Dairy Monsters: So just how healthy is milk?

[Guest guest]

Dairy Monsters

 

We used to take it for granted that milk was good for us.

But now the industry faces a crisis,

with the public questioning such assumptions.

http://www.bodyfueling.com/ARTICLES/Health1.html

 

So just how healthy is milk?

Anne Karpf investigates

 

Does God's own PR company handle the account for milk?

How else has it managed to hang on to its untarnished image, despite

gallons of evidence to the contrary?

 

White ergo pure, natural, nutritionally essential: milk seems more

an element than a product, as if it were nature in a carton. While

the reputation of other animal foodstuffs has plummeted, milk's has

stayed relatively buoyant. Indeed, many people believe that their

health will be jeopardised if they don't drink it. In the US, milk

is virtually the national emblem (apple pie, in comparison, is an

also-ran).

 

Yet something is bubbling up in the milk pan. The animal welfare

groups, for so long preoccupied with chicken and beef farming, have

begun to take up the cause of the dairy cow.

 

The scientific evidence, too, is massing up that regular consumption

of large quantities of milk can be bad for your health, and

campaigners are making a noise about the environmental and

international costs of large-scale intensive European dairy farming.

 

Will milk be the site on which health scares meet animal rights? We

have been weaned on the idea that cows' milk is the most complete

food to serve youngsters - default sustenance for picky children,

liquid calcium for thirsty bones. So thorough is our dairy

indoctrination that it requires a total gestalt switch to

contemplate the notion that milk may help to cause the very diseases

it's meant to prevent.

 

Yet as far back as 1974, the Committee on Nutrition of the American

Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) was answering the question, " Should milk

drinking by children be discouraged? " (even posing it seems

heretical) with a " maybe. "

 

Today, there's a big bank of scientific evidence against milk

consumption, alleging not only that it causes some diseases but,

equally damning, that it fails to prevent others for which it has

traditionally been seen as a panacea.

 

At the same time, new claims about its health-enhancing properties

are being advanced almost monthly - 30 years on, the AAP has changed

its mind and now recommends dairy products for children. For this is

a story of

evidence and counter-evidence, of an elixir tainted and attempts to

restore it to its previous pre-eminence. At stake are enormous

commercial interests, deeply rooted patterns of agriculture and

consumption - and our health.

 

It starts in infancy. Frank Oski, former paediatrics director at

Johns Hopkins school of medicine, estimated in his book Don't Drink

Your Milk! that half of all iron deficiency in US infants results

from cows' milk-induced intestinal bleeding - a staggering amount,

since more than 15% of American under-twos suffer from iron-

deficiency anaemia.

 

The infants, it seems, drink so much milk (which is very low in

iron) that they have little appetite left for foods containing iron;

at the same time, the milk, by inducing gastrointestinal bleeding,

causes iron loss.

 

The dairy industry acknowledges (as Hippocrates did) that some

people are allergic to milk - though this makes it sound as if the

problem lies in the individual's aberrant constitution, rather than

in the beverage itself.

 

Yet, when you look at it more closely, the extent of lactose

intolerance is extraordinary. Lactose is the sugar in milk, and it

needs to be broken down by the enzyme lactase that lives in our

intestines and bowels.

 

If the lactose we absorb is greater than our lactase capacity,

undigested lactose travels to the large intestine, where it

ferments, producing gas, carbon dioxide and lactic acid. The result?

Bloating, cramps, diarrhoea and farts. In 1965, investigators at

Johns Hopkins found that 15% of all the white people and almost

three-quarters of all the black people they tested were unable to

digest lactose.

 

Milk, it seemed, was a racial issue, and far more people in the

world are unable than able to digest lactose. That includes most

Thais, Japanese, Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews, and 50% of Indians.

 

According to various studies, there's a whole catalogue of other

illnesses that can be attributed to cows' milk, among them diabetes.

 

A 1992 report in the New England Journal of Medicine corroborated a

long-standing theory that proteins in cows' milk can damage the

production of insulin in those with a genetic predisposition to

diabetes.

 

The dairy industry dismisses this as " just a theory " - along

with " myth " and " controversial " , a term it applies to almost all

studies critical of milk.

 

The anti-milk lobby also claims that consumption of dairy products

can aggravate rheumatoid arthritis and has been implicated in colic,

acne, heart disease, asthma, lymphoma, ovarian cancer and multiple

sclerosis.

 

Major studies suggesting a link between milk and prostate cancer

have been appearing since the 1970s, culminating in findings by the

Harvard School of Public Health in 2000 that men who consumed two

and a half servings of dairy products a day had a third greater risk

of getting prostate cancer than those who ate less than half a

serving a day.

 

In the same year, T Colin Campbell, the Jacob Gould Schurman

Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University,

said

that " cows' milk protein may be the single most significant chemical

" carcinogen " to which humans are exposed " .

 

Yet even if milk does play a part in causing some diseases, surely

it's crucial in avoiding others?

 

" After the first year of life, " concluded Oski, " the child requires no milk of

any type.

 

The child,

like... adults, can thrive without cow milk ever crossing [its]

lips. " A profane statement such as that lights a flare of questions.

 

What about osteoporosis and our need for calcium? Surely if we don't

eat dairy products we'll become brittle-boned and frail, destined

for the dowager's hump?

It's an intriguing coincidence that just as the alarm was sounding about the fat

content of milk products, along came the panic about osteoporosis to propel us

straight back to dairy.

 

To the milk critics, the shibboleth that osteoporosis is caused by

calcium deficiency is one of the great myths of our time (each side

accuses the other of myth peddling).

 

Mark Hegsted, a retired Harvard

professor of nutrition, has said, " To assume that osteoporosis is

due to calcium deficiency is like assuming that infection is due to

penicillin deficiency. "

 

In fact, the bone loss and deteriorating bone tissue that take place

in osteoporosis are due not to calcium deficiency but rather to its

resorption:

 

it's not that our bodies don't get enough calcium,

rather that they excrete too much of what they already have. So we

need to find out what it is that's breaking down calcium stores in

the first place, to the extent that more than one in three British

women now suffers from osteoporosis.

 

The most important culprit is almost certainly the overconsumption

of protein. High-protein foods such as meat, eggs and dairy make

excessive demands on the kidneys, which in turn leach calcium from

the body.

 

One solution, then, isn't to increase our calcium intake,

but to reduce our consumption of protein, so our bones don't have to

surrender so much calcium. Astonishingly, according to this newer,

more critical view, dairy products almost certainly help to cause,

rather than prevent, osteoporosis.

 

Consider this: American women are among the biggest consumers of

calcium in the world, yet still have one of the highest levels of

osteoporosis in the world.

 

Lots of researchers have tried to work out the relationship between

these two facts. A study funded by the US National Dairy Council,

for example, gave a group of postmenopausal women three 8oz glasses

of skimmed milk a day for two years, then compared their bones with

those of a control group of women not given the milk.

 

The dairy group consumed 1,400mg of calcium a day, yet lost bone at twice the

rate of the control group.

 

Similarly, the Harvard Nurses' Health Study found that women who

consumed the most calcium from dairy foods broke more bones than

those who rarely drank milk.

 

Another piece of research found that women who get most of their protein from

animal sources have three

times the rate of bone loss and hip fractures of women who get most

of their protein from vegetable sources, according to a 2001

National Institutes of Health study. The pattern of diet and

fractures in other parts of the world is equally revealing.

 

Most Chinese people eat and drink no dairy products, and get all

their calcium from vegetables. Yet while they consume only half the

calcium of Americans, osteoporosis is uncommon in China, despite an

average life expectancy of 70.

 

In South Africa, Bantu women who eat mostly plant protein and only

200-350mg of calcium a day have virtually no osteoporosis, despite

bearing on average six children and breastfeeding for prolonged

periods.

 

Their African-American brothers and sisters, who ingest on average

more than 1,000mg of calcium a day, are nine times more likely to

experience hip fractures. Campbell puts it unequivocally: " The

association between the intake of animal protein and fracture rates

appears to be as strong as that between cigarette smoking and lung

cancer. "

 

Almost none of these scientific findings has been reflected in

mainstream nutritional advice, which continues to emphasise the need

for calcium. In fact, the recommendations on calcium are now so high

that it is difficult to devise practical diets that meet them. The

AAP, for example, currently recommends five daily servings from the

milk group for adolescents (try getting those into figure-conscious

teenage girls).

 

But there's another vital part of the calcium puzzle that suggests

that the American Dietetic Association and its UK counterparts are

looking in the wrong place. Instead of recommending multiple

servings of dairy, they'd probably have done better to advise women,

and especially teenage girls, to take more exercise. A 15-year study

published in the British Medical Journal found that exercise may be

the best protection against hip fractures and that " reduced intake

of dietary calcium does not seem to be a risk factor " .

