You have all been told one side of the story by our parents, by society, and by the Dairy Industry. Now please peruse this site: http://www.notmilk.com and see the other side of the story.
Which is true? Is practically the entire world living a lie due to the enormous power and influence of the dairy industry?
Milk is pretty good for you. I can’t help but wonder about all the anti-milk posts showing up on this board in the last week or so; has someone started a concerted anti milk campaign; like the “eggs will kill you” thing from the 1980’s ? Does this have anything to do with Jim Jeffords ?
Bad for us?? My father-in-law is 71. He drinks whole milk regularly. He’s in better shape than I am. His mother lived to be 97 - she also drank milk regularly. So if she didn’t drink milk, she’d still be alive today?!?
Yeah, whatever…
wow, I didn’t even bother to check the other posts. I came here from a hot deals forum actually, where a member posted a hot deal for milk (at a gas station if you can believe that) and an argument ensued naturally debating the pros and cons of milk. Naturally, I came here seeking advise and wisdom from the Straight Dope veterns who seem more knowledgeable than most.
I’m not getting on your case or anything here. It’s just that there’s been quite a good cluster of milk questions lately, and it makes me wonder.
FairyChatMom: I’m glad to hear your folks are doing fine. Note I never said it was indeed bad for you, I was merely asking the question.
I’m not certain that the anti-milk people say that milk will lead to death, but they do uphold that milk contributes a big role to sinus problems, cold/chest congestion problems, etc. I know people firsthand who used to be quite sickly, then swore of milk and haven’t gotten a cold/flu in years. I came here looking for the straight dope.
my feeling on milk is this…
first, what is it? it is a substance produced by female mammals to be used as nourishment until they are old enough to take actual food. the substance is excreted from the mammary glands of the mother.
humans of an advanced age drinking milk:
i don’t know if it is BAD for you, nor do i know if it is good for you… I do know that millions of years of evolution have taught us that this recent adult drinking milk phenomenon is definitely not necessary, and obviously we will be fine without it. adults and older children drinking non-human milk (primarily bovine) is just too weird for me to have an opinion on. i’ll step back and let others better schooled in bovine lactation and human nourishment take a crack at it.
me? i stay away from all milk, both human and all other mammals. should i ever attempt to drink this food, it would be of the human variety, definitely not another species.
nice angle, zuma…i used to drink milk without pause, then I came across a Calvin & Hobbes strip:
Calvin: I don’t get milk, who ever looked at a cow and said, “hey, I’ll drink whatever comes out of these things!”
It cracked me up and it got me thinking too, quite funny.
You could say that about more or less anything human beings consume except water. There’s no ONE food that’s necessary to our survival, and the fact that we drink another animal’s milk as opposed to our own isn’t any weirder than the fact that we eat another animal’s flesh as opposed to our own.
If you look at it in cartoon terms, what food ISN’T weird? Who the hell though up the idea of eating giant marine bugs? Who could possibly look at a brussel sprout and want to eat that?
Eh. Food is where you find it. It’s a renewable resource. Easier to cultivate the cow for its milk than kill it and eat its meat, then have to find another cow.
No milk? Then no cheese, no yoghurt, no ice cream, no butter. No custard. No pizza, no cheeseburgers, no lasagna, no veal saltimboca, no quesadillas. No saganaki (shudder).
And don’t tell me to substitute tofu. I like tofu. I cook with it. But it’s not a substitute for dairy products for my key recipes.
Nothing wrong with consuming dairy products, unless you’re lactose intolerant (many are) or have a specific allergy to one of its constituents. Worried about fats? Drink skim.
Does it thicken phlegm? NO. Is there an irrational anti-milk sentiment building in this country? Yes.
My advice to my patients: Moderation, moderation. (No, not you, bibliophage.
QtM, MD
Thank you all for your comments. I still do eat dairy products and drink milk, and maybe now I can do so with less guilt, eh?
I have heard that milk isn’t the best thing for you too but does have a lot of good things in it. I personally love cheese but seem to be a little healthier if I don’t eat too much of it. As for straigh milk - I don’t have enough of it for it to matter.
Oooh. Proof via Argument by Testimonial. Debate over.
Oh yeah, well I knew a kid who drank tons of milk and died at 14.
Actually, I find the idea of milk being bad in general to be silly. The proof is in many years of controlled studies though, not because you personally knew a couple of people who lived to 100 and drank milk. There’s plenty of examples of 100 year olds who smoked a cigar and drank whisky every day too.
Haj
This seems to go in cycles. I remember that during the 70’s a lot of experts were saying that American adults drank far too much milk. I remember one of them observing “The United States is the only country in the world in which the adults haven’t been weaned.”.
Milk is potentially bad for some people who are susceptible to milk protein allergies or cannot break down lactose efficiently.
For the rest of the non-milk sensitive population milk, like a any number of high calorie foods, can be bad if over-indulged in as modern fast food “upsizing” pleas continuously entreat us to do.
There is a logistic requirement to consume milk.
The dairy industry produces food, clothing. lubricants, glue, drugs, and vaccines the list goes on and on.
Add to this the value of farmland, the distribution network the value of investments tied up in one way or another, the fact that many farms are mixed and other products from them would not be as economically viable, likely costing more to the consumer.
Milk was seen as being necessary to make up for deficient diets in much of the industrial world even though it was proven later on to be a source of many infections. Despite the latter our ancestors still thought it was well worth the risk, such were the benefits conferred upon milk drinkers.
I don’t condemn vegetarians but they do seem to have this mission to make the world feel guilty.
Vegetarians do not seem to have any sense of scale, or at least the most fervent ones, the meat and livestock industry is a vitally important resource and if there are ways we can supplement our diet without products derived from theat industry there are still all the other non-edible products to account for.
There are also the effects upon the environment, we have been livestock farming for so long that many species directly benefit from the environment that we have created, many farms in the UK have not felt the plough on their land since Saxon times and even beyond to the Romans. To give up livestock farming would mean to change exclusively to crop farming.
The loss of such habitats would undoubtedly endanger many species.
Crop farming, which is the vegetarian utopia, is not free of environmental problems either, what with the natural production of organic run-off from the land into water courses.
Milk is an essential part of the livestock industry since it is so intimately involved in calf production, if you stop drinking milk altogether then like a row of dominoes other parts of the farming industry become uneconomic and the cost will always end up passed on to Joe Public one way or another.
Nope. Dairy cows are a special breed, they are raised specifically for milk production, and have virtually nothing to do with general cattle production.
Well, without dairy cattle, McDonald’s would have trouble filling it’s orders for beef. Their meat is a mix of over-the-hill dairy cows and Steer beef.
I don’t have a copy of it with me at work, but the latest Consumer Reports magazine looked at the question, evaluating the claims on both sides.
The answer leans more towards the “milk is good for you, but the milk industry overstates the benefits, and the anti-milk people’s claims have not been proven” verdict.
Several of the anti-milk studies can be considered flawed because the sampling was too small and also that the results have not been duplicated (which is not a mark against it, per se, only that other studies haven’t posted their results yet.)
Personally, it sounds like a scare to me. That trumps your Testimonial Support; I said it, therefore, it must be true. 
good lead, I’ll go see if I can find anything on Consumer Reports.