Don’t Drink Your Milk

by | Oct 1, 2013 | Articles, Don’t Drink Your Milk, Health Resources

Commercial milk: Linked to chronic disease, overweight, diabetes, cancer, weakened bones

Is drinking milk really safe? In a riveting article, “Worrying About Milk”, (Discover Magazine, August, 2000), Dr. T. Colin Campbell, PhD, a prestigious nutritional biochemist at Cornell University, reveals how drinking milk can keep you chronically ill. He grew up on a dairy farm and prided himself on drinking a gallon or more of milk every day. Earlier in his scientific career, he just to think that dairy products were an essential part of a healthy daily diet for good teeth and strong bones. But not anymore.

After years of scientific research, however, Dr. Campbell is now convinced that drinking commercial cow’s milk and eating milk products is responsible for many medical problems. The bottom line for Dr. Campbell: “It’s unnatural to drink milk.”

Summary of key points:

  • Lactose Intolerance. A majority of adults in Asia and Africa, along with many in southern Europe and Latin America, have trouble digesting lactose, the main sugar in milk. Only people of Northern European decent can predominantly tolerate lactose.
  • Decreased Lactase Production. Nature normally programs the young for weaning before they reach adulthood by turning down production in early childhood of lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose, which is needed to digest milk (from cows or humans). However, an apparent gene mutation inherited by people of northern European descent prevents the production of lactase from being turned down. Only these people may be able to adequately digest milk.
  • Milk From the Right Species. Human mother’s milk is best for human babies. Cow’s milk is best for cow babies (calves). What’s good for baby calves isn’t necessarily good for human babies or adults. Dr. Campbell asks: “Isn’t it strange that we’re the only species that suckles from another species?”
  • Unnatural Hormone Response. Dr. Campbell finds that cow’s milk unnaturally stimulates growth hormones in the human body that increases the risk of various diseases and overweight.
  • Milk: Not For Strong Bones. Cow’s milk does not do what has been claimed – building strong bones, since recent studies suggest that humans may need less calcium and better forms of calcium than milk to build strong bones. Other foods, including various vegetables and legumes, are a better source of calcium than cow’s milk.
  • Milk Protein and Liver Cancer. In 1965, Dr. Campbell worked as coordinator of a US Aid project in the Phillipines, where poverty stricken children were dying mysteriously from liver cancer believed to be linked to malnutrition. To his surprise, Campbell discovered that the incidence of liver cancer was especially high among some of the best nourished kids, whose diets were supplemented with powdered milk provided through a US-subsidized program. He was completely baffled until he read about a 1968 research study conducted in India and published in the Archives of Pathology (Arch Pathol 1968 Feb;85(2):133-7), which linked milk protein to liver cancer in lab rats. “That was a signal event for me,” Campbell says.
  • Milk Casein and Liver Cancer. During the next 30 years, Campbell conducted a series of experiments at Cornell University and Virginia Tech and found that rats given a brief initial exposure to aflatoxin, a carcinogen produced by mold growth, tended to develop liver cancer when fed casein, the main protein in milk. “We could turn on or turn off cancer growth,” he says, by increasing or decreasing the amount of casein.
  • 10% Milk Casein Promotes Tumors. Dr. Campbell initiated research of his own by feeding casein to rats in normal doses, with 15 to 20% of their diet (by weight) coming from casein. The typical American diet is roughly 17% protein, says Campbell, though the protein, of course, is not all casein. He found that the threshold amount of casein required for switching on tumor growth averaged around 10% of the diet.

Doctors Opposed to Milk

The Washington, DC-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (P.C.R.M.) is a non-profit advocacy organization, with over 100,000 members, that promotes preventive medicine, encourages higher standards for ethics and effectiveness in research, advocates broader access to medical services, and is opposed to milk consumption.

