Friday, September 07, 2007

Not Milk

In last week's article I talked about cutting back on meat. I also mentioned that some people have researched milk and have decided to stop consuming dairy products. (Thanks everyone for your comments!)

I decided to do some research myself. Today I bring you not an article, but a web page with many articles. It's all about the harmful effects of milk. There are countless articles there. I didn't read many of them, and realistically I'm not going to.

I did read an article or two on prostate cancer and how it's growth and spread is linked to a hormone in milk.

I started to read a long one on Crohn's disease. That's some scary stuff! That article is not for the faint of heart. It's a nasty chronic disease that's apparently on the rise, and is very closely linked with a type of bacteria found in milk that does not get removed during pasteurization. In one study they found that bacteria in 100% of Crohn's patients, and 0% of non-Crohn's patients. Mind you, I didn't read the article all the way through. I think that's just correlational . It doesn't mean that that type of bacteria causes Crohn's.

Of course, I suffer the same problem here as I do in many other areas. I'm not a chemist, nor am I a biologist. So they could be lying to me; pulling the wool over my eyes and I'd have no idea.

So do I believe these people, or do I believe mom/the teacher/the dairy council? My decision will not be based not on the facts, but how much I like milk verses how much effort it would take to lead a non-dairy consuming life. Chances are, that's how your decision will be made too. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.

I'll start with the easy things. For example, I won't take milk in my coffee. Instead I'll take cream.

I think milk will win. I can't imagine a life without cereal.

2 comments:

C.F.B said...

Very interesting....I could not do without milk either. They actually say that a lot of people with Crohn's disease are lactose intolerant as well. I did not read the whole article as it was pretty intense but what I read was really interesting. I guess there is still a lot of unknown questions with a lot of diseases out there. What I found interesting was that they are linking crohn's with some sort of TB bacteria? Interesting...

Anonymous said...

erm... not taking milk in your coffee by switching it for cream is actually worse... the hormones in the milk are fat soluble and therefore by taking cream you are having instead of 2% or so milk fat you are having like 18% milk fat so you are actually getting more of the bad stuff... so... yeah... if you are cutting out milk... going to cream isn't your best option.