Dairy farmers adding palm oil to cow feed ?

shikotee wrote: ↑ It is disappointing that over the last few decades, Canada has loosened the strings for this kind of crap.
We should be aiming to emulate EU food standards and labeling, and not the deceptive practices of the USA.

Disappointing but not really all that surprising.

I remember a few months ago when there was something about the farmers having to dump milk, there was a PR push with commercials from the Ontario Milk Board or whatever it was telling us about the good that they do. They do good for their members which I guess is there mandate. Not much will change as it is all about money at the end of the day.

Cows eat grass unless it is winter or the farmer does not have enough acreage, when they eat hay. Haylage/silage is for treats/finishing & grain is for finishing only. Straw is bedding.

In the 1970's, my buddy tells me, the neighbour fed his 100 head of cattle on potato chips & corn snacks in part. All the bags that went through the line & did not seal properly, & all the floor sweepings from local plants like Hostess & Jack's Snacks went to local cattle farmers.

Buddy worked in a flour mill & the floor sweepings there went to Mennonite hog farmers. In Nevada, post-consumer buffet leftovers go to hog farmers too.

I have heard of cattle being fed candy ends to finish them (when they are in a stockyard & fed high-calorie foods so they can develop well-marbled meat). The primary difference between A, AA, AAA, Prime beef is the marbling which means fat content. Wagyu beef is even fattier, but that is in part due to the breed.

For a while Neilson Dairy (which is owned by Weston Group, which also owns Loblaws) was producing DHA/Omega 3 milk by feeding ground herring (which is high in omega 3's) to cattle. Farmers know what goes in affects what comes out, & herring produces a healthy form of milk for humans. People did not bite & it is off the market now.

Palm oil is bad for us whether we ingest it in snack foods or as part of butter because it is highly saturated. That is why people are dealing with extra-hard butter. The end result is more like the old-style, much (rightfully) maligned stick margarine of the past. Palm oil is also used in microwave popcorn because it has a mouthfeel like butter when warm. It creates delightfully crisp snacks (think Bugles, which use is, vs. Doritos 3D, almost the same product but made with vegetable oil & not as light, crisp, buttery & delicate). I bet the palm oil butter would make the best kind of chocolate chip cookies. A lot of people have switched to healthier "spreads" like Becel which turn liquid at summer room temperatures & are about 10% water, so lower in fat too, for use with bread & toast. I am honestly surprised that there are enough people out there using old fashioned butter on bread to notice it has changed like this.

I normally use 1% milk in my tea & am pondering giving it up for unsweetened cashew milk. I am looking at 110 kcal per cup of 1% milk with 12 g of sugars, or 25 kcal per cup with 0 g of sugars for cashew milk. Lactose milk is not sugar-free, the lactose is simply broken down into glucose & galactose for those whose bodies cannot do that themselves. I am wondering if I really need to have a meal of milk in my drinks & so much sugar. Has anyone tried this product?

"Organic" in Canada only means "95%+ organic."

If the cows are on 95% grass, 5% "whatever" by weight, I think there must be some assumptions about what proportion of their diet is grass. Feed is tastier than grass so they will seek it out over grass. (They have radio ear tags that allow them access to computer-rationed feed at intervals through the day).

Palm oil feed is calorie-intense because it is fatty & may reduce what they take in as grass, which is lean. How much palm oil feed is required to change the nature of the fat in their milk? As compared to grass, it may not be much.