These vegan health articles are presented to assist you in taking a pro-active part in your own health.
See All-Creatures.org Health Position and Disclaimer
In their haste to sell products, the dairy industry has created an obsession over calcium that has become, in effect, a major contributor to the suffering and death of more than one billion people annually.
Nutritionally speaking, dairy foods are essentially "liquid meats"—but worse,
because people drink milk, and eat cheese, guiltlessly—often thinking "milk
makes my bones unbreakable, helps me lose weight, and makes my skin as soft and
beautiful as a baby's tush." In their haste to sell products, the dairy industry
has created an obsession over calcium that has become, in effect, a major
contributor to the suffering and death of more than one billion people annually
on Planet Earth from diseases of overnutrition—obesity, heart disease, stroke,
arthritis, and diabetes.
In the late 1970s when I was developing the McDougall Diet—after reading the
bulk of the nutritional science published since the early 1900s—I came to the
conclusion that starches, vegetables and fruits were ideal for human nutrition.
I then asked myself, what would be gained and lost by adding other food
categories (dairy, meats, poultry, fish, free-oils, sugars, etc.) to this
elemental foundation? In the case of dairy foods, I quickly eliminated the
"calcium advantage" because Nature packaged her foods so efficiently that
developing a disease due to calcium deficiency is nearly impossible on a diet of
plant foods (See last month's newsletter—February 2007).
After almost three years of exhaustive research I concluded: adding dairy foods
to my original plant-food-based diet would only supply more calories, fat,
animal protein, cholesterol, sodium, microbes, and chemical
contamination—ingredients that were making most of my patients ill in the first
place. In the final analysis, I found myself unable to discover any reasons to
add dairy into the McDougall Diet—the hazards weighed heavily and any benefits
were overstated, or blatantly falsified. Yet the drone from the dairy industry's
propaganda continues three decades later. I am the uncommon voice out there in
the wilderness; people tired of listening without questioning will find my
analysis of some of the dairy industry's most familiar messages refreshing.
Dairy Products Taste Delicious—Actually the Additives Do
The National Dairy Council refers to their products as "Nutritious and
Delicious." Undoubtedly, consumers love ice cream, cheese, yogurt, and butter.
But the reason is, they are loaded with sugar and salt; otherwise no one would
eat them. The National Dairy Council knows the importance of adding sugar and
other flavorings, reporting, "Studies show that elementary school kids drink 28
percent more milk when offered in "cool" flavors and packages."1 When I was a
child, my school required all students to drink milk daily. A small carton of
white milk was 2 cents and chocolate was 3 cents. I always splurged, because I
gagged from the taste of white milk. The reason plain milk is at all palatable
is because it naturally contains about 30% of its calories as sugar (lactose).
Chocolate, strawberry, and other flavored milks contain additional sugar. The
more sugar, the greater the attraction to dairy; witness ice cream with 52% of
the calories as sugar.
My patients taught me how really disgusting basic dairy foods taste. During my
residence training in the mid-1970s, I cared for people with kidney failure, who
were required to be on very salt-restricted diets. One of my duties was to
recommend they eat salt-less butter and salt-less cheese. Their response was,
"Doc, I can't eat a glob of greasy lard." Without the salt, these yellow blocks
of fat are unpalatable.
Adding salt and/or sugar to enhance the taste of potatoes, beans, rice,
vegetables and fruits would be a much healthier and tastier choice, rather
than mixing it with all that fat found in dairy products.
Dairy Products Build Bones - Actually They Damage Them, Too
The National Dairy Council writes, “A large body of scientific research
collected in recent decades demonstrates that an adequate intake of
nutrients (e.g., calcium) from dairy foods such as milk, cheese, or yogurt
positively affects bone health by increasing bone acquisition during growth,
slowing age-related bone loss, and reducing osteoporotic fragility
fractures.”2 The truth is dairy products can have bone-growth-stimulating
effects.
