Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Welcome to Roots to Health—where we dig deep into the foundation of lifelong wellness! Hosted by Dr. Craig Keever, Northwest Arkansas’ first and only plant-based pediatrician, this podcast unearths the power of nutrition, lifestyle, and holistic health to help kids, families, and adults thrive.
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Dr. Keever breaks down the science of nutrition and disease prevention in a way that’s simple, practical, and life-changing. From raising healthy kids to optimizing adult wellness, each episode delivers key insights that challenge conventional wisdom and empower you to take control of your health.
Whether he’s debunking nutrition myths, explaining how food shapes long-term well-being, or sharing actionable tips for disease prevention, Roots to Health is your go-to guide for vibrant living—one bite, one step, and one conversation at a time.
Get ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about health—and discover just how powerful roots can be!
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Roots to Health with Dr. Craig Keever
Beyond the Milk Mustache: Got Problems? Debunking Dairy Industry Claims
Have you ever questioned whether dairy deserves its health halo? Dr. Craig Keever and his wife Amy challenge the dairy industry's marketing claims with scientific evidence and personal experience in this compelling episode.
The hosts explore how milk is primarily a sugar drink containing lactose that most of our bodies naturally stop digesting properly after infancy. They discuss how dairy contains significant saturated fat linked to heart disease, proteins that trigger allergic reactions, and hormones from lactating cows that enter our bodies through consumption.
Most surprising is the revelation about calcium absorption – despite America being one of the world's top dairy consumers, we have alarmingly high rates of osteoporosis. Meanwhile, the calcium in green leafy vegetables is more bioavailable than milk's mere 30-35% absorption rate. The hosts don't shy away from addressing the environmental devastation caused by dairy production, including the shocking fact that 50% of U.S. waterways can no longer support aquatic life largely due to agricultural runoff.
Dr. Keever candidly shares his journey from consuming dairy for 58 years to embracing plant-based alternatives, resulting in losing 100 pounds and significant health improvements. The episode offers practical guidance on delicious alternatives like oat milk (their personal favorite), soy milk, and pea milk for young children, while dispelling myths about soy's effects on hormones.
Whether you're curious about improving your health, concerned about environmental sustainability, or simply looking for tasty dairy alternatives, this episode provides science-backed insights that might forever change your relationship with dairy. Share your thoughts and experiences with us – we welcome all perspectives on this often controversial topic!
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The information provided in this video is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have seen or heard in this video. Dr. Craig Keever is a licensed pediatrician, but the content shared here is general in nature and may not be applicable to your individual health needs.
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Welcome to another episode of Roots to Health. I'm Dr Craig Kiefer and my vegan chef, amy. She's really going to be your wife and my wife.
Speaker 2:Yes, you just carry your vegan chef everywhere. That's right.
Speaker 1:She's actually preparing to undergo some coursework and she'll actually have letters after her name that will prove she's a vegan chef. That's right outside. She's going to take the class that's offered by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and the program is called Food for Life.
Speaker 2:Food for Life. Over 20 different types of classes to teach. Be able to be one of their licensed teachers.
Speaker 1:We are very excited about this opportunity. Very excited about this opportunity. So this particular episode today will be taking on, you know, a relatively controversial topic in some people's minds, although the whole idea of going vegan is just a controversial topic oh my goodness, it comes with such identity related to it.
Speaker 1:But to add to that, or as part of the cause of that controversy with being vegan, is the whole idea of dairy and, um, what does that do or not do for you? Um and uh, yeah, so what we're going to try to discover or discuss during this episode is why dairy just isn't the? Um nutritional panacea that the dairy industry wants you to think. It is um, so um bad stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really that's controversy, to even say that but it's like we. You know, that's what we, that's our belief system, right you know, and I grew up science behind it yeah mean I grew up on dairy.
Speaker 1:You know I was an adopted child, never saw breast milk a day in my life and I'm certain my mother rest her soul probably did not think to put me on a soy-based formula.
