Sunday, July 13, 2008

Milk is more dangerous than cola

Is milk an essential food? Not at all. Humans evolved for hundred of thousands of years before herding cattle and flourished despite drinking no milk. Even today, large parts of Africa and China drink no milk. It is not essential.

Indeed, milk is a health hazard. For millions of lactose – intolerance people, milk is a poison. Many city – folks know about lactose intolerance, but hundred of millions of villagers do not, and kill or maim their children by dosing them with milk.

Humans are the only species to drink milk after being weaned from the breast. Drinking alien milk produces allergies and host of other health problems. The guru of baby and child care, Dr Benjamin Spock, opposed giving cow’s milk to children, saying it can cause anemia, allergies, diabetes and (in the long term) heart attack. Another US author Dr. Fuhrman says in his book Disease – Proof Your Child, that cow’s milk is linked to anal fissures, childhood – onset (Type 1) diabetes, chronic constipation, Crohn’s disease, ear infections, heart attacks, multiple sclerosis, and prostate cancer. Cow milk is labeled as having 3.5% fat, but this fat contributes 50% of the calories in milk. The percentage of fat is as high as 7% in buffalo milk, which is prized in India for its butter content but is the unhealthiest of all. In addition to that World’s 1530 million cattle contribute more to global warming than its 900 million cars and commercial vehicles. The methane of livestock flatulence and manure is 23 times more warming than the carbon dioxide.

Like all animal product milk is concentrator of pollutants (pesticides, heavy metals). According to a survey pesticide levels 3080 higher in milk as compared to cola products. So will any Indian NGO take up the challenge of denouncing milk as a health hazard? Bashing MNCs is much easier than bashing a sacred cow. Politicians and NGOs will point to the big employment yielded by milk production. For the sake of transparency, they should specify how many people they’re prepared to see killed per thousand jobs created. Pretending that milk is essential and harmless is false.


Edited from Times of India Editorials….

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