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Is dairy good or bad?

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  • TonyB0588
    TonyB0588 Posts: 9,520 Member
    Christine_72 wrote: »
    DomoChan16 wrote: »
    Dairy is to turn a baby cow into a fully grown cow that weighs over 1,000 pounds. It's baby formula for another animal, it WILL make you fat and put you at risk of other diseases. The dairy industry is full of animal abuse as well.

    I don't drink the same amount of milk a day that a 1,000lb cow does... So I have no fear of turning into a heifer :wink:

    It isn't the 1,000lb cow that drinks the milk. The calf (baby cow) does, when it is still small.

    Just to be clear, although I understand the argument, I actually use milk in small quantities. Just not as my main nutrient source as a baby does.
  • Gianfranco_R
    Gianfranco_R Posts: 1,297 Member
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    DomoChan16 wrote: »
    Dairy is to turn a baby cow into a fully grown cow that weighs over 1,000 pounds. It's baby formula for another animal, it WILL make you fat and put you at risk of other diseases. The dairy industry is full of animal abuse as well.

    Sounds like fearmongering straight off a vegan propaganda site. I've drank milk and eaten yogurt, cheese, butter. whey, etc. throughout my entire life and I'm over 50 years old. I'm neither fat nor diseased. And if you want to see animal abuse, go watch how an animal predator takes down its prey.

    Yet, that's a good age to start to check regularly your prostate (chances to get prostate cancer increase with a high dairy intake).
  • Gamliela
    Gamliela Posts: 2,468 Member
    edited October 2016
    Gianfranco_R wrote: »
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    DomoChan16 wrote: »
    Dairy is to turn a baby cow into a fully grown cow that weighs over 1,000 pounds. It's baby formula for another animal, it WILL make you fat and put you at risk of other diseases. The dairy industry is full of animal abuse as well.

    Sounds like fearmongering straight off a vegan propaganda site. I've drank milk and eaten yogurt, cheese, butter. whey, etc. throughout my entire life and I'm over 50 years old. I'm neither fat nor diseased. And if you want to see animal abuse, go watch how an animal predator takes down its prey.

    Yet, that's a good age to start to check regularly your prostate (chances to get prostate cancer increase with a high dairy intake).

    Now THERE is more fear mongering.

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited October 2016
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    TonyB0588 wrote: »
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    What does it even mean to claim that milk is not MEANT for us. If we are able to be nourished by it (and many of us have the genes that allow that), how is it not meant for us in a way that other animals or animal products or plants we eat (like, say, cows themselves or chickens or deer or eggs or almonds or broccoli or bananas are)? This way of looking at it just makes no sense to me. If nothing else it presupposes intelligent design, which is a religious POV, but then doesn't finish out the argument.

    I've heard the claim that humans are the only species that continue to drink milk after they're weaned.

    I've also heard the claims that humans are the only species that drive cars, use computers, cook their food, preserve food in refrigerators and use microwave ovens. Any or all of those anecdotes are equally pointless when compared with other species.

    Precisely. Does this mean that we aren't MEANT to do these things? Meant by whom?

    Also, other animals do drink meal after being weaned when it is easily available to them. We had the natural ability to make it easy to us, just like we (and not other animals) had the natural ability to make other foods we eat more easily available through, you know, farming. So I don't get the argument that this means we aren't MEANT to do something. If anything, it would suggest that the animals who don't do this aren't meant to do it, but that we are.

    As I'm not disagreeing with AnvilHead here, I would like to see the response from those who defend the "not meant to" idea, like maybe TonyB, since I honestly don't understand what they are trying to say or what it's based on.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    DomoChan16 wrote: »
    Dairy is to turn a baby cow into a fully grown cow that weighs over 1,000 pounds. It's baby formula for another animal, it WILL make you fat and put you at risk of other diseases. The dairy industry is full of animal abuse as well.