Speaker 2:Well, I was not adopted and I never saw breast milk either. So you know, it happens.
Speaker 1:And there you have it. So you know. So I have been on certain cow's milk since shortly after the day I was born, until the last few years, and never really had any, you know, major health complications from it, with one exception, you know, I do think cow's milk is very good for cows yeah, I had allergies as a baby and yeah, yeah, I was on soy yeah, so I mean, the issue with that is, you know, cow's milk is made to take little baby cows and make them great big cows, right?
Speaker 1:well, that's pretty much what it did for me. I mean, that's not the only reason I became that big, but truly, I never really had any inflammatory issues that I was aware of. I never really had any digestive problems related to that that I was aware of, and and so you know, I went through 58 years of my life loving ice cream and you know I like cheese. Okay, I was never quite as Cheese was my vice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my gosh. Someone in my family said if you can get off cheese, that's a miracle. Yeah, that's a miracle and it's true.
Speaker 1:And to that end, you know I loved a good hamburger and very often didn't particularly care if there was cheese on it or not.
Speaker 2:Uh-uh, no way, it's going to have to have some vegan cheese now.
Speaker 1:Exactly so, yeah, I mean, and the dairy industry has done a very good job of their whole marketing ploy. Like you know, milk does a body good and the whole series of the little milk mustache saying got milk, you know, all those things have just made this kind of really ingrain our culture. And, uh, I have a patient in my pediatric practice whose dad grew up in wisconsin. Okay, and you know, when I started saying you know things about dairy that weren't quite as flattering as he was used to, I don't think he actually took offense, but he was surprised because he grew up and he's a man in his probably mid to late thirties. He was surprised to find out my scientific research facts about dairy being really not very healthy for you. You know, the dairy industry tells us that this is a great source of calcium, that there's lots of good protein in it. Well, I was watching a video the other day and you know what is actually the composition of milk, okay, and the first main composition, nutritionally speaking, is actually a sugar. Milk is a sugar drink. Now, the sugar in milk is lactose, which um has two molecules hooked together one is glucose and one is a another sugar calledactose, and they're chemically bonded together and what you'll find is that there is a large percentage of the population that is lactose intolerant.
Speaker 1:And this physician likened this that I was watching. He's a plant-based physician, dr Neil Barnard. He likened this to. You know well. Basically, what he talked about, first of all, was that our bodies, as infants, generally have the proper enzymes, specifically lactase, which will break that down. Um, but what happens to most people's bodies over time, particularly after they reach about the age of one or two? They no longer have the ability to produce that enzyme, lactase, and so we become lactose intolerant, which is what happens to a large amount of people. And what he said basically and it just clicked, it made a lot of sense. That's our bodies telling us okay, you don't need milk anymore, let's move on yeah, and I would.
Speaker 2:I would venture to say that even if you don't have severe complications, it doesn't mean that your body's not suffering to have something like that in it exactly. That's very it's like kind of saying you're allergic to smoke. I mean like, who isn't allergic to smoke?
Speaker 1:right, so uh. So that's issue number one. Why is dairy not quite so healthy for you is there's a large percentage of population that is lactose intolerant. Now the dairy industry has countered that with providing people with, you know the enzyme, or I don't know exactly what's in lactaid. I don't know exactly what's in lactaid, but there are ways to kind of help our digestion with that. But again, the question is you know, mother Nature has told our bodies, okay, we don't need that enzyme anymore. Our bodies are telling us don't drink that stuff anymore, and we're not listening.
Speaker 2:Well, and I go back to the point of, this is not knocking at anybody at all who hasn't nursed a child, but the point is our breast milk is much lower in fat content than any other species, much less the dairy, you know the cow. So it just kind of that composition is so different.
