milk & cancer....

[Toddy]

Bowsayer is a food scientist and worked for the major Scottish Milk producer for two years. If we get her started on all of the efforts that are made, and problems that have to be dealt with, to keep the products healthy and fit to drink we'd be here until next month and still ***All three of her children drink milk.***

I would like to see some European, peer reviewed research details, but would point out that the nations quoted are also those with very high standards of living and life expectancies, where illness is considered something that ought to have been done differently.

From the Neolithic onwards dairy consumption has been one of the bedrocks of a successful farming society. From the fertile crescent of the East to the Western seaboard of Ireland, cattle, goats, sheep, reindeer, oxen........all have been exploited for their ability to produce milk for human consumption.

Is it natural.......well, define natural I wouldn't be writing to you now if life were entirely *natural*.......it's certainly culturally familiar & nourishing.
I haven't drunk milk for over twenty years, I feel queasy if I do, but I do eat cheese, butter, cream with no ill effects.
I disapprove with the way that cattle are turned into short lived machines for economic gain, did you know that it's cheaper to buy milk than some varieties of bottles water? and I would urge anyone to do what they can to influence the humane treatment of beasts, but milk and dairy products are a staple food for many who thrive on them with no ill effects.

I think it's back to the everything in moderation, think seasonally for foods, aim for variety and if you can buy local produce so much the better.

Oh, and human milk is not creamy but it is sweet

Cheers,
Toddy

 

[bambodoggy]

I'm sure in Mearsy's World of Survival when he's with the evenk people he talks about the massive amount of milk (reindeer) that they drink and that hardly any of them are ever ill. So following the various proposed ideas below if I eat nothing but Reindeer milk, reindeer meat and some forest berries then I'll live a long and healthy life Ray said so so it must be true! What he didn't mention (tv editing is a wonderful thing) was all the other stuff they eat and the amount of exercise they get in those cold places.

I think Martyn's point about exercise is a very valid one.

Bam.

 

[Martyn]

Tadpole, I was asking for links to the actual studies, not a cut and paste of a paper written by someone who's choice of "quotes" I cant assess, who's agenda is unknown to me and who may have a reason for writing a paper with a particular bias. I need the actual studies to evaluate their quality.

I’m sure that you will say that milk only play a limited part in the above reports, and you might be right, but as with the other examples I posted, smoking etc, why wait for the “indisputable” proof that milk (and too much dairy produce) is harmful just because the evidence is currently being glossed over by governments, producers, interested parties.

Because "evidence" like this is annecdotal, it's based on questionnaires, diary repots and so on and there is an equal amount of conflicting opinion that suggests the opposite. It's wishy-washy science. Before you can start to say there is some truth in it, you need to have truckloads of the stuff that all aggree, to compensaste for the fact that the quality of the research is poor.

My mothers generation was told (and sometimes prescribed by doctors) laudanum was good to calm kids down, that milk stout was good for pregnant mothers, tiny amounts of brandy in formula milk would aid a babies sleep. Cigarettes were recommended to people to help reduce stress. Doctors appeared in adverts extolling the virtues of smoking. Now we have foetal alcohol syndrome, infant drug withdrawal syndrome.

Tadpole, to compare milk consumption with drug use or smoking isnt something that works mate. You are comparing apples with oranges. With all the studies you mention, you have one clear group of drug users and the rest oif us who dont. If the drug users develop side affects, it's relatively straightforward to evaluate the only loinking factor - the use of the drug, smoking or whatever. You simply cannot compare that to a situation where virtually the whole population of the planet has been consuming a food product for many thousands of years.

We keep comming back to soft tarmac and heatstroke.


Anything to excess is bad for you. If someone lives off a diest of cheese, pizzas, yoghurt and fresh milk, then I would expect them to get sick. If someone eats far too much cheese and gets sick, you cant blame the cheese before you have considered their gluttony of it as a factor first. If your argument is that too much milk or milk products is unhealthy, I would agree, but you cant simply write off a centuries old food product because a few of over-eaters have coincidentally got sick. Can you not see that it is practically impossible to isolate milk consumption as a cause for anything?

You know when school kids in this country stopped having milk in the morning, they tried to evaluate the impact on the health of the nation, but failed miserably, because they were just so many factors involved, like a changing society, changing social circumstances, improved diets, more wealth etc. It was impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions.

How on earth is a questionnaire of a few hundred people supposed to give us anything meaningful?

 

[Martyn]

I'm not going to reply to any other posts on this thread, I was asked my reason for not using milk and I gave it, I don't come to this forum to fight or my my opinions mocked.
time will either prove me right or not, I'm not willing to wait only to later regret it.

...in fairness what you did was make this statement...

Coffee black and strong (I don’t drink milk as it is incredible bad for you)

...if you are going to try and sell your lifestyle choices to other people by making such strongly negative statements about their choices, you should probably expect to be asked to justify your comments.

If you want to avoid the interrogation, then simply "I dont drink milk" works very well.

 

[Tengu]

Tadpole, you quote a Chinese scientist.

Chinese traditionaly have a great distaste for milk and dairy products.

 

[C_Claycomb]

I believe that lactose intolerance is far more wide spread in Asians too. Some sources quote it as 75%.

 

[bent-stick]

My sister stopped drinking milk for a long time when she was 5 and I was 7. I told her it was cow's wee

She got over it. Dry cornflakes get boring, there's noting to help the sugar stick to them.

 

[Moonraker]

I'm not going to reply to any other posts on this thread, I was asked my reason for not using milk and I gave it, I don't come to this forum to fight or my my opinions mocked.
time will either prove me right or not, I'm not willing to wait only to later regret it. Action now is better than reaction later (just look at the state of the planet)

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I don't see anyone mocking you, only questioning your rigid stance and evidence provided. Instead of simply cut/pasting bits from other online sources and only offering the briefest of reference details (which no one here is going to have access to the source material) please provide links to the data you quote from and if it is from a book a harvard type citation or similar which would make finding the actual material a lot easier.

And please, if you are going to use quotations then have the courtesy of acknowledging the original author;

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Dr. Carl Sagan 1934-1996 (American Astronomer, Writer and Scientist)

I agree with bilko and the reason I drink organic milk or from local farms, is the intensive methods used in the dairy industry today. To my mind it is about personal choice and open information in order for us to make informed decisions.