The Hemp Connection:
milk

Just received an e-mail from our friends at Shape Foods (they're the ones coming out with the flavored flax oils we found at Natural Products West). They've got another wonderful product (in conjunction with Flax USA) that's only been on grocery shelves for 9 days…flax milk!

Andrew Lis of Shape Foods provided this interesting information about their product:

The key ingredient comes from our flax oil. Due to the superior quality of our oil and since we remove the impurities that can cause the oil to go rancid prematurely through our proprietary manufacturing process, it was the only flax oil on the market that was able to survive pasteurization without going rancid. That is why we are the exclusive ingredient supplier for this type of product.

This product is available at most Walmart stores, so intern Sarah Jones and I set out to find it. Here is Sarah with the original-flavored version (there is also vanilla-flavored).

This carton, here in Phoenix, is priced at $2.98, and it is in the refrigerator case near the other milks and milk substitutes.

It is a dairy-free, lactose-free, soy-free, and gluten-free product. Even though it's primarily fat-based, 8 ounces of the original flavor only contains 50 calories.

Here's the fatty acid profile on the side of the carton. As you can see, it's got a great omega-6 to omega-3 ratio.

The important thing to keep in mind is that this product is made with an oil, and it contains 0 protein. If you use this in place of milk on your cereal, be sure to add another protein source to that meal to keep your glycemic index in check.

I bet this would be a great substitute for creamer in coffee (you'd be hard-pressed to find another way to get omega-3's into your coffee!).

And if you have a fancy blender that makes ice creams, the vanilla version is likely going to be a nice treat. If anyone tries this in their kitchen, please share how you used it!

This product is available exclusively at Walmart.

Greek yogurt is all the rage these days. Are you missing something by not eating it?

Yes…and no.

This dairy treat is popular with consumers because it's thicker and creamier than regular yogurt. Nutrition experts like it because it is higher in protein. That, for PCOS is something to look for in foods.

Before you jump on the bandwagon, however, consider a couple of things.

Greek yogurt is made by straining out the water to make it thicker. In the process of straining, calcium leaches out into the water that is strained and discarded. This means that its calcium content tends to be lower.

Greek yogurt also doesn't contain vitamin D, a vitamin that is increasingly being found to be deficient in women with PCOS. I personally checked all major brand labels (Fage, Oikos, Chobani, and several other lesser known options) in the store to verify this, and unfortunately, not a single one is fortified with vitamin D.

So if you're using Greek yogurt as your dairy choice for the day, and you're assuming it's a good source of calcium and vitamin D, you're selling yourself short.

Fortunately, if you love Greek yogurt and you have a few minutes of time, the problem can easily be solved. It turns out, it's fairly easy to make Greek-style yogurt from regular, vitamin-D fortified yogurt! All you need to do is strain the regular yogurt with a cheesecloth. Here are the directions, with pictures.

Here is a list of yogurts that DO contain vitamin D. My recommendation is to stick with plain in order to keep the sugar content low. Also, to consider a low-fat rather than a non-fat version. Researchers have found that if only one of your dairy choices a day contains fat, you tend to increase your fertility.

If you want to, you can even save the liquid you've drained off and include it in smoothies--thus recapturing the calcium and the whey protein that's been drained off in the straining process.

Bottom line--don't assume that because yogurt is a dairy product that it is the exact nutritional equivalent of milk. And don't get caught up in the hype, and assume that Greek yogurt is automatically your superior choice.

There is a lot of demand for milk alternatives, for a lot of reasons. Some of you are lactose intolerant or have tested positive to a dairy allergy. So I wanted to compare the alternatives for you, if you fall in either of these categories, to give you some facts on which to base your personal decision.

Before I move on to milk alternatives, a word about cow's milk.

I'm not pro- or anti- cow's milk. I simply want you to have the facts about all of your options and base your decisions on facts. Much of what is said about cow's milk is personal opinion, not based on peer-reviewed evidence. In fact, there is not a single peer-reviewed article in the National Library of Medicine database even mentioning any kind of relationship between PCOS and cow's milk.

What IS found in that database, is a study I often cite, written in part by respected Harvard researcher Walter Willett, in which it was reported that women who consume one fat-containing serving of dairy a day were actually more fertile than those who did not. The statistics used to evaluate this relationship were derived from data obtained in the Harvard Nurses' Health Study II, from 18,555 registered nurses over a period of 8 years. Those are pretty impressive credentials! So I find the conclusions to be worthy of your consideration. Keep in mind, these women were not advised to change the type of milk they drank, so they were not steered toward raw milk, organic milk, or any other variation. They were most probably drinking plain milk you get from the corner grocer.

The researchers corrected for vitamin D and lactose, meaning vitamin D and lactose in the diet in the millk drinkers was NOT the explanation for this finding. In their words, their conclusion was this: "High intake of low-fat dairy foods may increase the risk of anovulatory infertility whereas intake of high-fat dairy foods may decrease this risk."

If you've been avoiding cow's milk and vitamin D supplementation isn't doing the trick for your vitamin D levels, I strongly encourage you to consider a second reason for drinking cow's milk. If you've been eating yogurt assuing it's an appropriate substitute for milk, it's not. Most yogurts do NOT contain vitamin D. Try switching to milk (at least 1%) and see if it makes a difference.

For those of you drinking milk, I'd like to encourage you to consider antibiotic, hormone-free, organic, grass-fed. It's not something that is readily available (many organic brands are not grass-fed), but keep your eye out for it and grab it when you see it.

Like I said, I don't care if you do or don't drink milk. I just want to be sure of two things:

1. That your choice to drink or not drink cow's milk is based on fact and not on someone else's opinion who may not have a handle on YOUR personal physiology. Every single case of PCOS is different and it is not clinically sound for anyone to make a blanket recommendation about milk to all women with PCOS.

2. That if you choose to drink cow's milk, you know what kind is most supportive of hormone balance, and if you choose not to drink cow's milk, you know what adjustments you need to make to your overall diet in order to make up for deficiencies that eliminating an entire category of foods may be creating.

On that note, tomorrow I'll summarize the pros and cons of milk alternatives.