The French Paradox refers to the curious observation that French people are slim and healthy, suffering from a low risk of coronary artery disease despite a diet extremely high in saturated fat regularly washed down with glasses of wine.
While the long held belief that saturated fat expands your waistline and causes heart disease has long since been disproven with cardiologists now going on record saying how ridiculous such an assertion actually is based on current research, there is clearly something else at play here keeping the French so healthy.
Is it just me or do the French just get it about what it takes to be healthy much better than Americans?
Case in point, while many Americans seem to prefer the latest and greatest silver bullet supplements that empty the wallet with promises of reduced fat, no wrinkles and perfect health yet never come close to measuring up, the French stick with the tried and true that actually works: nutrient dense food.
Check out this video below of a raw milk vending machine in France.
If raw milk was really as dangerous as the CDC and conventional medical authorities in the USA claim, wouldn’t these machines that are popping up all over Europe be causing some serious food borne illness outbreaks by now?
Perhaps the time has come to set aside the shrill warnings about the clear and present “danger” of grassfed raw milk and try some for yourself!
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
This brings to mind the video I saw of the recent “Raw Milk Debate” that was held at Harvard Law School. Before watching the video, I felt good about not only drinking raw milk myself but giving it to our future children. After the video though, I am actually left with some doubts.
For those of you who’ve seen it (google for it if you haven’t), I found Sally Fallon’s presentation to be very good. The second guy, not so much and the lawyer, not so much. But the last woman, she was from somewhere in the midwest, she seemed so level-headed I found her to actually be more credible than Sally Fallon. I realize my judgment here has more to do with assessment of character rather than the presented facts. Generally, I have like Sally’s work, but in the video, she lost me near the end. Maybe I am the only one who reacted like this, but would love to hear other’s comments.
I expected to see arrogant assertiveness from the midwest woman (prime dairy country), but she was the most reasonable and level-headed of the lot, IMO. I perceived her as trustworthy. When she said her interest in combating raw milk was solely for the public’s health, I believed her. I have no way to prove it, but she sure did not sound like a spokesperson for the big-biz (pasteurized) dairy industry.
My concern has to do with not the millions of people who drink raw milk with no problems, but the few who actually die from it. What do these deaths have in common, if anything? IIRC, the lawyer’s client had been drinking raw milk from a “healthy” farm, grass fed, small farmer, all that…and the client died, claiming from illness caused by the raw milk. We are not privy to more of this client’s health history, did they have a compromised immune system, etc? Don’t quote me on this…and I would have to watch the whole video again (which I will at some point) to see where I got this idea, but after watching the debate I was left with the idea that even though a lower risk, raw milk even from organic/grassfed/small farm/etc can kill. Possibly an adult would have a strong enough immune system to deal with bad raw milk, but a child, how can they deal with it? And yes, I realize the risk is quite small and there are plenty of other reasons to NOT feed your child pasteurized milk. And sure, driving a car is statistically more dangerous, I’m sure, not what I am looking for.
I wished the debate had had more time, I would have liked to have heard a lot more arguing/debating from both sides. For now, I will continue to make my own raw milk kefir and have some more time to explore the safety of serving raw milk to our children.
I’m bringing this up to bring more debate to this subject. I love hearing both sides and hearing only one side can dangerously lead to blind faith. Sally Fallon often seems to have good rebuttals, but I was unimpressed this time. I want to make the most informed decision. While I often trust my gut to make important decisions, having a wealth of information can certainly feed the gut!
pd,
All food can kill if handled improperly, and it has. Remember the Jack-in-the-box e-coli hamburger that killed people a few years ago. Sadly, people die every year of food-bourne bacteria often caused by negligence. Even becoming vegan won’t help: remember the tainted spinach in California that killed people. You can’t be afraid of life or eating. The numbers are very small compared to the general population. The percentages are very much in your favor.
