 Cheese is not only a delicious and approachable food, it is incredibly good for you, as are all dairy products. Granted, they are high quality. By high quality, we mean grass fed as well as raw. Unfortunately, over 99% of the dairy products in the United States are not grass fed, and they are certainly not raw. Fortunately, there is a small percent of cheeses that are typically imported from Europe, even in supermarkets that are both raw and grass fed. It is unfortunate how modern dairy products are devoid of nutrition because of what animals are being fed, how they are being raised, and then we process it in a way to make the quality even lower by pasteurizing it and homogenizing it. Cheese in particular rises above other dairy products for several reasons. It's a fermented food and all of our native ancestors, hunter-gatherers, consumed animal foods in their raw, cooked, and fermented state. This is a constant. There is no indigenous group that did not consume this food variety. The presence of raw, cooked, and fermented animal foods seems to be mandatory in the human diet, so there is definitely a need for fermented animal foods in our diet and cheese is arguably the most approachable. Another reason cheese rises above the rest is rennet. Rennet is a set of enzymes produced in the stomach of a baby cow and it is used to make cheese, essentially predigesting some of the cheese before we eat it. So cheese has the benefits of being a fermented food which is typically a higher vitamin K2 content and beneficial bacteria content and it has enzymes that have already aided in the digestion of certain aspects of the food. The difficulty of getting large amounts of vitamin K2 in our modern diets translates to many health problems. Vitamin K2 on its own can reverse calcification in blood vessels, essentially curing heart disease. It's needed for the transport of calcium throughout the body. So by combining vitamin D3 to mobilize and K2 to transport, we are able to remove excess calcium from organs as well as the bloodstream. Not only is cheese high in vitamin K2, it actually contains all of the fat-soluble vitamins, some water-soluble vitamins, minerals, elements, and fatty acids. Literally, every single thing our body needs to thrive. Cheese is more than just calcium. In Weston Price's book, it's about a dentist who went around in the early 1900s exploring people still living off of a natural diet. There was one group in particular. The Swiss living in the Lachental Valley got a large percentage of their calories from just cheese and rye bread. They supplemented this with some milk and meat from the animals occasionally, but a very large percentage of their calories was solely cheese and rye bread. So cheese itself can be a source of all of the vitamin, mineral, and element nutrition our bodies need. And there are small amounts of alpha-linolenic acid, conjugated linoleic acid, things that can convert to omega-3 fatty acids in our body. Not all cheese is created equal. The quality of the grasses and pasture is what determines the nutrient content of the cheese. Those Swiss people actually used to light candles with butter when the spring grasses came around, because in the winter the butter was white. In the summer and the spring, it turned yellowish orange. This is because there are keratines in the grass and other nutrients in the grass that the cows convert into nutrients in their milk, which is then turned into butter or made into cheese. These Swiss people knew the nourishing properties that the dairy obtained from the spring and summer pasture. Keeping the food raw also preserves more of these nutrients, and the type of rennet that's used can alter the bacterial profile. European cheeses typically use animal rennet, which is the naturally occurring rennet, and there is vegetable rennet, which is some type of modern man-made rennet. I have two of the most famous cheeses in the world today. Let's see Vaz, the most famous Gruyere cheese made from cows grazing on summer alpine pasture, and of course Parmigiano Reggiano from cows only being fed hay or grass. Both of these are made with a natural culture of animal rennet. They are what I deem to be the highest quality and best tasting. Yeah, you might be able to get raw cheeses from a local farm that have a similar nutrient profile, but the culture and traditional techniques used to make these cheeses create a far superior flavor, and it's literally, you know, the fermentation is dictated by the environment the cheese is in, and that's why these parts of the world are known and famous for those cheeses. Most of these are A2 dairy. You have A1 Cassian and A2 Cassian, the different types of protein that naturally occur in the dairy. Some people don't tolerate the A1 Cassian protein too well, but I believe these are both made from A2 dairy. There is a concern about B-Cassimorphine 7 in the A1 Cassian, but there is little proof that BCM7 is inherently inflammatory. It's just known to be less inflammatory than A2 Cassian. So let's take a look at these cheeses and taste them. First we have the Etivaz, and what's really cool to me about all these cheeses is on the rind, they usually have a very unique stamp. This says Etivaz Alpec, something in some language I don't understand, but the point is all these traditional cheeses will have a specific stamp indicating the DOP, the designation of protection, the rules and the laws that guide how they're supposed to make these cheeses. And when you taste this cheese, you know why there's a designation of protection on it. So let's give it a little taste. When you taste this, you understand why indigenous people loved fermented food so much. It's like eating almond dessert. It's so nutty and like inherently sweet. You could taste like the pasture the animals were on, it's unbelievable. It's crazy that you take the milk from a cow, you ferment it in a certain way and it creates this amazing product that's so good for you, it's so delicious and like unbelievably complex flavor profile that I can't even describe. I could see why those Swiss people in that valley lived mostly off of cheese. So this Etivaz Griller cheese is really so complex and flavorful that you can sit here and think about it as you're eating it and the nutrient profile matches that. It's made from the highest quality dairy from cows grazing on summer alpine pasture. It doesn't get better than that. The next cheese we're going to look at is Parmigiano Reggiano, known for its famous perforated dots on the outside. Here we have Reggiano Parmigiano, I always thought this was pretty cool. You have the giant wheels of Parmigiano cheese. I'm going to say this up front, the quality is really up in the air. We don't know if the Greer cheese is a higher quality nutrient density than the Parmigiano Reggiano. I mean I guess by the color and the taste we might be able to assume that but you know they're both very high quality raw cheeses made from cows grazing on summer pasture. So let's give the Parmigiano Reggiano a taste. This is so classic. I love it. The Parmigiano is not as nutty, as complex as the Etivaz. The Parmigiano is drier in texture and it has this really classic amino acid crunch like when you bite into the cheese it literally crunches. It's this really unique characteristic that is what I love so much about the Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. So with either of these cheeses you're getting an amazing source of nutrients, all the fat type of vitamins, amazing source of vitamin K2. That's the main reason to consume cheese and you're also getting some beneficial bacteria from these cheeses. Both of these cheeses are available on Frankie's free range meat as well as a gouda cheese and an English cheddar cheese. We are looking to bring you guys the highest quality, most nutrient dense foods at an affordable price. So if you are lacking vitamin K2 in your diet or simply want to try some delicious cheeses go to Frankie's free range meat dot com, learn more about us, more about our story. We are looking to do raw grass fed dairy in the future. That is something we are unable to do right now but with more support and more momentum moving forward, it is something we are looking to do hopefully within a year. So not only are we going to be bringing you guys legendary cheeses such as Parmigiano and Letty Vaz, we will try to get you guys that high quality orange raw butter that the Swiss used to do light candles with. Thank you guys for joining me today. 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