Share this link via
Or copy link
From an early age, we are taught that milk is healthy for us, that we need it for healthy bones, and that it's natural to drink it. This article determines whether this is true and what is in milk. We will also look into the most common myths related to cows and dairy.
Cows are emotional, intelligent, and social beings. They make friends within the herd and like some cows more than others, just like humans. They become anxious and depressed when they are separated from their friends. They are also very picky in choosing a mating partner.
Cows create strong bonds with their babies and are very nurturing and caring.
Cows don't produce milk on their own, just because they are cows, as many people think. Cows are mammals, and like any other species, they have to get pregnant and give birth for their bodies to start producing milk - food for their baby.
Cows in nature produce about 2,5 gallons of milk per day, the amount their baby needs. They don't make a 'surplus'. Through years of genetic manipulation, cows today have up to 25 gallons of milk per day, which exhausts their bodies and damages their health.
It is said that milk is a complete and perfect food, which is true, but for the calf. Cows are big and heavy animals, up to 10 times more severe on average than humans. Their milk is of a different composition, adapted to the nutritional needs of calves and not humans. For example, it contains special lactoferrins and immunoglobulins (cow-specific immunizing molecules) that serve as human allergens.
Besides humans, there's no other animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning, and on top of that, drinks milk from another species.
Do we really need it? Let's think about it. If we needed breast milk and it was crucial for us, our mothers would produce it and we would breastfeed until our 30’s and 40’s. Now that's a funny thing to imagine. We have also never seen an adult cow drinking milk, and the idea is just as funny and unnatural. Even though we (usually) drink cows milk from a glass, it doesn't make it any less weird.
Milk and other dairy products are something that most of us grew up eating without questioning it or giving it too much thought. Let’s see what's in milk and what most people consume on a daily basis.
Cow's milk contains up to 59 hormones, including:
prolactin, steroid hormones such as prostaglandins, progesterone, all types of estrogen (estradiol, estriol, and estrone), corticoids and androgens, IGF growth factors, insulin growth factor, pituitary hormones, hypothalamus hormones, thyroid and parathyroid hormones, insulin growth factor (1 and 2), nerve growth factor, MDGI inhibitors (growth inhibitor derived from the mammary gland), PGE, PGF2, alpha, cAMP, cGMP, tanferin, etc. It’s quite a hormonal cocktail.
Cow's milk has up to 300% more hormones than human milk. It is a growth formula whose role is to turn a 100 pound calf into a 1000 pounds young adult in a few months.
Now you probably think, if we drink organic milk from cows that are grazing on pastures, it must be different. But even if no hormones are injected, every animal naturally has high levels of steroid hormones, especially those who are pregnant and are breastfeeding. Dairy industry takes milk from cows in these states, which means that levels of hormones are even higher.
Even though the dairy industry, one of the biggest and most influential in the world, is doing everything it can to persuade consumers how dairy is safe to consume, and even financing their own studies to prove it, independent studies show something different.
According to them, intake of these hormones through the consumption of dairy products disrupts our endocrine system and can cause various health issues.
The link between cancer and dietary hormones, especially estrogen, is a source of great concern among scientists. Natural estrogens are up to 100,000 times stronger than environmental sources, like estrogen-like compounds in pesticides.
The highest concern is cow's milk and dairy products that contain significant amounts of female sex hormones. They make up 60 to 80% of the estrogen we ingest through food. Consuming dairy would be something similar to hormonal therapy that we never agreed to.
IGF1- the growth hormone, and estrogens, along with the milk protein casein, stimulate the growth of cancer cells and increase the risk of breast, uterine, ovarian, and prostate cancer. Studies have shown that consuming one cup of milk a day increases the risk of breast and prostate cancer by as much as 50%.
Casein, the major protein in milk, is one of the most relevant cancer promoters ever discovered. Casein is converted to casomorphin in the body, a substance that creates addiction similar to cocaine, and its role is for the calf to return to his/her mother. Since cows are large animals, cow's milk contains 10 times more casomorphin than human milk. This explains why cheese is so addictive (it's a concentrated casomorphin) and why it is so difficult for many people to give up dairy products, especially cheese.
