Acne
Arthritis
Asthma
Autism
Chron’s Disease
Diabetes
Diarrhea
Eczema
Heart Attacks
High blood pressure
Kidney Disease
Nasal Congestion
Tooth Decay

     By a quick show of hands, how many of you suffer from, or know someone who suffers from one or more of these ailments?  Well, there is one thing that has been shown to cause, or play a part in causing every one of these.  It is a food.  A food we all have seen advertised, that most people in this country believe is good for you, is essential for a healthy life.  This one food is so ingrained into our culture, most Americans are amazed to hear that in Asia, Africa, and South America, many people regard cow milk as unfit for human consumption and some even become hostile when told it can actually be harmful to your health.  Even the United States Government touts the ‘benefits’ of this ‘wonder food’.  What is it you ask?  Cow’s Milk.

     If you stop and think about it for even a second, does ingesting the bodily fluids of another species
make any sense at all?  The milk of mammals, though similar, differ greatly in composition from one animal to another.  Cow milk is designed for baby cows, not humans. Just as human milk is designed for our infants, not calves.  But we don’t think about it. The truth of the matter is this, dairy hurts our bodies more than it helps.  From sinus problems, to acne, to autism, even heart disease can be caused by dairy products.  Dairy can be more harmful than many of the vices our society tries to rid itself from every day.

     Everyone has probably heard of lactose intolerance.  It is the inability for the body to break down lactose, the sugar in milk. When ingested, lactose must be broken down into simple sugars to be absorbed into the blood stream.  The enzyme lactase does this.  If your body does not produce lactase, the lactose moves undigested into the large intestine where it is turned into carbon dioxide and lactic acid.  It also causes water to be drawn into the intestinal tract.  These factors combined cause bloating, increases gas, cramps, and even diarrhea.

      Lactate first appears in humans in the last third of pregnancy and peaks shortly after birth.  Usually, when a person matures between the ages of one and a half and four they stop making lactase.  This is a natural process that occurs in every mammal shortly after they are weaned. Most mammals are exclusively breast-fed until they have tripled their birth weight.  This would be about one year for humans.  7 out of 10 people world wide are lactose intolerant, therefore, most people cannot, or at least should not consume dairy products. It is a natural occurrence, not a freak abnormality as it is traditionally thought to be.

     Dairy also has adverse effects on other parts of our bodies, from our bones, to our hearts, even our brain.

     The Dairy Industry’s number one selling point for milk is that it is high in Calcium, that it helps decrease the chance of osteoporosis, bone fractures, and helps build strong bones.  Well, the truth is that, while cow milk does contain about 1,200 milligrams of calcium per quart your body doesn’t actually get that much. This is because cow milk also contains vast amounts of protein.  Protein can cause the calcium not to be absorbed.  More than one third of the calcium you ingest with milk is wasted by the other substances in the milk it self.  It is more than two thirds in cheeses.  The best way to get calcium?  Green leafy veggies, the darker the leaf the better.  All these, excluding spinach, have unbeatable calcium absorption, and Vitamin K, which also helps with bone health.  Other fruits and veggies, such as peppers, oranges, and bananas, though low in calcium, can help calcium absorption and decrease the risk of bone fracture also.

     Milk can also be a culprit in such a serious medical issue as heart attacks.  We all know that bad cholesterol causes heart attacks.  One of the sources of bad cholesterol is the food we eat.  The more saturated fat you eat, the worse your cholesterol will.  There are about 35 grams of fat in milk, and 60 percent of that is saturated.  If you drink just one quart of milk in a day, you have consumed over one-third of your daily recommended value of fat.   A recent Harvard nurse’s study showed that women drinking two glasses of milk a day had 67% more risk of heart disease that those drinking none at all.