    They gain a bunch of weight (you know, getting up to their normal size) on grass too, or grains. Does that mean we'd better avoid those foods, because fattening. (I suppose the anti carbers would say yes, but most of the vegan gurus do not.)
  • rebel_26
    rebel_26 Posts: 1,826 Member
    Any animal cruelty aside I cant believe I just read pages since my last posting and how uniformed/misinformed/ and over informed people are just on milk. Information is power if used correctly and comprehended. I sit on the pro milk side. Also lactose free milk is delicious for those who have issues with Dairy. I also eat greek yogurt almost EVERY day. Oh and I eat lots of veggies and have my whole life. I guess im an anomaly...or am I really just the norm...Im going to say the latter.


    also I'm not giving up my chicken either...thats a whole different cruelty conversation.

  • Gianfranco_R
    Gianfranco_R Posts: 1,297 Member
    jmbmilholland wrote: »
    Gianfranco_R wrote: »
    jmbmilholland wrote: »
    lcrampton44 wrote: »
    One particular type of cancer that affects men—and only men—is prostate cancer. In 2011, more than 200,000 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer. A recent study linked both meat and dairy product consumption with an increased risk of death after prostate cancer. This is consistent with previous research connecting animal products with a higher risk of developing prostate cancer, as well as increased mortality.


    http://www.pcrm.org/nbBlog/index.php/got-a-prostate-ditch-the-dairy

    Nice plagiarism of a paragraph from a personal opinion blog by an anti-meat "doctor" linking to a deeply flawed false-dichotomy "self reporting" study.

    When you look at the underlying factors, it basically correlates eating more vegetables with better health. Duh. It conveniently leaves out low-fat dairy and poultry, two linchpins of the diet for many healthy, cancer free Westerners. I see nothing in this study proving that animal products cause cancer.

    http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/8/6/545.figures-only

    if you want to criticize a study, you should read it attentively first: "Food groups with loading factors less than 0.3 for both dietary patterns were not listed in the table, and included fruit juice, poultry, condiments, nuts, tea, low-fat dairy products, pizza, organ, cold breakfast cereal, wine, margarine, mayonnaise, low-energy drink, beer, coffee, high-energy drink, and liquor" (note on table 1).
    It's safer to just repeat the old saying: association doesn't indicate causation :smile:

    Also, seeing all that irony about Westerners not eating vegetables, I don't know if it is clear, but the study uses data from the Physicians' Health Study, that is an American study. Therefore those patients observed were all Americans or at least living in the US. So some Americans do eat vegetables in high amount (at least after a diagnosis of cancer), and others don't. It seems that the former are wiser.

    Yes, Gianfranco, I diligently read every single word of that study, including the footnote you cited, which is why I pointed out that those particular foods were swept under the rug, or into a footnote, as it were: they are inconvenient, confounding factors in their attempt to create a good/evil Manichean dichotomy. If you admit, hey, lowfat milk and poultry appear to play a role in healthy diets, then it makes it more difficult to beat the drum on an anti-dairy, anti-meat agenda.

    I knew it was an American study, but that is another excellent point to make: look at the shady nomenclature. WTF is even going on with this? The "Prudent Diet" (vegetables) vs. the "Western Diet," (bacon and cheez-whiz) when both diets were actually Western diets. So what message are they deliberately structuring? I will tell you. Rhetorically, they are positioning the "Western" to align with "foolish" or "stupid" in the reader's mind. That is an utterly unscientific level of bias. It is an agenda playing dress-up with selected scientific trappings.

    I agree that it is pretty dumb not to eat a lot of vegetables. However, I grow and eat a robust amount of vegetables, am thoroughly Western, and am not doing so because I have been diagnosed with cancer. Probably there are one or two more Americans like me.

    Anyway, thanks for the suggestion that I don't read attentively. Medice, cura te ipsum.