‘Drink your milk to have strong bones’,we have all grown up to these dairy commercials. But is it really true?
More and more studies show that more milk is not only unhealthy for our bones, but that the countries with the highest consumption of dairy products also have the highest rate of osteoporosis.
They create acidity in the body, and the body then draws calcium, which is alkaline, from our bones to neutralize it. High amounts of protein in milk also has consequences that we don’t want. It causes metabolic disorders that have detrimental effects on bone health.
So, the answer would be - not only we don’t have to drink it, but we shouldn’t if we want to be healthy. Then what should we consume instead?
Milk is promoted as a great source of calcium, but there are many plant-based foods that contain as much or far more of this essential nutrient.
Tofu, for example, has about the same calcium content as milk. Dried figs contain 35% more calcium, almonds provide twice as much calcium as cow's milk, and sesame seeds contain up to 8x more. So, we can get more than necessary amounts of calcium in our daily diet, but without the harmful effect.
An Okinawa study from 1940’s showed that people who's diet was approximately 98% whole food plant based, had on average up to 60% less bone fractures than people in western countries who were eating a ‘standard omnivore diet', and back then it didn't include processed foods as it does today.
We know about lactose and people's intolerance to it, but what about galactose? This is a component of lactose and a type of sugar.
Studies done on animals surprisingly showed that it promotes oxidative stress, inflammation, causes premature aging, and damage to the tissues at the cellular level.
Elevated markers of oxidative stress and inflammation have been observed in humans who consume large amounts of cow’s milk. Lactose intake specifically has been linked to ovarian cancer risk.
I guess food for babies (of other species) is definitely not a good idea for adults.
Dairy products can cause:
- Allergies, and skin problems such as eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis, rashes, and acne -Asthma, sinusitis, and bronchitis. Dairy can cause inflammation and excess production of mucus in the body, which can cause breathing issues that often become chronic throughout life.
- Digestive problems such as cramps, bloating, gas, inflammation of the gut wall, diarrhea, as well as leaky gut, IBS, and Crohn's Disease
- Arteriosclerosis
- Problems of the reproductive system such as painful menstruation, PMS, and the already mentioned breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer, as well as prostate cancer. Dairy products are also connected to early puberty, especially in girls.
- Milk proteins have been linked to the development of autoimmune diseases, such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis through molecular mimicry
Milk naturally contains saturated fats and dietary cholesterol, which in addition to clogging blood vessels, are a major cause of today's most prevalent chronic diseases, such as already mentioned heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and obesity.
When it comes to food, many people say how they avoid fruits and veggies because they are often sprayed with chemicals.
What many don't realize is that animal products contain chemicals in even greater amounts, because the herbicides and pesticides they eat through food and are exposed to, accumulate in their body during their lifetime, and you can't wash that off, like you can with plants.
Most cow's milk has measurable quantities of herbicides, pesticides, and dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels).
Milk also contains - pus, blood, feces, urine, and antibiotics. All this is allowed and present in dairy products sold in stores worldwide.
Due to inhumane practices, cows often suffer from mastitis, inflammation of the udder resulting in pus in the milk. The FDA allows 750 million pus cells in every quart of milk, while 400 million pus cells are allowed in Europe. That’s about a million pus cells per tablespoon of milk. There is no limit to the amount of pus allowed in Australia. Organic farmers can’t use antibiotics to control inflammation and diseases, so the situation could be even worse.
As already mentioned, there is an acceptable amount of feces and fecal bacteria in milk (one of them is E coli).
Each cow produces around 18 gallons of effluent a day, and about 7 quarts of that comes out during milking. So there is a big chance of contamination.
This means that something other than just milk is in your morning coffee or your bowl of cereal.
Every year, around 63 tons of antibiotics are being used worldwide for treatment and promotion of growth of animals used for food. Antibiotics are also added to their food.
