Milk: Does it do a body good?
Thank you for publishing the article “Too Much Milk?” (July 12). As a longtime vegetarian and someone who recently went vegan, I felt compelled to weigh in on the issue.
Humans are the only living beings who drink the milk of another species, and despite popular belief, our bodies have no need for it. Cow’s milk provides the necessary nutrients for calves. The human body has no need for these nutrients.
Fortunately, there are so many great nondairy milks out there that making the healthier and more compassionate choice is easier than ever.
Elise Girard
Chevy Chase, Md.
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Something missing from your article was how pediatricians feel about milk. I believe the majority of them feel that the fat in milk is necessary for the brain function and that the calcium and other vitamins are necessary for their growth. Even your own L.A. Times piece months ago made the distinction between milk substitutes and milk, milk being the best all around.
I don’t know, but whenever I see the words “scientists” and “PETA” linked it makes me want to run for a tall glass of milk and a steak!
Susan Beckman
Sherman Oaks
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About 15 years ago, at age 35, I became very interested in the Masai tribe of Kenya, who, I understand, generally try to make some milk-producing animal, usually a cow, their only source of food. What this means is that most days of their lives the Masai drink milk as the only food they consume during the day (occasionally they slaughter a cow and get some beef).
I liked the Masai ideas, and I greatly increased the amount of milk I drank, but at that time my health was pretty good, and I drank milk more for the romance of it.
But as I’ve gotten older and struggled with health issues, I find that I feel the best when I live on milk and don’t eat or drink anything else. Though I can’t say I feel perfect when I live solely on milk, I do feel the best of all the diets I’ve tried or found.
Gregory Dahlen
Glendale
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Nature intended cow’s milk to be fed to calves, not humans. Humans are the only species that drinks another mammal’s milk. I will echo Dr. Neal Barnard’s comments about cow’s milk: “It’s gross.”
Laura Frisk
Encinitas
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Whether or not cow’s milk is harmful to human health, consumers should know that its production on modern factory farms is, without a doubt, egregiously cruel to cows. Our purchases supporting this industry not only harm female cows but also enable an abusive veal industry.
Max Fischlowitz-Roberts, communications coordinator, Compassion Over Killing
Washington, D.C.
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It is certainly a year of confusion for the consumer who is interested in promoting bone health. This article puts traditional wisdom — which associates calcium from dairy with strong bones — into serious question and comes out on the heels of extensive publicity questioning whether osteoporosis drugs such as Fosamax, meant to protect bones, are actually weakening them.
It seems strange that with so many studies being done on bone health that there should be such conflicting results. However, on careful examination, one finds that most of the studies that conclude the need for dairy in the human diet are funded, at least in part, by the National Dairy Council, a multibillion-dollar industry. The information gathered by nonprofit organizations such as Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine are showing just the opposite — that cow’s milk is a particularly dangerous part of the Western diet and that green vegetables are a better source of calcium. They show, moreover, that weight-bearing exercise and vitamin D from sunlight to be essential for bone health — but there are no well-funded lobby groups for those.
Even cows produce a large amount of calcium from a vegetarian diet of grass. And in the age of the Internet, when it is easy to do basic research, one can easily find that regions such as Scandinavia and the United States, with the highest intake of dairy products, currently have epidemic levels of osteoporosis, while many Asian countries — including China and Japan, where dairy is not a part of the normal diet — have a significantly lower incidence.
Also, the Hunzakut people of the Himalayas, long considered the healthiest people on Earth since they live to age 120 to 140 free of Western diseases, subsist on a diet of whole grains, vegetables fruits, beans, nuts and seeds.
It’s certainly food for thought.
Jill Rubenstein
Bell Canyon
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As a nutrition researcher quoted in your story about milk, I want to point out that the evidence that milk contributes to prostate cancer is too strong to ignore.
In two Harvard studies, men who had two or more dairy servings a day had a 30% to 60% higher prostate cancer risk, compared with men who generally avoided milk. Studies in other locations have found a similar association. The explanation for it is not entirely clear, but it probably relates to the effect of dairy products on compounds in the bloodstream.
We can get all the calcium we need from leafy greens and beans, without the fat, cholesterol, hormones and pesticides in milk. A plant-based diet can easily meet all nutrient requirements — and also reduces our risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity.
Neal Barnard, MD, president, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine
Washington, D.C.
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As a registered dietitian with Dairy Council of California, I found the headline “Too Much Milk? Studies Abound, but There’s No Clear Conclusion as to Whether Milk Is Good or Bad for Us” extremely misleading. The body of the article clearly outlines the decades of third party, nonindustry-funded research supporting many of the proven benefits of milk and dairy food for health.
