On Skimming Goat Milk
"The milk goat in Europe is said to be the peasant's cow, the baby's foster mother, a blessing to the invalid and a Godsend to the poor." (1918)
I won’t delve too deep into why goat milk tends to digest better than cow’s, but my switch from the latter to the former was prompted by indigestion (and various other symptoms) from consuming store-bought cow milk. The reduced bowel motility by the casomorphins (exclusive to cows), the fortified vitamins, and the immunogenicity of homogenization forced my hand in finding a safer alternative. Pikey recently posted about ghost ingredients that are often included in milk but never disclosed unless you directly email and ask; how this isn’t criminal is beyond me.
Since goat milk is naturally homogenized, it’s rarely sold as low-fat. When I switched to drinking Summerhill Goat Milk (whole) a few years ago, I quickly noticed how negatively the increased fat intake (~80 g from 2 qrts) made me feel. Given, it did digest better but left very little room to maneuver around the other macronutrients. There was also the issue with its PUFA content, of around 3 grams. One point that’s important to note is that estrogen is a fat soluble hormone and concentrates in milkfat, and because cows are stressed and milked when their estrogen is high the milk they produce reflects this.
A few months ago I decided to buy a milk cream separator (Vevor, around $100), which works by contrifuging and separating the milk from the fat, close to zero percent (0.03%). The process itself is quick and works with different types of milk; personally for me skimming enough to last a week takes around thirty minutes. I use the separated cream to make liver pate and ice cream.
My experience with varying the amounts of fat in my diet agrees with Ray’s observation about the benefits of skim/low fat milk for the average adult who isn’t bound to manual labor. I find pairing salty cheese with sugared skim milk to digest quite well, and with increased thyroid function the need for fat to slow the absorption of sugar is lessened as liver glycogen stores are increased. I received a few DMs about this topic and decided to expand a little, I hope you found it somewhat informative.
Have you had any issues with the durability of that specific separator?
Vevor should consider sponsoring you. After gaining weight on 1 quart of whole goat milk everyday, this blog was the final push I needed to finally invest in a milk-cream separator.