     Autism is a mental condition characterized by a great difficulty in communicating with others and in using language and abstract concepts.  Those with autism are commonly described as being “in their own world”.  Babies and young children with autism don’t make eye contact, don’t try to attract adult attention by pointing or grabbing, and have vastly delayed development.  In her book Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and PDD, Karyn Seroussi details her experiences with having a child diagnosed as autistic. When she took her son, Miles, off milk entirely, he showed marked improvement behaviorally, physically, and health wise only weeks after. If removing milk form the diet of a person with autism has such an effect on them, what must it be doing in the first place?

     Despite what milk does to our bodies naturally, there is also danger from what it becomes contaminated with between the cow and our glasses.  Because cows were never naturally meant to produce as much milk as they do (almost 100 liters a day), many suffer from painful udder infections called ‘Mastitis’.  When cows with mastitis are milked, the puss (or somatic cells), blood, and bacteria on the udders go right into the milk.  The Journal Nature reported that the use of Posilac, the so called ‘Bovine Growth Hormone’ used to increase the amount of milk a cow produces, increases the somatic calls in the milk by 19%.  The United States Department of Health and Human Services, and the Public Health and Service Food and Drug Administration knows there is a problem with pus in milk, and had created what is called ‘the somatic call count’ to gauge the milk quality.  According to this count, no milk with more than 200 million somatic cells per liter is not safe to be consumed my humans.  But every state in America, except for Hawaii, is well over this count.  The average somatic cell count for the country is 322 million cells per liter.  Massachusetts’ average somatic call count is 308 million cells per liter.  This is the equivalent of about one to seven drops of puss per glass. Now, this isn’t just gross, it is potentially dangerous.  The pus can contain paratuberculosis bacteria, which is thought to cause Chron’s Disease.

     Dairy farmers do try to treat the infections and contamination with large doses of antibiotics.  But, once ingested by the cow, these antibiotics go right into the milk and can cause allergic reactions in humans who drink it.

     Now, if you cannot live without milk, in your cereal, with cookies, in your coffee, etc, you could try one of the many milk substitutes out there.  I have brought with me today some rice milk.  I’ll pass it around with these cups so you can try it.  While it is not exactly the same as cow milk, it is quite good.  Try some and see for your self. Soy milk is similar, but is a bit heavier and some say it tastes gritty and has an after taste.  Both soy and rice milk also come in different flavors, like chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry.  Both rice and soy milk are a bit more expensive than regular milk, but they don’t spoil as easily, decreasing the amount of  wasted food, containers, and money. If you would like to learn more, here are some flyers with the names of books, and websites that have much valuable information.

     Any milk, other than mother’s own in the first few years of life, is a one of the more recent foods to be incorporated into the human diet.  Humans were never meant to continue drinking milk after the first three or four years of age.  Though it has been theorized before, it is now becoming apparent that milk is not a healthy part of our diet.  As we as a species have become less dependant on a pastoral lifestyle, we should also have become less dependant on drinking the milk of cows and goats to survive.  It is not needed.  We only think it is because of mass marketing campaigns by the Dairy Industry that falsely bestow milk as a divine elixir which will make us stronger, better looking, and better over all.  It is not true.  It is time that we come to know and believe the truth.  That cow milk is for calves, not humans.

Milk: It Does a Body Bad

      From infancy Americans are taught that milk and dairy products are not only good for you, but are necessary to for maintaining good health.  But is this true?  If you stop and think about it for even a second, how does ingesting the bodily fluids of another species make any sense at all?  The milk of mammals, though similar, differ greatly in composition from one animal to another.  Cow milk is designed for baby cows, not humans. Just as human milk is designed for our infants, not calves.  But no, we don’t think about it.  We don’t think anything of it because dairy products are so ingrained into our society and culture, most are amazed to hear that many societies don’t consume dairy at all.  That in Asia, Africa, and South America, many people regard cow milk as unfit for human consumption(Oski 4).  The truth of the matter is this, dairy hurts our bodies more than it helps.  From sinus problems, to acne, to autism, even heart disease can be caused my dairy products.  Dairy can be more harmful than many of the vices our society tries to rid itself from every day.