    Evil researchers from Harvard!
    As for the "foolish" and the "stupid". This is beyond the scope of this actual study, but there are in fact other ones that have identified the “western pattern” as associated with rural residence, working class status, and lack of high school completion.
    Evil researchers...
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    edited October 2016
    Gianfranco_R wrote: »
    jmbmilholland wrote: »
    Gianfranco_R wrote: »
    jmbmilholland wrote: »
    lcrampton44 wrote: »
    One particular type of cancer that affects men—and only men—is prostate cancer. In 2011, more than 200,000 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer. A recent study linked both meat and dairy product consumption with an increased risk of death after prostate cancer. This is consistent with previous research connecting animal products with a higher risk of developing prostate cancer, as well as increased mortality.


    http://www.pcrm.org/nbBlog/index.php/got-a-prostate-ditch-the-dairy

    Nice plagiarism of a paragraph from a personal opinion blog by an anti-meat "doctor" linking to a deeply flawed false-dichotomy "self reporting" study.

    When you look at the underlying factors, it basically correlates eating more vegetables with better health. Duh. It conveniently leaves out low-fat dairy and poultry, two linchpins of the diet for many healthy, cancer free Westerners. I see nothing in this study proving that animal products cause cancer.

    http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/8/6/545.figures-only

    if you want to criticize a study, you should read it attentively first: "Food groups with loading factors less than 0.3 for both dietary patterns were not listed in the table, and included fruit juice, poultry, condiments, nuts, tea, low-fat dairy products, pizza, organ, cold breakfast cereal, wine, margarine, mayonnaise, low-energy drink, beer, coffee, high-energy drink, and liquor" (note on table 1).
    It's safer to just repeat the old saying: association doesn't indicate causation :smile:

    Also, seeing all that irony about Westerners not eating vegetables, I don't know if it is clear, but the study uses data from the Physicians' Health Study, that is an American study. Therefore those patients observed were all Americans or at least living in the US. So some Americans do eat vegetables in high amount (at least after a diagnosis of cancer), and others don't. It seems that the former are wiser.

    Yes, Gianfranco, I diligently read every single word of that study, including the footnote you cited, which is why I pointed out that those particular foods were swept under the rug, or into a footnote, as it were: they are inconvenient, confounding factors in their attempt to create a good/evil Manichean dichotomy. If you admit, hey, lowfat milk and poultry appear to play a role in healthy diets, then it makes it more difficult to beat the drum on an anti-dairy, anti-meat agenda.

    I knew it was an American study, but that is another excellent point to make: look at the shady nomenclature. WTF is even going on with this? The "Prudent Diet" (vegetables) vs. the "Western Diet," (bacon and cheez-whiz) when both diets were actually Western diets. So what message are they deliberately structuring? I will tell you. Rhetorically, they are positioning the "Western" to align with "foolish" or "stupid" in the reader's mind. That is an utterly unscientific level of bias. It is an agenda playing dress-up with selected scientific trappings.

    I agree that it is pretty dumb not to eat a lot of vegetables. However, I grow and eat a robust amount of vegetables, am thoroughly Western, and am not doing so because I have been diagnosed with cancer. Probably there are one or two more Americans like me.

    Anyway, thanks for the suggestion that I don't read attentively. Medice, cura te ipsum.

    Evil researchers from Harvard!

    She didn't say that.
    As for the "foolish" and the "stupid". This is beyond the scope of this actual study, but there are in fact other ones that have identified the “western pattern” as associated with rural residence, working class status, and lack of high school completion.

    I'd like to see those, as I am curious.

    If you are correct, I think you are supporting her point, however, as I don't see why those factors would make one more "western" than a college professor in an urban area in the US who eats lots of vegetables.

    Hmm--my current favorite dairy purveyor is a highly-educated goat farmer in a college town in the midwest who is in a same-sex marriage. Don't know what class he considers himself, probably "middle class" like everyone else in the US likes to claim. Is this western? I'd think so.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    Salsa counts as a vegetable, right?
    Lots of salsa out west.
  • queenliz99
    queenliz99 Posts: 15,317 Member
    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    Salsa counts as a vegetable, right?
    Lots of salsa out west.

    I bet you like salsa❤️
  • dn0pes
    dn0pes Posts: 99 Member
    If lactose intolerant it can cause gas and offend other people at parties and when making nasty.
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    dn0pes wrote: »
    If lactose intolerant it can cause gas and offend other people at parties and when making nasty.

