The magnitude of this question is staggering and through my readings, I have also found it to be extremely boring, so I’ll try and make this speedy. The answers are “sort-a” and “yes”.
First and foremost, most diary cows are fed corn to cheaply fatten them up. So yes, there is corn in milk, and because of this the fat you drink in that milk is omega -6 fat, unless you get milk from grass fed cows. Stay tuned for a discussion on Omega-3 vs .Omega-6 fatty acids.
A lot of people don’t know this, but there is sugar in milk. Its call lactose, and you need a special enzyme to digest it, lactase. If you can drink milk now, it is because the genes which produce lactase are still turned on in your body. But for many people, especially Asians and our hunter gatherer ancestors, those genes turn off after childhood, and you quickly learned that no, milk is not healthy for you, unless you really really loved pooping and puking. It is only through a phenomenon Richard Dawkins refers to as “domestication”, that most of us can happily drink milk.
If you are wondering where our hunter gatherer ancestors managed to get all their calcium while being lactose intolerant, consider that at that same time, over 50% of the volume of their diets came from fruits and vegetables, many of which are rich in calcium including: kelp, collard greens, kale, turnip greens, almonds, parsley, dandelion greens, sunflower seeds, olives, carrots, celery, cashews, romain lettuce, artichokes and the list continues.
Anyway, back on point: Is milk healthy? I have a hard time saying “no”, I think because I’ve been inundated with body by milk adds my whole life. But I can’t find a good reason to say “yes”.
From a weight loss perspective, no. Milk isn’t going to do you much good. Milk is for babies to help them grow, and milk has a hormone in it IGF which promotes cell growth. This is a hormone IN the milk which isn’t removed, so when you get hormone free milk, realize the hormones they are referring to hormones given to most dairy cows bST. Also - when the dairy industry hires people like Brooke Shields to wear a milk mustache and talk about how they owe their bodies to a milk based diet, they are referring to the studies shown where increased calcium in diets is linked to weight loss (hint: if you want to lose weight by increasing the calcium in your diet, make your diet consist of 10x more veggies - there is an added bonus of veggies being good for you in about 10,000 other ways also).
Remember also, lactose is a simple sugar, easily converted into body fat. If you try and make milk lower in calories by taking the fat out of it, you end up with just sugar. I will talk about this in a later article in depth, but removing fat from milk removes the element which lets your body know you are full and satiated - the FAT (fat releases into the body at a slower rate than simple sugars)!
So now you might be thinking, its ok to drink milk, as long as I’m not trying to lose weight. The problem is that most the fat in milk is animal fat, most of which is saturated. Saturated fat (of which you NEED none) has a bad reputation, and has a history of being linked to heart disease (however, that point is contested in the Reuters article linked below). For the most part, a person’s diet should be limited to about 16 grams of saturated fat a day. If you have a 2 serving glass of whole milk (we already went through why it shouldn’t be fat free milk) you are already at 2/3 your daily allotment.
Is milk healthy? If you aren’t trying to lose weight AND you don’t any other animal fat, I guess milk isn’t bad for you. If the articles suggesting a small amount of saturated fat is good for you, and the only animal fat you eat is from milk, then maybe it is healthy. If you only ingest calcium from milk, and have a diet high in protein, then yes, milk is essential because you need the calcium to replenish what the protein leeched from your bones.
On a personal level, I don’t drink milk, I drink unsweetened soy and almond milk. Once in a while I’ll have a Green Tea Latte from Starbucks and because their soy is sweetened, I’ll ask them to add whole milk. I’m still alive and my weigh loss is still continuing (albeit at a snail’s pace).
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I am going to end here - there are quite a few books written on milk, and you could probably make a college major out of studying the stuff. This entry touched on a ton of other topics I will discuss in much depth in the coming months, but I think because I am so obsessed with Omega-3 right now, next week on Popular Excuses, we’ll cover Omega-3 vs. Omega-6 fatty acids.
Feel free to leave comments challenging my position or ask questions about what I’ve written. If I can’t answer your questions, I’m happy to look up any answers I can.
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Reading List
The Ancestor’s Tale, Richard Dawkins p31-33
The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods p117-118
Cliff Sheets, Lean bodies p44
Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution - p87-88
Food, Inc. P 232
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61341020100204
Additional Information on the Industry from NPR:
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=1972363&m=1972364
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