Certainly you have heard the nursery rhyme “Little Miss Muffet”:Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
Along came a spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.
Most can figure out the tuffet part. But what are curds and whey? Isn’t whey a white protein powder from dairy? (Actually, whey protein comes from dairy, but it is the isolated protein nutrient leaving the rest of the nutrition behind.)
Back in the 15 – 1600’s, this nursery rhyme made perfect sense. If we were to modernize the ryme, it might read:
Little Miss Goldilocks
Playing her x box
eating her skittles and KoolAid;
Along came a spider,
who sat down besider her
only to get sprayed with raid.
You see, when it comes to real life, we have practically lost it. We have moved so far from reality we don’t even know what real food is anymore.
The kids to whom this original rhyme is currently being read to have probably never eaten curds and whey. They may have had a form or curds separated from whey. Maybe it was called “Large Curd Cottage Cheese”.
Just yesterday, my wife cultured some raw dairy with lacto-fermenting cultures. The result was curds and whey. The curds were on the bottom and the whey was on top.
Cottage cheese is even beyond a far cry away from Miss Muffet’s Curds and Whey. It is a form of cutured dairy. However, commercialized cottage cheese almost always comes from the milk of confined feedlot operations (CFO’s), that is, grain fed cattle. This creates an inflammatory milk to begin with. And then, whey separated from the curds, what did they do with it?
Cultured whey is the golden liquid that is the co-product of the cheese making process. When you eat yogurt or cottage cheese, sometimes you can still see some whey separate from the product and appear on the top. These days, people assume it is a bad part and pour it off the top!
Good whey is an excellent “nutrient dense” source of many vitamins and minerals, especially the electrolyte minerals, enzymes, organic acids, pro-biotics, and lactic acid.
In fact, many of us have an out-of-balance sodium/potassium ratio. This is partly due to too much sodium in our diets. But for many of us, it is also due to an insufficient amount of potassium in our diets. That is, we don’t consume enough potassium rich fruits and vegetables, bananas, avocados and the likes of.
Sodium attracts and holds onto an excess of water in our bodies. Increasing potassium will encourage that detoxifying water exchange – excess stagnant waste water for a proper balance of intracellular and intercellular hydration. Cultured whey is an excellent source of organically bound postassium.
Whey supports the liver, kidneys, and colon in detoxification. Hippocrates and Galen called cultured whey “Healing Water”. Whey used to be called “Old Man’s Drink” because it could make an old man feel young again. Cultured whey can also help someone who has lost their sense of thirst to restore the normal thirst and hydration levels.
Many have considered coconut water to be the perfect electrolyte mineral drink. But coconut water does not have probiotics, calcium, nor the 7 B vitamins as are found in cultured whey.
By combining cultured whey with honey, juices of fruit, and essential oils, the benefits only increase as it is transformed into a magnificent tasty electrolyte mineral sports beverage.
From a tasty probiotic beverage viewpoint, cultured whey might be likened to Kombucha. But kombucha is lacking elecrolyte minerals, vitamins, and enzymes as are so richly provided by cultured whey.
Of course, since whey is a dairy product, the best source would be from 100% GreenFed(TM) milk certified organic, free of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, hormones, antibiotics, and the likes of such as is found in Suero Viv from Beyond Organic.