SubscribeMilk: Is it Healthy or Not?
I would be hard-pressed to find a food substance that attracts as much controversy as milk. Whether or not it is beneficial to overall health, whether or not it helps weight loss, whether we should buy raw or pasteurized, low fat vs. full fat - the list goes on and on. Hence, I hope to make an attempt to navigate through the speculation, possibilities and try to come up with some ideas on how to think about this issue.
Who to Believe?
On one side, we have groups like the PCRM and PETA (read: Milk is evil).
On the other end of the spectrum is the Dairy Association (read: milk is essential for optimal health). In addition to health debates, there are political, ethical and environmental factors to consider. Like most other issues, the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Let's try and find that middle
Milk and Health
400,000 adults were tracked worldwide for 28 years. Those who drank the most milk had lower risk of heart disease and stroke than those who drank little or no milk (a study not funded by the dairy industry).
There is a worldwide increase in hormone-related cancers. Cow's milk is a source of estrogens and insulin-like growth factor (IGF-1), which can cause irregular cell multiplication.
Correlations between breast and prostate cancers tend to disappear when adjustments are made for excess consumption of other animal products - namely red meat.
- Milk drinking does increase the risk of ovarian cancer, however it has been shown to decrease the risk of colorectal cancers - which are far more common.
- There is currently no evidence of a link between milk consumption and type I diabetes
- About 70% of the population has some degree of lactose intolerance. This can be problematic for milk drinkers, but there are lactose-reduced options available. Also, cheese and yogurt have far less lactose and don't tend to cause problems.
Milk and Bones
Asians have a lower incidence of osteoporosis than Westerners even though they consume less dairy. The Nurses Health Study showed that women who drank more than 2 glasses of milk per day had a higher incidence of bone fractures.
Asians have a much different overall diet and lifestyle and the results of the Nurses Healthy Study may have been a result of them already being at risk and trying to compensate (too little, too late).
Milk and Weight Loss
The once promising research that 3 servings of milk products per day leads to weight loss has fizzled out. Well-conducted, non-industry sponsored research has shown little to no benefit of dairy consumption in the battle of the bulge. Not surprising, considering that one person owned the rights to the dairy-weight-loss claim.
Pasteurized vs. Raw
Louis Pasteur and Weston Price must be spinning in their graves! Those in favor of pasteurization insist it is a necessary process to destroy harmful bacteria and that it doesn't significantly change milk's nutritional value or flavor.
Anti-pasteurizationists believe that the process used to kill bacteria also causes the destruction of vitamins, minerals and enzymes that are vital to our health. Further, they have shown that bacterial infections due to raw milk are very rare and not likely to cause any major concerns.
What to make of this
This is a highly individual issue. I'll try my best to sum up what evidence there is and perhaps others can shed some light on their experiences:
- I don't see milk as the health food it is promoted as in widespread campaigns. I believe you can have a perfectly healthy diet with or without it.
- That said, milk is not the root of all evil as suggested by the
People Enabling Terrorist ActivityPeople for the Ethical Treatment of Animals - With all else being equal, 1-3 daily servings of dairy is probably sufficient for the vitamin/minerals and not enough to spark any health concerns
- Milk and other dairy products are likely the best way to get adequate calcium, albeit not the only way. Supplementing with vitamin D is also advisable to make the calcium usable to the bones.
- Don't expect your glass of milk, bowl or yogurt or hunk of cheese to help your weight loss efforts
- I don't think there are as many issues with pasteurized milk as the anti-pasteurizationists claim, and the reverse is probably the same with raw milk. The risk of bacterial infection from consuming raw milk seems quite small, but the potential consequences are heavy enough to question it. If you do go raw, it is important to know the animal care standards, sanitary practices and testing procedures of your provider. Drinking live or dead milk won't likely have a significant impact on health either way when consumed in moderate amounts
I hope you found this information mooving and that doesn't go in one ear and out the udder. You've probably herd most of this information before, but it is important that we not be steered in the extreme directions by special interest groups.
References:
- Elwood, Peter. Milk Drinking, Ischaemic Heart Disease and Ischaemic Stroke. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2004
- Weston Price Foundation
- FDA Consumer Magazine. September/October, 2004
- Schwarcz, Joseph. An Apple a Day. 2007. Harper Collins Publishing
I have to say I dont love milk (do a LOT of other daily and Tums to keep up my calcium..and chia...but I digress) but it is all personal taste and EVEN THOUGH I MIGHTSHOULD CARE I dont fret about it as the PETA PEEPS do.
for me there are too many other things (*waves at high fructose corn syrup and trans fast*) on the list...
ReplyMilk is for baby cows. Definitely not for lactose-intolerant Chicken Girls. :p
ReplyMIlk is the best complete food, not only for baby cow, but for every one who has no intolerence to it.
ReplyHumans are the only adult species that thinks they need to drink milk after they grow up......Hmmmmmmm.
That and milk gives me mucus and asthma like breathing issues right after I drink it....so hence...I don't
ReplyI'm not sure comparing us to other species is entirely accurate. We eat a lot of what other animals do not. Our broad palate is likely part of the reason for our successful evolution - we can and will eat and enjoy a far greater variety of food than you see in any other species. I saw an interesting special on this on the Discovery channel, I believe it was.
