I think Cecil’s point about cats was that what’s bad for cats isn’t necessarily bad for people. It’s a completely different question.
Power tool are also bad for cats, for that matter.
I don’t think Cecil meant this quite the way it sounded, but rather as a short way of suggesting that the logic is flawed. Since “Milk is bad for people because it’s bad for cats” is somewhat ain to saying “We shouldn’t eat chocolate because it’s bad for dogs” or “We shouldn’t drink grape soda because you should see what happens when I feed it to my bird.”
well, i think he should have put it another way, then. It did sound quite patronising, as if no-one cared what’s good for cats.
Cow’s milk is too heavy for cats, it contains too much lactose, it gives cats the squirts.
There is milk available, especially adapted for cats, with a reduced lactose level. I had to feed it to my kittens, once, when they were starving (but that’s a whole other story).
I’ve heard an osteopath once explain how milk can be bad for people who miss that particular enzyme, the one that’s used to break down milk in our system, as it is lactose that in the muscles that causes cramp, and to counteract that, the muscle will actually subtract calcium from the bone.
In other words, milk can actually cause bones to get weaker, IF you’re lactose intolerant.
Can anybody verify this?
It also might have something to do with the fact that your Lucky Charms are 85% sugar and have been soaking in the milk for a few minutes. Most animals have problems with significant amounts of sugar.
Also, like humans, animals vary in what they can digest. Food introlerances can vary between animal to animal. Unless the substance is toxic to the animal (chocolate for example) there is a chance that the animal can have the enzymes to digest it. Me & my cat have both been tested for our food intolerance. As far as humans go, Dairy is the most common food intolerance (all dairy, not just lactose - at least according to the test I’ve taken). Testing animals for their food intolerance is a fairly experimental procedure, and I don’t have significant enough numbers to give a ‘most common’ intolerance for any animal. Both me & my cat tested dairy intolerant. My cat does get ‘the squirts’ when he has a lot of milk. My girlfriend’s cat, who didn’t test dairy, can drink all the milk she wants - though not chocolate (though that’s another, disgusting story).
Anyways, long story short, animals, like people, very in their digestive capabilities. Depending on their genetic history, and thus digestive enzyme makeup, they will vary in what they can digest. IMHO, when you add the possibility of rBGH or more likely IGF-1 getting into the milk, plus antibiotics, everyone should probably stay away from non-organic milk. After all, are you willing to take that risk that in 30 years, the government comes out and says, oh yeah, that was really bad for you. Same goes for all GM food. I’d like to not take that chance. It is simply a fact that we have no idea what any of these newer foods will do to your body after consuming them for 30 years. Personally, I think evolution is a better guide for what foods we should eat, not corporate america.
Anyone who’s interested in what they should or shouldn’t be eating might find this website worth a look: www.westonaprice.org
Basically, they agree with akrako1 that we should eat what evolution designed us to eat, rather than what somebody has to sell.
A poster asked a couple of questions back if you had any evidence to claim that these chemicals get through the milk. Do you have any sources that prove it comes through.
If you do have sources that prove that it comes through the milk. If so do you have and sources that can prove the effects on humans. Are you saying that a hormone designed for cows effects humans?
Thats a beautiful line. I could just as easily say that unofficial, unproved scientific documents say organic foods cause cancer.
We could claim young ladies are developing faster due to some boogey man type chemical or we could look for actual scientific studies.
No thats stupid.
The fact is that we have no proof that GM foods are dangerous. The majority of us right now are eating GM foods.
For fun why don’t you tell me some of the health hazards from eating GM foods.
Then maybe you could list out the steps taken to genitically modify foods. and point out the steps in which their becomes a chance of danger to people.
Maybe provide a couple of legitimate sources that name the dangers of GM foods.
Not to be mean but I don’t trust your shirly-wellness site.
I stopped drinking milk 10 years ago, and the infections in my respiratory and sinus systems disappeared. I was sick 2-3 months out of the years for 10 years previous while a milk drinker. don’t know if it’s good for you or not, but i tell you this, if you’re getting sick a lot i suggest switching to soy (although rice milk is much better for my 2 cents).
