Skim Milk has the same calorie load as Soda (& 10 other Reasons to not Get Milk).
Pass the Water: 11 Reasons to skip Milk.
The below excerpts are from Mark Bittman. Skip this, go straight to his great article at the NY Times.
1. Americans were encouraged not only by the lobbying group called the American Dairy Association but by parents, doctors and teachers to drink four 8-ounce glasses of milk, “nature’s perfect food,” every day. That’s two pounds! We don’t consume two pounds a day of anything else…
Photo: scribbletaylor
2. Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for dairy is…three cups daily — still 1½ pounds by weight — for every man, woman and child over age 9.
3. 50 million people are lactose intolerant, including 90 percent of all Asian-Americans and 75 percent of all African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews. The myplate.gov site helpfully suggests that those people drink lactose-free beverages.
4. Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine: “Sugar — in the form of lactose — contributes about 55 percent of skim milk’s calories, giving it ounce for ounce the same calorie load as soda.”
Let’s repeat that one: Skim Milk has the same calorie load as soda.
5. Nutrients…[are] far more easily digested as yogurt or cheese than as fluid milk.
6. …milk allergy — the second most common food allergy after peanuts, affecting an estimated 1.3 million children…can be life-threatening.
7. …Although treating heartburn is a business worth more than $10 billion a year, the solution may be as simple as laying off dairy. (Which, need I point out, is free.)
8. Dr. Barnard,
“It’s worth noting that milk and other dairy products are our biggest source of saturated fat, and there are very credible links between dairy consumption and both Type 1 diabetes and the most dangerous form of prostate cancer.”
9. ….9 million dairy cows, most of whom live tortured, miserable lives while making a significant contribution to greenhouse gases. …The bucolic cow and family farm barely exist:
“Given the Kafkaesque federal milk marketing order system, it’s impossible for anyone to make a living producing and selling milk,” says Anne Mendelson, author of “Milk.” “The exceptions are the very largest dairy farms, factory operations with anything from 10,000 to 30,000 cows, which can exploit the system…
…and the few small farmers who can opt out of it and sell directly to an assured market, and who can afford the luxury of treating the animals decently.”
10. Osteoporosis? You don’t need milk, or large amounts of calcium, for bone integrity. In fact, the rate of fractures is highest in milk-drinking countries, and it turns out that
…the keys to bone strength are lifelong exercise and vitamin D, which you can get from sunshine.
11. The federal government not only supports the milk industry by spending more money on dairy than any other item in the school lunch program, but by contributing free propaganda as well as subsidies amounting to well over $4 billion in the last 10 years.
Incorrect source, offensive, or found a typo? Or do you want to write for Elephant?
Yep. The milk of a mammal is meant for nobody but that mammal's offspring. There's really no getting around that fact once it strikes you, but it never does with most people… the dairy industry has done an amazing job propaganda-wise!
And seeds are meant to produce plants and we eat them too. Some human groups actually evolved tolerance to milk specially those descended from cattle farmers.
Okay, then those who wish to drink dairy can drink human milk. There are no ethical issues involved with that because humans can voluntarily give their milk. Separating calves from their mothers is a cruel practice just so we can have cheese fries.
Human milk is, after all, perfectly tailored for human (though infant) nutrition. Why drink cow's milk that is designed specifically to nourish calves? It seems we have also evolved to be able to digest petroleum and plastic. Does that mean we should be eating either?
Well , people like drinking milk just like some people like eating tofu or buying wedding rings with big bloody diamonds.
I dont think there are any humans that can digest plasitic, if you know the meaning of the word evolved then you know that what you said is nonsense.
It is not impossible to produce dairy ethically , you can have yur own cows and take good care of them….on the other hand nothing that is produced at an industrial level will ever be sustainable or ethical not even beans ..there is a reason for the existence of industrial ways of producing stuff , we are just too many and if you think that is going away you are dreaming and in denial…the fact that it creates destruction and suffering doesnt change anything…you can make it better by changing the law and regulation but you wont make it dissapear .
There are ethical issues involved with everything that is not handcrafted or produced by yourself, from the plastic and rare metals in your cell phone to the wooden floors in your home.
Many things in nature are meant to be used in some ways and for certain purposes but we use them differently . We were meant to be hunter gatherers but now we are not ….deal with it …or go live in a cave .
I'm not contesting the idea that we are hunter-gatherers, and I'd rather not live in a cave, thanks. I eat meat but I won't consume dairy.. I'm contesting the idea that the milk of any other animal is meant for human consumption. I don't believe it is. There is no other animal who drinks the milk of another species.
True, there are ethical issues involved in the production of most, if not all, of what we consume. It is impossible to create without destroying, That said, I think your attitude is a bit defeatist. Just because there are potential ethical issues embedded in the production of most, if not all of what we consume doesn't mean we shouldn't try to minimize harm. I acknowledge that dairy can be produced humanely, but the vast majority of dairy consumed is not. Dairy cows are artificially impregnated with a frequency way beyond what they'd naturally experience and calves and their mothers are separated within 24 hours of birth. I truly believe mammals experience pain with this separation – probably not as profoundly as a human mother and child would, but it's still significant.
Nutritionally, I don't believe cow's milk (or goat's milk or camel's milk) is any good for humans, but I guess I don't care if people consume it as long as nature's intended recipient (the calf) receives it first. Unfortunately this is very rarely the case.
I don't agree that we should skip milk. Being so concerned about calories isn't justified given calcium and other nutrients you get in milk. From soda, all you get is fructose. Lactose intolerance is something that I've been struggling with too but this started only when I moved to America. Back in my home country Nepal, I could drink quarter gallon milk in a day without any digestive problems. In America, even few drops in coffee upsets my digestive tracts. I imagine the root cause of this intolerance is hormones and chemicals used in industrialized and processed milk.
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Milk is one of the only foods that I don't seem to be allergic to or intolerant of, I can't have wheat, corn, legumes, really any grains, bananas etc. I have cut milk out of diet many times but I feel better when I have it as a source of nutrition. I don't eat meat but I consume milk products, which is just as bad ethically. I didn't ever really drink it as a child.
I do agree that there has been a lot of propaganda preaching that you need milk, that kids need to drink a lot of milk to grow, I was a tall girl at 5'8 and 130 by the time I was 11, vegetarian and only had maybe 3-4 servings of dairy a month, so being without it didn't stunt my growth.