However, if you’re going to not drink raw milk (because of the potential for illness), you have to use the same logic(?) to not eat anything else that could cause potentially serious and life threatening illness – No more eating out, no more hamburgers or meat, no more fish, no more vegetables, no more fruit. Oh, and, don’t drink the water!!!
Pot calling the kettle black argument. When it suits them the USDA wants to use ancedotal unscientific “evidence” to support their claims. Many people die after taking medical drugs and/or “treatments” but you think they’d get anywhere suing those conglomerates or trying to advertise how unsafe they are? Because the USDA wants to shutdown raw milk these stories (and very few mind you ) keep popping up. So? You can keep searching and you’ll never find enough evidence to support any of these claims because it’s all buried. You just need to know they died and oh by the way they drank raw milk. But the previous year they drank it no problems. It doesn’t get any more unscientific than that.
How cool! When will the US catch up?
I think it will be sooner than most people expect.
Still hasn’t. People are still afraid of nutritious milk and also think getting sunlight is the worst thing in the world for you. Also fat is still bad according to people. Looks like it’ll be awhile.
I just went back and checked and it was up. I don’t know what happened before but i got to see it. That is really interesting to get raw milk from a vending machine. I wonder if France is laughing at us and the big to- do about raw milk in the states.
I can’t click on the video. Nothing happens.
New to Real Food, (just picked up my 2 gallons of raw milk, 2 quarts of yoghurt, and
2 dozen free range eggs) but am remembering how my Dad used to eat. He always
put a little cream on his oats for breakfast, cooked his eggs in butter because he would never, ever eat margarine, and ate liver with relish. Never had high cholesterol. My Mom – she loved sugar and wouldn’t touch butter. She has had 2 triple bypass surgeries; she has been on a lowfat diet and statins for years.
Thanks, Sarah, for reminding us how to eat, and for teaching us how. Gotta go check my
cream cheese and whey, my raw milk clabbered 1st try!
Unfortunately the French Paradox is endangered by American food companies and restaurants like McDonald’s in France. The children are eating like Americans there and they are already seeing poorer health and obesity too. A good friend of mine lives near Paris and I fill her in on WAPF news and info, and while she tries to teach her daughter traditional cooking and eating, she says it’s getting just as hard there to feed her family well. Good food is expensive as it is here and the economy is suffering.
My brother lived in France for a while, and I have been 3 times….unfortunatley that was when I was a fat-o-phobic. I also lived in Austria for a semester of school. Fresh cream, whole fish with the heads, and lots of butter were staples at every meal. Its funny, I often use to pass a very old woman walking up the side of a mountain with her bag of groceries(smiling and robust). I thought, “How in the world can a woman that old hike up the side of a mountain with her groceries….IN THE WINTER?!” Simultaneously I was disgusted at the food being fed to me (low fat college girl) so I’d walk to the nearest supermarket to get something “healthier.” If I’d only known then what I know now I could have saved my children and myself from some health issues that come from being so malnourished!
If everyone ate nutrient dense food, a lot of those items’ prices would shoot through the roof. E.g., a lamb may yield a few pounds of liver, but many more pounds of meat. If everyone wanted to eat lamb’s liver, its price would be maybe 30 times what it is selling right now. Another example: my fishmonger stopped selling me snapper heads after I let him in on the secret that, unlike with salmon heads, fish stock made with non-oily snapper heads would not stink up the whole joint. Now the fishmonger is switching to snapper heads to make his store-made fish soups and wants to sell me salmon heads! Now just imagine everyone wanted snapper heads: it would have cost $50 each instead of $2.
That said, raw milk is a bit different because its production uses a different process than pasteurized milk. Cow’s milk output remains the same. It is interesting that Louis Pasteur’s fellow countrymen/women are drinking non-pasteurized, raw milk:)
Just an FYI, Dr. Dwight Lundell isn’t a Cardiologist but rather a heart surgeon.
talkes about what he sees when doing heart surgery. But many cardiologists say the same thing..