The Wheele of Five by Weston Price
There is a new ‘Food Guide’, in which the government and the Nutrition Centre set out their views on how the population ‘should or ought to eat’. It is a guide with a moral compass, as key drivers behind this …
Author: Ton Baars
And the winner is…
Over the past month in the Netherlands, there have been tastings of dairy products: cheeses of all shapes and sizes, farm-fresh produce in a variety of flavours. There are both ‘farmhouse cheeses’ and ‘cheeses from the farm’. The former is …
Kefir made from cow’s or goat’s milk
Take home message Traditional kefir based on grains (SCOBY) has a different composition depending on whether it is made from cow’s milk or goat’s milk. Results are based on highly pasteurised whole milk. A Turkish-trained taste panel prefers kefir made …
Vorzugsmilch, a quiet death
Vorzugsmilch, RIP Vorzugsmilch, or raw milk suitable for young children, the milk that healed, milk that was used for milk cures, milk that was recommended by doctors, was first mentioned around 1900 and resulted in legislation (Vorzugsmilchgesetz) around 1930. In …
Milk fat may slow down dementia…
… provided it is mainly consumed in full-fat cheese. Take home message Dementia as a spectre for the ageing population In the fight against lifestyle diseases, dementia is a high priority. For many, it is a horror to no longer …
Milk fat sorted
There is milk fat and then there is milk fat. Much of the fat we consume through dairy products is determined by what the cows eat; whether it is summer or winter, whether the cows graze or not, and whether the cows are pushed to the highest possible milk yield by feeding them extra fat in the form of palm oil. The image below illustrates the shifts in milk fat composition, and was created based …
Cheese maturation, umami and kokumi
Take home message Making good cheese is a skill Gouda cheese is made from (raw) milk, rennet and starter culture. The starter culture converts milk sugar into lactic acid (= fermentation), while the rennet causes certain proteins (casein proteins) to …
Listen to Pasteur
Take home message Louis Pasteur and heating The concept of “pasteurisation” is attributed to Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), although as early as the beginning of the 19th century, there were people who advocated heating milk to make it safe for consumption (Westhoff, 1978). Nowadays, milk is heated before consumption almost everywhere. The combination of temperature and time determines whether a product has been heated sufficiently to be classified as safe. For example, at start pasteurisation of milk was …
Escherichia coli
The word “bacteriology” did not exist in the early 1880s. With people such as Louis Pasteur (France) and Robert Koch (Germany), a new field of study emerged. Between 1870 and 1890, many bacteria were discovered, described and given names. Robert Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacterium (Mycobacterium tuberculosis) and the cholera bacterium (Vibrio cholerae). The same applies to Escherichia coli, named after its discoverer Theodor Escherich (1857-1911). Bacteriology opened up a completely new window to observe the world …
Rules, trust and boundaries
Without rules, you are powerless and lost, whether you are a human being, an animal or even the earth itself. Without agreements, you cannot trust other people. Suddenly changing agreements makes you an unreliable fellow human being or government. Rules …