Speaker 1:Well, and that brings me to my next point about the nutritional content of milk. Um, and one of the light bulbs that went off in my mind, pardon me early on, about uh, you know why I just needed to switch to plant-based um. Our only source, uh, of saturated fat in our diet is animal-based products, and saturated fat is throughout milk. Now you know, again, as a younger baby we can tolerate that probably a little better, but over time and as we get older, saturated fat is one of the key components to the atherosclerotic plaques that develop and cause heart attacks. We don't need saturated fat, you know, and so that's another knock, I suppose, on dairy, and that you know, our nutritionally, our human bodies, don't need any saturated fat. And regular milk and low fat milk, even you take some of it out, it's still saturated fat. Um, and and um, regular milk and low fat milk, even you take some of it out, it's still saturated fat, right and there are minute amounts in avocado and coconut.
Speaker 2:Just right, clear, just so right, but those are minute amounts and and not anywhere close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and so and the no fiber you know.
Speaker 1:and the no fiber? Yep, yeah, and so then the last bit about the nutritional content of milk is the milk protein. And there is, again, a very significant percentage of the population that ends up having some form of an allergic reaction, whether it's a major one or a minor one, to milk proteins. And you know, I see not uncommonly babies on regular cow's milk based formulas that come in with horrible eczema. You take them off the cow's milk based proteins and the eczema goes away, you know. So that's our immune system on hyper alert, you know. So, yeah, I just just kind of hammer home the major areas about dairy that just have, really surprisingly to me, caused me to become I suppose you could almost say anti-dairy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it's just, it's just not good for us, and I mean not to mention that there's whatever is in that cow, to begin with the antibiotics, the. You know it always makes me just kind of pause when people say that something is hormone free. Well, no, that's a lactating cow. So to say this is hormone free milk or this is hormone free beef, it's like no doubt, no, no doubt. Your body doesn't know how to metabolize that.
Speaker 1:Well, and the other interesting thing I would say about calcium that I just find kind of shocking from a scientific basis is that you know, the United States is one of the leading countries, definitely within, I think, the top five in terms of dairy consumption in the world, and so to that end, if we're getting that much calcium per capita, you would think that the rates of osteoporosis in this country would be really low. And in fact it's not just in the US but all the major leading countries that have the highest rates of dairy consumption also have some of the highest rates of osteoporosis.
Speaker 2:There's some kind of disconnect there to me Right and can you explain what it actually is? It's leaching calcium from the bones. As far as I've always heard that dairy somehow leaches calcium from the bones.
Speaker 1:I mean it takes it away. I haven't heard that research.
Speaker 2:Campbell talked about it.
Speaker 1:Okay, I missed that one. So yeah, I'll have to learn that and speak on it a little later.
Speaker 2:So leafy strains are full of calcium, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's exactly where I was going. You know what are the good sources of calcium and, to Amy's point, green leafies. That's the best source and it's even more bioavailable. The other fact that I learned the other day from Dr Barnard is, even with all the milk that you drink, we only absorb about 30 to 35 percent of the calcium that's in there. The rest of it ends up in the toilet. As opposed to and I don't know the exact statistics, but the absorption rate of calcium in green leafy vegetables is much higher.
Speaker 2:You have to think that the fiber is a part of that. It's the reason that it's really I mean fiber is so very important for our microbiome. I can't wait for us to dive deep into microbiome, because it's really the root of everything, of all health. Very much so If that's not being taken care of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, If that's not being taken care of? Yeah, so other good sources of calcium besides green leafies, calcium is in almonds and tofu and various fortified plant milks. So those are all good sources. So now, moving on to Amy's point about hormones, you know, one of the biggest knocks that I have with the dairy industry has to do with these concentrated animal feeding operations, and whether it's to grow meat or dairy, they're both, in my mind, basically the same.
