Food Myths : Can milk cause cancer? Healthy drink or white poison?
Dairy in general has become a controversial topic, we have been consuming dairy and especially milk for centuries.
But recently, we have had several allegations and research which suggest that milk is actually bad for you. According to abcnews.go.com LESS than 40% retain the ability to digest milk much rather enjoy its nutritious content, we call this lactose intolerance.
But this is what they didn’t tell you!
Let’s roll it back; during the early age, natural calamities could disturb agriculture, and animal hunting was not a guaranteed success; during that period, groups that consumed milk had a source of nutrition; by natural selection, these groups flourished, which in turn changed our genes to increase the probability of survival.
Milk contains fats, proteins, and the sugar lactose; during infancy, our small intestine produces the breakdown enzyme lactase to digest and absorb the nutrition in milk, but slightly after infancy, we start losing the enzyme causing lactose malabsorption and lactose intolerance.
Even if 68% of the population cannot digest milk, 2560000000 people can. But this distribution is not spread out evenly, in East Asia the number is as high as 90% but in north Europe it is as low as 5%.
But if we’ve been consuming milk for so long, why such chaos now?
Several research studies suggest that consuming milk can cause problems like brittle bones, cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and allergies.
Some older studies show that consuming milk can cause breast, colon, and prostate cancer, but meta-analyses show that these results are inconsistent.
The even better thing is that calcium is actually helpful in preventing colon cancer; however, that could just be calcium in general.
Studies suggest that consuming 150ml-250ml of milk daily is safe for all.
Link to all sources and studies can be found at the end.
Some studies even suggested that consuming dairy regularly can decrease blood pressure, but they lack significant evidence.
The case gets even more complicated when we talk about bones; the most consistent and regular study shows that consuming milk neither makes your bones stronger nor weaker. Kind of a mood buster right?
But most people worry about the chemicals added in the milk, including pesticides and hormonal compounds; however, these are in very low amounts, for comparison you would need to consume about 5000l of milk to receive the same amount of hormonal compounds as an oral pill and even if you did most of it would be destroyed by your digestive acids, exactly why so many medicines are coated in hard shells.
Some believe consuming milk can cause acne or allergies, and this belief is very real; up to 24% of milk consumers develop acne, and 1 in 18 kids can develop an allergy to milk; however, many are believed to fade away after teenage.
The calcium and other vitamins are a great source for overall growth, not that these cannot be found in another sources too, you do not need to drink milk to receive these nutrients.
To get environmental, about 3 percent of total greenhouse emissions are caused by the cattle industry, even more than all the emissions by planes. Surprising right?
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On top of that, the cattle industry is found to be quite cruel, to make up for demand cows are constantly impregnated, and the children are shortly separated from their mothers, their bodies are constantly tortured to produce milk, and once they cannot produce anymore they are slaughtered.
To find an alternative, in plant-based milk, soy milk is the only milk that competes with its nutritional value. In contrast, others need to be artificially enriched to reach similar levels of calcium, which include almond, oat, and rice milk.
Another option might be in the works called “Lab milk,” which contains a taste and nutrition similar to regular milk and even contains cases in which plant-based milk is not used for preparing cheese and other dairy products.
Lactose malabsorption is when our body cannot completely absorb the nutrition in milk or dairy; however, it does not cause symptoms like indigestion, bloating, diarrhea, etc., that are included in lactose intolerance. Hence, you can continue to enjoy dairy like cheese and ice cream, etc, without blowing up *in some cases.*
In the US, ethnic and racial groups are likely to have lactose intolerance.
Europe is the least affected with lactose intolerance (just 5%); however, in India 1/3 of the total population is lactose intolerant. To get more geographical, 27% of north India ( Delhi )are studied to be lactose malabsorbents whereas 66.6% of south India ( Trivandrum, Pondicherry )are malabsorbents ( however data is subjective and approximate)
Milk contains several valuable nutrients like calcium, potassium, phosphorous and vitamins like vitamin D, vitamin B1, B6 etc.
Use this simple rule: if consuming dairy does not cause any symptoms within an hour or two, you are safe to consume dairy.
Milk has nutritional value and in many places, a vital source of nutrition for those who lack other alternatives but it is also harmful and causes a lot of suffering; if you are looking for other options, the best choice would be to consume any plant-based milk that is locally available.
Milk like every other topic is deep and subjective, we as a society need to come up with a decision for the betterment of the society.
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Sources: https://sites.google.com/view/sources...