And the problem with this is?
Re:Miltonyz
Is most of the world irrationally paranoid? I am not going to be able to prove to you that GM foods are bad for you. If it could be conclusively proven, there wouldn’t be a debate. There’s a reason why rBGH and GM foods are banned in many parts of the world.
Let me make one quick point to all you folks that treat the FDA as god. First of all - modern medicine doesn’t know as much as it arrogantly thinks it does. You HAVE to agree: modern (allopathic) medicine can’t determine the cause of cancer or immune disfunction diseases. How can we say conclusively that somethine doesn’t cause cancer?? Especially when it is diet oriented, something that is very difficult to do long term studies on - as there are so many other daily stimuli/variables.
Since we don’t know the cause of cancer, wouldn’t you want to do whatever you could to stay away from potential causes? Let’s see, here were talking about rBGH. Growth hormones cause cells to divide and grow. Cancer is cells dividing and growing out of control. And you want to consume artificial, bioengineered hormones - and it will be safe. Good luck.
As far as source, man, just try a quick google search. It took me about .5 second sto find:
Very well referenced:
http://www.argonet.co.uk/users/john.rose/rbgh.html
“As reported in a January 23, 1998 article in Science, men with high blood-levels of the naturally occurring hormone, insulin-like growth factor 1(IGF-1), are over four times more likely to develop fullblown prostate cancer than are men with lower levels. The report emphasized that high IGF-1 bloodlevels are the strongest known risk factor for prostate cancer, even exceeding that for a family history of the disease, and that reducing IGF-1 levels is likely to prevent this cancer. It was further noted that IGF-1 markedly stimulates the division and proliferation of normal and cancerous prostate cells and that it blocks the programmed self-destruction of cancer cells, thus enhancing the growth and invasiveness of latent prostate cancer. These findings are highly relevant to any efforts to prevent prostate cancer, whose rates have escalated by 180 per cent since 1950, and which is now the commonest cancer in non-smoking men, with an estimated 185,000 new cases and 39,000 deaths in 1990.”
http://www.thegreenguide.com/doc.mhtml?i=36&s=milk
"Increased levels of Insulin-Like Growth Factor (IGF-1) are found in the milk of rbgh-treated cows. Bovine and human IGF-1 are molecularly identical, and increased levels of human IGF-1 have been linked to breast and colon cancers in people. A study in the Journal of Endocrinology (August, 1995) revealed that these increased levels of IGF-1 in the cows’ milk are not broken down through pasteurization or digestion, as supporters of rbgh contend, but are instead absorbed into the human bloodstream. "
The hormone insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-1) is known to have a broad range of effects including promotion of cell survival, stimulation of metabolism, and proliferation of differentiating cells. The receptor to this hormone is also a receptor tyrosine kinase whose activation by IGF-I binding leads to association with and activation of PI3-kinase, the guanine nucleotide exchange factor Grb2/SOS and mitogen activated protein kinases (MAPKs)
And then there is this article
Titled: IGF-1 and Prostate Cancer: An Insubstantial Link
http://hgh.vespro.com/pressrel.html
Located in the article
Look if you cannot prove to me something is harmful to me then why are you claiming it is. The fact is that GM foods have not been proven harmful.
I have to go more later
I am sorry the first paragraph is also qouted. It is not of my design.
Then answer me, why are GM foods and rBGH banned in many parts of the world?
I don’t particularly want to get into the rBGH good/bad debate, but I will say something about this question. In some parts of the world (infrequently in the US), they attempt to operate by the Precautionary Principle. This means that if questions arise about the safety of a chemical/etc, that it should not be allowed until it is PROVEN SAFE. This is in particular used if there is a safe alternative (for example, not giving your cows rBGH in the first place).
