At last -- I thought -- I’d gotten to the point where my diabetes regime was predictable, practical and effective. The doctor at the Valier Clinic hadn’t turned over for a while, the very strict pharmacist in Cut Bank had moved on, and all my statistics were normal and happy.
Then suddenly I was told that all my prescriptions were blocked until I scheduled an appointment with the doctor. The good a1c I’d had didn’t count.
Without my prescriptions -- though I take few pills -- my regime might crash and burn. But I really resented being pulled in and suspected it was a money-generating scheme for the clinic. Remember that I had worked “backstage” as a ward clerk with this clinic and knew that “benevolence” was not their middle name. Their first, middle and last names are all “PROFIT.” So, kicking and screaming, I went to the clinic this morning, belly-aching and making accusations and spreading paranoia on all sides like a flu virus. The others were much more docile, because that’s the way is in Valier. You’re docile or you’ve somehow got a grip on enough money and power to throw your weight around. This is so true that if you’re not docile, everyone assumes you’ve got some secret source of money and power even when you don’t.
But no one had told me not to eat, so I couldn’t have the blood workup that was the reason for me being there. And it was NOT the doctor who had called me in -- it was a state agency that had decided to “survey” the state’s diabetes cases through the doctors. I don’t know which state agency. I don’t know whether they were covertly checking for illicit drugs. I’m told Medicare will pay for it, a nice little raid on the public purse, but I’m not told how much the survey would cost or what the goals and parameters might be. Nothing has been in the newspaper.
Big Health Care doesn’t have their fingers on the pulse of this state, they have their two hands around the state’s throat. It’s a major industry. So why all the secrecy or did I just not see the stories or recognize them? Or was some Helena agency hiding from the Big Health Care forces? Diabetes is such a GREAT source of income: something everyone has, assumed to be all their fault, and that people themselves believe can be treated with pills alone. They pretend to diet and exercise, but who has time? Want sugar, take more pills. Anyway, the effectiveness of the diet and exercise is in the twenty years BEFORE the diabetes is diagnosable, so the motivation is just not there in the most crucial years. I predict that diabetes will become a bigger money-maker for the pharm industry that even AIDS or anxiety.
But now I’ll switch sides. How can we drum up support and education for the public’s own health care of their own bodies -- let alone the massive changes that need to be made in the restaurant business, the grocery business, the ag business, the insurance business -- even ignoring the growing conviction that diabetes and other things are caused by environmental pollution, plastics, and food processing chemicals, overuse of poisons -- without knowing any objective measurements?
After all, the state’s humanities people suddenly became convinced by a biz school faculty member that if they only knew how much money everyone made with arts and crafts, the legislature would come to its senses and fund a few basic things like orchestras and museums. Of course, that was before the economic infrastructure collapse, but I didn’t notice any change of heart on their part. Still, was the principle wrong? (I still think it was wrong for art, but maybe right for health. But isn’t art healthy?)
The clinic offers a support group now, but that’s not what I need. What I need is a source of unadulterated food. Another case of fiddling around on the edges of a problem instead of confronting it.
I’m aware that some diabetes assumptions have been shot down now that measurements and cellular knowledge is so much more precise and powerful than the previous equation of “sugar + insulin = health”. In its place is a complex of things that can go wrong with the cycle of metabolism from resistance in the cell itself to antibodies interfering both with the production of insulin and the nature of it. Now there is Diabetes I, people who produce no insulin because the Isles of Langerhans in their livers no longer function; Diabetes II which is more a matter of cell resistance; something called LADA which has to do with autoimmune phenomena; gestational diabetes which is triggered by pregnancy; and so on. The numbering idea stopped with Diabetes III which no one understood.
I learned something interesting, which is that when doctors are given information in conferences or journals, the study is now ranked from “this is only an idea with no evidence or research,” through “this has been studied but the results are not conclusive,” to “this has been studied well for a long time and the results seem convincing.” One of the hallmarks of science is that the case is NEVER closed. New theories and methods turn up new evidence all the time. The best doctors are the wisest in terms of the big picture, not the ones with the longest list of meds.