 

Similarly,

researchers at Penn State University concluded that bone density is

affected by how much exercise girls get in their teen years, when up

to half of their skeletal mass is developed. The girls who took part

in this research had wildly different calcium intakes, but it had no

lasting effect on their bone health. " We [had] hypothesised that

increased calcium intake would result in better adolescent bone

gain, " said one researcher. " Needless to say, we were surprised to

find our hypothesis refuted. "

 

What's the dairy industry's response to all this? The Americans say

the idea that excess protein makes you pee out calcium is

controversial. The British call it a myth.

 

And those figures on the higher rates of fracture in countries where large

amounts of dairy are consumed?

 

Ah, they say, that can be explained by the fact that the northern

hemisphere has a limited number of months a year when we're outside

for long enough for our bodies to synthesise vitamin D, which is

vital for the absorption of calcium. And they're right - vitamin D

is critical.

 

In a major follow-up to the Nurses' Health Study, the risk of hip

fracture in postmenopausal women was reduced not by milk or a high-

calcium diet, but by higher vitamin D intake.

 

The Dairy Council also

says that we protein- and calcium-guzzling northerners keep breaking

our hips because of our sedentary lifestyle - ie, we don't exercise

enough. Remarkably, here they acknowledge one of the milk critics'

central arguments: that no matter how much calcium you down, without

adequate exercise and vitamin D, it's to no avail.

 

So much for milk as the great bone protector.

 

By now, the reader (unless you're Bantu) may be despairing. So what

is it that you should be eating? Should we eat nothing, since all of

it makes us sick? Or, in that case, we might as well eat everything?

 

For the record, calcium from leafy vegetables seems pretty benign

(though watch out for pesticides) - it is, after all, where

elephants, rhinos and most other animals get their strong bones

from - as are nuts, seeds and dried fruit.

 

Absurd, says the dairy industry: you'd need seven servings of cooked

broccoli or eight medium bags of peanuts to get the same amount of

calcium as in a 200ml glass of milk. Milk isn't only nutrient-dense,

but it needs no preparation and is easily swallowed, both important

considerations with the very young and the old.

But given that the benefits of cows' milk have been seriously

questioned, why is it still nutritional orthodoxy and a staple of

government policy? One reason is history. Even within living memory,

rickets was widespread. In the poor living conditions that the

working class had to endure early last century, milk seemed

indispensable, with the result that it came to be indissolubly

linked to health. The 1934 Milk Act, providing elementary

schoolchildren with a third of a pint a day at the subsidised price

of a halfpenny, enshrined this idea; by 1965, the majority of

English and Welsh schoolchildren were downing their daily third.

 

When, in 1971, as minister of education, Margaret Thatcher

controversially decided to withdraw free school milk for children

over seven, she was widely vilified as a " milk-snatcher " .

(Perhaps she's retrospectively due some gratitude?)

 

Yet already 10 years earlier, the Framingham Heart Study had

reported a link between coronary heart disease and raised

cholesterol levels, and by the 1970s the Royal College of Physicians

was recommending the replacement of saturated fats by

polyunsaturated.

But still the association of milk with health is hard to break.

 

Says Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City University, " The

contradictions in policy are a leftover from the 1940s, when

nutritionists argued, with justification, that milk provided a good

technical fix for poverty. Sixty years on, nutritional science has

advanced, and important evidence of the impact of saturated fats has

come to the fore. "

 

Another reason why official policy on milk is often at odds with

medical evidence lies in the conflict of government role, both in

Britain and the US. The US department of agriculture, for example,

has the twin, and often mutually incompatible, tasks of promoting

agricultural products and providing dietary advice. In 2000, it was

still recommending two to three servings of dairy products a day, to

the rage of critics such as the Physicians Committee for Responsible

Medicine.

 

PCRM claimed that six of the 11-member drafting panel had close ties

with the meat, egg and dairy industries (five of them with dairy).

Britain isn't free from conflict of interest, either. The government

is heavily involved in encouraging us to drink milk. The department

for the environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) sponsors both

the dairy industry and the Milk Development Council, responsible for

the generic marketing of milk. Equally parti pris are the British

and US dairy councils - apparently the source of public health

information, but in reality branches of the milk business.

 

In the UK, the National Dairy Council is the promotional arm of the

industry, funded by dairy farmers, milk processors and

manufacturers. Its website includes the " fact " that eating three

portions of dairy products a day significantly lowers cholesterol

and the risk of coronary heart disease.