    "when making nasty" LOL
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    dn0pes wrote: »
    If lactose intolerant it can cause gas and offend other people at parties and when making nasty.

    Fairlife milk. No lactose. More calcium and protein. I make pumpkin spice tea lattes with it every morning. Best breakfast ever.
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,343 Member
    edited October 2016
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    dn0pes wrote: »
    If lactose intolerant it can cause gas and offend other people at parties and when making nasty.

    Fairlife milk. No lactose. More calcium and protein. I make pumpkin spice tea lattes with it every morning. Best breakfast ever.

    ^ My favorite (and I'm not even lactose intolerant). I drink it in my protein shakes, use it for my cereal, and of course, dip my Oreos in it. Great macro profile.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    dn0pes wrote: »
    If lactose intolerant it can cause gas and offend other people at parties and when making nasty.

    Fairlife milk. No lactose. More calcium and protein. I make pumpkin spice tea lattes with it every morning. Best breakfast ever.

    What do you make it with (other than the milk). That sounds like an amazing breakfast, particularly now that we're under snow :frowning:
  • GottaBurnEmAll
    GottaBurnEmAll Posts: 7,722 Member
    edited October 2016
    nutmegoreo wrote: »
    GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »
    dn0pes wrote: »
    If lactose intolerant it can cause gas and offend other people at parties and when making nasty.

    Fairlife milk. No lactose. More calcium and protein. I make pumpkin spice tea lattes with it every morning. Best breakfast ever.

    What do you make it with (other than the milk). That sounds like an amazing breakfast, particularly now that we're under snow :frowning:

    Nothing fancy. Just pumpkin pie spice and liquid splenda. I have an electric milk frother that heats the milk and froths it and was worth every penny. It was about $30 on Amazon. I put a little maple extract in the milk sometimes.

    I find milk to be very filling. I also have another one for an afternoon snack with an apple, and that keeps me really full too.
  • BoxerBrawler
    BoxerBrawler Posts: 2,032 Member
    Food product for humans (Wiki)

    The Holstein Friesian cattle is the dominant breed in quintessential industrialized dairy farms today
    In many cultures of the world, especially the West, humans continue to consume milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other animals (especially cattle, goats and sheep) as a food product. Initially, the ability to digest milk was limited to children as adults did not produce lactase, an enzyme necessary for digesting the lactose in milk. Milk was therefore converted to curd, cheese and other products to reduce the levels of lactose. Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in human populations in Europe that enabled the production of lactase in adulthood. This allowed milk to be used as a new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food sources failed.[16] Milk is processed into a variety of dairy products such as cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, and cheese. Modern industrial processes use milk to produce casein, whey protein, lactose, condensed milk, powdered milk, and many other food-additives and industrial products.

    Whole milk, butter and cream have high levels of saturated fat.[17][18] The sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia flowers, and a few tropical shrubs. The enzyme needed to digest lactose, lactase, reaches its highest levels in the small intestine after birth and then begins a slow decline unless milk is consumed regularly.[19] Those groups who do continue to tolerate milk, however, often have exercised great creativity in using the milk of domesticated ungulates, not only of cattle, but also sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo, horses, reindeer and camels. The largest producer and consumer of cattle and buffalo milk in the world is India.[20]
  • Hornsby
    Hornsby Posts: 10,322 Member
    edited October 2016
    cushman5279 wrote: »
    Food product for humans (Wiki)

    The Holstein Friesian cattle is the dominant breed in quintessential industrialized dairy farms today
    In many cultures of the world, especially the West, humans continue to consume milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other animals (especially cattle, goats and sheep) as a food product. Initially, the ability to digest milk was limited to children as adults did not produce lactase, an enzyme necessary for digesting the lactose in milk. Milk was therefore converted to curd, cheese and other products to reduce the levels of lactose. Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in human populations in Europe that enabled the production of lactase in adulthood. This allowed milk to be used as a new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food sources failed.[16] Milk is processed into a variety of dairy products such as cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, and cheese. Modern industrial processes use milk to produce casein, whey protein, lactose, condensed milk, powdered milk, and many other food-additives and industrial products.