Speaker 1:Well, what happens with that? Because they're kept in such terrible conditions, they fill these animals so full of chemicals and antibiotics and hormones. And and then, well, what do you mean hormones? Well, the life cycle of a dairy cow. Well, first of all, let's step even further back. The normal average lifespan of a cow is about 20 years, I think, right. So what happens in these concentrating animal feeding operations is, um, these cows are placed in these stalls, um, and artificially inseminated, and when she gives birth, then the baby is ripped away from her and she is kept there and put on the milk machine and these cows produce every year, just like that, for about four years, I hear is the average, and that's all they do. Yeah, and then after about four years, their production starts to drop and they're taken out and slaughtered.
Speaker 2:You know that's a pretty cruel industry yeah, male calves killed on spot, and like I can't even, like that's right, I don't. Yeah, I can't go too far in that because it's just heartbreaking to me.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and so to then get back to the whole hormone issue, not only are we talking about things that are probably given to the animals, but you're also talking about, in that state, that cow has been pregnant and now is not pregnant and is now producing milk, has been pregnant and now is not pregnant and is now producing milk. That cow is full of her own estrogen. That estrogen is in the milk. Okay, one of the big knocks on soy, um, historically probably came from the meat and dairy industry, um, is that the phytoestrogens are a problem creating feminization of men and whatnot, and that's a bald face lie and that's been shown to be not true, but many people still believe it actually is, people with breast cancer actually are doing better with exactly.
Speaker 1:The soy is a protective against many female type of cancers and, uh, I would challenge anybody to show me somebody who's had estrogen effects from the phytoestrogens from eating too much soy. It's just not out there for any men.
Speaker 2:I know plastics and things like that cause those kind of things. That's a completely different phytoestrogen than what we're talking about.
Speaker 1:And then, as I mentioned, you know, these cows are in kind of poor conditions, generally speaking, and so they get infections and they're put on antibiotics a lot as a preventative. As a preventative, yeah.
Speaker 2:In their feed.
Speaker 1:So, and another little known fact the dairy industry has a certain limit for what they call somatic cells. Basically that means pus. All right, so in all of our milk and cheese and cheese is more concentrated than milk, so it's even more concentrated in cheese we have a certain amount of pus. That's allowed in our food. Yeah, not me Now. It's not much Granted. In fact, I just read something from Dr Michael Greger that in one cup of milk the equivalent is about one drop of pus. So if you're okay with a drop of pus in your cup of milk, well, okay, I'm not.
Speaker 2:And you know the chemicals that they clean the teats and things like that. That all goes, that's right. You really can't filter that out.
Speaker 1:That's right, you know that's very true. So, and then the other issue then too, yes, and one that Dr Colin Campbell brought to my awareness is you know, they're essentially two main types of protein in milk the whey and the casein. Actually, casein is known to be a carcinogens. Yeah, and that's part of what Dr Campbell's research was on was showing how, you know, different levels of casein in a diet will trigger certain cancers.
Speaker 1:Right Turn off and on the pace, on the percentage you take it down to a low enough percentage and it turns it off.
Speaker 2:And it had almost like a cocaine effect as far as to the brain, as far as what casein, you know, haven't we all tasted something and we just felt a little euphoric afterwards, that's what it is, and also I will say not to belabor that.
Speaker 2:But you know, on a plant-based diet I can go really truly hours without getting hungry. On the standard diet I could every two to three hours. I had to have something because that addictive quality in the food's made me sick to my stomach, unless I could just you. So it's wild how that works.
Speaker 1:Next area of interest that I have in the whole dairy industry and the issues I have with it. It has to do with the impact on the environment. You know, I was shocked to learn in my class on plant-based nutrition through Cornell University, that think about this fact 50% of all the waterways in the country do not support aquatic life. That's an astounding number to me. 50% Now, what does that mean? Well, and what is that from?
