The Reality Of Milk
HEALTHY DRINK OR WHITE POISON?
Over the last decade, milk has become a bit controversial. Some people say it’s necessary and nutritious food, vital for healthy bones, but others say it can cause cancer and lead to an early death. So, who’s right? And why are we drinking it anyway?
Milk is the basis of every mammal’s diet after birth when our digestive systems are immature and small. But it’s a lot of effort for mothers to produce. Eventually, humans stop drinking mother’s milk and transition to the diet of their parents. This is how it’s been for thousands of years. Until about eleven thousand years ago, when our ancestors settled down in the first agricultural communities. Soon, they domesticated the first dairy animals: goats, sheep, and cattle. They found that dairy animals can eat useless and abundant stuff and turn it into nutritious and tasty food. This made a huge difference in terms of survival, especially in hard times. So groups that had milk available had an evolutionary advantage. And through natural selection, changing the genes of communities who consumed a lot of it.
This adaptation has to do with a specialized enzyme: lactase. Babies have a lot of it in their system, so they can break down the milk sugar lactose and digest milk easily. But the older we grow, the fewer lactase enzymes our body produces. Worldwide, about 65% of the population does not have the enzyme after infancy, which means they are not able to digest more than about 150 milliliters each day. This lactose intolerance is not spread evenly around the world, though.
In some East Asian communities, for example, it’s up to 90%. In Northern Europe and North America, the rates are the lowest overall.
Milk production has a significant impact on the global climate. About 33 percent of cropland is used to feed grazing animals including dairy cattle Even though the carbon footprint of dairy products has declined since 1990, Dairy production is still responsible for 3 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, even more than all airplanes combined.
Milk is a huge industry and sadly, most of its production in factory farms causes incredible suffering. Cows are impregnated over and over, separated from their young shortly after birth, and slaughtered once their tortured bodies are not productive anymore. We can’t ignore that much of the milk we consume stems from an industry that is torture and contributes to climate change. We should remember that when we are small and are unable to digest proper food only then do we need milk and that too is mother’s milk. The cow’s milk or goat’s milk or for that matter any animal’s milk is only for that animal.
IS MILK VEGETARIAN?
There is one thing that we do with full concentration and that is shaving. Even while driving, we are on phone. But, while shaving we know that even if we lose focus for half a second we’ll set cut and feel a sharp pain! If I am out of town and have to get shaved, I tell the barber to use the trimmer. I am afraid of being under the blade. That half a second injury causes us pain, makes us feel fear, imagine a cow getting slaughtered for 10 minutes. How much fear and pain she must feel. And she is not slaughtered with a super effective safety razor. She is usually slaughtered with an old, blunt, rusty blade. If that doesn’t finish her then they use a hammer to end her life.
If you are a human think about the pain. Not just yours but of animals too. There is one more thing. People eat chickens, people eat pigs, goats too. They are ‘‘produced’’ to be sold, killed, and eaten. Of course, vegetarians don’t eat any of this as they don’t want to cause suffering. They think that they are not the ones who are “producing” cows for eating beef. They don’t know that cows are “produced” for milk. And after these harmless animals are tortured to the fullest extent by inhumanely taking tons of milk they are then sent to slaughterhouses. Moreover, the male calves are immediately sent to the butchers because they are not capable to give milk.
So next time you are shaving, think about this. If because of our milk demands cows end up in slaughterhouses, then how can we call milk vegetarian?
So-called health benefits of milk:
Milk and milk products are not even healthy for us now. In prehistoric times it was good, but now when we sit 8 hours in chairs and have a sedentary lifestyle we can’t even digest it properly. Erectile dysfunction, ovarian cancer, obesity, indigestion is all so common now.
“MILK MAKES STRONGER BONES” is just a commercial slogan. We are misinformed. We have grown up drinking milk, so why are the bones still so weak? Whenever we slip in our bathroom why do we break our bones? They should have become stronger by now, after so much milk consumption over the years. Problems like gastrointestinal irritation and anemia are also seen in people consuming animal milk. So please understand the truth behind dairy. For your health and the sake of the animals.
Easily Available Alternatives For ANIMAL MILK.
Soy Milk. Easily the most accessible alternative to dairy milk in the market, Soy Milk is both rich in protein and contains less fat than dairy milk. Other alternatives like Almond Milk, Cashew Milk, Rice Milk, Coconut Milk, Hazelnut Milk, Oat Milk, Walnut Milk are also easily available in the market.
CONCLUSION
We have had our fair share of milk when we were newly born. Humans are not meant to drink animal milk and it is quite evident with the number of problems it causes to the human body. It is an industry that only gives suffering and is doing no good either to the environment or to the living.
It becomes our responsibility to stop consuming it and shift to healthier, environment friendly, and cruelty-free alternatives as mentioned above. Changes can be made if we decide so. Help spread awareness and bring a true change.
