“Got Milk?” ask famous athletes like Venus and Serena Williams, Tony Hawk, Marion Jones, Mark Mcgwire and Cal Ripken Jr. Milk, they claim, has “nine essential nutrients active bodies need.” Is milk their secret? Here in Sonoma County, a local cycling team is sponsored by a large dairy company. Their jersey features an image of a cute, happy cow on a bike with a quart of milk strapped to its back. Sound like a good way to get your calcium? Before you start putting milk in your waterbottle, let’s examine how milk can affect your health and performance.

The “9 essential nutrients” found in milk (calcium, protein, vitamins A, B-12, and D, potassium, phosphorus, niacin, and riboflavin) are important for health, but any nutritionist can tell you there are over a hundred vitamins and minerals critical for optimum nutrition (not to mention thousands of lesser known nutrients whose functions are not yet fully established). Just as intake of these nutrients is vital to health so to is avoiding anti-nutritive substances. Engineers know that garbage going into a system equals garbage coming out. The human body likewise processes junk we put in our bodies in the form of mucus and disease. In terms of nutrition, then, food that is good for us should not contain anything toxic that would have to be eliminated from the body. Would you eat poison ivy if it was found to be a good source of iron? Hopefully not. But what could be bad about a glass of sweet, creamy bovine mammary secretions?

To start, America’s dairy industry is highly polluted. Much of the US dairy supply is contaminated with toxic pesticides and antibiotics¹. A recent report by the Environmental Working Group exposed rocket fuel contamination in California milk². Most dairy farmers continue to use the genetically engineered recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) in production, which increases levels of insulin growth factor (IGF-1) in the milk. An increased level of IGF-1 is associated with many diseases³. Pesticides, antibiotics, and hormones are certainly hazardous to our health, but even organic milk contains intrinsic toxins and allergens that cause alarming health problems.

Many leading health experts blame milk consumption as a primary cause for the ill health and unnecessary deaths of many Americans. Regardless of the exogenous toxins introduced into the dairy supply, dairy naturally contains two components in particular that do not belong in the human organism: pus cells from another animal and casein, a highly allergenic protein. Milk is made as a dairy cow filters blood through her udder and uses dead white blood cells (pus cells) in the manufacture of her milk. Federal regulations set a limit to the amount of pus allowed in milk, but Hawaii is currently the only state whose milk meets this standard⁴. Dr. Michael Greger traces Crohn’s disease, a painful and deadly intestinal illness, to the possibility of paratuberculosis bacteria transmitted by these pus cells⁵.

Robert Cohen, author of Milk: The Deadly Poison, wrote an article on the unexpected death of renowned track and field athlete Florence Griffith Joyner for the Not Milk website⁶. Using evidence from Flo Jo’s autopsy records, Cohen indicts the allergic nature of dairy products that eventually led to the seizure and death of a famous milk mustache poster girl. The congested internal organs and respiratory system, the benadryl to relieve the congestion and the large hunk of cheese found in her stomach ten hours after her death point to a serious allergic reaction to casein. Infants can die from anaphylactic shock if they drink cow’s milk due to its high casein content. And if you’ve ever had a sticky mouth and throat after drinking milk, it should be easy to recognize that casein is also used to make glue. And the issue of milk as an important source of calcium gets even stickier.

Flo Jo surely was not immune to dairy’s stronghold in our culture’s concept of nutrition. We’ve all heard that you need the calcium in milk in order to build strong bones and prevent osteoporosis. According to the Why Milk? Campaign, “America finds itself in a calcium crisis today because consumers aren't drinking enough milk” ⁷. What the dairy promoters fail to tell us is that foods high in protein (like meat and dairy) actually cause calcium leaching from the bones. These foods’ acidifying effect in the body draws on calcium reserves to maintain a critical alkaline homeostasis. Contrary to what the dairy industry tells us, bone health depends on more than merely calcium intake from milk.

On the subject of osteoporosis, Dr. Robert M. Kradjian writes, “Consider these two contrasting groups. Eskimos have an exceptionally high protein intake estimated at 25 percent of total calories. They also have a high calcium intake at 2,500 mg/day. Their osteoporosis is among the worst in the world. The other instructive group is the Bantus of South Africa. They have a 12 percent protein diet, mostly plant protein, and only 200 to 350 mg/day of calcium, about half our women's intake. The women have virtually no osteoporosis despite bearing six or more children and nursing them for prolonged periods!”⁸

Olympic swimmer Amy Van Dyken says she performs a “world-class chug-a-lug” with milk to help her “get the one mineral every Olympian craves. Gold.”⁹ Those athletes really good at their sport might be able to make a few gold coins on dairy endorsements. But for the rest of us, milk is not doing anyone’s body any good. Fortunately, fruits and vegetables provide the 9 essential nutrients that milk athletes so proudly extol plus a whole lot more!

Notes
1-http://www.notmilk.com/p.html
2-http://www.ewg.org/reports/rocketmilk/summary.php
3-http://www.organicconsumers.org/rbgh/0724_monsanto_rbgh.cfm
4-http://www.notmilk.com/pusmilk.html
5-http://www.veganoutreach.org/health/gotmilk.html
6-http://www.notmilk.com/deb/flojoms.html
7-http://www.whymilk.com/
8-http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html
9-http://www.whymilk.com/bios/amy_van_dyken.html