 

Of course, it's no crime for the industry to promote itself; what's disturbing

is its

masquerading as a disinterested source of incontrovertible

information.

 

What has galvanised the whole debate has been a major change in our

dietary habits. We just aren't drinking milk in the quantities we

used to. The British went down from 30.55 gallons each a year in

1969 to 25.42 in 1993; by 2001, this had fallen further. But the

milk industry is fighting back.

 

For years, milk producers thought their product so essential that it

didn't need marketing - you don't promote water or air, after all.

 

But when sales declined because of anxieties about cholesterol, the

rise of eating out and competition from soft drinks and bottled

water, they realised it was time for a makeover. Out went the goody-

two-shoes image, and in its place came the birth of cool.

 

Milk was repositioned by major ad campaigns. The first was the " Got Milk? "

campaign, launched in California in 1993, in which celebrities and

high-profile sports figures were adorned with a white milk

moustache: Naomi Campbell, Serena Williams, Melanie Griffiths, the

cast of Friends - all were featured with one.

 

The idea has now travelled to Britain, where milk's unhip image is

challenged by the National Dairy Council's The White Stuff campaign,

launched in 2000 (and co-funded by Defra). It plays the macho card

(white stuff/right stuff), suggesting that milk drinkers are as

tough as aviation heroes, reinforced by a punchline demanding, " Are

you made of it? " (calcium and strong bones, that is). Recruiting

homegrown celebrities such as George Best and Chris Eubank, it

increased UK sales.

 

The Americans also tried to staunch the flow away from milk by

introducing flavoured milks. Forget chocolate, strawberry or banana;

today, you can choose between " Orange Scream: a whole new concept in

milk " (contents: cellulose gum, pectin, soy protein, high fructose

corn sugar, sugar and annatto colour), cappuccino-flavoured milk,

caffeine milk, even root beer milk.

 

And anyone for carbonated milk,

with carbon dioxide for added fizz?

 

In Britain, the industry is promoting the provision of milk in

primary schools, and installing milk bars in secondary schools. On

average, each bar shifts 10,000 litres a year. The final, and

perhaps most insidious, dimension of the dairy fightback is funding

research. Michael Zemel is director of the Nutrition Institute at

the University of Tennessee; his study demonstrating that the

consumption of skimmed milk, yogurt and cheese can lessen the risk

of obesity attracted international publicity, as well as an

enthusiastic press release from the National Dairy Council, which

omits to reveal that it funds him. A recent Zemel study shows that

people who included three servings of Yoplait Light yogurt in their

diet lost significantly more weight than those in the control group

(another of his funders is General Mills, makers of Yoplait Light).

The British Nutrition Foundation, however, cites the yogurt study as

if it were independent research.

How come it's taken so long to learn about milk's less health-giving

properties? Partly it's to do with how research is conducted.

 

Until

recently, no one had done the science - the epidemiological and

population studies.

 

What's more, though the milk advocates maintain that humans have

kept animals for milk products for thousands of years, milk-drinking

on the scale we have it now is relatively new. Fresh, raw milk was

rarely consumed after childhood until the late 19th century, except

in nomadic countries.

 

Milk is essentially a modern, industrial

phenomenon - its consumption only really took off after the

discovery of pasteurisation in 1864.

 

In the west, we've moved very fast (in historical terms) from

undernutrition to overnutrition, from insufficiency to excess. While

milk had a major role to play early in the last century, today's

nutritional needs are different. Says Lang, " I'm not saying that

milk is lousy. It does have nutrients and is a rich source

of energy, quickly taken up in an easily digestible form - good when

children were short and you needed growth. But should we be basing

our diets on it today, as though without dairy we couldn't survive?

I'd say no. "

 

Alongside the researchers raising questions about milk sits the more

inflammatory animal rights movement, which has recently focused its

attention on dairy farming and what it argues is its intrinsic

cruelty. For a long time, those concerned about animal welfare

seemed magically to exempt milk from their preoccupations.

 

They suffered from what Richard Young of the Soil Association

calls " the vegetarian fallacy " : non-meat-eaters who still drink milk

and so perpetuate the cycle that ends in crated veal calves destined

for European dinner tables.

 

Now many of them have begun to contend that, organic or not, there's

no such thing as humane milk. For in order to lactate, cows - like

humans - first have to get pregnant.

