So much money has been spent by the milk industry to convince us all that milk is healthy, that whenever someone suggests perhaps milk isn't a panacea, a frequent response is utter disbelief, like you've just told someone that the moon landing was faked (it wasn't, btw). I have removed milk drinking from my diet for several years now, but still eat occasional morsels of cheese or dollops of butter. Much, much less than when I was a kid though: living in rural Ontario. Of course, the milk I consumed then was fresh, unpasteurized, from cows who weren't fed hormones, ranged in the meadows, yadda yadda. My great-grandfather (who I never met) owned a dairy in Wisconsin, probably why my grandfather has been a cheese and butter booster his whole life. Perhaps my refusal to give up cheese and butter totally stems from his influence (via my mother maybe).
D eats nearly zero dairy, but then she has a lot more discipline in her diet in all respects.
Anyway, milk is not good for everyone, there are better ways to get calcium.
Chicago Tribune | not milk?
You know it like the Pledge of Allegiance: “Milk helps build strong teeth and bones.”But does it really? Or, as nutrition researchers from Harvard and Cornell Universities are radically suggesting: Have we all been duped by the dairy industry's slick, celebrity-driven “got milk?” advertising campaign?
Milk, the sacred cow of the American diet, is under attack and not just by animal-rights activists. Though federal dietary guidelines and most mainstream nutrition experts recommend that people age 9 or older drink three glasses of milk a day, researchers are examining the role of dairy in everything from rising osteoporosis rates, Type 1 diabetes and heart disease to breast, prostate and ovarian cancer.
Last March, the journal Pediatrics published a review article concluding that there is “scant evidence” that consuming more milk and dairy products will promote child and adolescent bone health. Some leading practitioners of integrative medicine, including best-selling author Dr. Andrew Weil, suggest eliminating dairy products from the diet to help treat irritable bowel syndrome, asthma, eczema and ear infections. The late Dr. Benjamin Spock reversed his support of cow's milk for children in 1998 in his last edition of his world-famous book “Baby and Child Care.”
..But researchers Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, say there is little evidence that shows boosting your calcium intake to the currently recommended levels will prevent fractures.
Willett, who co-authored “The Nurses' Health Studies,” one of the largest investigations into the risk factors for major chronic diseases in women, found that women with the highest calcium consumption from dairy products actually had substantially more fractures than women who drank less milk.
Campbell, who like Willett comes from a dairy-farming family, found the same thing after spending several decades surveying health-related effects of a plant-based diet and death rates from cancer in more than 2,400 Chinese counties.
Both men say there is no calcium emergency; Americans get plenty. And they argue that the unnecessary focus on calcium prevents us from using strategies that really work in the fight against osteoporosis, including getting enough exercise and vitamin D and avoiding too much vitamin A.
“The higher the consumption of dairy, animal protein and calcium, the higher the fracture rate--an indisputable observation in my view,” said Campbell, whose life work is compiled in “The China Study” (Benbella Books, $24.95), one of the most comprehensive nutritional studies undertaken.
The link between milk and cancers is sketchier--peer-reviewed studies back both pro- and anti-dairy viewpoints--though a growing body of evidence has shown that animal-based foods are associated with prostate cancer, possibly because of the high intake of calcium and phosphorus, Campbell said..Though dairy is high in saturated fat, the dairy industry claims that low-fat dairy products can encourage weight loss. During the last few years it has spent millions on a controversial “got milk?” advertising campaign, using milk-mustachioed figures such as television's Dr. Phil McGraw.
In response, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed false-labeling petitions last June with the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration. They maintain that the “got milk?” weight-loss ads are “dishonest,” because scientific evidence contradicts the claims. The dairy industry based its assertion largely on the work of University of Tennessee researcher Michael Zemel, who received funding from the Dairy Council and who also has patented a weight-loss program using calcium.
...Hornick and his wife, chef Jo Kaucher, who co-own the meat-free restaurant Chicago Diner, have found a growing market for their soy cheeses (casein-free), soy, rice and nut milks, organic soy ice creams, vegan cream cheese and tofu ricotta.
They send dairy-free cookies, muffins and cheesecakes to 18 Whole Foods stores across the Midwest and other local stores and restaurants, including Wild Oats grocery stores, Evanston's Blind Faith, Argo Teas, Chicago's Kopi Cafe and Uncle Joe's at the University of Chicago.
The restaurant has been an oasis for Chicago's Rikke Vognsen and her husband, David Saxner, who cut dairy out of their diets 20 years ago to help with Saxner's arthritis. He also lost 80 pounds in the process. Their belief is that dairy creates dampness in the body and promotes yeast growth. But they also wanted to avoid ingesting residues of the hormones, antibiotics and other supplements given to the cows that produce non-organic milk.
...“We saw immediate improvements in my husband's health after eliminating dairy,” Vognsen said.
and from the companion article:
But emerging and highly controversial science shows there might be other reasons to avoid introducing cow's milk too early, such as Type 1 diabetes. Some evidence has linked child-onset diabetes to an allergy to bovine serum albumin in dairy products in genetically susceptible children. This type of diabetes strikes in the early teenage years and begins with the immune system destroying the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, according to Patrick Holford, founder of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in London.“The depth and breadth of evidence now implicating cow's milk as a cause of Type 1 diabetes is overwhelming, even though the very complex mechanistic details are not yet fully understood,” T. Colin Campbell wrote in “The China Study.” “Human breast milk is the perfect food for an infant.”