Because nutrition and science research can sometimes be confusing or seem contradictory even to experts, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans were established and first published in the 1980s to provide consumers with science-based advice to promote health and reduce the risk of chronic disease. For 30 years, the dietary guidelines have supported the important role that milk and dairy foods play in a healthy diet. Currently, the dietary guidelines and MyPyramid encourage adults to enjoy three servings of low-fat or fat-free milk each day. Milk and dairy foods supply several “nutrients of concern” for which adults and children have low intakes, including calcium, potassium and magnesium.
While the article mentions some newer, less conclusive areas of research regarding milk and dairy foods in the diet, there are decades of published, peer-reviewed scientific research supporting dairy’s positive role in reducing the risk of osteoporosis, high blood pressure/hypertension and colon cancer. In addition to this huge body of credible research, dairy’s role in a healthy diet has long been established by the nutrition and science community. This includes the Surgeon General, the National Institutes of Health, the American Medical Assn.’s Council of Scientific Affairs, the National Osteoporosis Foundation, the School Nutrition Assn. and many other organizations.
Despite this incredibly positive body of scientific research and support from the medical community, on average most adults are only getting about half (1.7 servings) of the milk and dairy foods they should consume daily. Articles like this one only continue to muddle the issue and could put the health of many at risk. Perhaps the Los Angeles Times would better serve its readers with an article outlining the consequences of not getting enough milk and dairy foods in the diet.
Mary Anne Burkman, Dairy Council of California
Oakland
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The fact that the USDA has recommended 3 cups of it a day for decades still astounds me, given the controversy and the still-ongoing conflicting research results on whether it’s good or bad for you. Could the dairy lobby perhaps have something to do with that?
One fact is undeniable: Cows are routinely given hormones, antibiotics, and fed pesticide-laden foods that all can get into the milk. And as mastitis is a common problem with dairy cows, this can easily lead to pus and blood contaminating it also. Since calcium can easily be gotten from other sources, it seems to me that until we get some more definite answers to the whole milk question, shouldn’t we give ourselves and our children the benefit of the doubt, and steer clear of milk?
David Bernazani
Lafayette, Calif.
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Milk and all dairy products that we enjoy so much do not come without a sacrifice. The only way a dairy cow can produce milk is if she gives birth to a calf.
In many “factory farms,” the newborn calves are immediately chained into crates so small that they cannot turn around. A few weeks later, they are often too weak to walk to the transportation truck for slaughter. Their little legs buckle, and they fall. They get jabbed and prodded to get back up. If they can’t get up, they are dragged to slaughter.
Call or write Secretary Tom Vilsack, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1400 Independence Ave. SW, Washington, DC 20259, (202) 720-2791. Ask him to amend the regulations to ban slaughter of downed veal calves, and enforce the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act which requires no animal should be slaughtered while conscious.
In my opinion, we should stop eating veal to end this torture altogether.
Lene Harris
Somerville, Tenn.
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It’s correct to identify PETA and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) as outside-the-mainstream “groups promoting animal rights and veganism.” But it would be more accurate to identify them as two halves of the same organization.
PCRM president and founder Neal Barnard was president of the PETA Foundation until just a few years ago. For more than 10 years beginning in the 1990s, that foundation processed PCRM’s payroll and fulfilled other legal functions for what amounts to PETA’s quasi-medical front group. The animal-rights newspaper Animal People News declared in 2002 that PETA, PCRM and the PETA Foundation should be “seen as a single fundraising unit.”
PETA and PCRM make up most of today’s anti-milk movement. What few understand is that a lab coat (worn by the less than 4% of PCRM’s members who have medical degrees) is the only major difference between them.
David Martosko, director of research, Center for Consumer Freedom
Washington, D.C.
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I completed my own experiment. After 20 years as a strict vegan, I routinely got the flu, all my joints creaked, and the discs in my spine deteriorated enough to require a fusion of my L4 and L5 vertebrae. For the last eight years, I’ve been drinking a lot of raw milk (must be raw, very important). I’m twice as strong, have less body fat and never get sick. I still support PETA, but dairy cows on organic farms are happy animals.
Leo Nordine
Hermosa Beach
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In response to the question “Milk — How Much Should You Drink?” I was astonished that you did not print the correct answer, which would be “none” (unless, of course, you are a baby cow).
The article begins by saying: “Uncertainty about milk aside, the FDA’s recommendations are clear cut.” It is a curious approach to start by setting the enormous uncertainty aside. The certainty that the dairy protein is the carcinogen to which Americans are most exposed is well-documented in “The China Study,” the most comprehensive study of diet and health ever conducted, by world-renowned nutritionist T. Colin Campbell of MIT and Cornell University.
Is an attempt to ingest some amount of calcium worth the health risks of dairy consumption that come along with it — cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity, osteoporosis? And why would osteoporosis be so prevalent in this cheese-covered country when people around the world who do not consume dairy do not suffer osteoporosis? It turns out that the excessive unhealthy animal protein in dairy actually leaches calcium from the body, while more absorbable calcium is found in the plant kingdom, in beans, in leafy greens.