 

Calves are essentially the

waste by-product of the industry. What happens to them once they've

done what they were created to do - stimulate a cow's milk

production by the very fact of their being conceived? Male udderless

cows are of no value to the dairy industry, so if prices for male

calves are low and the veal route unprofitable, most are killed

within a couple of weeks for baby food or pies, to make rennet, or

sent to rendering plants to be turned into tallow or grease or, in

other countries, animal feed.

 

Female calves, on the other hand, are

bred as replacement stock for their mothers. The provision of beef

essentially originates in the dairy industry: if we didn't drink

milk, we wouldn't have all that extra meat to get rid of.

 

Though a male calf's life is unenviable, its mother's is no better.

To ensure almost continuous lactation, she endures annual

pregnancies. Her calf is removed from her within 24 hours of its

birth. Calves hardly ever drink their mother's milk.

 

Like agribusinesses everywhere, milk producers have tried to

increase output while cutting costs. The victims are the cows.

Today, from the age of two, they're expected to produce up to 10,000

litres of milk during their 10-month lactation stint (before they

dry off, are re-inseminated and the whole process starts up again).

 

Milked once or twice (or even three times) daily while pregnant,

they produce around 20 litres a day, 10 times as much as they'd need

to feed a calf. The amount of milk cows are required to make each

day has almost doubled in the past 30 years, because having a

smaller number of high-yielding cows reduces a farmer's feed,

fertiliser, equipment, labour and capital costs. That's why the

variety of cattle breeds in Europe has declined so much - everyone

wants the high-yielding black-and-white Holstein-Friesens.

 

You don't need to be sentimental about animals to pity the poor

bloated creatures, dragging around their vast, abnormally heavy

udders. Many each year go lame, and they rarely live longer than

four or five years, compared with a natural lifespan of around 25

years. Then they are slaughtered. The official view is that not only

do dairy farmers care about their cows, but that it's in their

interests to keep them healthy.

The reality is that overmilking, problems with cleanliness and the

choice of high-yielding breeds together cause more than 30 incidents

of mastitis per 100 British cows each year. Mastitis is a painful

infection of the udder.

 

Cows' mastitis has implications for human health, too, because to control

infection farmers use more antibiotics.

 

The industry's most indefatigable foe, Robert Cohen, a former

scientific researcher and author of Milk: The Deadly Poison, has

declared, " We are at war... Monsanto is the enemy. "

 

The object of

Cohen's wrath is Posilac, Monsanto's trade name for rBST,

recombinant bovine somatotropin, which is injected into cows to get

them to produce more milk. This synthetic growth hormone, approved

by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1993, boosts a cow's

milk output up to 15%. According to the FDA, hormone-treated milk

is " not significantly different " from untreated milk.

 

Cohen, along

with other critics, disagrees. He went on a 206-day hunger strike to

pressurise (unsuccessfully) the FDA into banning Posilac. Cohen et

al maintain that greater levels of IGF-1 (Insulin-like Growth Factor-

1) in rBST milk are linked to breast and colon cancer, hypertension

and diabetes. On the other hand, respected health bodies, such as

the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Health Organisation,

American Council on Science and Health, and American Medical

Association, have all confirmed the safety of milk supplemented with

rBST.

 

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the rBST milk saga has been the

introduction since 1993, in 13 US states, of Food Disparagement

Acts. Hitherto only a living person or company could be libelled,

but under this legislation you can now libel fruits, vegetables,

cattle, even fish, and be sued for large sums.

 

Opponents claim that

the acts are just another weapon designed to intimidate critics and

curtail evolving nutritional knowledge. It was under this act that

Oprah Winfrey was sued when, in the wake of the UK's mad cow disease

outbreak, a guest on her show disparaged beef.

 

In one sense, this needn't bother us, since the EU, along with

Canada, Japan and 100 other countries, has banned rBST milk because

of its effects on animal (rather than human) health and welfare. On

the other hand, there are no restrictions on the import of rBST

dairy products, or a requirement to label them.

 

And even if we

scrupulously try to avoid GM products ourselves, we're drinking milk

from cows unable to do the same, since 6% of animal feed in Britain

is made up of GM products (maize, soya and corn).

 

If you're struck by the absurdities in the milk story so far, this

last part will have you thinking you've woke up in the middle of a

Dalí painting. It concerns the common agricultural policy (CAP), a

system so opaque and complex that it seems expressly designed to

elude (or should that be evade?) public scrutiny. In her recent

briefing on the dairy industry, Land Of Milk And Money?, for

Sustain, an alliance of more than 100 national public interest and

farming organisations, Vicki Hird unearthed its follies.