Personally, I don't consume huge amounts of milk but I do enjoy dairy (except for cheese). Honestly, I feel better when I include milk in my diet than when I do not. Obviously, I have no lactose intolerance issues-- I do hear those are increasingly common in varying degrees.
ReplyI find it really hard to believe that we eat a greater variety of food than other omnivores. Maybe collectively as a species, but not as individuals. Most people eat the same ten foods over and over, and have one major daily subsistence food (i.e., wheat, rice). I would be really astonished if omnivorous foragers weren't eating many, many more different types of foods in a week than we were.
Our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably did have greatly varied diets that aided our evolution; our diets today are not even remotely like those. Since most of the world's population today, like other mammals, lose the ability to digest milk after infancy, I doubt milk had much part to play in our evolutionary success.
ReplyReally, I would imagine that those hunter/gatherer folks did not have the patience to make the decision to milk the beast. They were pretty much of the "see-food" diet followers. See the food, eat the food! With the occasional be the food :-(
ReplyI rarely drink milk straight out of the carton, but do consume a lot of other dairy. I LOVE cheese, yogurt and ice cream, and eat my fair share of sour cream. I'm just now trying out making my own yogurt for the first time, and just had homemade ice cream.
I don't think milk is a "health food," or is necessary for good health. I tried hard for a long time to cut dairy out of my diet, to the point of having my sons drinking soy milk, but decided that the overall diet matters much more than the individual food, so we just try to eat dairy in moderation. But we're failing miserably.
The only thing that really, really irritates me is official government recommendations to consume 3 servings of milk daily, as if it is the only way to get calcium, vitamin D, or anything else. No one over the age of, oh, infancy NEEDS milk or dairy, and no one ever needs to consume the milk of another species. Considering how many people in the world are lactose intolerant, and how it affects certain ethnic groups more than others, I think it could almost be argued that those recs are downright racist.
ReplyI agree that milk is not the glorious health food it is proclaimed to be. However, it is a good source of protein and quite tasty on cereal. ;)
I gave up milk for quite a while, due to mild lactose intolerance and concern about the antibiotics and hormones that it contains. But my husband and I decided to try to conceive, and I've been reading that full-fat dairy products are good for fertility (while low-fat and fat free dairy have actually been linked to anovulation), so I've started drinking it again, but I only get organic and only have about a cup a day.
I say if you love milk and can tolerate it, buy organic (it's not THAT much more $$) and go for it. :)
ReplyAfter having several months of food related gluttony dominate the end of 2007, I started 2008 with what was intented to be a brief 2 week 'take it easy' diet - no dairy, no meat, no suguar, no wheat.
I haven't looked back.
Since cutting dairy and wheat out of my diet, I cannot tell you how much better I feel - I suspect that I may have been both lactose intolerate and wheat intolerant to a certain degree - and my suspicions are proven when I 'slip up' and have a meal with significant amounts of either.
Suddenly mild, day-to-day digestion problems (strange stomach feelings, unpleasant bathroom trips) etc don't exist.
I do believe that some people can ingest dairy and feel great, and perhaps they even need it, but I think that there is a lot of propoganda out there stating we HAVE to drink milk - which is BS when we can gain all of the nutrients in milk from other natural sources.
Replygroups like the PCRM and PETA
The PCRM is basically a front group for PeTA, I wouldn't refer to them separately. Only a tiny percentage of its membership is actually made up of physicians.
ReplyGood & Funny article. I will stick to my vegan lifestyle. :-)
ReplyI don't agree with a lot of what PETA belives in, but I will agree with you. I will stick to my vegan diet. = )
ReplyI would like to add, too, that if you think beef and milk are healthy, maybe you should read the book "Mad Cowboy". Very eye opening.
ReplyI don't eat a lot of dairy; I'm not a big fan of just drinking straight milk. I do enjoy yogurt or some good cheese every now and then. Of course, adults don't need milk because we can get food from other sources. But milk is a really great source of nutrition...it's a very complete food and it probably helped a lot of our ancestors in time of food famines. Think about it: keep a cow around and get milk to nourish yourself every day or kill the cow and get beef for a while. So I'm sure it's just a matter of custom that we consume milk/dairy, but it just so happens that it has a lot of health benefits.
My husband grew up on a dairy farm and they grew up on raw milk and my father in law swears by the stuff. He claims pasteurizing it takes all the "good stuff" out of it. But yeah, they drank their milk straight from their own cows, so they definitely knew where their milk was coming from and they never got sick.
ReplyTo me it seems that anyone can be fine with or without milk, but it is best not to overdo it. I think with just about everything we consume moderation is key. It seems that when a study shows potential health benefits from consuming something, people overdo it and think more is better. In most cases consuming too much is hazardous and negates the potential positive effects. Personally, I drink milk on a fairly regular basis, but not strictly as a "health drink."
