Most of us have grown up being told to drink our milk. But did you know that drinking milk with meals is actually not a healthy habit, and that it inhibits proper digestion and causes many health problems as a result? Did you ever wonder why wine is traditionally taken with meals instead of milk?
Let’s start by understanding what happens during digestion.
The food that you eat travels to the stomach, where the acid environment of the stomach enters into a chemical process with your food to break it down.
If your digestion is strong, the protein in your food is broken down into amino acids; fats are broken down into fatty acids; and carbohydrates are broken down into glucose. These nutrients in addition to vitamins and minerals in foods need to be broken down properly in order for the body to be able to utilize them.
First, in order to do its job properly, the stomach needs to maintain an acid environment. Then after the food leaves the stomach, it goes through the small intestine and the nutrients are absorbed through the intestinal lining into the blood stream. Because your blood reaches everywhere, every tissue of your body then receives the nutrients.
Now, what happens when you drink milk with a meal?
1. Milk is alkaline, so diluting your stomach contents with an alkaline liquid neutralizes the acidity of the stomach contents. Food can’t be broken down properly while the stomach acid is being diluted and neutralized.
2. Liquids taken with meals will dilute the stomach contents and flush them into the small intestine before digestion in the stomach is completed. Even water, although it’s more balanced and not alkaline as milk is, will dilute the acidity of the stomach and flush the stomach contents too quickly.
This is also the reason why when we eat soup, we usually eat it before the rest of the meal, because it’s largely liquid. We want to take liquids first before solid foods, so that we’re not flushing the foods through to the intestines too quickly.
What happens when food isn’t digested properly?
Undigested food will putrefy in the gut and become food for microorganisms that can contribute to a variety of health issues. Proper digestion creates a balance of “good” and “bad” microbes in the gut, but poor digestion throws this balance off and allows certain microbes to overgrow.
This is an important reason why proper digestion is so essential for maintaining good health. And considering the price of a good steak, most of us would prefer to be receiving the nourishment from it, not feeding parasites in our guts with it!
Finally, to the liquid you’ve been wondering about—wine!
Wine is acidic. So unlike milk, wine won’t interfere with the acid environment of the stomach. And when we take wine with meals, we tend to take sips rather than gulping down large quantities of liquid. So we’re not flushing the food through the stomach too fast when we sip wine with a meal.
Many traditional cultures use wine with the meal, even though they may not have understood the biochemistry involved, but intuitively it was understood as a healthful practice. This isn’t to say that everyone would benefit from drinking wine - but it’s important to understand the difference between milk and wine in the way that they interact with the food in your stomach, producing very different results!
Now with real information about how your digestion functions, you can become an educated consumer when it comes to the foods you choose. If you feel like drinking milk, it would be wise to take it between meals or at bedtime.