      Everyone has probably heard of lactose intolerance.  It is the inability for the body to break down lactose, the sugar in milk.  Lactose is a disaccharide.  This means it is made up of two monosaccharides, glucose and galactose. When ingested, lactose must be broken down into these simple sugars to be absorbed into the blood stream.  The enzyme lactase does this.  If there is a lack of lactase in the small intestine the undigested lactose travels to the large intestine.  There it is acted upon by bacteria and converted into a gas (carbon dioxide) and an acid (lactic acid)(Oski 8-9).  It also causes water to be drawn into the intestinal tract.  These factors combined cause bloating, increases gas, cramps, and even diarrhea(Goldberg 828).

      Lactate first appears in humans in the last third of pregnancy and peaks shortly after birth(Oski 8).  Usually, when a person matures between the ages of one and a half and four the lactase activity dies off.  This is a natural process that occurs in every mammal shortly after they are weaned. Most mammals are exclusively breast-fed until they have tripled their birth weight.  This would be about one year for humans.  Therefore, most people are lactose intolerant, and it is a natural occurrence, not a freak abnormality as it is traditionally thought to be.

      Studies done by Dr. Norman Kretchmer showed that the more milk and dairy products a society consumed, the fewer instances of lactase deficiency were discovered.  In a society where no milk was ingested after weaning, 99 percent of the population was lactase deficient between one and a half and three years of age.  In a society where the ingestion of milk was paramount to survival, the instance of lactase deficiency was only 20 percent.  He concluded from the observations that “the ability to absorb lactose was genetically determined.” Those who must survive on milk developed a strain of mutant individuals who could process lactose past the usual weaning period.  This also showed that losing the ability to process lactose after weaning is a natural accompaniment of growing up.  Since lactose only occurs in mammalian milk, this shows that nature never intended for us to drink milk past the first year or so of life(Oski 10).

      Autism is a mental condition characterized by a great difficulty in communicating with others and in using language and abstract concepts.  Those with autism are commonly described as being “in their own world”.  Babies and young children with autism don’t make eye contact, don’t try to attract adult attention by pointing or grabbing, and have vastly delayed development.  In her book Unraveling the Mystery of Autism and PDD, Karyn Seroussi details her experiences with having a child diagnosed as autistic. When she took her son, Miles, off milk entirely, he showed marked improvement behaviorally, physically, and health wise only weeks after(Seroussi 39-40).  I have seen this response in my own experience.  My nephew, Rhaeden, also has autism.  When he was five years old, his mother (my sister) decided to try the milk free diet.  I had the fortune to be visiting for the summer when the change took place.  His behavior improved dramatically.  He seemed calmer, became frustrated less, and could focus better.  If milk or dairy somehow got into his diet again, even just a little bit, his behavior would regress almost immediately.  Five years later he is still on the diet, and milk still effects him.  If he has even a small bit of cheese on a hamburger, or eats a cheesy cracker, he becomes unfocused, hyper, and hard to handle.  It then takes days for the offending substance to get out of his system.  If removing milk form the diet of a person with autism has such an effect on them, what must it be doing in the first place?

      Infants are particularly at risk from the hazards of dairy.  In a study done to determine the frequency of cow milk allergy 787 babies were carefully studied starting at birth.  59 of the 787 babies were found to have a cow milk allergy evidenced by persistent or recurrent nasal congestion, attacks of asthma or chest infections, persistent or recurrent skin rashes, or persistent or recurrent vomiting or diarrhea for which no other explanation could be found.  Though only 7.5 percent of babies over all were found to be allergic to cow milk, a full 25 percent of babies who were first fed cow milk before three months of age were found to be allergic.  So, the earlier a child is introduced to foreign milk, the more likely it is he/she will develop an allergy(Oski 20).