 

Here are some gems:

In 2001, CAP provided ?16bn of direct and indirect support to dairy

production, and yet, over the past 10 years, average farm income has

all but collapsed. Most British dairy farmers sell milk at less than

it costs to produce - they get around 18p for a litre that sells for

43p in the supermarket. CAP subsidies to traders allow dairy

products to be dumped (exported below cost) on to the international

market, destroying the livelihoods of thousands of small-scale farms

in countries such as Jamaica and Kenya. Equally bizarrely, the EU

imports Brazilian soya beans to feed to its cows, then sells some of

the resultant surplus milk powder back to Brazil.

 

The WHO recommends that we consume not more than 10% of our total

calories from saturated fat, but CAP encourages milk fat production

and subsidises schools to buy full-fat (but not fat-free) milk and

food manufacturers to buy surplus butter.

 

And just when

nutritionists have vaunted the healthiness of the fruit- and

vegetable-dominated Mediterranean diet, those Mediterranean

countries joining the EU, and therefore CAP, have increased milk

production and consumption, and decreased fruit and veg production.

 

This trend, known as " nutrition transition, " is not, Hird argues,

inevitable but shaped by food policy and pricing. It gets worse:

milk quotas are set by CAP at a level that guarantees a

surplus, allowing cheap export, yet in the UK the current milk quota

is not enough to meet domestic need. Milk quota (effectively the

right to produce milk) can be traded as if it were milk. Until the

end of 2003, even non-producers were allowed to rent and lease it -

so, for instance, Manchester United has traded in milk quota.

 

And the final insult: a large proportion of subsidised skimmed milk

powder surplus to European requirements is sold cheaply to veal

producers, who then feed it to calves. In other words (and with only

a dash of poetic licence), after the calves have been forcibly

removed from their mothers, the milk they would have been drinking

is turned into powder and fed back to them. At taxpayers' expense.

 

So what's the alternative? Compulsory veganism and the banning of

milk? The dairy industry is the single largest agricultural sector

in Britain, which is the third largest milk producer in the EU. It

generates £6bn in retail sales, and can't just be wished away. Nor

do most of us respond well to attempts to police our eating habits.

 

Yet what we eat and drink isn't just the result of individual choice

and cultural tradition: the contents of our shopping trolleys are at

least equally shaped by government policy and official decisions.

 

Dr Tim Lobstein, co-director of the Food Commission, an independent

watchdog on food issues, is scathing about dairy overproduction. He

advocates the removal of all EU subsidies from dairy production,

with the money going to support sustainable forms of food

production, including some organic dairy farming. What would he say

to struggling dairy farmers? " I can't help to stay in business the

producers of commodities that aren't helping human health - they'll

have to find alternative employment. The EU should help farmers

transfer to products more helpful to human health, such as

horticulture. "

 

Why, Lobstein asks, do we need to import onions from Tasmania or

beans from Kenya? Perhaps the ultimate folly is the import of New

Zealand apples into a country in which so much of that fruit is

grown already. Hird's report recommends more radical CAP reform, the

removal of free school milk, the adoption by the WTO of anti-dumping

measures, as well as other structural changes that would

produce " less, better milk from happier cows. "

 

Of course, changing food policy and individual eating habits is hard

and slow. The first major step is a national debate about milk

production and consumption - a real one, not the kind the government

has conducted on GM foods.

 

Part of this debate will have to be a

frank appraisal of whether milk can jeopardise human health. Finding

a way of discussing milk that neither evangelises nor demonises will

be tough. So, too, is distinguishing the dogma from the science,

especially since the research is so often conflicting.

 

Yet it seems

increasingly clear that dairy prodicts alone probably don't protect

bone health in the way we've long thought, and that calcium intake

on its own has only a small effect on bone density.

 

At the same time (and Atkins notwithstanding), while some fats are

essential, the human body does not thrive on excessive amounts of

milk fat. Yet milk's connotations are so primordial, its

associations so pastoral and the interests that promote it so

enormous, that changing the way we think about it, and drink it,

will be a process every bit as challenging and root-and-branch as

the loss of unquestioning religious faith.

_________________

 

JoAnn Guest

mrsjoguest

DietaryTipsForHBP

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest