https://www.interest.co.nz/rural-ne...ibution-will-be-constructing-first-foundationSir Bob Elliott’s most lasting contribution will be for constructing the first foundation on which the A2 milk movement is built. All of the biggest international dairy companies now have their own A2 projects.....
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My own association with Bob Elliott did not occur until 2004. That was when I became aware of his work on Type 1 diabetes and milk that had come out of left field.
Bob had been puzzled as to why Type 1 diabetes was extremely rare in Samoan children living in Samoa but was relatively common in Samoan children living in New Zealand. The ethnicity of the children was the same so clearly it had to be something in the environment.
Perhaps it was something in the physical climate, such as sunlight affecting vitamin D levels? That is a theory that still gets talked about widely by people interested in Type 1 diabetes. However, it was also easy to pick holes in that theory such that at best it could only be a contributing factor.
Eventually, Bob’s investigations led to diet. The obvious difference there between childhood diets in Samoa and New Zealand is that a lot more milk is drunk in New Zealand than Samoa. Was there something about cows’ milk that was triggering the disease. However, the answer was never going to be that easy.
The reason that Bob knew the answer could never be that simple was that Type 1 diabetes was also very uncommon in parts of East Africa where the human diet was focused on cow milk. That gnawed away at Bob until eventually in 1993 he called the Dairy Research Institute and asked them whether there was any difference in the protein chemistry of African milk. The answer came back that there was indeed a small difference in the beta-casein protein. All beta-casein in African cattle was of the A2 type, whereas many European cattle produce beta-casein of the A1 type. It seemed a long shot, but to Bob with his explorer mind it was worth looking at.
It didn’t take long for Bob to identify that the geographic distribution of Type 1 diabetes, which was already known to correlate with milk consumption, correlated much more tightly once A1 beta-casein rather than milk itself was used as the explanatory variable. Bob then went on to test his theory by taking diabetes-susceptible mice, splitting them into two groups, and feeding A1 beta casein to half the animals and A2 beta-casein to the others. Remarkably, 47 percent of the mice fed A1 beta-casein developed Type 1 diabetes but none of those fed A2 beta-casein became diabetic. It all made sense, particularly once it became apparent that a mu-opioid fragment called beta-caseomorphin7 was released from A1 beta casein, but under normal circumstances did not release from A2 beta-casein....
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