      In another study done in the 1930's in Chicago shows the superiority of breast-feeding over giving infants cow milk.  Over two thousand infants were included in the study.  One group was fed only human milk, another only boiled cow milk, a third group was fed half human milk and half cows milk.  They were introduced to other foods at the same ages.  The overall mortality rate in the first nine months for the babies raised on cow milk was 87.4 deaths per 1,000 infants.  The rate for breast-fed infants was only 1.5 per 1,000.  The death rate due to gastrointestinal infections was more than forty times higher in the babies who were fed cow milk than the ones that were breast-fed.  The death rate from respiratory infections was 120 times higher(Oski 38). 

      It is important that this study was done before the development of such antibiotics and medical knowhow as we have today.  Nowadays, it would be hard to prove the case because an infection that was life-threatening in the 30's could be easily treated today.  In developing countries, however, the death rate for babies not fed human milk is still markedly high.  In Chile, mortality rates for bottle-fed infants in the first six months of life are twice as high for those who are breast-fed.  Even infants who get a mix of breast and cow milk still have less of a chance of survival than those only breast-fed(Oski 39).  “Even the National Dairy Council now openly acknowledges that whole cow milk is not a suitable feed for infants during the first 6 months of life(Oski 46).”

      Milk can also be a culprit in such a serious medical issue as heart attacks.  When an artery is blocked by fatty deposits, called ‘plaques’, blood cannot get through and the muscle the artery is supposed to supply dies.  When the muscle is located in the heart, this is termed a heart attack(Oski 28).  The plaques that cause a heart attack are rich in fats, mostly cholesterol.  There is ‘good’ cholesterol (HDL), and there is ‘bad’ cholesterol(LDL).  The higher ratio of HDL to LDL in one’s blood serum the more risk there is of one having a heart attack(Oski 29).  Diet is important to determining this ratio. Cholesterol is derived from two sources, the food we eat and what is produced in the liver and intestines.  The average adult in the United States consumes 600 to 800 milligrams of cholesterol per day.  The cholesterol is derived from foods of animal origin such as egg yolks, dairy fats, and meat.  500 to 1,000 milligrams of cholesterol are also produced per day in the body(Oski 30).  The plasma level of cholesterol is controlled by two substances in the diet: the cholesterol and saturated fats you eat.  The ingestion of these fats make serum levels rise.  There are about 35 grams of fat in milk, and 60 percent of that is saturated.  If you drink just one quart of milk in a day, you have consumed over one-third of your daily recommended value of fat(Oski 30-1).

      The one fact the milk industry always uses to convince people they need milk for a healthy life is that milk is rich in calcium.  While this is true, cow milk contains about 1,200 milligrams of calcium per quart, that doesn’t mean your body gets all that calcium, or that you even need it(Oski 48).  Human milk contains only 300 milligrams per quart, but a baby being fed human milk absorbs more calcium into it’s body than a baby getting the 1,200 milligrams of calcium from cows milk(Oski 48).  This is because cow milk also contains vast amounts of phosphorus.  Phosphorus can combine with calcium in the intestinal tract preventing the absorption of calcium into the bloodstream(Oski 48).

      It was only 40,000 years ago that humans first domesticated cows and started ingesting their milk.  Any milk, other than mother’s own in the first few years of life, is a one of the more recent foods to be incorporated into the human diet(Solomons 180).  Humans were never meant to continue drinking milk after the first three or four years of age.  Though it has been theorized before, it is now becoming apparent that milk is not a healthy part of our diet.  As we as a species has become less dependant on a pastoral lifestyle, we should also have become less dependant on drinking the milk of cows and goats to survive.  It is not needed, we only do so because of mass marketing campaigns by the Dairy Industry that falsely bestow milk as a divine elixir which will make us stronger, better looking, and better over all.  It is not true.  It is time that we come to know and believe the truth.  That cow milk is for calves, not humans.