MILK, it does a body, well, not so good!

It's true, I don't drink milk. Not for any particular beliefs or protests or whatever. My lack of desire for the stuff is based on something a little more, mundane and in fact my aversion to the stuff goes way back some thirty years or more. But it would seem that there in fact is a good reason for me not to drink the stuff after all. New studies have recently been published that give us some very disturbing views of the this once heralded product that has long been claimed to be liquid health in a bottle.

I know there are a lot of skeptics out there that want proof, and just saying something is true doesn't make it so, even on the internet. So I have some interesting research to present to you that begins to make those old homilies about always drink your milk for strong bones and teeth, a little less believable. Last month the prestigious British Medical Journal published an article that compiled the data from a TWENTY year study that involved over a hundred and five THOUSAND people that answered specific questions regarding their eating habits, with one of the factors looked at and recorded was consumption of milk. Now here is where it gets a little odd, when the researchers looked at both groups, men and women, they discovered that the mortality rate for both was considerably higher (very nearly DOUBLE) for regular milk drinkers than it was for non or occasional milk drinkers. And the worst part, that regular milk drinkers had dramatically higher incidences of bone and hip fractures over those that didn't drink milk.

Yikes, that isn't what the American Dairy Associations have been telling us now for decades.

No, it isn't. However in America large corporations have the ability to declare whatever they want to be true and we as citizens are required to believe their lies. That's the way the system works, private businesses and humans of wealth give money to elected servants of the people to use their influence to make changes in the Code of Laws of the "Government of the People" that will allow them as the wealthy or businesses to do what they desire.  If you think this is baloney, then you just need to take a look at the IRS tax codes to verify how true this statement is. The little booklet you get with your return has very little to do with the six thousand pages of loopholes added to the Tax Code by privateers. I think that is but one very prominent and visible example of how our government works, there are of course many many more. (Just for fun, search Keating Five to see how much Senators cost)

I digress, sorry. Anyway this isn't the first study like this done. In 1994 the American Journal of Epidemiology published a similar study reporting that women that drank milk on a regular basis had greater incidences of bone and hip fractures than women that rarely or never drank milk. And in 1997 the The American Journal of Public Health published the Harvard Nurses study detailing the 12 year long study of over seventy-seven thousand women showing a definitive increase in bone fractures as consumption of milk increased. And then there is Dr. Amy Lanou, director of nutrition for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine who has come right out and stated that WORLDWIDE the countries that have the highest consumption of milk have the highest rates of osteoporosis. And the connection between calcium consumption in the form of milk and overall bone health is almost nonexistent.

But wait a minute, the TV has ads on it ALL THE TIME telling us to drink milk because it's good for our bone health and prevents those things. How can they not be true? Indeed.

All is not bad though, the BMJ study did in fact indicate that when milk is fermented, as in the making of yogurt, kefir or other ferments, the exact opposite was true. Then the milk had beneficial effects. But milk itself, not so good.

• Studies show that drinking 3 glasses or more of milk per day show increases in both prostate and ovarian cancers. 2009 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition
• World wide countries that have higher milk consumption have greater rates of multiple sclerosis. 1992 issue of Neuroepidemeology 
• Milk increases atherosclorisis and arthritis in humans 1992 Journal of Nutrition
• Milk is the food item with the highest rate of allergies in the world. 2007 Allergy Clinical Immunology

Here in America what we are told, is not always the truth. We as consumers need to verify for our own protection any products that we buy. Snake oil, is everywhere.

Milk, it does a body good!