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The Dark Side of Dairy: Part 2

White Lies – is cows’ milk healthy or natural?

Like all 4,500 species of mammal, humans produce milk for their young. Unlike the other 4,449, we continue to drink it after weaning – but not even our mother’s milk, cow’s milk. So much for it being natural! Fine for a baby calf, which is what nature intended, but not so fine for a human baby, whose needs are very different.

Despite this, milk is presented almost as a wonder food, essential to health - strange considering that Americans lap it up and have some of the worst health statistics going while Japanese barely touch it and are some of the healthiest, longest-living people on Earth. So just what can cheese, butter, cream, ice cream, yoghurt and milk chocolate do for you? Probably more than you reckoned.

Milk is pure?

Dairy cattle are so diseased through over work that right now, one in three has mastitis. Painful, swollen udders issue copious amounts of pus and some of it is allowed in your milk – up to 400 million pus cells in every litre.

And if that doesn’t make your stomach turn, every sip of milk also contains a cocktail of 11 different growth factors and 35 different hormones. Why so many? Because two thirds of all milk comes from pregnant animals, the rest from those who have recently given birth - times when oestrogen and other hormone levels are sky high.

Milk magnificent for kids?

Allergies, acne, asthma, colic, eczema and ear infections are all linked to dairy to one degree or other. It’s also one of the main causes of childhood anaemia because of the intestinal bleeding it can cause.

Childhood diabetes (type 1), for which insulin injections are needed, is dramatically on the up in under fives. Cow’s milk formulae and early milk drinking are important triggers in genetically susceptible children.

Type 2 diabetes is also skyrocketing. It used to affect only adults but is now being found in children. Research in 40 countries shows the more milk and meat kids eat, the higher their risk.

Milk to build bones?

If this were true, three quarters of the world’s people would be very floppy indeed because they don’t drink milk! They’re intolerant of the sugar it contains (lactose) or allergic to its protein (casein).

Milk is not the key to strong bones, as scientists recently showed in a study published in the professional journal, Pediatrics. In fact, people in the US gobble up more dairy than almost anyone else in the world and yet have record levels of osteoporosis. Milk is part of the problem, not the cure because of the high acid levels it produces, which causes calcium loss from the bones. (Protein from milk (and meat) causes acidity when digested which is buffered by loss of calcium from the bones – a well documented effect, known as ‘the calcium paradox’ by the World Health Organisation.)

Milk – fat of the land?

Sure is and particularly the most damaging kind – saturated fat. Breast cancer in the UK is up 80 per cent since 1971 and hits one in nine women. It’s one in 10,000 in rural China, where dairy is a rarity. The difference is due to diet, not genes.

Ovarian cancer is also increasing and women who eat four or more servings of dairy a day have double the risk of those who eat little. Prostate and bowel cancers are also major killers and again milk can play a part.

The biggest killer of all in the UK is heart disease and most of us are at risk. Fatty animal products, cholesterol and animal protein which are all in dairy are amongst the villains responsible.

Milk good for growth?

Certainly is, too good! The guilty party is a hormone called IGF-1, designed to make calves grow fast! Small increases of IGF-1 in people increase the risk of several cancers. The more dairy you eat, the higher your levels of IGF-1.

Milk – the demon drink

As if that collection of potential ailments isn’t enough, there’s still more with links to dairy – arthritis, constipation, Crohn’s disease, food poisoning, gallstones, kidney stones, migraines, multiple sclerosis and obesity.

For a fully referenced report on the health impact of consuming cow’s milk and dairy products, see:
http://www.vegetarian.org.uk/campaigns/whitelies/wlreport01.shtml