The primary biologic purpose of cow’s milk is to cause growth—from a 60
pound calf to a 600 pound cow in less than 8 months. This “miracle-grow”
fluid has several qualities that help accomplish this feat. Cow’s milk is
50% fat, providing 600 “growth-supporting” calories per quart.3 Cow’s milk
also has high concentrations of protein, potassium, sodium, calcium, and
other nutrients to sustain rapid growth. (In comparison, these nutrients are
at a three to four times lower concentration in human milk than cow’s
milk.3)
Dairy foods increase growth hormones: In addition
to calories and nutrients to support growth, cow’s milk increases hormones
that directly stimulate the growth of the calf. The most powerful of these
hormones is called insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1). When cow’s milk is
fed to people, IGF-1 levels also increase. Studies funded by the dairy
industry show a 10% increase in IGF-1 levels in adolescent girls from one
pint daily and the same 10% increase for postmenopausal women from 3
servings per day of nonfat milk or 1% milk.4,5 This rise in IGF-1 level is
an important reason for the “bone-building” effects of cow’s milk.
IGF-1 promotes undesirable growth too—like cancer growth and accelerated
aging. IGF-1 is one of the most powerful promoters of cancer growth ever
discovered for cancers of the breast, prostate, lung, and colon.6
Overstimulation of growth by IGF-1 leads to premature aging too—and reducing
IGF-1 levels is “anti-aging.”7
Dairy Foods Raise Estrogen: The message that
estrogen builds fracture-resistant bones (prevents osteoporosis) has been
hammered into women’s minds over the past 4 decades by the pharmaceutical
industry, selling HRT formulas, such as Premarin and Prempro. Food also
raises estrogen levels in a person’s body—and dairy foods account for about
60 to 70% of the estrogen that comes from food.8 The main source of this
estrogen is the modern factory farming practice of continuously milking cows
throughout pregnancy.8,9 As gestation progresses the estrogen content of
milk increases from 15 pg/ml to 1000 pg/ml.
Well-recognized consequences of excess estrogen are cancers of the
breast, uterus, and prostate.
The overall effect of the Western diet is bone damage:
The National Dairy Council would like you to believe, “There is no evidence
that protein-rich foods such as dairy foods adversely impact calcium balance
or bone health.”10 But these same dairy people know this is untrue and they
state elsewhere, “Excess dietary protein, particularly purified proteins,
increases urinary calcium excretion. This calcium loss could potentially
cause negative calcium balance, leading to bone loss and osteoporosis. These
effects have been attributed to an increased endogenous acid load created by
the metabolism of protein, which requires neutralization by alkaline salts
of calcium from bone.”11
Thus, dairy products have bone-building effects—IGF-1 and estrogen; and
bone-destroying effects—dietary acid and protein. The net result depends
upon the final balance of these accumulative effects. (Note that calcium
consumed results in little of either a positive or a negative change for the
health of the bones. See the February 2007 McDougall Newsletter for
details). A common practice of researchers designing studies to show dairy
is beneficial to bone health is to first neutralize the dietary acids with
lots of fruits and vegetables or add antacids (like Citracal) to the
experiment.12 By this means, the positive effects, like bone growth
stimulation from IGF-1, will dominate.
Consistently, when populations of people who eat different diets are
compared, rates of hip fractures increase with increasing animal protein
consumption (including dairy products). For example, people from the USA,
Canada, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and New Zealand have the highest rates of
osteoporosis.14,15 The lowest rates are among people who eat the fewest
animal-derived foods (these people are also on lower calcium diets)—like the
people from rural Asia and rural Africa. 14,15 Dietary protein correlates
directly with the dietary acids consumed.
Dairy Products Make People Trim—That’s Not What They Tell Each
Other
The National Dairy Council writes, “A growing body of research indicates
that enjoying 3-A-Day of Dairy as part of a reduced calorie diet can give
adults better results when it comes to trimming the waistline than cutting
calories alone.”16
The dairy industry promotes dairy consumption for weight loss, even though they know their campaign is false. Consider the conclusion of a review article they funded that was published in a 2003 issue of the Journal of Nutrition, “Nine studies of dairy product supplementation were located: In seven, no significant differences in the change in body weight or composition were detected between treatment and control groups. However, two studies conducted in older adults observed significantly greater weight gain in the dairy product groups.”17 At the Dairy Product Components and Weight Regulation Symposium held on April 21, 2002 in New Orleans, LA. Dr. Susan Barr (who frequently works for the dairy industry), said “In conclusion, the data available from randomized trials of dairy product or calcium supplementation provide little support for an effect in reducing body weight or fat mass.”17 See, they know the truth, but fail to share it with the customers. Research published since this review has been supported largely by the dairy industry and fabricated to support their profitable weight loss campaign.