Speaker 1:So, in large part I won't say all of it because there's nothing 100, but in large part the runoff from these concentrated animal feeding operations, whether it be for growing meat or dairy, um, the runoff gets into the water table and with that runoff, uh, comes an algae bloom. Uh, we've all seen them on different ponds and whatnot. Well, once the algae dies, it sinks to the bottom, the bacteria take over. When the bacteria take over, they munch up all the oxygen. And guess what? No oxygen in the water, no aquatic life. And that is evidenced by a dead zone at the mouth of the mississippi. You can google that and there's a large dead zone there that continues to grow regularly every year.
Speaker 2:Um, and there's just no aquatic life there, uh, and in large I know we're not talking about fish today, but it's like that our, our seas are literally. That's right's right, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, and in large part that's due to all these huge animal operations that's draining into our water table, yeah so.
Speaker 2:Not to mention everything it takes to feed it to you know Well exactly, and as a.
Speaker 1:For instance, one of the statistics that's given to me here is it takes about a thousand gallons of water to make one gallon of milk. All right, I don't know exactly what it takes to make a gallon of plant-based milk, but I'm going to guess it's less than 1,000.
Speaker 2:I know they've compared it and I don't know this either, but with grain, you know how much it takes to make grain. You would think crops would take a lot of rain, but not compared to being able to keep those alive, and at that level and I know that people not in the plant-based world have um poo-pooed this idea about methane.
Speaker 1:But that large amount, those large, those large amounts of cattle do produce methane.
Speaker 2:No pun intended Right.
Speaker 1:They do produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and you know, I would need to take a deeper dive on the science behind that before I could talk intellectually about that, but I think it's certainly an issue that science has brought up as something we do need to be paying attention to. Right, so Right, absolutely. So what are our alternatives to dairy? And I am really happy, and I've mentioned a little bit about that, but you know the plant-based milks. There's a number of them, um, and my favorite in terms of taste, personally, is the oat milk by far, by far. Now, having said all of that, um, certainly, um, the oat milks, depending on which brand you buy and how it's made. There are certainly some processed things in that, there's some oils and you know things. Um, we haven't yet really delved into the idea of making our own. I haven't found that.
Speaker 2:I like it that much, but I have a recipe that I'm going to try. However, with the creamers, I'm pretty stuck on that creamer and you know, here's the thing. If you're letting it in everywhere, if you're letting those oils in everywhere, then you've got problems, but that's literally the only oil I could think about is letting in. You know, occasionally we'll have a vegan butter, if we have, you know, like a weeknight or weekend kind of thing, but I don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:And again, our butter that we usually get is from oat milk Vegan butter yeah, yeah vegan oat milk.
Speaker 2:Miyoko, if anybody needs, you know again. I know it's got some oils in it, but sometimes you need just a little bit of a pick-me-up.
Speaker 1:Yeah you know, tastes so good. It is very nice, you know. But other forms that most people are probably aware of of plant-based milks include almond milk, soy milk, cashew milk, and I never thought about this much until in the last year or two. But pea milk is another very good one, and the reason I bring that up is, you know, toddlers between the age of one and two really do need an increased fat content of their milk, and so for those that are plant-based, soy works very well. And again, to reiterate, the phytoestrogens in soy do not cause any estrogenizing effect on boys or girls. They're protective. But if you'd rather not do soy milk, or the baby doesn't take the soy milk very well, or whatever reason, pea milk is another good alternative. Those are the two that I know of for kids between ages one and two. Because of the protein and fat content, those are good substitutes for dairy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and I'm going to be playing around with some fun things like pistachio milk and some cashew milk and doing some different things with some sorbets that I'm excited about.
Speaker 1:Well, and sunflower milk, sunflower milk, the other thing I would say about substitutes for dairy, not just the milks, but you know, probably I'm going to guess 20 years ago or more, you put the words vegan and cheese together and you had nothing that was very tasty, yeah, however, um, in recent years, uh, there are a number of companies that are now making very tasty vegan cheeseeses.
