Page 39 - Fall2010

THE MAGNESIUM CONTENT OF MILK

In general, milk is not a rich source of magnesium, but many cultures throughout the ages have depended upon
dairy foods as the foundation of balanced, healthy diets that conferred strength and vitality. Weston Price, for example,
investigated residents of the Swiss Alps as well as the African Maasai whose sturdy, disease-resistant individuals had
little or no tooth decay. But can we can replicate those diets with the same health-giving properties if we depend upon
today’s industrialized food model?
The mineral composition of milk depends upon many factors, including the breed of animal, stage of lactation,
frequency of milking, environmental conditions, type of pasture, soil makeup and amount of soil contamination. Grass
tetany, for instance, is a serious and potentially fatal condition in cattle characterized by extremely low levels of serum
magnesium. Also called “grass staggers” or “wheat pasture poisoning,” it is the result of animals grazing on fast-growing
young grass in spring or fall on soil that is severely magnesium deficient, as can happen when the pastures have been
fertilized with high nitrogen and potassium fertilizers. In acute poisoning, the animal can be saved by injections of
magnesium sulfate; yet subclinical magnesium deficiency in the herd may go undetected.
By contrast, pastures that offer a great deal of plant diversity to grazing animals also offer diversity to the soil ecol-
ogy as well as nutrient diversity to the ruminant. In a Swiss study that examined thirty plant species of alpine pastures,
researchers found that “the botanical composition of an alpine pasture has a significant influence on the nutritive value
of the forage…. Compared with grass species, legumes and herbs showed a lower content of cell walls but a higher
content of crude protein, as well as four times the content of calcium and twice the content of magnesium.” The Swiss
visited by Dr. Price grazed their cattle on alpine slopes populated by numerous plant species and watered by the
mineral-rich glacial run-off—water the villagers also used in drinking and cooking.
Numerous stresses can take their nutritional toll on the dairy animal and therefore on the quality of her milk.
Crowding, confinement, filth and unnatural fodder come to mind instantly as obvious offenders, but too frequent milk-
ing—more than once a day—can result in dilution of nutrients in the milk. The daily output is greater, but the nutrients
are fewer by volume.
“The mineral content of milk and popular meats has fallen significantly in the past 60 years, according to a new
analysis of government records of the chemical composition of everyday food,” begins an article in the Guardian about
researcher David Thomas’s comparison of food tables from 1940 and 2002. The research was done for the consumer
watchdog group in the UK, the Food Commission, and published in their quarterly journal, The Food Magazine. Mineral
declines in dairy products showed that milk lost 60 percent of its iron, 2 percent of its calcium, and 21 percent of its
magnesium. Compared to 1940, currently “[m]ost cheeses showed a fall in magnesium and calcium levels. According
to the analysis, cheddar provides 9 percent less calcium today, 38 percent less magnesium and 47 percent less iron,
while parmesan shows the steepest drop in nutrients, with magnesium levels down by 70 percent.”
Ignoring the declining magnesium content in foods such as dairy products may have confounded some analyses of
disease etiology in large populations. Anti-animal-fat proponents tend to blame the rampant incidence of heart disease
among the Finns on their high intakes of dairy products. However, according to Dr. Mildred Seelig, of New york Uni-
versity Medical Center, “In Finland, which has a very high death rate from IHD (ischemic heart disease), there is a clear
relationship with heart disease and the amount of magnesium in the soil. In eastern and northern Finland, where the
soil content is about a third of that found in southwestern Finland, the mortality from ischemic heart disease is twice as
high as is that in the southwest. Ho and Khun surveyed factors that might be contributory both to the rising incidence
of cardiovascular disease in Europe, and the falling levels of magnesium both in the soil and in the food supply. They
commented that in Finland, which has the highest cardiovascular death rate in Europe, the dietary supply of magnesium
has decreased by 1963 to a third of the intake common in 1911.”
Modern, urban Finns of course consume pasteurized dairy products, which not only have reduced magnesium
levels to begin with thanks to modern farming practices, but also have less soluble calcium as a result of the denaturing
of the enzyme phosphatase during pasteurization. Calcium that is not soluble precipitates out to soft tissue, such as
the vascular system, and can contribute to a cascade of ominous events linked to heart disease.
We might surmise from these observations, then, that dairy products must be produced with reverence not only
to the beast herself, but also to the soil that feeds the pasture that feeds her. When all nutrients are in balance with
one another we can expect the food to have the power to truly nourish us.
Countless stressors in life today increase the body’s demands for magnesium—by our challenged endocrine systems,
by environmental poisons that must be neutralized, by excess refined carbohydrates in our diets, to name a few. The
balance of nutrients provided in the foods in the groups that Dr. Price visited was also in felicitous balance with those
peoples’ physical, emotional, and social ecologies. We can only strive, both as consumers and producers of food, to
achieve that equilibrium in the ecologies we inhabit.

FALL 2010 Wise Traditions 39