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Breast feeding for at least six months has been associated with enhanced immunity and other benefits for children -- but a prospective study from Australia suggests breast feeding may also yield academic benefits later in a child's life, at least for boys. The study, which followed almost 3,000 children from birth onward, found those who were predominantly breast fed for six months or longer had significantly higher scores on standardized tests of reading, math, and spelling at age 10 compared with kids breast fed for shorter periods, according to Wendy Oddy, PhD, of Telethon Institute for Child Health Research in...

An Australian farm is laying claim to producing the country's only non-violent milk, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported. Workers on New Govardhana farm in Queensland do not use dogs to round up cattle, machines for milking or send cows to slaughter. One of the 80 Hare Krishna devotees who live on the farm, Vrindavana Sevika Devi Dasi said milk from the cows, known as ahimsa milk, was much creamier and sweeter than normal milk because of the treatment of the herd. She said the cows were hand milked and the faith's followers wanted to show the dairy industry a positive...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US researchers on Thursday unveiled the secret of how cats lap water or milk with such elegance, a phenomenon that happens so fast it cannot be followed by human eyes. Cats are among the many species that, unlike humans, cannot close their mouths and create suction. With help from from high-speed video taken of a felines lapping liquid, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Princeton University found that household cats and larger felines like tigers balance gravity and inertia as they imbibe liquids. The research will appear in the November 12 issue of the...

REVERE, Mass. -- A man walked into a Revere convenience store Thursday night, stripped naked, and then poured milk all over himself, according to investigators. The store owner said he's never seen anything like it. “It's very scary. Very scary. Especially, I did not witness or heard anything like this for a long time,” said Shaheedul Islam, the store owner. The store owner said he doesn't plan to file charges. Police said the intruder was having a bad reaction to his medication. He was taken to a hospital for a mental evaluation.

This is a first, and it's not something to be proud of, but I have to be honest: I didn't actually ingest this week's "I'm Eating What?!?" products. Yes, the whole aim of this column is to chomp down on unusual things, swallow, research and report. But when something smells so gawd-awful that it makes me want to wretch -- no gig is worth that. (My friend and fellow taster, a particularly vociferous bacon-lover, even pulled the Jew card as an excuse for not trying the products, claiming they weren't kosher. Girl, puuuuhhhlleeease.) However, we are pleased to report that...

New research has revealed that agriculture came to Europe amid a wave of immigration from the Middle East during the Neolithic period. The newcomers won out over the locals because of their sophisticated culture, mastery of agriculture -- and their miracle food, milk. Wedged in between dump trucks and excavators, archeologist Birgit Srock is drawing the outline of a 7,200-year-old posthole. A concrete mixing plant is visible on the horizon. She is here because, during the construction of a high-speed rail line between the German cities of Nuremberg and Berlin, workers happened upon a large Neolithic settlement in the Upper...

The United Arab Emirates has been pushing hard for the European Union to accept imports from its camel dairy farms. Until now the EU has not considered the camel to be a dairy animal, but in the last few weeks the legal process has moved along. Could camel milk soon arrive on a supermarket shelf near you?

Most people have heard of the "Got Milk?" and milk mustache advertising campaigns that are designed to promote the sale and consumption of milk and milk products in the United States.  The advertising and promotion of dairy products is overseen by the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board (National Dairy Board - NDB), an organization that is a part of the Agricultural Marketing Services (AMS); AMS is a division of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and administers programs that help market U.S. agricultural products.  According to AMS's website, "The Dairy Production Stabilization Act of 1983" (Dairy Act) authorized...

Investigators recently entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts. Then, guns drawn, four officers fanned out across Rawesome Foods in Venice. Skirting past the arugula and peering under crates of zucchini, they found the raid's target inside a walk-in refrigerator: unmarked jugs of raw milk. "I still can't believe they took our yogurt," said Rawesome volunteer Sea J. Jones, a few days after the raid. "There's a medical marijuana shop a couple miles away, and they're raiding us...

DUBAI (Reuters) – Hard on the hooves of cow's and goat's milk, European grocery shelves may soon be invaded by milk from that proverbial ship of the desert, the camel. An animal famous for bad breath and ill humour might seem an unlikely source of liquid to lubricate a bowl of breakfast cereal or froth up a latte, but promoters from the United Arab Emirates say it is healthy -- and almost like mother's own. "People with lactose intolerance can drink it with no problem, unlike cow's milk, it doesn't cause protein allergies, and it's high in insulin," said Ulrich...

