this.

Safe Fish

At the time of this writing, there are still several species of wild caught fish that aren't usually contaminated with mercury: flounder, haddock, Pacific sockeye salmon, Petrale sole, sardines, wild tilapia, and wild freshwater sport fish like trout. In the next chapter, we explain why these fish are your best choice.

Cured and Precooked Meats

Cured meats or any precooked meat, including deli meats and hot dogs, often contain nitrates or nitrites, which are preservatives that prevent oxidation (discoloration) of the meat. Sodium nitrate is most common. Nitrates themselves aren't too toxic, but when they're ingested, they convert to nitrites and disrupt cellular respiration (the ability of a cell to create energy).