Even so, you still have a very fundamental problem with milk: it's for baby cows. Humans, with few exceptions, are not small cows. A baby cow weighs about 80 pounds. After six months, calves stop drinking milk and weigh about 500 pounds. Human mothers have long been discouraged from giving cows' milk to their infant children, as the proteins in cows' milk can be very difficult to digest - to the point where it can even cause intestinal bleeding. Cows' milk often causes constipation in children as well. It's estimated that 65% of the world's human population does not drink cows' milk and much of the world's population is lactose intolerant. Those who do drink cows' milk represent the only creatures that 1) drink milk beyond infancy and 2) drink milk from another species. Medical authorities including Dr. Benjamin Spock, Dr. Charles Attwood, and Dr. Neal Barnard have publicly advised against the consumption of dairy products. Speaking of saturated fat, cows' milk contains over nine times the quantity of saturated fat included in soy milk, while soy milk offers more than 10 times more essential fatty acids. Soy milk also lowers, rather than raises, LDL cholestorol levels and are, of course, cholestorol free. As for the purported benefits of milk: broccoli and collard greens contain far more calcium. While the dairy industry constantly promotes the claim that milk strengthens bones, have you ever noticed that this statement NEVER appears on actual milk containers? That's because the ads are regulated by the FTC while the cartons are regulated by the FDA - and the FDA actually requires that product claims be factually supported.
Walter Willett, Chairman of the Nutrition Department at the Harvard School of Public Health, co-authored a study of more than 75,000 American nurses, which found that women who consumed the most calcium from dairy products suffered from substantially more fractures than women who consumed less milk. This correlation is consistent with broader trends, as the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis (The US, Finland, Sweden, and England) are also the countries with the highest consumption of dairy products. Fracture rates are dramatically lower in parts of the world where dairy products generally aren't consumed, like rural China, where the fracture rate is just 1/5th that of the US. So much for the "milk does a body good" campaign. On the ethical front, even though hormones aren't used in the production of organic milk, in order to stimulate milk production dairy cows are forcibly impregnated. The calves are taken from their mothers within hours, which causes the mother cows to frantically search for them, bellowing in agony. Male calves are sold for veal. In several documented cases, their mothers have managed to escape and travel miles away overnight to locate their babies. Many ovo-lacto vegetarians don't know that, by supporting dairy products, they also support meat products. Not only are dairy cows' male calves fated for slaughter, but so are the dairy cows themselves. Dairy cows, weakened and exhausted from milk production, are killed and ground into hamburger years before they would reach the life expectancy of a free cow.
just remember if you quit milk, don't drink milkshakes! You will have a bad day
I feel old