I read this on Stossel’s blog this morning and thought it was a good idea to pass this on to all of you good folks. "Now here is another example of why the government is so adept at helping us all live better lives. 'New Environmental Protection Agency regulations treat spilled milk like oil, requiring farmers to build extra storage tanks and form emergency spill plans. …'" I was worried that you might miss it and I was just sure that you would want to be informed of such important new rules as this surly is. I get such a...

GRAND RAPIDS -- Having watched the oil gushing in the Gulf of Mexico, dairy farmer Frank Konkel has a hard time seeing how spilled milk can be labeled the same kind of environmental hazard. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is classifying milk as oil because it contains a percentage of animal fat, which is a non-petroleum oil. The Hesperia farmer and others would be required to develop and implement spill prevention plans for milk storage tanks. The rules are set to take effect in November, though that date might be pushed back. "That could get expensive quickly," Konkel said....

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Eating dairy foods could help protect your heart, new research from Sweden suggests. Dairy foods are a major source of saturated fat in the diet, which has been associated with heart disease. However, there's some evidence that dairy foods could actually benefit heart health, for example by lowering blood pressure or reducing cholesterol levels, Dr. Eva Warensjo of Uppsala University and her colleagues note in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. To get a clearer sense of people's intake of fat from dairy and heart disease risk, Warensjo and her team measured blood levels of...

Department Of Justice Files Charges Over Tragic Spill On Thursday Attorney General Eric Holder announced that criminal charges will be filed over the tragic spill that occurred 42 days ago in McKinney Texas. Holder and his crack team were lucky enough to be on the scene at Spoon’s Diner when James Friday, age 11, carelessly knocked over a large glass of milk his mother had ordered for him. Quickly sensing the gravity of the situation Holder and his team sealed off the diner and informed all of the patrons that they would be detained indefinitely as witnesses. “Whether this was...

HAMILTON, CANADA – Women who drink two large glasses of milk a day after their weight-lifting routine gained more muscle and lost more fat compared to women who drank sugar-based energy drinks, a McMaster study has found. The study appears in the June issue of Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise. "Resistance training is not a typical choice of exercise for women," says Stu Phillips, professor in the Department of Kinesiology at McMaster University. "But the health benefits of resistance training are enormous: It boosts strength, bone, muscular and metabolic health in a way that other types of exercise...

Saudi scholar's fatwa wades into controversy Saudi scholar gets into trouble for saying that women could give their milk to men for maternal relations Manama: A Saudi scholar has waded into controversy after he said that women could give their milk to men to establish a degree of maternal relations and get around a strict religious ban on mixing between unrelated men and women. According to Shaikh Abdul Mohsin Al Abaican, a consultant at Saudi Arabia's royal court, a man who often entered a house and came in contact with the womenfolk there should be made symbolically related to the...

Feds tell court they can decide what you eat 'Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish' Attorneys for the federal government have argued in a lawsuit pending in federal court in Iowa that individuals have no "fundamental right" to obtain what food they choose. The brief was filed April 26 in support of a motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's ban on the interstate sale of raw milk....

The milk debate sparked some salty language on "Good Day New York" this morning. The anchors were debating the National Milk Producers Federation's assertion that products should only be categorized as “milk” when it comes from a “lactating animal.”

A Kentucky woman was charged with assault after she allegedly squirted breast milk into the face of a deputy, sparking online debate Sunday in the local media. Toni Tramel, 31, was arrested Thursday for public intoxication in Owensboro, WYMT-TV reported, but it is what she did next which has attracted headlines. As Tramel changed into an inmate uniform, she squirted a stream of breast milk into the face of the female deputy watching over her. A press release from the Daviess County, Kentucky, Detention Center, said that after the deputy decontaminated herself from the "bio-hazard", Tramel was charged with third...

The California Milk Advisory Board may have shot itself in the hoof. The board, which promotes the state's dairy farmers and is overseen by the California Department of Food and Agriculture, is again preparing to film commercials touting California milk from California cows -- in New Zealand. In January, it plans to shoot part of its new series of 10 California "Happy Cows" TV commercials in Auckland, taking advantage of that country's low production costs. It comes just after California began offering film tax incentives this summer to reverse so-called runaway production that has caused the loss of thousands of...