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| Truth | 35% | 48 votes | Total: 137 votes | |
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Add to FavoritesMilk is perfect food for calves, but not perfect for humans - adults or children.
As a Holistic Nutritionist, I know three good reasons why we do not need milk: 1.It is highly overrated as a source of calcium; 2. It is a product that barely resembles the original food; and 3: It may actually be harmful to health.
We are told we need milk because it is a good source of calcium, but because humans do not digest milk well, we don't absorb the calcium from the milk. Research at Cornell University does not support milk drinking in the prevention of osteoporosis. Meanwhile, other good, digestible sources of calcium such as greens, nuts and seeds are virtually ignored by government food guides. I surmise this is because of the powerful dairy producers lobby that has succeeded in keeping dairy as a food group on its own.
Milk is further down graded by human processing. Cows are often given drugs to keep them healthy, but any woman who had breastfed their baby knows that drugs will be in their milk - the same goes for cows. Pasteurization, which is required to kill harmful bacteria, also destroys some of the nutritional value in milk. Homogenization breaks down the fat globules which makes it more difficult for human bodies to digest the milk fat.
My assertion that milk might be harmful will no doubt raise many hackles. But this is not just my opinion. Numerous population studies have linked dairy consumption with juvenile diabetes, insulin resistance, heart disease, Crohns, premature puberty and MS (see New England Journal of Medicine).
The bottom lins is that milk is NOT the perfect food - for adults OR for that matter our children.
Learn more about this author, Ruth Thompson.
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Fiction
Are you ready for controversy? Do you want to be challenged? Do you want to think outside the norm? Do you want to think and learn for yourself? Keep reading this article!
Milk is almost the perfect food. However, I am not referring to the mineral and vitamin depleted pasteurized substance that we purchase in the grocery store. I am talking about real milk. The unaltered milk that comes from a cow, just as nature intended. I am advocating the use of what is called raw milk that can be purchased from a local farmer who raises his cows naturally and humanely.
There are many powerful forces at work to denounce raw milk as unsafe. The FDA, the pharmaceutical industry and Big Dairy will tell you milk must be pasteurized to be safe. If you examine the evidence you will find that, yes, some milk needs to be pasteurized to be safe. Some milk does not. To understand the difference we will need to go to the initial reason pasteurization was advocated.
In the 1800's New York City grew rapidly. In order for the milk industry to provide enough milk the dairies had to be located closer to the city. Dairies began to located adjacent to whiskey and grain distilleries so they could obtain cheap distillery slop as feed for the cows.
In order to maximize space, cows were permanently tethered in their stalls. They never left their stall. They were fed and milked each day in the stall. The cows were fed an unnatural diet and raised without grass, their natural food. The waste from the cows piled up in exactly the same spot the cows were milked. They milk was gathered in open containers by workers whose sanitation practices were non-existent.
Milk was obtained from unhealthy cows by unhealthy workers in unhealthy conditions. Milk became contaminated and children began to die from the milk in New York City. The solution was to pasteurize or heat the milk to eliminate the toxins and it worked. Deaths did indeed decrease after pasteurization began.
The problem with pasteurization is that while killing unhealthy bacteria that may be present in the milk it also kills the minerals and vitamins that make milk such a wonderful food. The dairy industry today must add synthetic vitamins to give milk value as a food.
It is true that cows, for the most part, are no longer tethered in stalls. But they are still mostly grain fed in a confinement type atmosphere and are not grass fed as they were created to do. Pasteurization is still needed in our present dairy conditions.
Cows that are holistically, naturally raised and fed grass produce healthy, nutritious milk. Milk that is so good that Mark McAffe, of Organic Pastures Dairy in California, has actually injected toxins in his milk and the natural immunological functions of raw milk killed the toxins. Dr. J.E. Crewe, one of the founders of the Mayo Clinic, treated many diseases with a raw milk diet. His patients only food intake was grass fed, rich, raw milk. The results were so successful and the methods so simple that Dr. Crewe's conception of disease and its alleviation was radically changed. He lamented that the method was so simple that other doctors had no interest in the treatment.
It is easy to understand that doctors would have no interest in a treatment where they received no kickback from drug companies or income from invasive surgical procedures.
Do you want to learn more? Do you want to decide for yourself? Research the issue and make your own decision. A good place to start would be to read "The Untold Story of Milk' by Ron Schmid. It could change your life. It could prolong your life.
Learn more about this author, Jim Tompkins.
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