Why the hate for dairy?

If milk’s good enough for Wally and the Beav, then by golly, it’s good enough for me.

These people never put a bowl of milk in front of an animal, huh? Lots of animals will happily drink random milk, they just don’t have the chance.

When I was a kid on the farm, we hand-milked one cow for our own use. Our cats would eagerly sit next to the cow during milking, waiting for a ‘squirt’ of ultra-fresh milk.

No other species talks. Perhaps humans should all stop talking because that’s Nature’s way?

Hmm. Now that I think about it, that might be an improvement if about 85% of humanity just. shut. up.

I used to live in Wisconsin.
It’s many Dairies produce much milk.
And the country air is so fresh.
Visit Wisconsin, and smell their Dairy Air.

Cats love milk, and I give my cats milk occasionally for a treat. But, most cats are lactose intolerant, so it shouldn’t be given too often.

No argument there. But the implication is that drinking milk is “unnatural” and shunned by the beasts of the world. That obviously isn’t the case.

I drink a lot of milk, though only the fat-free / lactose-free stuff. If milk were bad for human consumption, I would be in bad shape. But I’m fine. :slight_smile:

OK - makes sense. Thanks.

(Not sure what the exact quote was - if it distinguished between behavior “in the wild” and in domestication.)

Tho I’ve thought a lot of what Pollan writes makes sense, I acknowledge his words are not necessarily the end-all.

The anti-milk folks are also pro-butter and demonize margarine. It’s all the same crowd. When you question their belief, they always, without fail, resort to a conspiracy theory:

Them: “Butter is healthier than margarine! Margarine is molecule away from being plastic!”

Me: “Then why does the American Heart Association recommend margarine over butter?”

Them: “Because they want you to be sick! There’s no profit to be made in healthy people!”

:roll_eyes:

I think what Pollan means is that it required a mutation in human beings to be able to consume significant quantities of dairy as adults. So it’s not “natural” in that it’s not what normally happens in mammals or even most humans. But if you do have that mutation it is a food option for you. It’s just not necessary as Western European/North American culture has implied for quite some time. Not one adult human requires milk, even if some have no problem digesting it.

A major emphasis among anti-dairy advocates is that dairy food cause inflammation. Research to date does not establish this, in spite of claims like those of Amy Myers, the “functional medicine” doc whose article is linked to above (immediate red flags on her website include recommendations for fixing one’s “leaky gut”, offering “Candida support” and having an online store to hawk supplements. She’s also antivaccine, because of course she is).

A good rule of thumb is to be highly wary of any promotions of Superfoods or clickbaity warnings about The One Food (or Multiple Foods) You Must Avoid.

Eating a balanced diet with calorie limitation is so bo-oring, so we must hunt for extreme solutions.

I remember a Top Ten list from David Letterman’s show back in the 80s where the topic was “Top Ten News Headlines For The Year 2000” and one of the items was “Oat Bran: The Silent Killer”. :sweat_smile:

Bringing up Michael Pollan again, in the Omnivore’s Dilemma he writes that perhaps the best course of action is to follow the advice of his grandmother. “Eat a little bit of everything. Mostly plants.” We do always seem to be looking for magical solutions.

I think you probably meant something about like

Eating a balanced diet with calorie limitation is so bo-oring difficult to monetize, so we must hunt for extreme solutions.


Unrelated to the above …
Here’s another tell: If the website mentions “inflammation”, simply click away; it’s pushing the woo du jour.

Is inflammation a real biological thing? You bet. So are toxins. But the kind of inflammation or toxins mentioned in breathless prose on pushy websites are not the real kind; they’re the woo kind.

Which are the reechest kind. For them and their BS product $ale$.

Thank you for that!

I think this is related. It is a fact that, for some people, gluten is bad. It is a fact that, for some people, dairy is bad. But people as a whole aren’t very good with fine nuance, and so a lot of people take that and convert it to “Gluten and dairy must therefore be bad for everyone”.

I also suspect that there is an element of “sometimes my gut is upset, and I hear a lot about how people are allergic to gluten (or dairy), so that must be it!”

The same way gluten is tied to glycemic starch; dairy is tied to LDL cholesterol. Sugar and fat. People like to believe they can just eliminate/reduce certain elements of those classes of food and still eat the other things with sugar and fat with impunity.

Just wait until you find out what they doo with their Cheese.
:face_with_peeking_eye: