Dairy: Is It Good Or Is It Bad?
For years its been commonly thought that one of the best ways to stay healthy was to drink a lot of milk and in fifties it was extremely common to drink milk with dinner as well as use a pretty substantial amount of butter in the cooking. Even today people look to milk and dairy as a way to safe-guard against degenerative diseases like osteoporosis but this simply isn’t the case. Milk and dairy products in general are not the health food that people think they are and they’ve been shown to make a greater contribution to osteoporosis, kidney problems, certain forms of cancer, diabetes, and various other health concerns. Diary products are also the leading culprit when it comes to food allergies, especially in children, and the low-fat or “skim” versions of these products aren’t any better because of their higher source of concentrated protein. Dairy can also do quite a bit to mess up the small intestines, especially if exposed to it at a young age, and this can set a person up for a long list of problems later in life.
For a lot of people the trouble with dairy begins in infancy when a mother decided to use artificial methods to feed a child such as formulas or cows milk as opposed to breast-milk. A mothers milk is loaded with important antibodies that are essential or a baby to receive during it's first few days after childbirth. During the first six months of it’s life a baby’s small intestine is very permeable to allow the maximum absorption of the mothers milk and all the nutrients and antibodies in it. What this means is that babies that are bottle fed end up absorbing all of the pasteurized milk or milk formulas and have been proven to suffer more pneumonia, ear infections, respiratory infections, viral illnesses, and so forth. The risk of the flu and spinal meningitis is sixteen times greater than the risk for breast fed babies. It should also be noted that after about age two humans stop producing about 90% of the enzyme that is required to digest milk - and that to some degree, everyone is lactose intolerant.
Because the dairy industry is so huge in our country it makes sense that it’s promoted widely as being healthy and “good for you” where most dairy is calcium deficient when compared to the many other sources and there are plenty of safer sources as well. Part of the problem with conventional milk products is that they are all homogenized and pasteurized - meaning they’ve been heated to high temperature to kill potentially harmful bacteria. What happens when they do this is that the lipids in the milk are broken apart from their natural composition and become these tiny little globules - so small in fact that they can pass right through the walls of our organs and veins, directly into our blood stream which is extremely dangerous. These small globules are no longer able to be absorbed by the body which means they just linger in the blood stream like a virus and many times the body will actually think this is a virus and send out antibodies to take care of it which is how severe dairy allergies can develop. On top of that studies have been done that show that dairy consumed later in life can actually lead to a loss of calcium along with the intake of other animal products and excess sodium.
There are also a lot of other reasons not to consume dairy aside from the fact that our bodies really aren’t designed to make use of any of it. For one the process of making and obtaining dairy products is complete different from how it used to be. Aside from pasteurization and homogenization, which as listed above has dangerous side effects that would make any ice cream lover think twice before they have that next scoop, there are also a myriad of other problems that come along with the production of dairy. First our consumption of dairy products is much more widespread then it used to be. That means that there has been an increase in the demand for milk and milk-related products. Now cattle are expensive to purchase and expensive to feed and maintain so instead of buying more cows the dairy companies have learned to use alternative methods. These methods consist of using things like the Bovine Growth Hormone to force cows to produce more milk than their bodies naturally would. If that isn’t a problem enough when this growth hormone is used the cows become more prone to udder infections which translates into an increased amount of pus and blood ending up in the milk we drink. In addition cows aren’t treated the same way they used to be. Cows traditionally have a grass based diet but in the modern dairy industry they are fed grains which has the effect of not only fattening them up but also imbalances the the makeup of fatty acids in the milk as well as the levels of omega3’s. On top of this the cows are kept in such poor conditions (often never being let roam or even out of tiny corrals) that they are prone to disease and infection and instead of spending the money to give them better living conditions the dairy companies use antibiotics to combat potential infections and diseases and guess where those chemicals end up? Yep - in the milk.
So when it really comes down to it there are far better sources of calcium and protein then conventional dairy products particularly like dark leafy greens which are far better for you and don’t have the same negative side effects, dangerous reactions in your body, and hormones or antibiotics in them. Ultimately it’s a much better idea to look at natural sources of plants to get your calcium from and it may even be worth it to look into taking a supplement if you aren’t willing to eat that many vegetables.
If you insist on drinking milk then it’s best to look for a raw, organic dairy farmer that will give you a good look at how he takes care of his cows and doesn’t send his products through any chemical processes that can alter their composition. You also want to be sure that the cows are fed grass, allowed pasture to roam, and are generally well taken care of. If you can’t find a raw milk farmer at least try organic milk that hasn’t been injected with hormones and antibiotics. Whatever you decide to do make sure you understand the health implications of your decision.