ReplyYeah I think we can be healthy with or without milk. However I do think out body requires a certain amount of dairy food and this for calcium. There is certainly a heap of studies out there that show the benefits of calcium for our bones and milk is a large souce of that.
ReplyCow pus. Ick. Although it makes a nice foam on a cappuccino.
ReplyMilk is certainly more healthy than some alternatives (soy milk). It is not just about calcium, milk also contains high levels of immune boosting lactoferrin and other immunoglobulins. Also, the epidemiological studies proclaimed by the anti-milk folks have not panned out in actual clinical trials.
Milk drinkers weight less than non-milk drinkers.
ReplyState your sources, please.
I used to drink a lot of milk and eat dairy products, but after I became a vegetarian I had less and less. Now I know that correlation does not prove causation, and I am not sure which one (being vegetarian or drinking less milk) caused it, but I have lost weight and felt a lot healthier. There is little proof for the argument that drinking milk makes you lose weight. Again, I couldn't tell you what causes it but vegans tend to be much healthier and more fit than people who eat animal products.
This is all from personal experience, so I could just be seeing things differently, but from my experience milk is definately not necessary.
ReplyI've done my own research on milk and what I've found is that - largely - the studies that purport that milk is not healthy do not take into account either the quality of the milk nor the ethnicity of those in the study. Drinking milk is a personal decision just like just about every other food choice we make. In all of my studies, I've never found a whole food that was bad; it's all dependent on how this food affects your body individually. If you're going to drink milk, I suggest drinking it raw. Conventional dairy (called "blood filled, puss filled, homogenized, pasteurized, suicide" by David Wolfe) is a far cry from what I'd consider actual dairy.
Replyin my opinion, milk is not a good thing to have. Humans are the only animal that raises another animal to drink their breast milk! You don't see dogs raising cats to drink the milk that was intended for their babies!
I stopped consuming dairy after a horrible hormonal acne breakout in my early 20's. I went to several dermatologists and tried every treatment but nothing worked. It wasn't until I went to a speaker on natural health that I began to suspect dairy as the culprit. First, I eliminated all dairy that was produced using artificial growth hormones. That didn't seem to make a difference so I went back to loving the white stuff. About a year later, I herd that it was how the natural hormones that exist in dairy react with the bodies natural hormones. I felt like this made sense since the hormones in milk are made for developing calves, not humans! After cutting dairy completely out of my diet, my skin had never been clearer! I also notice a direct correlation with breakouts and dairy consumption. I would suggest banning the breast milk for those suffering from acne and other hormonal symptoms, it may make a huge difference! And as a plus, there are fantastic dairy free replacements for all your favorite foods :-)
ReplyDo not take this as disagreeing with your point of view, but just the other night on the news was a story about a dog, raising and breastfeeding kittens! The point of the story was the power of being a mother and how it can overcome other instincts, not about the milk of it all.
Replyhahahahaha that's funny... guess I was wrong.
ReplyIt all boils down to this: if you're going to buy milk packaged in a store where it has been trucked in over several states and made several stops in a distribution center, and came from a cow packed in a building full of other cows and questionable hygeine practices, yes, it's a good idea for it to have been pasteurized.
Fact is this process (and also the skimming process) does destroy nutrients. Now, I realize we don't all have access to fresh, raw milk - but at least "organic" provides milk from cows that are grass -fed and generally treated better which makes for a better product, not to mention the absence of hormones, antibiotics, etc.
That said, there *is* a lot of "processing" going on in the organic industry, thanks the govt. getting involved:
http://feedingblackmail.blogspot.com/2008/01/usda-organic-seal-killing-hometown.html
Humans have been consuming dairy for thousands of years, not just from cows. I am still on the fence about what to buy at the grocery, as I do not have a healthy cow in my backyard :)
~Marcie
ReplyMilk is a business...huge business. Remember the ads from the 80's and 90's... "Milk, It does the Body Good".
Replydespite finding dairy and beef products tasty i stopped consuming any of them, though because of different reasons: we are culturally accustomed to the idea of consumption of "bovine lacteal glands fluids", but how many people would drink, for example, cat's or dog's milk and when you imagine all the process of "extracting" those fluids from cows - that's appaling and rather unappetiting...
ReplyI never have been a regular milk drinker. When I was a kid my parents would nag me to drink more milk and if I had to, I'd gag it down. I just don't like it. However, despite many spills and accidents in my life I've never had a broken bone. i think it's a myth that we need 3 glasses a day to prevent things like osteoporosis. Weight-bearing exercises can also strengthen your bones.
Replyaccording to the makers diet
raw milk or fermented milks are much better for you.
Preferably kifir which is very similar to yogert.
They say goats milk is the more superior for health
COws milk takes over 7 hours to digest in a babies stomach while goat milk only takes half an hour without the side effects of mucus buildup or lactose intolerant people.
I used to drink alot of soy milk and now there are studies suggestions that the soy protein is hard to digest and that soy prevents the absorption of nutrients and minerals
ReplyI love milk (not that white water called 1%)... to bad I cant drink it in the summer
ReplyI hate milk and my parents force me to choke down 4 huge glasses a day. I usually pour one or two glasses down the sink though.
Reply