The Safety of Milk

Recently, Wal-Mart announced that its private label milk would be produced exclusively from cows that had been given no artificial growth hormones. This has sparked nationwide concern about how milk is produced and how its production affects human health.

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Milk is advertised as having nutrients that are essential to your health. The milk lobby has been instrumental in this view. On average, American adults are known to consume only half of the three daily servings of milk recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Milk is advertised as a top dietary source of calcium, a mineral that’s critical for helping prevent osteoporosis and keeping teeth strong. The problem is that the body is incapable of absorbing the calcium unless a sufficient amount of Vitamin D is present. Unfortunately, most containers in the market allow for the ready destruction of the added Vitamin D and other vitamins that are required to be able to absorb the calcium.

Milk is advertised as a great way to get calcium, but the truth is that other dairy products, soy proteins, beans, vegetables and some nuts are often far more valuable for good health, calcium and vitamin supplementation. To make matters worse, copious amounts of sugar are added to milk to improve the taste to the detriment of the blood-sugar impaired citizens of the U.S.

Raw milk became known as a convenient vehicle for the transmission of communicable disease because of improper handling. In older days, cows were not heavy milk producers with enormous udders. Cows were rarely ill because they were not pushed to the edge and afflicted with mastitis. Mastitis often requires the almost continuous use of penicillin to keep milk flowing freely. Special feed is used to maximize milk production. Milk production is about money over quality.

When people began moving to cities, milk became a food of commerce. Cows were bred for large udders to produce more milk. As milk production entered commerce, it became subject to contamination by bacteria. Mass production resulted in more milk, but quality faltered. Before the days of refrigeration, cows were kept in large sheds in the city, even underground, becoming distressed and diseased. Pasteurization was necessary to prevent the spread of disease.

Nowadays, milk is a remedy for nothing. Negative effects of modern products can be easily equated with the lack of food enzymes from pasteurization. Even pasteurized fruit juices provide little benefit to the average consumer. The rise of Diabetes and other immune disorders can be easily ascribed to the lack of food enzymes in processed products and the exhaustion of enzymes within the human body.

Modern nutrition condemns the old nutrition of raw fats and cholesterol. Men and women that live in Europe still use old fashioned butter and raw milk while commonly living into their nineties. Perhaps there is a difference between the dairy products of primitive Europeans and modern milk drinkers. Chemists have identified 35 separate enzymes in raw milk. Unhappily, more than 90 percent of naturally occurring enzymes in milk are destroyed by pasteurization.

Unpasteurized milk and butter were used for thousands of years with the history of giving good health to humanity. From the time of Hippocrates, physicians used raw milk and raw butter as therapeutic agents to treat disease. With the advent of pasteurization, dairy products lost the charm of rich health. In the days before milk and butter lost enzymes from the heat of pasteurization, millions of people that lived on dairy products did not develop atherosclerosis or clogged arteries. As a result of intensive pasteurized milk use, modern science has lost the ability to handle killer clogged arteries. The problem is in the lack of enzymes, notably lipase, also valued in olive oil and other unprocessed natural oils.

Milk proponents contend that women need milk most. Yet, many substantial documented studies have shown that drinking milk does not protect women against the development of fractures from osteoporosis. A 45% increase in hip fractures among women who drank at least two glasses of milk per day compared to those who rarely drank milk. The preponderance of evidence suggests that modern milk is not good for women either.

Meat, fish and dairy are concentrated protein sources. What is usually kept quiet is that high amounts of animal protein deplete calcium from the body through the kidneys leaving calcium deficient bones and increased kidney stones. The high acid in protein foods forces the body to remove calcium from bones to balance the pH in the blood. Acid forming foods also creates excess uric acid, which builds up in muscles and organs causing pain and congestion.

The nutritional hype is that milk is a great source of calcium. The high amount of phosphorus in cow’s milk interferes with calcium absorption. Aging in the human body prevents the absorption of calcium. The older you are the less calcium you are going to get from milk. Cow’s milk is also high in lactose, a carbohydrate sugar that bothers many sensitive individuals.

Cow’s milk can cause allergies from antibody reaction to milk proteins. The most common reaction is chronic diarrhea in which the stools frequently contain mucus and blood. Half of iron deficiency in infants and women is likely caused by gastro-intestinal bleeding from cow’s milk. Milk allergies are also responsible for the cause of eczema, psoriasis and dermatitis. Credible evidence also links milk to many severe disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, heart attacks, multiple sclerosis and osteoporosis.

The politics of milk have been costly to the American population. How costly milk is to you depends on what you decide to do with available knowledge and health. Who do you believe? The decision is yours.