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VA-toxic food chain/chicken experiment/"walking corn"
just another note: It sure doesn't help that they are also adding vitamin A to feeds, corn may not be the entire problem.
UPDATE: This thread started out my pondering about carotenes and then turned out to be more about a theory of the VA toxicity inherent in modern agriculture, corn and how corn has become the basis of much of the food chain in North America. This is the original post (with some updates) so you can see my train of thought.
Also, my home experiment with chickens is discussed.
...
Some people are told they are better or worse carotene-converters on their DNA tests. Certain health conditions make you a better or worse converter, including diabetes.
What happens to carotenes in people who can't convert? You can't pee out fat soluble vities right? So do you store them? Do they just hang around, causing problems? (coloring skin yellow? irritating epidermi?) If you can't ever use them, what eventually gets rid of them? Denatured by Sunlight?
It seems to me, not ingesting carotenes might be particularly important to some people.
I was thinking about how it seems that carotenes ARE present in in cow dairy fats (and also, for example, free range eggs).
I was thinking about how some OTHER milks, such as goat and sheep... the carotenes are completely converted.
UPDATE: this isn't completely true. Some carotenes are not vitamin A precursors and so won't be converted to A and will come through in goat milk etc. For instance, lutein and zeaxanthin. These are quite high in corn, and corn has become the number one ingredient in most agricultural feeds.
Some people feel that goat or sheep dairy agrees with them more than cow dairy.
quote:
"Another common skin ailment that can be treated with goat dairy is eczema. Many years ago I met Jane Murphy of Ardsallagh cheese who told me how she got into cheesemaking in the first place.
She was a mother of two little ones with severe eczema when one day an insurance salesman called at her door.
He looked at the children and came back later with a nanny goat who was in kid, and told her to give the milk to the children for their skin.
She did so and within days their eczema cleared and the scars too, and so her life path was laid out and she now makes the most delicious goat’s cheese too." end quote
UPDATE: Given that this anecdote is in the past, and in Ireland, I'm betting their feed wasn't full of corn (yet)
white egg yolks are possible! article:
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-species-of-bird-which-lays-eggs-with-yolks-that-are-not-yellow
quote:
Above, there is a photo of chicken eggs. Same species (obviously), but different diets. (photo: Google)
On the left, the bird was probably fed a diet based mainly on rice or some other ingredient devoid of xantophylls (a naturally occuring pigment in green leaves and corn), or carotinoids (found in grains like corn/maize).
end quote
"While goat milk seems like a quirky choice to some, it’s actually the most popular milk worldwide, and it has been for centuries."
--https://meyenberg.com/benefits-goat-milk
"fun" question: What would a carotene-free chicken feed contain? these are the basic components of most back yard chicken feeds:
Grains 62-77 % -- (perhaps brown rice here)
Vegetable Protein 15-19% - (perhaps cracked black beans? but some say their chickens don't like legumes. Perhaps sesame seeds?)
Fish meal 4-5 % (probably no carotenes?)
Oyster Shell 2% (same)
Salt
Kelp 4% (I'm thinking kelp has carotenes and would need to be replaced? This is needed for minerals)
I just read that Japanese pig farmers are also now raising pigs on rice-based feed schemes rather than corn.
This all makes me wonder about a change that has happened in our American agriculture over the decades...
Corn have infiltrated our entire food system... I remember reading about it in the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma".
Corn, with its higher carotenoids ...
Just puzzling... I wonder if there is something worse for us in corn carotenoids than there is in grass carotenoids...
One of the most basic things about farm animals is that they turn permaculture (such as grass-- that we can't eat) into food for us that we can eat.
Grain happens occasionally in a field. (Nothing like Corn...corn is ultra-grain on steroids).
If you think about it, corn is a New World food. Our cows and chickens etc that we Europeans brought over never saw it until recently.
woops, I might have to rethink the idea that there might be (in this case beta carotene) hiding in protein in cows milk
quote: "Moreover, cow milk shows an intense fluorescence band appeared at 525 nm which is absent in buffalo milk. This band corresponds to carotenoids more specifically β-carotene [30]. As reported, buffalo metabolize β-carotene mostly into vitamin-A and then passed on to milk, whereas, in cow milk it is stored in fat globules surrounded by protein cluster."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5436857/
Identification of cow and buffalo milk based on Beta carotene and vitamin-A concentration using fluorescence spectroscopy
I suppose this was to be expected, but I was surprised to find that the Vitamin A in goat milk is higher than that in cow milk. It appears that because the carotenes (that can be converted) are converted, goat milk is higher in pre-formed VA than cow milk.
Quote from lil chick on August 4, 2019, 5:57 pmI just read that Japanese pig farmers are also now raising pigs on rice-based feed schemes rather than corn.
This all makes me wonder about a change that has happened in our American agriculture over the decades...
Corn have infiltrated our entire food system... I remember reading about it in the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma".
Corn, with its higher carotenoids ...
Descalzo et.al., 2005, found pasture-fed steers incorporated significantly higher amounts of ß-carotene into muscle tissues as compared to grain-fed animals. Concentrations ranged from 0.63 – 0.45 µg/g and 0.06 – 0.5 µg/g for meat from pasture and grain-fed cattle respectively, a 10 fold increase in ß-carotene levels for grass-fed beef.
I've seen, if I'm not mistaken, the occasional chicken contract "metabolic disease". And plenty of cats and dogs. To some extent, these animals are like us. Domestic animals eating domestic foods.
I guess I have seen some "wilder" animals such as pigeons or deer (say, living near a Mcdonalds or in a park) with metabolic disease--but mostly only when they were eating out of trash cans etc. I don't think it happens with their wild foods. And yet their wild food would definitely have some VA...
