There are so many books, articles and so-called research studies written and conducted which present us with conflicting information about the dangers of dairy, milk and meat that it’s often hard to sort the wheat from the chaff and know what to do for the best with regards to health and prevention of disease.
That being said, it is hard to conclude that milk is good for you, when it is pumped full of hormones, designed to take a baby cow – who has four stomachs – from small to massive within a few months and given that the dairy industry spends millions of pounds every year to promote the ‘drinking milk is good for’ agenda to the Western world…A notion that the Eastern world does not subscribe to and think is ludicrous – drinking another animals pregnancy milk!
Further, the conditions dairy cows are kept in is unnatural at best and devastatingly cruel and savage at worst.
Here are some of the negative health implications that have been very strongly linked to drinking milk.
Dangers of Dairy: Milk & Cancer
Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1) is a normal growth factor present in humans and animals. However, excess levels are linked to human cancer development and growth. In 1994, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of the genetically modified recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), developed by our dear old friends at Monsanto (who are also responsible for the genetically modified soybean). Monsanto has influenced U.S. product safety laws permitting the sale of unlabeled rBGH milk.
Injections of rBGH causes cows to produce up to 20% more milk. It also stimulates the cows’ livers to increase IGF-1 levels in their milk and it is not destroyed by pasteurisation. After the rBGH milk is consumed, IGF-1 is not destroyed by human digestion. Instead, IGF-1 is readily absorbed across the intestinal wall. Additional research has shown that it can be absorbed into the bloodstream where it can affect other hormones.
Research has shown it highly likely that IGF-1 transforms normal breast cells to breast CANCER cancers. In addition, IGF-1 maintains the malignancy of human breast cancer cells, including their invasiveness and ability to spread to distant organs. Increased levels of IGF-1 have similarly been associated with colon and prostate cancers – unsurprising, since milk is designed as a hormonal delivery system.
Many American dairy farmers inject rBGH to dairy cows to increase milk production. European nations and Canada have banned rBGH to protect citizens from IGF-1 hazards.
Milk also contains casein – a protein found in milk that requires the enzyme rennet to break down (which we do not produce, since we’re not baby cows). Casein has also been linked to cancer.
In Asia, where many people drink no milk at all, breast cancer tends to be rare. In rural China, for example, among women aged 35 to 64, The China Study found that breast cancer deaths averaged 8.7 per 100,000, as opposed to 44 per 100,000 in the US, about a 5-fold difference.
Dangers of Dairy: Osteoporosis
In part one of this article: Is Milk Bad For You? The Dangers of Dairy – Part 1 we look at the the Harvard Nurses Study, which looks at the dangers of dairy in relation to promoting osteoporosis and hip fractures.
This may be surprising and the reason why milk could be bad for your bones is this: Milk contains calcium but it is not readily extracted and assimilated by our bodies. In fact, in order to extract the calcium from milk, we have to use our own alkaline mineral reserves to neutralise the acidity that milk creates in our bodies and bloodstream. Where do we get these alkaline minerals from? Our bones! The net effect is a LOSS of calcium to our bones. See below for more on milk as an acidic food.
– ‘Case-Control Study of Risk Factors for Hip Fractures in the Elderly’ – American Journal of Epidemiology. Vol. 139, No. 5, 1994[/features_box_green]
Dangers of Dairy – Diabetes & Heart Disease
It’s funny that if you type in ‘milk and diabetes’ into Google, half of the results lead to pages that say that milk is good for preventing diabetes and half that say it promotes diabetes. Heart disease shows similar results. Upon initial inspection, the ones that say milk is good for you are form mainstream news sources and diabetic societies – that are heavily influenced and funded by pharmaceutical companies and the milk industry. PROPAGANDA.
See more on the subject of milk industry propaganda and diabetes here: http://www.naturalnews.com/019568_dairy_industry_cows_milk.html
…BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU GET YOUR INFORMATION FROM
Many credible studies – like the China study, have found a strong link between drinking milk and type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Read an interesting interview with Robert Cohen, author of ‘Milk, The Deadly Poison’ here.
Dangers of Dairy – Contamination & SSC
Painful inflammation of mammary glands from an infection called mastitis, is common amongst milk cows and bacteria such as E Coli can be present in this infection and therefore in the milk. Somatic cell count (pus) is an indicator of health/disease of a cow and level of infection. Cows with an SSC of 300,000/ml and higher are classed as infected. You may find it interesting and rather repulsive to learn that a SSC of 750,000/ml is allowed in your drinking milk. Yes, that’s 750 MILLION pus cells per litre of milk. Enjoy!
Also, cows concentrate pollutants and pesticides into their milk fat. The high amount of drugs now given to cows adds to this chemical soup.
Dangers of Dairy – Milk is An Acidic Food
Like any other animal-derived protein-rich food, milk has a positive potential renal acid load (PRAL) which triggers a protective biological reaction to neutralise all the damaging acidic protein before it reaches the kidneys.
Milk acidifies the body pH which in turn triggers a biological correction: Calcium is an excellent acid neutraliser and the biggest storage of calcium in the body is in the bones. So the very same calcium that our bones need to stay strong is used to neutralise the acidifying effect of milk. Once calcium is pulled out of the bones, it leaves the body via the urine, so this contributes to a net calcium deficit.
This may sound mad but the body is designed for survival, so it sacrifices bone density to protect the kidneys and urinary tract because the latter are essential to immediate survival.
The Dangers of Dairy: Animal Rights and Cow Cruelty
Cow Treatment
Dairy cows are treated quite abominably. They are artificially inseminated at a very young age to get pregnant and produce milk. Baby cows are taken away for their mothers after a day – heart wrenching for both. Cows are milked relentlessly and kept in very confined and harsh conditions. Cows would normally live to around 20 years of age but due to their severe treatment, they are literally knackered and slaughtered after about 5 years.
Veal Industry
If you drink milk, you’re silently supporting and funding the veal industry. Not only do we commoditise female cows for milk production and slaughter for meat but male calves are often taken away from their mothers when they are as young as 1 day old to be chained in cramped stalls for 3-18 weeks and raised for veal. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) states that in addition to suffering from diarrhea, pneumonia, and lameness, calves raised for veal are terrified and desperate for their mothers.
Environment
To touch on this subject, raising cows for milk and meat causes a lot of stress on the environment and takes up huge amounts of natural resources. Rainforests are cleared, manure pollutes rivers and produces methane gas – which contributes heavily to air pollution, for starters.
Add your comments and questions about this article ‘Is Milk Bad For You? The Dangers of Dairy’
Leave A Comment