    Whole milk, butter and cream have high levels of saturated fat.[17][18] The sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia flowers, and a few tropical shrubs. The enzyme needed to digest lactose, lactase, reaches its highest levels in the small intestine after birth and then begins a slow decline unless milk is consumed regularly.[19] Those groups who do continue to tolerate milk, however, often have exercised great creativity in using the milk of domesticated ungulates, not only of cattle, but also sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo, horses, reindeer and camels. The largest producer and consumer of cattle and buffalo milk in the world is India.[20]

    Yep. We got lucky and now it's perfectly fine for most of us.
  • BoxerBrawler
    BoxerBrawler Posts: 2,032 Member
    Hornsby wrote: »
    cushman5279 wrote: »
    Food product for humans (Wiki)

    The Holstein Friesian cattle is the dominant breed in quintessential industrialized dairy farms today
    In many cultures of the world, especially the West, humans continue to consume milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other animals (especially cattle, goats and sheep) as a food product. Initially, the ability to digest milk was limited to children as adults did not produce lactase, an enzyme necessary for digesting the lactose in milk. Milk was therefore converted to curd, cheese and other products to reduce the levels of lactose. Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in human populations in Europe that enabled the production of lactase in adulthood. This allowed milk to be used as a new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food sources failed.[16] Milk is processed into a variety of dairy products such as cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, and cheese. Modern industrial processes use milk to produce casein, whey protein, lactose, condensed milk, powdered milk, and many other food-additives and industrial products.

    Whole milk, butter and cream have high levels of saturated fat.[17][18] The sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia flowers, and a few tropical shrubs. The enzyme needed to digest lactose, lactase, reaches its highest levels in the small intestine after birth and then begins a slow decline unless milk is consumed regularly.[19] Those groups who do continue to tolerate milk, however, often have exercised great creativity in using the milk of domesticated ungulates, not only of cattle, but also sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo, horses, reindeer and camels. The largest producer and consumer of cattle and buffalo milk in the world is India.[20]

    Yep. We got lucky and now it's perfectly fine for most of us.

    Luck has nothing to do with it.

  • French_Peasant
    French_Peasant Posts: 1,639 Member
    cushman5279 wrote: »
    Hornsby wrote: »
    cushman5279 wrote: »
    Food product for humans (Wiki)

    The Holstein Friesian cattle is the dominant breed in quintessential industrialized dairy farms today
    In many cultures of the world, especially the West, humans continue to consume milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other animals (especially cattle, goats and sheep) as a food product. Initially, the ability to digest milk was limited to children as adults did not produce lactase, an enzyme necessary for digesting the lactose in milk. Milk was therefore converted to curd, cheese and other products to reduce the levels of lactose. Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in human populations in Europe that enabled the production of lactase in adulthood. This allowed milk to be used as a new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food sources failed.[16] Milk is processed into a variety of dairy products such as cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream, and cheese. Modern industrial processes use milk to produce casein, whey protein, lactose, condensed milk, powdered milk, and many other food-additives and industrial products.

    Whole milk, butter and cream have high levels of saturated fat.[17][18] The sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia flowers, and a few tropical shrubs. The enzyme needed to digest lactose, lactase, reaches its highest levels in the small intestine after birth and then begins a slow decline unless milk is consumed regularly.[19] Those groups who do continue to tolerate milk, however, often have exercised great creativity in using the milk of domesticated ungulates, not only of cattle, but also sheep, goats, yaks, water buffalo, horses, reindeer and camels. The largest producer and consumer of cattle and buffalo milk in the world is India.[20]

    Yep. We got lucky and now it's perfectly fine for most of us.

    Luck has nothing to do with it.

    We got *busy* and now it is perfectly fine for most of us.

    Gives a new meaning to...

    Brown chicken brown cowwwwww!!!

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