We are led to believe by TV, mainstream media, the food industry and even the health services that milk is great for health – full of calcium and protein that is good for our bones, teeth and muscles – so why would we ask ‘is milk bad for you?’
It may seem ridiculous to even ask such a question but let us not forget that there have been MANY mainstream practices and health advice that populations took on board en masse and considered normal, that we now cringe at, asking ‘how the hell did they ever think that that was good for health?!’
Let’s take a little look at a few, just for fun…
Mercury was used for centuries to cure pretty much everything – rub it on a wound, ingest it to increase your regularity…and they wondered why people were dropping dead all over the place. As we know Mercury is super-toxic (in fact I am looking to have my only Mercury amalgam filling removed this year, as they are shown to leak Mercury, despite what the dental associations say).
Labotomies were very popular around the 1940s – its inventor winning the Nobel Prize. Slight depression? Ahh an icepick through the eye to remove part of the brain is just what you need!
Bloodletting was invented by the Greeks and is one of the most popular and enduring medical practices in history, used for, well, pretty much anything. If you were feeling under the weather in any century prior to the early 19th, then it was almost certainly because you simply just had too much blood in you.
The theory was that the body contained four main fluids – blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile, called humours. Any imbalance in the four was the root of all illness. Apparently blood can sometimes take up too much room, so it would be necessary to remove up to 3 litres to make room for for the others. Makes perfect sense right?
Heroin was used to suppress niggling coughs…wayhay!
Ok, let’s get back to the modern-day ridiculous health practice and the question ‘is milk bad for you’…
The food industry pushes milk, cheese, butter, margarine, ice cream and yoghurt in various elaborate marketing campaigns. They use pseudo-science and portray happy cows in happy fields, providing us with dairy products that are essential to humans for a ‘well balanced’ diet and good health.
I’m afraid it’s not quite like this.
To answer the question this article poses – ‘Is milk bad for you?’ The answer is a resounding YES.
Why Is Milk Bad for You?
The dangers of dairy products are well-researched and documented, however you are unlikely to see the findings on the six o’clock news.
Milk and dairy are bad for human health in so many ways and also in terms of cruelty to dairy cows and destruction to the environment. The dairy industry vehemently argues otherwise but you don’t have to dig very deep at all before you begin to question and reject this thinly-veiled propaganda – especially given the overwhelming evidence from large-scale scientific studies, such as the Nurses Health Study by Harvard University and The China Study, which spanned for 20 years.
Is Milk Bad For You?
“The dairy industry has a powerful hold on the nutrition industry in this country
numbers of dietitians, doctors, and researchers to push dairy, spending more than $300 million
annually, just at the national level, to retain a market for its products. The dairy industry has
infiltrated schools, bought off sports stars, celebrities, and politicians, pushing all the while an
agenda based on profit, rather than public health.”
– Bruce Friedrich, Director of Vegan Campaigns at PETA
[divider_bar]divider[/divider_bar]
The Harvard University Study Which Evidenced the Dangers of Dairy Milk
The landmark Nurses Health Study, conducted by Harvard University followed 78,000 women, aged 34-59, over a 12-year period and is one of the largest investigations into risk factors for major chronic diseases in women ever conducted. The study found that women who drank three or more glasses of milk per day had no reduction in the risk of hip or arm fractures compared to those who drank little or no milk, even after adjustment for weight, menopausal status, smoking, and alcohol use. In fact, the fracture rates were slightly, but significantly, higher for those who consumed this much milk, compared to those who drank little or no milk.
[divider_bar]divider[/divider_bar]Is Milk Bad For You?
“The dairy folks, ever since the 1920s, have been enormously successful in cultivating an environment within virtually all segments of our society – from research and education to public relations and politics-‐-‐to have us believing that cow’s milk and its products are manna from heaven.
…Make no mistake about it; the dairy industry has been virtually in total control of any and all public health information that ever rises to the level of public
scrutiny.”
…The association between the intake of animal protein and fracture rates appears to be as strong as the association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.”
– Dr. T. Colin Campbell, the world’s leading epidemiological researcher in the field of diet and health – author of ‘The China Study’
[divider_bar]divider[/divider_bar]See next page for part 2 of this article ‘Is Milk Bad For You?’ – diseases linked to drinking milk and some solutions to dairy milk alternatives…
Add your comments and questions about this article ‘Is Milk Bad For You?’
I take on board what has been said in this article however I would suggest, there is milk, then there is milk. Milk today from cattle, fed on processed food and injected with antibiotics etc. is not the same as that from cows fed only on clean grass with no medication put into their system. Pure milk has all sorts of “good” bacteria and substances in it which, from what I’ve read, is therefore a healthy substance to drink. When I was young the local farm kept one Jersey cow for milk for the house. She was cleaned then hand milked into a clean bucket, the cream was skimmed into a small jug to have over fruit and the milk simply put into a jug. The milk was not treated in any way and stayed fresh for ages even when not refrigerated and none of us was ever ill. Milk produced on an industrial scale and shipped about by milk tanker nowadays is nothing like that from the Jersey cow of my childhood. It’s a pity that this good milk can’t be bought in this country nowadays.