Kefir Pineapple Smoothie

Dairy is the number one allergen in the world. I always find recommendations on dairy interesting because a really great quality dairy product is so deeply nourishing. Milk from Jersey Cows that have not been injected with hormones or antibiotics and that grow up eating grass is optimal.

Cows have a complex stomach and digestive system. Their stomachs are called rumen and they are designed to eat wild grasses, not grains. There are four different compartments in a ruminant (an animal with rumen stomachs) and each compartment performs a different and important digestive activity. Most importantly, a cow’s stomach is teeming with a multitude of bacteria that break down the grasses.

A human being’s bacterial environment colonizes the whole digestive system, from our lips all the way to the back end. The stomach produces hydrochloric acid, which makes a very hostile environment for microbes. As a result, a healthy stomach has a very low population of microbes. The majority of the microbes are found in our digestive system.

Because grasses and plants are not as easy for us to digest, it’s important that we prepare these foods in ways that make both their bioavailability of nutrients more easily digestible.

A healthy and happy cow produces milk that is teeming with nutrition, but most of us are not consuming the milk of happy, healthy cows.

Grains are given to cows in feedlots, also known as CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), where large numbers of cows and other animals are piled in together.

These conditions are horrific for livestock for so many reasons. They are often confined to small areas, have their babies taken away at birth, given large amounts of hormones to grow bigger, faster, and require antibiotics because of cross-contamination in close confinement with one another.

Livestock that is raised this way are living and eating in unnatural and often inhumane ways. And then, we’re ingesting that energy. Since everything is energy, we would all do well to find and support local farmers (and this is an entire other blog post on sustainability) who farm in traditional, sustainable and health-centered ways.

Really, they are everywhere. We just have to look.

Back to the yummy dairy.

Dairy from grass fed Jersey cows is also significantly higher in calcium and has 10% more protein. It also has 15% less sugar than regular milk. Additionally, Jersey cows produce A2 protein milk which some find easier to digest.

Hands down, the most nutritious way to consume milk is to ferment it and make it into kefir. It’s incredibly simple to do and it tastes wonderful. It’s like a liquid yogurt.

In fact, not only is kefir a great source of calcium, it also contains high levels of vitamin B12, magnesium, vitamin K2, biotin, folate, enzymes and is teeming with probiotics. Your average store-bought probiotic contains around 10 different strains of bacteria. Kefir from grass fed cows contain at least 50 different strains of probiotics.

We know that some of our rampant health issues are the direct result of lower and less diverse populations of bacteria in our gut. Kefir is a wonderful and delicious way of repopulating our gut for health.

Since our gut health predominantly runs the show for the health of our entire body-mind system, we would all do well to find ways to decrease our consumption of antibiotics (which will wipe out all the ‘good guys’ at the same time that they wipe out the ‘bad guys”) and increase our consumption of fermented foods.

Ingredients:

This smoothie is SOOOO good. It’s like a pina colada and a chai tea got together and had a baby. Seriously. It’s delicious.

1.5 - 2 cups homemade or store-bought milk kefir

1 large banana

1.5 cups of chopped, fresh pineapple

dash of cinnamon

dash of nutmeg

dash of ginger

handful of ice

Combine all ingredients in a high-speed blender and blend until smooth.