How We Got Duped Into Believing Milk Is Necessary for Healthy Bone
17th July 2015
AH: We’ve had school milk programs and milk in schools since the beginning of the century. During World War II, we needed to boost milk production in order to make processed dairy products to send to soldiers overseas. But farmers weren’t producing enough to meet this demand because they weren’t getting paid enough. So the government decided, “Great, we’ll create demand for milk by giving milk to our kids, and that way we’ll have a demand for the fluid milk and we can make the processed products we need for soldiers.”
So war was part of it. Convenience is also part of it. As people moved to the city and women started working away from home, cow’s milk became seen as a convenient way to give babies nutrition if women weren’t able to be home breastfeeding all the time. And as the dairy industry grows, farmers have an incentive to try to boost demand with government subsidies of dairy.
I can’t say which one of these many different forces did it, but it’s just a combination that has led to this health halo around milk. I think what’s more troubling is how deeply ingrained the idea has become and how inaccurate many of our assumptions about milk are.
July 17th, 2015 at 09:05
And today’s scare books on poisonous and incorrect diets are more accurate than yesteryear’s scare books why again?
July 17th, 2015 at 17:29
If you track your vitamins you’ll find that you have to have milk, eggs, fish or meat, or you’ll have a difficult time getting your B12. Nothing wrong with spreading the intake around and including milk. Fern eaters are always and forever deficient in B12, so they supplement, but it’s not the same thing.
July 18th, 2015 at 16:26
That’s why God gave us vitamin pills.