Speaker 2:And you know, the thing I like is you don't really want it to be as decadent as you used to have, because remember how you feel after a meal like that. So I do like that they are hearty, that they have depth to them, but they don't make me feel miserable, Right, you know? So I think that's kind of there's your sign.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's your sign. Now you know if you're struggling with insulin resistance. These are things that we have to pay attention to in terms of because these things are going to be a little higher in fat content. I think we mentioned that coconuts have saturated fat. I think coconut is often a part of some of these things, whether it's coconut oil or milk or whatever, so there is some saturated fat that can come in with some of that. So you do have to pay attention to that, particularly if you're struggling with certain health issues.
Speaker 2:And that's what I like about Food for Life classes that I'm going to be teaching, because they'll be geared towards. If you're looking at, helping with cancer, if you're looking at, this class is for more diabetes, this is more for heart health, this is more for you know. So, depending on how you need to tweak that, that'll be very beneficial for people to kind of learn, because it's a lot to learn.
Speaker 1:There's a lot. Yes, well, in closing I suppose kind of a recap, you know I would I would again say I find myself kind of surprised to be a bit anti-dairy at this stage of my life and and it really has come down really from an actual scientific kind of and personal experience of you know the the problems with dairy in the diet.
Speaker 2:It to me, and this can't be weighed, but to me and I've heard several plant-based doctors say it is the most inflammatory thing you could put on your body, and I think cheese would definitely win that case, because you're adding so much more to the cheese than just the regular milk. So sodium, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, and just like the transition from um, uh, just um standard american diet to um, a plant-based diet, um, you know, my first reaction to that um was from my health perspective. Okay, that's the only reason I did this. You know, if, if I wouldn't have been recognizing that I was this, you know, if I wouldn't have been recognizing that I was a heart attack waiting to happen, I wouldn't have done this. But that has then blossomed to looking at all the reasons behind a need to switch to plant-based and, as we talked about a little bit ago, you know, the two other main issues, particularly in relation to large animal feeding operations, are going to be not only the animal ethics but the environment. Those two issues together, combined with my health, really form kind of a pretty solid reason. There's just no reason to go to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And on top of that you throw in the fact that in the plant-based world, the nutritional value of what we're getting far exceeds what we were getting before. Right, you don't feel like a slug. You don feel like a slug. You don't feel like a slug. You don't get all this gunk. You know, and I can tell you that after five years, nearly five years, of doing this, not only am I a hundred pounds lighter and feel so much better, but I mean, all these factors point together. Just keep me moving in the same direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and to me it's like we've I go back to the fact that we've always been I've always been told kind of that this, this mystery, like this heart attack just hopped up on somebody, we don't know how it came out of the blue, and that used to scare me. You know so much. I mean I lost a brother to a heart attack at 47 and so and lots of cholesterol issues and heart and blood pressure issues in my family and my dad was adopted, so I didn't really know part of my history. But I mean it's just amazing how it doesn't work that way. It's so hopeful and that's what I wish.
Speaker 2:People could come away, open up your mind, if you can, and realize that it's not maybe the vegan options or the vegan idea of what you thought be the vegan options or the vegan idea of what you thought you know it is, and just be open to this cuisine and let it be able to be a healer for your body. I mean it's, there's so many hopeful things that can come from it and that's my mission is to be able to cook things that can, you know, introduce people first to the food and go OK, I wouldn't have eaten that normally because I don't like that vegan. You know, one of the chefs I was listening to today said um, oh, you don't like that guacamole stuff. You don't like that. You know you're against if you say you're against veganism, you're against strawberries. You know we can so block our minds. Your mom did a lot of vegan options and you didn't know it. She might have put some butter in it, but but you, you grew up on a lot more of it than you realize. You.
Speaker 1:You bet. Well, as always, we'll welcome comments and any ideas you want to have us further expand on or points of contention, always willing to talk about any of these issues and would like to hear from you all if you want to. So we'll close out this episode for now and we'll look forward to seeing you next time. Take care, thank you.