  • Milk: The Worst Calcium. “It would be hard to imagine a worse vehicle for delivering calcium to the human body,” says Neal Barnard, head of P.C.R.M.
  • USDA: Conflict of Interest. P.C.R.M. says that US officials have turned a blind eye to the very real potential health risks of milk. In December 1999, they filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services claiming the agencies unfairly promote industry special interests through official dietary guidelines. PCRM argues that the U.S.D.A. has an inherent conflict of interest: a dual mission to help dairy farmers as well as to promote good nutrition.
  • Promoting the Dairy Interests while Ruining America’s Health. U.S.D.A. officials claim that current dietary guidelines focus on dairy products as the major source of calcium because they are based on a realistic assessment of food choices most Americans make. “There’s nothing against vegetable sources of calcium,” says Eileen Kennedy, deputy undersecretary of research, education and economics at the U.S.D.A., “but we have to fashion healthful eating around current habits.” This thinking is circular. The reason many Americans follow a dairy-rich diet is that they trust the government and assume it is healthy.
  • Overcoming Lactose Intolerance For What? Dairy proponents insist that most people who think they are lactose intolerant can actually digest small amounts of milk by consuming milk slowly – in sips throughout the day, adding up to 1 -2 glasses of milk. Is the goal to promote the dairy interests and the consumption of milk – or to promote the best sources of calcium and other nutrients (which is clearly NOT milk).

Cancer and Milk Consumption

Many people are not aware of the link between milk consumption and risk of cancer:

  • Milk Drinking and Breast/Prostate Cancer. Epidemiological research suggests a correlation between milk consumption and at least two kinds of cancer prevalent in Europe and North America: breast and prostate.
  • No Milk, No Breast Cancer. In Asia, where many people drink no milk at all, breast cancer tends to be rare. In rural China, for example, among women aged 35 to 64, Campbell found that breast cancer deaths averaged 8.7 per 100,000, as opposed to 44 per 100,000 in the US, about a 5-fold difference.
  • Higher Milk Consumption, Higher Breast Cancer. A comparative study published in 1989 showed that in Europe, two areas with higher milk consumption (Scandinavia and the Netherlands) also had higher breast cancer rates.
  • Higher Milk Consumption, Higher Prostate Cancer. Worldwide, men are far more likely to die of prostate cancer in countries where dairy consumption is high than in countries where it is low. A study published in 1977 revealed that 10 men die of prostate cancer in Western Europe for every one who dies in Asia.
  • Two Large Studies Link Dairy to Prostate Cancer. Two large US studies (2000) have linked dairy consumption to prostate cancer. In the Physician’s Health Study, researchers tracked 20,885 male doctors over 10 years. Those who consumed at least 2½ servings of dairy food per day were 30% more likely to develop prostate cancer than doctors who consumed less than half a serving. (Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research April 3, 2000 in San Francisco, CA)
  • Dairy Increases Risk of Metastatic Prostate Cancer. A 1999 study of nearly 50,000 subjects (the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study) found that men who consumed a total of more than 2,000 milligrams of calcium per day raised their risk of metastatic prostate cancer more than 4-fold.
  • Push For High Dairy Intake is Worrisome. Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard professor and co-author of both of the above studies, believes that calcium itself, at high levels of consumption, promotes prostate cancer by depleting protective levels of vitamin D. Considering the push for high dairy intake in the U.S., he finds: “For prostate, the data are generally consistent and the high relative risk in the Health Professionals Study is quite worrisome.”
  • The More Calcium, The More Fractures. Disparities between calcium intake and bone health can be seen worldwide. The more calcium (dairy) people consumed, the more susceptible they were to hip fractures. People that consumed the highest levels of dairy foods (North American and northern European nations) take in two or three times more calcium, yet break 2-3 times more bones than people with the lowest calcium (dairy) intake (Asians and Africans).
  • Harvard Milk Study: Milk Linked to Higher Fractures. The 12-year Harvard Nurses’ Health Study involving 78,000 nurses found that nurses who drank the most milk (two or more glasses per day) had a slightly higher risk of arm fracture (5% increase) and significantly higher risk of hip fracture (45% increase).
  • Substances in Milk That Leach Calcium. Although some milk nutrients may promote bone growth, other substances in milk, such as abnormal proteins and toxic residues may actually leach calcium from bone.

Calcium Guidelines: Bogus or Not

Do people really need as much calcium as the U.S. dietary guidelines state? Currently, these recommended daily intakes are:

*Children 4-8: 800mg *Kids 9-18: 1,300mg *Adults: 1,000mg

Are these numbers based on sound science and apply to everyone? Most likely not. Much evidence argues against these recommended amounts.

  • More Milk, More Fractures. The Harvard Nurses’ Health Study (1997) reported that among 78,000 women followed for 12 years, those who got the most calcium from dairy products had approximately double the hip fracture rate, compared to women who got little or no calcium from dairy products. In other words, the more calcium in your diet, the higher your risk of breaking bones.
  • Young Girls: Dairy Not Linked to Increased Bone Density. Another study reports that among girls 12 to 18, calcium intake had no effect on bone density, although exercise did help build strong bones (Pediatrics, July 2000; 106: 40-44).
  • US Calcium Guidelines: Too High? The U.S. guidelines are high, even when measured against those of most other western countries. For example, the British recommended calcium intake for kids ranges from 350 mg to 1,000 mg (versus 800 mg to 1,300 mg in the US) and for adults is 700 mg (versus 1,000 mg in the US). The Institute of Medicine (in U.S.) recently suggested that teenagers and adults over age 50 increase their calcium intake to 1,300 and 1,200 mg, respectively, per day. The World Health Organization recommends 500 mg for children and 800 mg for adults. This is a substantial difference.
  • High Calcium: High Fracture Rate. In the US, one in two women and one in eight men over age 50 breaks a bone because of osteoporosis, despite the fact that calcium consumption is among the highest in the world.
  • Bone Studies: Misleading. Walter Willett, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and chairman of the Nutrition Department, finds: “There is no evidence that we have a calcium emergency as the dairy industry would have us believe. We have one of the highest calcium intakes in the world.” He also points out: “The studies of bone mineral density can be highly misleading. What is clear is that an increase in calcium intake causes a onetime small increase in density (about 2%). However, this does not continue to accrue and disappears when stopping the extra calcium.” From research, sustaining this slight increase does not protect against fractures.
  • 5 Times Less Fracture with 50% Less Dairy. In general, the Chinese eat less than half the calcium (as dairy) recommended by the USDA and seem healthy. Among women over 50, the hip fracture rate appeared to be one fifth as high as in Western nations.

Critics of the governments push for increased milk consumption cite several examples of unfair practices, which may be adversely affecting the health of its citizens:

  • Unfair Push for Dairy by Government. Dairy producers get price supports and government purchase of surplus production. They plow some of their profits into promotional dariy groups that fund “so-called” research studies, educate health professionals about milk, and provide free materials to schools suggesting that milk is vital to good nutrition, despite the lack of adequate scientific data.
  • Racial Discrimination: Milk Pushed in Schools. In the National School Lunch Program, milk is the only beverage offered to children. A section of the Physicians Committee lawsuit alleges that milk’s special status in the school lunch program amounts to racial discrimination. Studies suggest that 70 % of African Americans, 50% of Hispanics and 90% of Asians have trouble digesting lactose, while only 15% of Caucasians do. And we allow so many of our children to continue to drink milk which will cause them gastrointestinal distress symptoms? The program that serves free meals to needy children won’t reimburse schools for non-dairy alternatives to milk unless the substitution is requested by a doctor.

Would Consumers Replace Milk With Sodas?

USDA deputy undersecretary, Eileen Kennedy, believes that consumer preferences – not dairy promoters – shape federal nutrition policies. Americans get about 75% of their calcium from dairy products. Kennedy suggests that even if the government removed dairy as a recommended food group, people would not eat other calcium-rich foods such as vegetables and legumes. She thinks that they would continue current trends, including no exercising and consuming more foods such as sodas and junk food that actually leach calcium from bones, so they’d be worse off than with less milk. In fact, consumption of milk has been slowly dropping off for decades, unfortunately being replaced with an even worse choice, soda drinks.

Comment: This article clearly shows the many dangers and diseases associated with consuming commercial milk and milk products. Commercial milk has many other problems including health-demoting practices such as the use of synthetic growth hormones, pasteurization, homogenization, GMO-feeds, and antibiotic use – all contributing to the general unhealthy condition of commercial cows. Numerous studies show that commercial milk frequently contains pathogenic organisms (still present after pasteurization). Unhealthy cows means unhealthy milk.

However, not all milk is bad. Some companies do produce good quality milk from healthy cows. They allow their cows to range-feed on grass (not commercial soy/grain (GMO)-based feeds) and do not use synthetic hormones or antibiotics.

Homemade Kefir

Although we do not recommend drinking commercial milk or the consumption of most commercial dairy products, we highly recommend the use of fermented dairy products, such as homemade kefir, using only high quality milk. This turns pasteurized milk (overnight) into a delicious, hearty, pudding-like texture, teaming with billions of live beneficial bacteria, something most Americans are drastically short on. This centuries old process of fermenting milk is associated with many long-lived cultures throughout the world. (See our Kefir Starter Kit.)

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