Today’s milk is a processed food. Until the end of the 19th century in Europe and the beginning of the 20th century in the US, milk was consumed unpasteurized or raw. Later on, homogenization became the industry’s standard. These processes further alter milk’s chemistry and actually increase its detrimental acidifying effects.

Under current industrial methods, cow’s milk is often a toxic brew of man-made ingredients like bio-engineered hormones, antibiotics (55% of U.S. antibiotics are fed to livestock), and pesticides—all of which are bad for us and the environment. For example, unintentional pesticide poisonings kill an estimated 355,000 people globally each year. In addition the drugs pumped into livestock often re-visit us in our water supply.

We are the only animals on the planet who take another animals milk and drink it for consumption. We are biologically designed to drink our own mother’s milk. Would you go and put your mouth to a cow’s nipple and start drinking it? It’s not a naturally occurring desire in my mind.

The biochemical make-up of cow’s milk is perfectly suited to turn a 65-pound new born calf into a 400-pound cow in one year. It contains, for example, three times more protein and seven times more mineral content while human milk has 10 times as much essential fatty acids, three times as much selenium and half the calcium. Some may like cow’s milk but drinking it is both unnecessary and potentially harmful.

Despite popular opinion, recent studies and exposes have shown that dairy can actually create osteoporosis in our bones. Not only do we barely absorb the calcium in cow’s milk (especially if pasteurized), but to make matters worse, it actually increases calcium loss from the bones. This increases your risk for fractures and more.

Many of the animals today are factory farmed and abused. Those are just a few of the reasons why milk isn’t the most optimal of foods for our bodies. But remember that it doesn’t stop there. Milk is found in cheeses, yogurt, non-vegan ice creams, whey protein, whipped creams and any type of dairy product.

Check out next weeks blog post to learn about the large selection of milk alternatives and why there better for you.

🙂

Tea is the second most consumed beverage around the world with it being in almost every culture, in fact we go through millions of tea bags in just one day. Tea is there if your feeling a bit run down, getting in after a long hard day, having a chat with friends or just watching TV, tea is one of our all time favourite friend’s that gets us through day to day life.

But what we don’t know is that our everyday cup of tea actually contains plastic, polypropylene to be exact, which means they are not 100% biodegradable. Tea bags contains lower grade dust and fanning’s from broken down tea leaves. Now switching to loose leaf teas means not only are you getting rid of the plastic, you will be drinking from larger leaves which means more natural oils will be entering your body and don’t forget about all that tasty flavour!

There has been a lot of research done on loose leaf teas, because they hold so many antioxidants they’ve been known to prevent cancers, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, help with stress and acne, aid in weight loss and boost the immune system. They’ve also been found to hold anti aging and anti allergy components, you would hope that anything 100% natural would right?

So with that in mind wouldn’t you rather sip on a lovely flavoursome cup of natural loose leaf tea? So come down and choose a brew of your choice out of our wide selection here at Anna-Loka. 🙂

Everything here at Anna-Loka has been up-cycled,from the chairs to the lockers and even the light shades. Everything that gets used here is biodegradable and recycled. We have a zero waste policy.

Here is a few facts about plastic and the damage it’s doing to our oceans.
Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the Earth four times.
Over the last 10 years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
We currently only recover 5% of the plastic we produce.
The average person throws away 185 pounds of plastic every year.
35 billion water bottles get thrown away each year.
It takes 500 – 1,000 years for plastic for plastic to degrade.
1 million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually.

Here are a few tips on how you can help with plastic waste.
Recycle every single day.
Re-use shopping bags, containers etc.
Buy a re-usable mug to buy your coffee in everyday, you will also save money on this.
Avoid plastics that have got BPA in them (a chemical used to make plastic)
Volunteer at beach clean ups.
Spread the word, tell your family and friends and get people doing the right thing for our planet.
Thanks for reading.
🙂