I did decide to have the blood panel. I don’t need to worry about illicit substances showing up -- not even nicotine. But I’ve been taking metformin for several years now. One is supposed to have regular blood panels for liver function, because research shows some livers can’t handle it for long. Oh, yeah. No one remembered that until now. Too much distracted by the ghastly consequences of diabetes: foot amputation, blindess, kidney damage and for many late middle-aged women, heart flutter that throws clots causing heart attacks and strokes. Too much fear. Not enough thought. I watch the consequences daily in the obits.
I don’t need threats from my doctor or the pharm industry. I beg my friends not to slosh Roundup all over their yards to get rid of weeds. They do it anyway. I know how the doctors feel.
Showing posts with label FOOD CHAIN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FOOD CHAIN. Show all posts
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
THE IMPORTANCE OF IONS
When I moved back to Valier, I had visions of a fabulous garden. They have not become real for a number of reasons, not least of them money. The problems with gardens here include: temp extremes (zone 3 plants are pretty dependable, Zone 4 will be killed in a hard winter, and Zone 5 need special protection); high winds; enough altitude for high ultra-violet light; clay soil; and both alkali water and alkali soil. The best seed catalogues (this year they’re coming online rather than hard copy, which is an improvement in terms of keeping the piles of things under control around here) will list the acid/alkali affinities of the plants in question, but all too many of them do not. There are alluring plants like winterberry and azalea that simply cannot be grown here because they demand acid soil. Most evergreens are always on the edge of being stressed because of not enough acid. The books caution not to use poplar leaves for compost because they are so alkaline. REAL gardeners use little kits to be sure about acid/alkali balance because it can vary all over the yard. I haven’t done that, but I notice that the best local gardeners use tons of peat moss.
I became aware that humans have to think about this stuff, when I did my hospital chaplaincy. There was a little girl brought in unconscious because she had spent a hot summer day swilling lemonade, to the point that her electrolytes (which depend upon acid/alkali balance) were out of whack enough to render her comatose and possibly permanently brain dead. Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia (okay, I’m lazy -- but I can usually understand Wikipedia and it’s handy): pH of the blood: The pH is usually maintained within a narrow range by a number of buffer systems in the body. A normal pH value may still be due to a well-compensated imbalance or a mixed acid base disorder and an abnormal value is definitely due to a poorly compensated acid base problem or due to both metabolic and respiratory derangements causing an imbalance in the same direction.
Some people are more acid than others. Ireland is an acid place where much of the soil is peat and maybe those of us with Irish genes tend to be a little acid in more than our outlook on the world. My brother Paul was acid enough that his skin chemicals destroyed metal watch bands. He could patine copper by simply rubbing it. But an accumulation of lactic acid, suspected of being at the root of fatigue and other metabolic problems, can raise havoc in a body by blocking “perfusion” or the flow of fluids. I myself am a little too acid and feel better over here on the alkali prairie.
Now consider this:
“Anion gap: Body fluids including blood may contain a variable number of ions, but the total number of anions (negative ions) and cations (positive ions) are roughly the same. The ions that are usually measured in blood are cations like sodium and potassium and anions including chloride and bicarbonate. There are unmeasured ions in both groups (cations and anions), which also contribute to the ionic constitution of blood. The measured cations are usually greater than the measured anions by about 8-16mmol/L. This is because the unmeasured anions constitute a significant proportion of the total number of anions in blood. Proteins make this up predominantly, but also included are sulphates, phosphates, lactate and ketones. Causes of a decreased anion gap include hypoalbuminaemia and severe haemodilution. Rarer causes include increase in minor cation concentrations like calcium and magnesium. Causes of a raised anion gap include dehydration and any cause of raised unmeasurable anions, like lactate, ketones and renal acids, along with treatment with drugs given as organic acids such as penicillin, salicylates and poisoning with methanol, ethanol and paraldehyde. Rarely it may be due to decreased minor cation concentrations such as calcium or magnesium.”
It’s from Wikipedia, but I can barely grasp it. The point is that “ions” are electrons and it is largely the management of ions among atoms and molecules that makes our bodies work properly. They are what digest food by assembling and reassembling molecules, they are what makes glue stick, they are what cause colors to fade, they are how genes work, they are how thinking works -- all on this electromagneticochemical level that was unsuspected until recently. A few extra ions here and there, a few missing where they ought to be, and the human body (like the bodies of other critters) will try to compensate, then begin to express distress, and finally simply stop functioning. Death.