Recommending Dairy is Racist
The National Dairy Council says, “Minorities who have experienced
gastrointestinal problems consuming milk are learning new strategies to
enjoy milk and other dairy foods. This means that minorities (and
non-minorities) with lactose intolerance no longer need to miss out on
essential nutrients provided by dairy foods. The health consequences of
avoiding dairy foods, the major source of dietary calcium, may be especially
serious for African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Native American
Indians. Many minorities are at high risk of hypertension, stroke, colon
cancer, and osteoporosis – diseases in which a low calcium intake can be a
contributing factor.”18 This is fear-mongering at its worst.
White people have a high tolerance for the sugar found in milk, known as
lactose. Non-whites commonly have a normal, natural “intolerance” to milk
sugars, and such sugars consumed after the weaning-time cause them
intestinal distress with flatulence, cramps and diarrhea. Milk makes 60 to
90 percent of these people sick.
An editorial from the October 2006 issue of the British Medical Journal
addresses this, “Furthermore, we need to ask the question of whether we are
doing children a disservice by encouraging them to meet recommendations.
Childhood obesity is on the rise in westernized countries, and dairy
products—the main source of calcium recommended by nutrition
guidelines—contribute greatly to the intake of fat and sugar in children.
Nearly three quarters of the world's population are estimated to be lactose
intolerant after the age of weaning and therefore do not tolerate the
consumption of milk and other dairy products well. In addition, some studies
suggest that the consumption of cow's milk increases the risk of some types
of cancer.”19 Diary products do essentially nothing to help prevent or treat
hypertension either—at best, a review funded by the dairy industry showed a
reduction of 1.44 mmHg systolic and 0.84 mmHg diastolic.20 (By comparison,
our results from the McDougall residential center show a 23/14 mmHg decrease
in blood pressure in people with high blood pressure (150/90 mmHg or
greater) in less than 10 days; and almost all of these people were taken off
all of their blood pressure medication during the 10 days.)
Dairy foods are high in calories, fat and cholesterol; contributing to the
cause of heart disease, strokes, type-2 diabetes, and obesity. They are high
on the food chain so they accumulate, in sometimes dangerous amounts,
environmental chemicals. Dairy protein is the number one cause of food
allergies and can cause more serious forms of “food allergy” called
autoimmune diseases. Dairy products are also known to be infected with
life-threatening microbes, including E. Coli, listeria, salmonella,
staphylococci, tuberculosis, bovine leukemia viruses, and bovine AIDS
viruses. A more complete discussion of the hazards of cow’s milk is found in
my May 2003 newsletter article, “Marketing Milk and Disease.”
The Dairy Industry Remains Unaccountable
Because of their financial power and political connections, the people in
the dairy industry can say whatever they want and no one can stop them.
Questioning consumers, however, might ask themselves, “Why are humans the
only animals that drink milk of another species, and continue to drink it
after normal weaning-time?” And “Why would Nature (or our Creator) design us
so that in order to get a necessary nutrient, calcium, we must risk our
lives?
With a $206.5 million annual budget dedicated to confusing people and
covering up the truth for the sake of profits, and with the current
political climate, there is no hope of regulating the dairy industry—or more
appropriately for such a hazardous substance, outlawing these cow products
for human consumption.21 Fortunately, thinking people are freeing themselves
and their families from sickness and obesity by learning that human
nutritional needs are far removed from those of baby cows.
References:
Return to Vegan Health Articles
Visit Food Hazards in Animal Flesh and By-products
We began this archive as a means of assisting our visitors in answering many of their health and diet questions, and in encouraging them to take a pro-active part in their own health. We believe the articles and information contained herein are true, but are not presenting them as advice. We, personally, have found that a whole food vegan diet has helped our own health, and simply wish to share with others the things we have found. Each of us must make our own decisions, for it's our own body. If you have a health problem, see your own physician.