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Big mistake
One of the biggest mistakes made by doctors and nutritionists today is telling people to drink lots of milk and to eat lots of other dairy foods like cheese and yoghurt.
Milk and dairy foods cause lots of health problems, including cancer. I will give some details of these problems later. But first, let's take a look at how nutritionists think and understand how they come to make this big mistake.
The science of nutrition is very simplistic. Its logic goes like this: Our bones are made of calcium. Milk is rich in calcium. Therefore milk is good for our bones. Therefore milk is good for our health. Therefore all of us should drink lots of milk.
It seems to make sense. But this was exactly the same mistake nutritionists used to make regarding meat.
They used to tell us that our flesh is made of protein. Meat contains lots of protein. Therefore meat is good for health. Therefore we should all eat lots of meat.
And the people who followed such advice ended up with lots and lots of health problems, including heart disease, kidney failure, gout and various types of cancer.
The same sort of simplistic logic is now being applied to milk. Nutritionists never seem to learn from their past mistakes.
Because they never change their way of thinking. They look at what a food contains, rather than what the food does to us.
If you look at what milk contains, well, it contains lots of nutrition - protein, fats, sugars, vitamins and minerals, including plenty of calcium. You will reach the conclusion that milk is "the perfect food".
But if you at the effects of drinking lots of milk, you will realise that milk does more harm than good. A lot more harm than good.
Here's a brief summary of some of the more important scientific studies and observations about the harm caused by milk:
CANCER
The highest rates of female cancers (breast, womb and cervical cancers) in the world can be found in milk-producing / milk-drinking countries:
- Denmark (139 per 100,000 population)
- Scotland (136)
- Hungary (129)
- England / Wales (127)
- Ireland (126)
- New Zealand (124)
- Northern Ireland (123)
Singapore ranks 18th (110), on par with the US.
- World Health Statistics Annuals, 1987-90
cited in The Cancer Prevention Diet, by Michio Kushi
Cancer of the lung, breast and colon increased 2 to 3 times among Japanese women between 1950 and 1975. During that period, milk consumption increased 15 times, meat, poultry and eggs climbed 7 1/2 times, and rice consumption dropped 70 percent.
- Y Kagawa, Preventive Medicine, 7:205-17, 1978
A study of 250 women with breast cancer in Vercelli, Italy, found that they tended to consume considerably more milk, high-fat cheese and butter than 499 healthy women.
- Paolo Toniolo et al, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 81:278-86, 1989
A 1977 study based on 111 cases with prostate cancer and 111 hospital controls showed that the cancer patients consumed more high-fat foods, including beef, pork, eggs, cheeses, milk, creams, butter and margarine.
- I D Rotkin, Cancer Treatment Reports, 61:173-80, 1977
Harvard University researchers asked hundreds of women with ovarian cancer to record in detail what they normally ate. There was one thing that they had eaten much more frequently than women without cancer – dairy products, especially the supposedly “healthy” dairy products such as yoghurt and cottage cheese.
The problem is the milk sugar, not the milk fat, so it is not solved by non-fat products.
- Cramer D W, et al, Lancet, 2:66-71, 1989
A 16-nation study, based on WHO statistics, indicated that consumption of beef and dairy products increased the risks of lymphosarcoma by 70% and Hodgkin’s disease by 61%.
- A S Cunningham, Lancet, 2:1184-86, 1976
ALLERGIES
A teenage boy in hospital with muscular and skeletal pains, bronchial asthma, abdominal pains, headache and dark circles under the eyes experienced substantial improvement within 2 days when milk and chocolate were taken out of the diet. When milk was given to him again after 3 weeks, the pallor, dark circles and other symptoms returned.
- E G Weiberg, Annals of Allergy 31:209-11, 1973
ANAEMIA
Many studies have measured the blood iron levels of people with different diet-styles. Vegetarians consistently fared better in these tests than do meat eaters. The only people who run into trouble are the ones who eat a lot of dairy products, fatty foods, sugar and junk foods....
- John Robbins, Diet for a New America
ARTHRITIS
A 38-year-old woman had, for 11 years, been suffering from steadily worsening rheumatoid arthritis. Three weeks after doctors removed all dairy products from her diet, she showed signs of improvement. In four months, her arthritic symptoms had completely disappeared.
In the interest of scientific curiosity, she once again ate some cheese and milk. The next day, her joints were swollen, stiff and painful. Her symptoms again disappeared as she resumed her abstinence from dairy products.
- Parks A, British Medical Journal, 282:2027, 1981
ASTHMA
Twenty five patients with bronchial asthma were put on a strict vegetarian diet. They showed 71 percent improvement within 4 months, and 92 percent improvement within one year. The experimental diet avoided meat, dairy food, eggs, fish, sugar, chocolate, salt and other foods.
- O Lindahl et al, Journal of Asthma 22:45-55, 1985
CATARACTS
Populations that consume large amounts of dairy foods have a much higher incidence of cataracts.
The problem appears to be the milk sugar, lactose. In the digestive tract, lactose breaks down into two simple sugar molecules, glucose and galactose. When blood concentration of galactose increase, it can pass into the lens of the eye. . . (and) can lead to opacities of the lens.
Nursing children can generally handle galactose. As we age, many of us lose this capacity to break down galactose. There are even rare cases of genetic defects in which children cannot break down galactose. These children can form cataracts within the first year of life.
- Couet C et al, Journal of the American College of Nutrition 10(1):79-86, 1991
CRIME + DELINQUENCY
Researchers at the University of Washingtom found that juvenile deliquents drank a lot more milk. Male offenders consumed an average of 64 ounces of milk a day, while the control group consumed an average of 30 ounces. For girls, the figures were 35 and 17 ounces respectively.
In some cases, the researchers reported, “eliminating milk from the diet can result in dramatic improvement in behaviour, especially in hyperactive children.”
- Alexander Schauss, Diet, Crime & Delinquency
DIABETES
Cow’s milk protein can enter the infant’s bloodstream and stimulate the formation of antibodies which, in turn, destroy the pancreatic cells that produce insulin. Diabetes occurs when 80 - 90 percent of these cells are destroyed.
Researchers from Canada and Finland found high levels of antibodies to a specific cow’s milk protein in every one of 142 diabetic children they studied.
Antibodies can apparently form in response to even small quantities of cow’s milk. Cow’s milk protein can even reach a breast-feeding baby if the mother drinks milk.
- Scott F W, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 50:728-30, 1989
OSTEOPOROSIS
MILK ACTUALLY WORSENS OSTEOPORSIS!
Countries where dairy products are commonly consumed - the US and North European countries - actually have more osteoporosis than other countries. Milk does contain calcium, but diets that are high in protein, especially animal protein, causes the body to lose calcium.
- Hegsted R et al, Journal of Nutrition, 111:553-62, 1981
A study – funded by the US National Dairy Council for the purpose of showing the benefits of milk – showed that women continued to develop osteoporosis even when they drank an extra three 8-ounce glasses of low-fat milk every day for a year.
Scientists who conducted the tests said this was due to “the average 30% increase in protein intake during milk supplemtation.”
- Recker R, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2:1061, 1974
The calcium in kale is more efficiently absorbed than the calcium in milk.
- Robert P Heaney & Connie Weaver,
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 51:656-57, 1990