I looked up those cow acids: acetic or ethanoic acid is just vinegar. “Acetic acid is one of the simplest carboxylic acids (the second-simplest, next to formic acid). It is an important chemical reagent and industrial chemical that is used in the production of polyethylene terephthalate mainly used in soft drink bottles; cellulose acetate, mainly for photographic film; and polyvinyl acetate for wood glue, as well as synthetic fibres and fabrics. In households diluted acetic acid is often used in descaling agents.”
The use of acetic acid in alchemy extends into antiquity. In the 3rd century BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastos described how vinegar acted on metals to produce pigments useful in art, including white lead (lead carbonate) and verdigris, a green mixture of copper salts including copper(II) acetate. Ancient Romans boiled soured wine in lead pots to produce a highly sweet syrup called sapa. Sapa was rich in lead acetate, a sweet substance also called sugar of lead or sugar of Saturn, which contributed to lead poisoning among the Roman aristocracy.
In the 8th century, the Muslim alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber) was the first to concentrate acetic acid from vinegar through distillation. In the Renaissance, glacial acetic acid was prepared through the dry distillation of metal acetates. The 16th century German alchemist Andreas Libavius described such a procedure, and he compared the glacial acetic acid produced by this means to vinegar. The presence of water in vinegar has such a profound effect on acetic acid's properties that for centuries chemists believed that glacial acetic acid and the acid found in vinegar were two different substances. The French chemist Pierre Adet proved them to be identical.
In 1847 the German chemist Hermann Kolbe synthesized acetic acid from inorganic materials for the first time.
Propionic acid (systematically named propanoic acid) is a naturally-occurring carboxylic acid Propionic acid was first described in 1844 by Johann Gottlieb, who found it among the degradation products of sugar. Over the next few years, other chemists produced propionic acid in various other ways, none of them realizing they were producing the same substance. In 1847, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas established that all the acids were the same compound, which he called propionic acid, from the Greek words protos = "first" and pion = "fat," ... Bacteria of the genus Propionibacterium produce propionic acid as the end product of their anaerobic metabolism. This class of bacteria is commonly found in the stomachs of ruminants and the sweat glands of humans, and their activity is partially responsible for the odor of both Swiss cheese and sweat. Propionic acid inhibits the growth of mold and some bacteria. As a result, most propionic acid produced is used as a preservative for both animal feed and food for human consumption, and can be used as a preservative for Ballistics Gel. For animal feed, it is used either directly or as its ammonium salt. In human foods, especially bread and other baked goods, it is used as its sodium or calcium salt. Similar usage occurs in some of the older anti-fungal foot powders.
NOTE THIS ONE: A recent publication by MacFabe and colleagues found that intraventricular infusions of propionic acid produced reversible behavior that was very similar to that seen in autism. Behaviors included: hyperactivity, dystonia, turning, retropulsion. In addition, the treated rats demonstrated caudate spiking and the progressive development of limbic kindled seizures. The paper concludes that this is an excellent animal model of autism and warrants further study (MacFabe, 2007).
The human skin is host to a species of bacteria known as Propionibacterium acnes, which is named after its ability to produce propionic acid. This bacteria lives mainly in the sebaceous glands of the skin and is one of the principle causes of acne.
Butyric acid, (from Greek ???????? = butter) IUPAC name -Butanoic acid, or normal butyric acid, is a carboxylic acid with structural formula CH3CH2CH2-COOH. It is found in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and vomit, and has an unpleasant odor and acrid taste, with a sweetish aftertaste (similar to ether).
Butyric acid is used in the preparation of various butanoate esters. Low-molecular-weight esters of butyric acid, such as methyl butanoate, have mostly pleasant aromas or tastes. As a consequence, they find use as food and perfume additives.
Dunno about you, but the ions are flyin' around in my head.
I became aware that humans have to think about this stuff, when I did my hospital chaplaincy. There was a little girl brought in unconscious because she had spent a hot summer day swilling lemonade, to the point that her electrolytes (which depend upon acid/alkali balance) were out of whack enough to render her comatose and possibly permanently brain dead. Here’s an explanation from Wikipedia (okay, I’m lazy -- but I can usually understand Wikipedia and it’s handy): pH of the blood: The pH is usually maintained within a narrow range by a number of buffer systems in the body. A normal pH value may still be due to a well-compensated imbalance or a mixed acid base disorder and an abnormal value is definitely due to a poorly compensated acid base problem or due to both metabolic and respiratory derangements causing an imbalance in the same direction.
Some people are more acid than others. Ireland is an acid place where much of the soil is peat and maybe those of us with Irish genes tend to be a little acid in more than our outlook on the world. My brother Paul was acid enough that his skin chemicals destroyed metal watch bands. He could patine copper by simply rubbing it. But an accumulation of lactic acid, suspected of being at the root of fatigue and other metabolic problems, can raise havoc in a body by blocking “perfusion” or the flow of fluids. I myself am a little too acid and feel better over here on the alkali prairie.
Now consider this:
“Anion gap: Body fluids including blood may contain a variable number of ions, but the total number of anions (negative ions) and cations (positive ions) are roughly the same. The ions that are usually measured in blood are cations like sodium and potassium and anions including chloride and bicarbonate. There are unmeasured ions in both groups (cations and anions), which also contribute to the ionic constitution of blood. The measured cations are usually greater than the measured anions by about 8-16mmol/L. This is because the unmeasured anions constitute a significant proportion of the total number of anions in blood. Proteins make this up predominantly, but also included are sulphates, phosphates, lactate and ketones. Causes of a decreased anion gap include hypoalbuminaemia and severe haemodilution. Rarer causes include increase in minor cation concentrations like calcium and magnesium. Causes of a raised anion gap include dehydration and any cause of raised unmeasurable anions, like lactate, ketones and renal acids, along with treatment with drugs given as organic acids such as penicillin, salicylates and poisoning with methanol, ethanol and paraldehyde. Rarely it may be due to decreased minor cation concentrations such as calcium or magnesium.”
It’s from Wikipedia, but I can barely grasp it. The point is that “ions” are electrons and it is largely the management of ions among atoms and molecules that makes our bodies work properly. They are what digest food by assembling and reassembling molecules, they are what makes glue stick, they are what cause colors to fade, they are how genes work, they are how thinking works -- all on this electromagneticochemical level that was unsuspected until recently. A few extra ions here and there, a few missing where they ought to be, and the human body (like the bodies of other critters) will try to compensate, then begin to express distress, and finally simply stop functioning. Death.
I looked up those cow acids: acetic or ethanoic acid is just vinegar. “Acetic acid is one of the simplest carboxylic acids (the second-simplest, next to formic acid). It is an important chemical reagent and industrial chemical that is used in the production of polyethylene terephthalate mainly used in soft drink bottles; cellulose acetate, mainly for photographic film; and polyvinyl acetate for wood glue, as well as synthetic fibres and fabrics. In households diluted acetic acid is often used in descaling agents.”
The use of acetic acid in alchemy extends into antiquity. In the 3rd century BC, the Greek philosopher Theophrastos described how vinegar acted on metals to produce pigments useful in art, including white lead (lead carbonate) and verdigris, a green mixture of copper salts including copper(II) acetate. Ancient Romans boiled soured wine in lead pots to produce a highly sweet syrup called sapa. Sapa was rich in lead acetate, a sweet substance also called sugar of lead or sugar of Saturn, which contributed to lead poisoning among the Roman aristocracy.
In the 8th century, the Muslim alchemist Jabir Ibn Hayyan (Geber) was the first to concentrate acetic acid from vinegar through distillation. In the Renaissance, glacial acetic acid was prepared through the dry distillation of metal acetates. The 16th century German alchemist Andreas Libavius described such a procedure, and he compared the glacial acetic acid produced by this means to vinegar. The presence of water in vinegar has such a profound effect on acetic acid's properties that for centuries chemists believed that glacial acetic acid and the acid found in vinegar were two different substances. The French chemist Pierre Adet proved them to be identical.
In 1847 the German chemist Hermann Kolbe synthesized acetic acid from inorganic materials for the first time.
Propionic acid (systematically named propanoic acid) is a naturally-occurring carboxylic acid Propionic acid was first described in 1844 by Johann Gottlieb, who found it among the degradation products of sugar. Over the next few years, other chemists produced propionic acid in various other ways, none of them realizing they were producing the same substance. In 1847, the French chemist Jean-Baptiste Dumas established that all the acids were the same compound, which he called propionic acid, from the Greek words protos = "first" and pion = "fat," ... Bacteria of the genus Propionibacterium produce propionic acid as the end product of their anaerobic metabolism. This class of bacteria is commonly found in the stomachs of ruminants and the sweat glands of humans, and their activity is partially responsible for the odor of both Swiss cheese and sweat. Propionic acid inhibits the growth of mold and some bacteria. As a result, most propionic acid produced is used as a preservative for both animal feed and food for human consumption, and can be used as a preservative for Ballistics Gel. For animal feed, it is used either directly or as its ammonium salt. In human foods, especially bread and other baked goods, it is used as its sodium or calcium salt. Similar usage occurs in some of the older anti-fungal foot powders.
NOTE THIS ONE: A recent publication by MacFabe and colleagues found that intraventricular infusions of propionic acid produced reversible behavior that was very similar to that seen in autism. Behaviors included: hyperactivity, dystonia, turning, retropulsion. In addition, the treated rats demonstrated caudate spiking and the progressive development of limbic kindled seizures. The paper concludes that this is an excellent animal model of autism and warrants further study (MacFabe, 2007).
The human skin is host to a species of bacteria known as Propionibacterium acnes, which is named after its ability to produce propionic acid. This bacteria lives mainly in the sebaceous glands of the skin and is one of the principle causes of acne.
Butyric acid, (from Greek ???????? = butter) IUPAC name -Butanoic acid, or normal butyric acid, is a carboxylic acid with structural formula CH3CH2CH2-COOH. It is found in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and vomit, and has an unpleasant odor and acrid taste, with a sweetish aftertaste (similar to ether).
Butyric acid is used in the preparation of various butanoate esters. Low-molecular-weight esters of butyric acid, such as methyl butanoate, have mostly pleasant aromas or tastes. As a consequence, they find use as food and perfume additives.
Dunno about you, but the ions are flyin' around in my head.
Monday, February 18, 2008
COW PUKE, SPIT AND POOP
Investigators of healthy food have pointed to the bovine feedlot as a prime suspect for nastiness, saying that cattle are so unsuited to the digestion of corn or other grains that the ground in feedlots is covered with cow vomit. Yuck. But WHY do they throw up? An article in my local ag rag is revealing. It was written by J. Wagner and T.L. Stanton, Animal Sciences professors at Colorado State University and is framed as advice to ranchers “finishing” by switching them to grain.
There are four points to the discussion:
1. If cows go from eating roughage (hay) to eating grain too quickly, they will suffer from acid indigestion (produced by rumen bacteria trying to digest the grain) so severe that the cow may stop gaining weight or die.
2. So the cows should be switched from hay to grain in steps, maybe as many as eighteen (!) so as to be gradual enough for the cow’s natural “buffering ability” to keep up.
3. The writers feel that successfully switching to grain is possible if it is done carefully. (I will refrain from cynicism at this point.)
4. The best way to tell whether the switch is gradual enough is by inspecting the cow’s dung. This is better than lab tests on fecal starch or pH, which is the acid/alkalai ratio. (It’s possible to be too scientific.)
If this is too much information for you, don’t keep reading.
Grain is used to “finish” cattle because it is usually more economical, depending on variables like cattle prices, cattle breeding, the price spread between good and choice (grain-fed) quality carcass grain and the price of grain. It’s possible that making grain into ethanol will take the price of grain high enough that feedlot grain feeding will be too expensive and we’ll all be treated to arguments about “healthier” hay-fed cattle. But the feedlot people will groan at the necessity of jacking the hay around to the cows. On the other hand, with modern hay managing equipment, it’s hardly like having to buck bales over a fence. There is some evidence that grain feeding is the source of the kind of e-coli that kills humans and that sticking to hay can clear e-coli out of the cow’s system.
When a cow has acid indigestion or the bovine equivalent of heliobacter pylori, it’s in more trouble than a human because it has more stomachs. Evolved to digest fiber of all kinds (organic) it is basically a series of fermentation tanks. (There used to be a guy downwind of Browning whose cows included a lot of wind-transported paper and cardboard in their diets. Of course, today’s plastic sacks would kill them.)
The key to this digestion system is pH, which should be neutral, or “7” on an arbitrary scientific scale. Below 7 substances are labeled acid and above 7 the substances are “base” or alkali, like TUMS. When the bacteria are happily living at 7, they make the stomach contents into volatile fatty acids of three kinds: acetic, propoionic and butyric. These are the sources of the cow’s energy and they are only mildly acid, taking the environment to 6.5 or 6.8. Other stuff in there, when the cow eats roughage, is fiber, lignin, cellulose, and hard-to-digest carbohydrates. I suppose you could call this “cud,” since the cow brings it up and rechews it.
But grain is starch and sugar, which go quickly to glucose (Tell me about it! I can see it on my meter!) and then to lactic acid. If the grain goes to lactic acid in amounts the bugs can handle, no problem. But a little too much makes the bugs sicken and die. Then the acid score goes to 4 or 4.5 and digestion stops. (Tell me about it! I take a Pepcid AC every night! And it used to be much worse before I eliminated all sugar, white flour, and corn syrup from my diet.)
But wait, there’s more. Cattle drool and their saliva is alkaline (8.4 - 8.7). When they chew their cud, the saliva acts like TUMS. It’s the chewing and saliva that liquefies the roughage so it flows smoothly through the system. (More than 70% of the liquid in a cow’s stomachs is from saliva. Like, 20 to 30 GALLONS of saliva!) But they don’t slobber much over grain, so it doesn’t get either buffered or liquified. Silage and green chop are wet but work like grain, besides being already acid.
That’s not all. Grain-type foods spoil easily and can’t be left in the feed bunks more than 12 hours without going moldy and stale, so the cows won’t eat it. “For every 1 percent reduction in intake, expect reduced gains of 1.5 to 2.0 percent.” Cows are SUPPOSED to gain weight -- at cross-purposes with human desire to LOSE weight. The Marine cafeteria idea (take all you want but eat all you take) works out to feeding cattle twice a day, but no more than they will clean up -- but feed them again within a half hour after the bunks are empty. But if a storm is coming, they will increase consumption by as much as 20% which means that they ought to be throttled back with hay rather than grain.
Every morning someone must calculate the food value of the feed as well as its moisture content (which can vary as much as 200%), check that the bunks are emptied and what the intake was, look at the weather, and make up a feed ticket for the day. Every evening the whole process must be repeated and any errors (over- or under-feeding) should be corrected. A 500-1,000 cow or steer should have a minimum of 8 inches of bunk space, but a foot is better. (I’d give ‘em more space that that, were I there! Like farther than the length of their legs.) If there’s not enough room so that they have to crowd in, they eat more food but less often, which hinders weight gain. And if they have a tummy ache, they will eat less. They might even throw up.
That’s ugly enough, but what you really want to pay attention to is the cow manure. You’re looking for “stools that are a little loose -- somewhere between one that is stacked or formed and loose -- with a little big of grain passing through. A bubbling loose stool or one with white caps indicates acidosis.”
This doesn’t address antibiotics, growth hormones, and other molecular fiddling with cows. But it seems to me that it clearly makes the point that if you eat cows, you should not eat as they do. And maybe eating feedlot cows is a lousy idea. If you do, eat a lot of spinach and All-Bran to make up for what the cow didn’t get.
There are four points to the discussion:
1. If cows go from eating roughage (hay) to eating grain too quickly, they will suffer from acid indigestion (produced by rumen bacteria trying to digest the grain) so severe that the cow may stop gaining weight or die.
2. So the cows should be switched from hay to grain in steps, maybe as many as eighteen (!) so as to be gradual enough for the cow’s natural “buffering ability” to keep up.
3. The writers feel that successfully switching to grain is possible if it is done carefully. (I will refrain from cynicism at this point.)
4. The best way to tell whether the switch is gradual enough is by inspecting the cow’s dung. This is better than lab tests on fecal starch or pH, which is the acid/alkalai ratio. (It’s possible to be too scientific.)
If this is too much information for you, don’t keep reading.
Grain is used to “finish” cattle because it is usually more economical, depending on variables like cattle prices, cattle breeding, the price spread between good and choice (grain-fed) quality carcass grain and the price of grain. It’s possible that making grain into ethanol will take the price of grain high enough that feedlot grain feeding will be too expensive and we’ll all be treated to arguments about “healthier” hay-fed cattle. But the feedlot people will groan at the necessity of jacking the hay around to the cows. On the other hand, with modern hay managing equipment, it’s hardly like having to buck bales over a fence. There is some evidence that grain feeding is the source of the kind of e-coli that kills humans and that sticking to hay can clear e-coli out of the cow’s system.
When a cow has acid indigestion or the bovine equivalent of heliobacter pylori, it’s in more trouble than a human because it has more stomachs. Evolved to digest fiber of all kinds (organic) it is basically a series of fermentation tanks. (There used to be a guy downwind of Browning whose cows included a lot of wind-transported paper and cardboard in their diets. Of course, today’s plastic sacks would kill them.)
The key to this digestion system is pH, which should be neutral, or “7” on an arbitrary scientific scale. Below 7 substances are labeled acid and above 7 the substances are “base” or alkali, like TUMS. When the bacteria are happily living at 7, they make the stomach contents into volatile fatty acids of three kinds: acetic, propoionic and butyric. These are the sources of the cow’s energy and they are only mildly acid, taking the environment to 6.5 or 6.8. Other stuff in there, when the cow eats roughage, is fiber, lignin, cellulose, and hard-to-digest carbohydrates. I suppose you could call this “cud,” since the cow brings it up and rechews it.
But grain is starch and sugar, which go quickly to glucose (Tell me about it! I can see it on my meter!) and then to lactic acid. If the grain goes to lactic acid in amounts the bugs can handle, no problem. But a little too much makes the bugs sicken and die. Then the acid score goes to 4 or 4.5 and digestion stops. (Tell me about it! I take a Pepcid AC every night! And it used to be much worse before I eliminated all sugar, white flour, and corn syrup from my diet.)
But wait, there’s more. Cattle drool and their saliva is alkaline (8.4 - 8.7). When they chew their cud, the saliva acts like TUMS. It’s the chewing and saliva that liquefies the roughage so it flows smoothly through the system. (More than 70% of the liquid in a cow’s stomachs is from saliva. Like, 20 to 30 GALLONS of saliva!) But they don’t slobber much over grain, so it doesn’t get either buffered or liquified. Silage and green chop are wet but work like grain, besides being already acid.
That’s not all. Grain-type foods spoil easily and can’t be left in the feed bunks more than 12 hours without going moldy and stale, so the cows won’t eat it. “For every 1 percent reduction in intake, expect reduced gains of 1.5 to 2.0 percent.” Cows are SUPPOSED to gain weight -- at cross-purposes with human desire to LOSE weight. The Marine cafeteria idea (take all you want but eat all you take) works out to feeding cattle twice a day, but no more than they will clean up -- but feed them again within a half hour after the bunks are empty. But if a storm is coming, they will increase consumption by as much as 20% which means that they ought to be throttled back with hay rather than grain.
Every morning someone must calculate the food value of the feed as well as its moisture content (which can vary as much as 200%), check that the bunks are emptied and what the intake was, look at the weather, and make up a feed ticket for the day. Every evening the whole process must be repeated and any errors (over- or under-feeding) should be corrected. A 500-1,000 cow or steer should have a minimum of 8 inches of bunk space, but a foot is better. (I’d give ‘em more space that that, were I there! Like farther than the length of their legs.) If there’s not enough room so that they have to crowd in, they eat more food but less often, which hinders weight gain. And if they have a tummy ache, they will eat less. They might even throw up.
That’s ugly enough, but what you really want to pay attention to is the cow manure. You’re looking for “stools that are a little loose -- somewhere between one that is stacked or formed and loose -- with a little big of grain passing through. A bubbling loose stool or one with white caps indicates acidosis.”
This doesn’t address antibiotics, growth hormones, and other molecular fiddling with cows. But it seems to me that it clearly makes the point that if you eat cows, you should not eat as they do. And maybe eating feedlot cows is a lousy idea. If you do, eat a lot of spinach and All-Bran to make up for what the cow didn’t get.
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