Milk - Does It Really Do A Body Good?
By Charlie Skeen

I remember as a child growing up I was always told to drink milk and eat other dairy products, such as cheese, because it will build strong bones and make me healthy. That same message is still being heralded to kids today, as well as adults. In fact, there has been a commercial announcing that drinking and eating dairy products helps you lose weight. I assume the message is, that there is something miraculous in dairy that will just melt the pounds off in spite of people eating too many calories and not exercising. It seems some researchers wanted to find out if using dairy would indeed help you lose weight so they conducted some studies on children and adults. The results can be found below.

Harvard Study with Kids Eating Dairy
Researchers at Harvard closely observed almost 13,000 adolescents from 9 to 14 years old. Their observations revealed that those who drank more milk actually have a tendency to gain more weight, not lose it. The adolescents who had the highest milk consumption, more than three glasses a day, gained more weight than those who drank less, or had no milk at all. It was concluded that the high intake of milk, which includes skim and 1% fat, contribute to fat gain, because the calorie content is too high.

Purdue Study with Women Eating Dairy
In this year long study 155 women from the ages of 18 to 30 consumed various amounts of calcium rich dairy foods. All of the women took in the same amount of calories each day, and were allowed to eat as much, or as little dairy as they wanted as long as the calories remained the same. At the end of the study it was demonstrated that none of the women lost body fat or weight whether their intake of dairy was high or low. It’s rather interesting to note that this study was sponsored by the National Dairy Council, the same organization that sponsors the commercial that dairy contributes to weight loss.

26 Studies Reviewed at the University of British Columbia
In nine of these studies which involved the eating of dairy products, two of them revealed that people had gained weight. In the other seventeen studies involving the use of calcium supplements only one of the studies showed some weight loss.

Dairy Is No Magic Weight Loss Food
In light of these studies it is quite obvious eating dairy in any amount is not a miracle weight loss food as the National Dairy Council would have you believe. But in a country that is always fighting a battle with the bulge it certainly is an excellent tactic to increase the sale of dairy products. If an individual is trying to lose weight then the tried and proven methods of reducing calories and daily physical exercise combined with a healthy eating program is the best, and always will be the best way to go. I will get more into losing weight in a future article. Right now I just want you to realize that dairy is very bad for our health.

Dairy Does Not Do A Body Good
In my many years of studying nutrition and health I found out years ago that dairy is not good for me or you. In fact, I remember that when I gave up dairy products my health improved tremendously. And I have been helping people get off of dairy for many years with the same results I had, improved health. I hate to say it but people have been brainwashed for years into thinking that dairy is an excellent food and that if we don’t get enough our bones will dry up and blow away. It is very interesting to note that countries that have the highest dairy consumption have the worst bones and far more diseases such as cancer. Please note the two charts below. In the FIRST CHART you will see that there is a higher death rate for people ages 55-64 per 100,00 people who consume the highest amount of milk. In the SECOND CHART it reveals that the countries that consume the most dairy have the shortest life expectancy and highest incidences of cancer of the breast, ovarian, prostate, and colon.

To read more information about dairy and how bad it is for the body you can go to an excellent web site that is packed with information from all over the world about the correlation of dairy and disease. That web site is www.notmilk.com.

Dairy Is Not the Best Source of Calcium
Because so many people think dairy is the best source for calcium I provided a chart below listing just a few plant sources of calcium. I will provide a longer list of non-dairy sources of calcium later.

Substitutes for Dairy
If you want to give up dairy, especially milk, and are wondering what you can use in place of it I suggest that you use rice milk or almond milk. Please do not use soy milk. It has its own problems which I will relate in another article. If you are going to use any soy at all please use fermented soy products such as tempeh. Do not use soy beans, soy bean powders, and any soy products that have not been fermented. As for cheese, if you have to have something I would suggest real goats cheese, also known as feta cheese.

I know for many people giving up dairy is going to be a tough pill to swallow. But if you do your research and eliminate it for a while I am sure that you would agree like many other people have, that it would be one of the best decisions you ever made to improve your health.

DISCLAIMER: The information in this article is for educational purposes only, and is not intended to provide medical advice which should always be obtained from a qualified health practitioner, and has not been approved by the U.S. FDA.

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