I recommend THIS article on the Precautionary Principle. Here’s a quote regarding rBGH and GM:
Eeep. I just reread what I wrote, and it’s not the best phrasing I’ve ever used. It gets the point across, but you may rightfully say, how can anything be PROVEN safe. So let me rephrase that definition with a quote from the Wingspread Statement :
"When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof. "
Cecil stated that milk has alot of calcium and it would be hard for a kid to eat alot of vegtables to get the calcium. But milk has ver little magnesium and so we only absorb 25% of the calcium from milk then if we eat brocolli in which ew would absorb all.
That’s true Kriss. This is one of the many fallacies that the FDA pushes - obviously because of funding from the dairy lobby. In fact, there are very few vitamins and minerals that we get from sources other than fruits & vegetables. Instead of pushing the correct foods, the FDA & food industry would rather ‘enrich’ every product out there - but usually without the required companion substances (like magnesium is required to process calcium). The product can still claim on the package that it contains your full RDA of a certain mineral. Unfortunately, the label doesn’t tell you that you will be unable to absorb most of it. You need approx. a 2 to 1 ratio of calcium to magnesium to actually absorb and process the calcium into bone.
Anyone remember, “Don’t fool with Mother Nature!”?
You go, akrako1!
OK< fellow Americans; try breastfeeding for the first 2 years of childrens lives and then it will not matter about possible lactose intolerance! And all or almost all the cal/mag they need is right in the breast milk as long as the mother eats and supplements properly!
Trust the FDA? HA! Seems to me, they are only looking to make money (what a shocker in this country, eh?). Does anyone realize that the FDA wants to regulate herbs? That way the can get a slice of the pie and you can get a presciption when you want to buy cinnamon or cloves?!? Oh, yeah; they are just looking out for us, the generally moronic public.
And as for cats, give them goat’s milk; I have raised many an abandoned kitten on it.
Hey, Cecil? You rock! Keep tweaking my brain, please!
???
The FDA are looking to make more money?? It’s a government bureaucracy, fer cryin’ out loud, if they could make any money we wouldn’t let them be in government 
Oh, and the “herbs” that some people want the FDA to crack down upon? It’s NOT cinnamon and cloves, it’s herbal remedies. Y’know, stuff like ephedra or Kava, that people will take for their maladies instead of regular meds because “it’s natural”, disregarding that something natural can hurt you if you use it wrong.
Oh, and as for milk, take it easy, folks. Cecil is refuting the idea that there is something intrinsecally horrible for humans in cow’s milk. Some people can handle it well, some can’t, some should not at all – as happens to a lot of foods. Myself, no problems so far with drinking milk. But I did cut down on overall consumption and on the fat content of dairy, and that has done me well. It’s not really essential to life, if a well balanced diet is available to children and mothers.
Lily, thank you for answering akrako 1’s question. Still, his/her “challenging” tone seemed to imply that somehow the other countries had “proven” something we did not know or are getting wrong. Rather, it’s just a different operating principle. And AFAIK, rather than meats/milk it’s the question of transgenic crops’ seeds or pollen crossing into the stocks of, or outright displacing, the unmodified species, that is the biggest concern. (Not that virtually every major food crop in the planet has not been man-handled through selective-strain husbandry to the point it bears little resemblance to its “natural” version.)
However, there is something about phrases like “When an activity raises threats of harm… even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically” that standing by itself seems to be begging the question. It makes me worried about at what point is the “burden of proof” satisfied?
As to the hormonal effects from BGH, I had always read that the possible effects were not mainly from milk, but from the various treated meats, and then not even primarily beef but chicken. Heck, I’ve even seen precocious merarche be attributed to tetraphtalates leaching from PETP plastic bottles.
My impression was that the hormone used in beef industry was an estrogen-derivative or an estrogen-androgen combination, not a growth hormone (although there have been studies about administering growth hormones to cattle).
Also, I would like to see data that IGF goes into milk and humans, and that it goes into the human circulatory system, staying around enough to cause something. IGF-1 and Growth hormone are peptide-based hormones, easily degraded, and have to be injected to the bloodstream systematically to keep the increased concentration. They wouldn’t survive a travel through the digestive system, unlike steroid hormones like estrogen.
There’s no point in using logic with people who believe in homeopathic “medicine”.