The debate continues - Health & Medicine - health aspects of milk - Brief Article

American Fitness, July-August, 2002

There are positive and negative opinions concerning milk. The USDA recommends consuming two to three servings of dairy products per day and the United States government requires milk in its lunch programs for public schools. The Web site, drsears.com, pronounces milk to be "one-stop shopping" for nutrition, containing nearly all the basic nutrients a growing child needs: fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals (with the exception of iron).

On the other hand, people also view milk as a source of migraines, bloating, gas, indigestion, asthma and prostate cancer. Frank Oski, M.D., former chairman of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins University and author of Don't Drink Your Milk, blames every second childhood health problem on hormone-ridden commercial milk. Sixty percent of ear infections in children, under age six, are caused by milk consumption and, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, milk is the primary cause of iron-deficiency anemia in infants. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the United State's leading authority on child-care, has spoken out against feeding "cow's glue" to children. What he is referring to is much of milk's protein is contained in casein--which is also a raw material for commercial glue. Undigested, casein sticks to the intestinal walls and blocks nutrient absorption.

Dr. Robert Cohen of the Dairy Education Board, a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing the milk lobby, contends that the 52 percent rise in asthma deaths among minority children in New York coincided with the surplus of dairy products distributed under the USDA's school meal programs. It has been reported that almost 90 percent of African Americans and the majority of Latinos, Asians and southern Europeans lack the genes necessary to digest lactose (the primary sugar in milk) that Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH) results in a tumor-promoting chemical IGH-I (implicated in an explosive increase of colon, smooth muscle and breast cancer) and antibiotics present in cow's milk greatly hasten human tolerance to most antibiotics.

So is milk good for you or isn't it? Do the research and decide for yourself. A number of books, journals and Web sites can help you.