Speaker 1: Hi, folks, I am Felicity Harley, host of this body
Speaker 1: and soul pod called Healthy Ish. Sipping and swallowing colostrum.
Speaker 1: Apparently it's what all the celebrities and health and wellness
Speaker 1: influences are doing right now, are you. It's a lettus
Speaker 1: wellness trend. But is the cow's variety really beneficial for
Speaker 1: our health? Especially as an adult? We know the colostrum
Speaker 1: is great for babies. Well Today, chef and food critic
Speaker 1: turned farmer and food activists Matthew Evans joins us from
Speaker 1: his farm in Tazzy. He's written a new book called Milk,
Speaker 1: and he is here to discuss whether colostrums health claims
Speaker 1: are actually legit. Make sure you listening to Extra Healthy
Speaker 1: Ish as well, where we take a deep dive into
Speaker 1: the truth and lies about milk. You can grab that
Speaker 1: wherever you I podcasts. Matthew, thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: on Healthy Today. All the way from a beautiful Tasmania.
Speaker 2: Well pleasure, the sun shining. It's glorious, but happy to
Speaker 2: be inside chatting to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, inside is good. Now I can talk about colostrum
Speaker 1: and your fabulous new book. You write a bit about
Speaker 1: this and obviously there's a lot of buzz about it.
Speaker 1: Celebrities are drinking the cow's variety, powders are selling out,
Speaker 1: and chemists or particularly in the US, the supplements. Now
Speaker 1: you've got a book about milk. What are your thoughts
Speaker 1: on this new wellness trend around colostrum.
Speaker 2: Yeah, look, it's fascinating to me. I guess, colostrum to me,
Speaker 2: like milk is a miracle, Like it's an amazing product.
Speaker 2: It's nutrient dance. It's got so many things that when
Speaker 2: we're first born, it's colostrum that we get in that
Speaker 2: first day, And so I was pretty keen to discover that.
Speaker 2: I guess that colostrums like the milk of milk. It's
Speaker 2: like the nutrient dense version of the nutrient dense liquid.
Speaker 2: So yeah, look, I'm interested that people are taking it.
Speaker 2: It has the potential to do lots of things for us.
Speaker 2: It has things like lactofer and Lactoferren's this sort of
Speaker 2: miracle ingredient that they're trying to work out how to
Speaker 2: recreate in labs that exists in really high quantities in
Speaker 2: human breast milk. It exists in milk, more generally in
Speaker 2: cow's milk, but it's much higher in col colostrum, and
Speaker 2: there's things that can feed our immune system. So the
Speaker 2: sugars in some of that early milk are really good
Speaker 2: at feeding our microbiome, the things that live in and
Speaker 2: on us. So I guess colclostrum has that capacity. And look,
Speaker 2: it seems to be it has the potential to help
Speaker 2: a little bit with some of our immune system. It
Speaker 2: has the potential to help particular with things like diarrhea
Speaker 2: and where you've got a tummy bug, but it's not
Speaker 2: going to be it's not going to do that unless
Speaker 2: you're lacking probably somewhere else in your diet. You know,
Speaker 2: like it's only going to do that if potentially you
Speaker 2: need a little bit of extra help or because you're
Speaker 2: lacking other stuff in your diet. So yes, I think
Speaker 2: it's probably valuable and useful. But you know, whether it's
Speaker 2: anytime anyone latches onto something and said it's the miracle product,
Speaker 2: then you've also got to realize that, well, it might
Speaker 2: be a miracle product for the cow when it's first born,
Speaker 2: but by the time it's pasteurized and dehydrated and put
Speaker 2: into a powder form and put into a capsule in
Speaker 2: a chemist, you know, are what has happened to that?
Speaker 2: It's not. It doesn't have the beneficial bacteria anymore. Some
Speaker 2: of the proteins have been denatured. So yes, it may
Speaker 2: be doing you some good, but is it doing you
Speaker 2: as much good as you think? The jury is still out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, It's interesting, isn't it? How we we latch onto
Speaker 1: something like colostrum. As you said, it's got the nutritional benefits,
Speaker 1: particularly a human colostrum are you know, there's nothing else
Speaker 1: that compares to it in many ways. But then as
Speaker 1: soon as the celebrities put in start drinking it from
Speaker 1: the supplement form, they are like, oh quick, quick, We've
Speaker 1: got to get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I think it's really fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 2: one of the things that that colostrum has in it
Speaker 2: and this is what is you know, we don't know
Speaker 2: why this happens, but this happens in mammals, don't We
Speaker 2: can't test that it happens in humans, but we presume
Speaker 2: because it happens in other mammals that happens in humans.
Speaker 2: So the colostrum is producing that first day when when
Speaker 2: the mother's memory glands are really poorous, so big cells
Speaker 2: pass through much more easily, and the baby's gut is
Speaker 2: much more poorous, so big cells can go from the
Speaker 2: milk into the baby. So one thing that happens in
Speaker 2: those first few hours after giving birth is that stem
Speaker 2: cells from the mother can enter the bloodstream of the
Speaker 2: baby and then get into the serahbrospinal fluid, the fluid
Speaker 2: that connects our spine and our brain, and those cells
Speaker 2: can then travel into the brain of the baby, and
Speaker 2: they then stem cells can become other things. They're like
Speaker 2: the origin of the origin cells. They can differentiate, they
Speaker 2: become neurons and gile cells. They become part of the
Speaker 2: brain of the baby. Now that's wonderful when it happens,
Speaker 2: and we presume that there's a reason why that happens
Speaker 2: in mammals when they're firstborn. But do you want cows
Speaker 2: stem cells getting into your brain? You know you've got
Speaker 2: to question, Well, we think that our stomach's too close
Speaker 2: to that, that our digestive system will stop that happening.
Speaker 2: We can't test for that. So the reason why, you know,
Speaker 2: we want to be cautious.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you talk a bit about breast milk
Speaker 1: made in labs? I mean, this is really interesting. You
Speaker 1: talk about this in your book that potentially, you know,
Speaker 1: we might be seeing this in that will we ultimately
Speaker 1: see this in our fridges.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is fascinating because breast milk is so such
Speaker 2: a wonderful thing. It's altered by the age of the baby,
Speaker 2: the status of the mother, the health status of the mother,
Speaker 2: but it's altered by the hour over which the baby's
Speaker 2: being fed. It gets tailored to the individual baby. So
Speaker 2: it's a beautiful thing. But there are parts of breast
Speaker 2: milk that we don't know how to make in the lab.
Speaker 2: You know, there's milk sugars that feed the microbiome of
Speaker 2: the baby, the immune system of the baby, that we
Speaker 2: don't really know how to make, but they are what
Speaker 2: they're doing. Scientists are taking breast milk cells and then
Speaker 2: trying to get a form of breast milk crowded in
Speaker 2: a lab, in fermenting chambers in the lab. And what
Speaker 2: that would allow is because formula is a way of
Speaker 2: keeping babies alive but doesn't really feed the immune system
Speaker 2: of the baby. It's not a complete food, it would
Speaker 2: allow us to, I guess, make formula more appropriate for
Speaker 2: human babies because at the moment it's good. It's great.
Speaker 2: It does amazing things for people who are unable to
Speaker 2: press feed for whatever reason. You know, and there are
Speaker 2: many reasons why it's hard to breastfeed. But it's not
Speaker 2: the best foods. But if we could add leacto fair
Speaker 2: and that miracle ingredient, if we could add some of
Speaker 2: those immune boosting properties, wouldn't it be wonderful to see
Speaker 2: that added into formula to make formula a more complete
Speaker 2: and appropriate food for our tiny, vulnerable newborns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, watch this space. Now you've written a whole book
Speaker 1: on milk, which is fascinating. Is there like one what
Speaker 1: is the healthiest milk we should all be drinking.
Speaker 2: It? Wouldn't it be great if I could just name
Speaker 2: one place? Well, yeah, I'd love to. But the problem is,
Speaker 2: you know, some people are lactose intolerant, which means they
Speaker 2: can't consume much fresh dairy because lactose is a milks
Speaker 2: with it, some people can't digest very well, and it
Speaker 2: can give you bloating and diarrhea and gas and even
Speaker 2: constipation if you have too much of it. We can
Speaker 2: ferment milk, so we can get traditional dairy cow's milk
Speaker 2: and get rid of the sugar, so hard cheese doesn't
Speaker 2: have the lactose. But then some people are allergic to
Speaker 2: the proteins and different proteins people that have different allergies
Speaker 2: or different reactions to so those people probably shouldn't eat
Speaker 2: much dairy or any dairy, but there are. In terms
Speaker 2: of what actual cow's milk and goats milk and dairy
Speaker 2: from a mammal contains, it is by far the most
Speaker 2: nutrient dance product that we have, comparing it to plant
Speaker 2: milks or the current lab milks that they're making where
Speaker 2: they're taking genetically modified yeasts and creating some of the
Speaker 2: dairy proteins in a lab and then combining them with
Speaker 2: some bats and sugars and stuff. The milk that comes
Speaker 2: from cow is by far the most nutrient dance it has.
Speaker 2: You know, some of these lab milks are going to
Speaker 2: have six, maybe ten proteins in them. Cow's milk can
Speaker 2: contain over the cow's lactation can contain four thousand, six
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty four proteins. So what we create in
Speaker 2: the lab is not equivalent. And one thing we do
Speaker 2: know is that the milks that people are choosing to drink,
Speaker 2: if they're replacing dairy with plant milks. Plant milks replace
Speaker 2: the color, maybe the textual appeal of the dairy in
Speaker 2: some ways, but they don't replace the nutrition. So I
Speaker 2: forget the numbers off the top of my head. It's
Speaker 2: something like twenty for one glass of milk, you get
Speaker 2: the same amount of bioavailable calcium the cowsum your body.
Speaker 2: Or one glass of milk. It's something like seven glasses
Speaker 2: of oat milk and twenty two glasses of soy milk. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you know, yes, you can get the nutrition, but
Speaker 2: who wants to have twenty two glasses of soy milk?
Speaker 1: No? Thanks, thank you for coming on Healthy Pleasure, Thanks
Speaker 1: for having me, my friends. If you have more questions queries,
Speaker 1: if you do want to read more about milk, grab
Speaker 1: Matthew's new book. It is called Milk and it's out now.
Speaker 1: If you did enjoy this chat, jump on tell Us
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Speaker 1: and until tomorrow, we'll enjoy your milk, perhaps not your colostrum,
Speaker 1: and stay healthy is