The USDA, as your column suggests, is practically an extension of the dairy industry, and the credibility of its recommendations (based on questionable and dairy-industry-financed “scientific” studies, as revealed in your column) should be questioned.
The FDA, apparently interested more in dairy industry profit than public health, is quick to suggest cows’ milk as a source of calcium, etc., but the dairy consumer should know that along with that (unabsorbable?) calcium come genetically engineered growth hormones, antibiotics, blood, pus, tuberculosis and leukemia, for which no RDA has yet been established by the FDA..
I know that the column’s author wishes to set aside uncertainty about cows’ milk. The certainty is that with the well-documented health consequences, plus the environmental devastation caused by dairy production, including climate change (methane from cows being over 70% more deadly than carbon according to a World Watch Institute report), deforestation, water depletion and pollution, soil erosion, desertification, habitat destruction, and consumption of astronomical amounts of fossil fuels, the answer to how much cows’ milk a human should drink is obviously — none!
Bob Linden, host, “Go Vegan With Bob Linden,” https://www.GoVeganRadio.org
Los Angeles
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It is disheartening to see your pursuit of “balance” obscure the scientific truth in your reporting on milk. The truth you report in the story is that extraordinarily large, carefully controlled, expertly analyzed, nonindustry funded studies involving hundreds of thousands of people in several countries continue to show both the safety and value of dairy products. It is impossible for me to imagine a more confirming scientific test of the hypothesis than the studies you report.
It would surely have been more honest and helpful to readers to indicate that fringe groups continue to deny the truth of genuine science. Your final sentence would strike anyone with training in science or statistics as patently absurd. The truth lies with the overwhelming evidence that your article reports carefully.
I hope that in your editorial meetings there can be a discussion of the difference between accurate reporting and a “politically correct” foolish effort to accord fringe, nonrational views equal weight. If you are not going to report the truth clearly and unambiguously in your paper, why bother to publish it?
David M. Bee, MD, MS, FACP
assistant professor of medicine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine
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Thanks for your thoughtful and fairly balanced article on milk. There are many opposing views on milk consumption, as you point out. One very notable and ethical nutritional researcher is Dr. T. Colin Campbell from Cornell University. After a lifetime of research uninfluenced by industry, he concludes that milk products are a root cause of most modern chronic diseases, including cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease. He grew up on a dairy farm, by the way.
His conclusions are based on the demographics of disease in addition to other cutting-edge scientific evidence. His recent book, “The China Study,” outlines a lifetime of research and his conclusions.
The other issues that we should be concerned about are the impact of factory farming on the environment — it is said that 20% of greenhouse gasses are directly caused by factory farming. The demand on water, grains and soy are unimaginable to raise beef for our table. [Then there is] the sheer cruelty of most dairy farms. You did mention growth hormones — but failed to mention the antibiotics given to cows prophylactically to prevent infection. There is evidence to suggest that trace antibiotics found in milk and meat may make humans less and less responsive to antibiotic therapy when infected.
[I have been a] healing arts practitioner for the last 20 years, and it is my experience that dairy products are often not healthful for many children and adults. They frequently create an immunological reaction in the human body — aggravating all types of problems: digestive disturbances, diarrhea, headaches, constipation, allergies/sinusitis/, asthma and respiratory infections.
My intuition tells me that if we could raise Bessy or Daisy the cow in our own yards — and they were fed organic grasses and taken care of in a loving way — perhaps it wouldn’t be such an unhealthful food.
Kirk Mann, licensed acupuncturist
Ventura
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In regards to the milk-health debate, you missed three very important topics:
1) To get milk, the cow must be kept pregnant. Pregnancy leads to the birth of a calf, which is soon separated from its mother and enters the food production chain (veal, beef or dairy industries). Subsequent lactation after birthing equals milk production. To be profitable, the modern dairy keeps its cows pregnant as often as possible, and when pregnancy can no longer be obtained, the older cow is sent to slaughter for meat production (usually ground meat).
2) The dairy industry has great environmental impacts — manure disposal, groundwater pollution, large quantity of animals confined into small spaces (disease control); animal feeds created by other industry byproducts, to cite just a few.
3) Pasteurization and homogenization have existed in industrialized societies for only a little more than 100 years, but many people in the world drink raw milk that has not been homogenized. There is strong medical research to indicate that raw nonhomogenized milk is far more healthy for people to consume, assuming that proper animal husbandry and sanitary dairy practices are rigorously followed.
FYI — a very insightful and well-written book on the history of milk production, modern dairy practices, pasteurization/homogenization and the consumption of raw dairy products is called: “The Untold Story of Milk: Green Pastures, Contented Cows and Raw Dairy Foods” by Ron Schmid (New Trends Publishing).
Dale Menagh
Topanga
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