It's no wonder that significant amounts are found in the milk of dairy animals. Studies have shown that up to 70% of antibiotics are released unaltered into the milk and can cause serious harm to human health, such as cancer and hypersensitivity reactions along with development of antibiotic resistance.
Antibiotic resistance is a term we hear more and more in the last few years. WHO recently reported that this silent and worrisome issue reached alarming levels in many parts of the world.
It can be manifested in many ways, from prolonged treatment of various infections, allergic reactions, and destruction of the gut microflora to more serious issues like carcinogenic impacts and mutagenic effects on female fertility.
All this is definitely another good reason to swap dairy products for plant based ones.
When cows are milked, due to inhumane practices, sometimes a large amount of blood comes out along with the milk. This type of milk is not for sale, so instead of changing their cruel practices, the industries add cacao powder to it and sell it as chocolate milk. Because why not make money out of every drop taken from these unfortunate mothers.
Now that we know what is hiding behind it, we would agree that it’s better to avoid it. Instead, we can make our own chocolate milk at home using plant milk and cacao powder. Coconut milk in this combination is especially tasty, creamy, and rich.
About 70% of the population has 'milk intolerance', which is a lot of people, and if it was any other food, it would have been removed from the market a long time ago. There is a reason why so many adults are lactose intolerant - our bodies are not designed to digest milk after infancy, especially not milk from other species.
The dairy lobby is one of the biggest in the world. Billions of dollars are used annually to promote it.
Something we probably don’t think about is that dairy products also contain stress hormones like cortisol, because dairy cows grieve for their stolen babies for weeks and months. Everything is energy, and their despair affects us, not only energetically, but also physically. Cortisol is proinflammatory and can cause a variety of health issues. Plant milks, yogurt, cream, cheese and the like are healthy, without hormones, saturated fats, cholesterol, etc., and they are very tasty.
Besides humans, there's no other animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning, and on top of that, drinks milk from another species. Do we need it? Let's think about it. If we needed breast milk and it was crucial for us, our mothers would produce it, and we would breastfeed until our 30's and 40's. Now, that's a funny thing to imagine. We have never seen an adult cow drinking milk; the idea is just as amusing and unnatural. Even though we (usually) drink cows milk from a glass, it doesn't make it any less weird.
It’s not about one single component of dairy that causes health issues, and could be eliminated, but rather a combination of substances. According to Dr. Campbell’s work, these factors include, “the increased activity of growth factors and compensatory cell replication, metabolic acidosis and its impact on key enzyme reactions, hormonal imbalances, and adverse effects on immune system components.”
In other words, cows milk cannot be altered to become truly safe for human consumption. “While many companies have attempted to remove the lactose and cut down on the inherent saturated fat found in dairy, they cannot eliminate the natural hormones found in all dairy, nor can they cease the growth-promoting characteristics of what, truly, is cow infant food.”
If you ask almost anyone, they will say how cheese is something they love and can’t live without. It tastes salty, spicey, it can melt, be chewy, creamy, and so much more. It unfortunately contains an array of unwanted substances, like concentrated casein that is carcinogenic, inflammatory, and addictive. It also contains many species of bacteria - some are harmless, but some are pathogenic and quite unpleasant.
It has concentrated levels of pus, saturated fats, and cholesterol that clog the arteries. We would agree, it’s not the healthiest to consume.
Absolutely. Today on the market there are more and more brands that offer excellent plant based milks, yogurt, ice cream, as well as cheese of various types and flavors. You can use them the same way you would use your favorite dairy products. You can cook with them, bake, fry, grill, whatever comes to mind.
Vegan cheese is (just as) delicious in sandwiches, with pasta, in lasagnas, melted on pizza, or just enjoyed on their own.
You can also make plant based dairy products yourself, and that way you can choose what ingredients you put in. It's cheaper than store bought, and the process is often easy and fast. You can find many recipes online.
With all this information in mind, knowing how dairy products affect us, and also being aware that we can still enjoy all the foods we love to eat without any sacrifice, I think it's easy to make the right choice, both for us, and the animals.