Dairy Alarmism

This is why my family has invested in a lactating chimp. More genetic similarities and all.

My brain knows this is a joke, but my stomach (which is getting over a bug) feels more like ...

Oh, come on, why is the milk of one species good, but the other invokes the immediate response of disgust?

I apologize if I've offended your delicate sensibilities. If you enjoy chimp milk, by all means, please continue to do so, I give you my blessing (which is to say, lighten up, I never intended to disparage the chimp-milking industry... the juxtaposition of lactating and chimp makes my primitive, unenlightened stomach do flip-flops after 48 hours of constant nausea).

The apple tree's intent is to plant it's seeds, i agree with that, but without interaction from frugivores, the fruit tree's seed would rarely ever make it farther than the base of the tree.

They give us delicious food, and we spread their seed far and wide.

My only question about dairy (and I am a huge ice cream lover) is that, at its foremost, it is food intended for a baby cow. Humans, as should come as no surprise, have nutrition requirements that are MILES away from a cow. Take a look at the constituents of bovine milk vs. human milk. It is pretty interesting. Is it the best thing to use dairy products formulated for a species so vastly different from our own? That is what makes me wonder. Of course, not when I eat my appropriate serving of Ben & Jerry's ice cream!

Edited to add: be wary when using the UDSA to evaluate meat and milk. The USDA's mission (at least one of them) is to promote our over-consumption of meat and dairy. That is why our food pyramids, for so long, has pushed meat, dairy, and cheese as particularly healthy. They are all loaded with saturated fats! There is a really good study out there about dairy, but I don't have my notes in front of me. I think it was the Nurses Heart research study or something like that. Try googling it. It is a real an eye opener about dairy.

And honey is food intended for bees. Should we avoid it then?

My thought on that was that it would be very cruel to keep a chimp for this purpose, because they are social animals and need to be around their own kind, and forcibly milking one would be extremely cruel (although the human who attempts this is likely to come off worse :laugh: )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn1GmYHpjiw

Help a man out. Are there any legitimate dairy concerns, backed by a consensus of good research?

Unless you have an intolerance, no. I haven't seen anything beyond alarmism and agenda-pushing.

Dairy is fine if your body produces the enzyme lactase. The very recent evolution of the ability to digest dairy products in adulthood is fascinating... this trait has evolved in populations with a long history of dairy farming/herding, e.g. Europeans, Masai (in Africa)... what's most interesting is that this trait evolved at least twice, i.e. separately in both those populations, and it may be the case that it's evolved separately in other dairy/herding populations (the alternative is that gene flow between populations resulted in the trait spreading from one population to another,but it's been demonstrated in scientific studies that the European mutation and Masai mutation for digesting dairy as adults are different and arose separately).

Anyway, whether you find that kind of thing interesting or not, the ability to digest lactose is quite closely tied to ethnic origin (although it's not 100% because of gene flow and archaic genes sticking around) so if your ancestors over the last few thousand years were dairy farmers or herders, chances are you can digest dairy just fine, and there's no reason to avoid it. If your ancestors from this time period didn't have anything to do with dairy, then there's a high probability that you can't digest dairy and in that case you should avoid it. But usually people who are lactose intolerant know about it without being told this information due to getting sick when they eat dairy.

Dairy allergy is separate to lactose intolerance and while I'd love to know the evolutionary history of allergy (which is probably a defence against parasitic infection) I don't know much about it or examples of any particular populations it evolved in. But if you're allergic to milk that's another reason not to drink it.

Unfortunately there's a lot of pseudoscience against milk because both the vegan crowd and the paleo crowd hate on it. There are few things that these two groups agree on, but hatred of dairy products is one. And both groups will tell you "milk is for baby cows not for humans" they also both tend to ignore or be unaware of the fact that humans are highly adaptable in terms of diet, and the ability to digest dairy products has evolved in populations with a long enough history of dairy farming/herding.

I, personally, am from the British Isles and the Britain a history of dairy farming going back at least 5000 years; I can digest dairy just fine and will continue to consume dairy products

:drinker: @ dairy products and the lactase persistence gene






tl;dr: if dairy makes you sick don't eat/drink it, if it doesn't and you like it then eat/drink it

Dairy sources that are low in fat have been shown to help fat loss.

How about sustainable long term health?

*shrug* Go to some nursing homes or talk to people who are in their 80's and 90's and ask them what their diets were. Ask them how they have eaten pretty much all of their lives. Do it. Go. NOW. Because most of those folks will tell you they grew up eating meat -- and not just the pretties but the organs, too, like brains and liver. They will tell you they drank whole fat milk and real butter along with their veggies (and even their veggies were carrots, potatoes, green beans and maybe cabbage) and very little to no fruit. I have a large family -- something like 11 or 13 uncles and aunts on just ONE SIDE. They have ALL lived into their late 80's and most into their 90's. All grew up and continued to live and eat meat and drink dairy milk. Including my hearty Granny who lived until the age of 99. She was in a healthy weight range, active, and on NO medications. NONE. And for almost her entire life, she lived on what you would consider an unhealthy diet because it contained meat and dairy. Most of which was combined and included lots of fat and sugar! She loved to bake. Back to my point. She ate all of these things and they constructed most of my diet, too because we all literally lived right next to each other so eating together was a thing. When I gained weight, it wasn't because of meat or dairy or fat -- it was simply due to portion sizes. She never had an issue with that. We all ate the same things, but at some point, we quit paying attention to portion sizes and just flat out ate too much. Dairy isn't the problem and neither is meat. The problem is flat out the over-consumption of food in general. Even if it is 'healthy'. That and barring any medical conditions.

*Edit to add that I say nursing homes because that is the greatest concentration of older folks I can think of. Or senior living centers. Unless you're like me and live in an area where the population of retirees is high.

THIS!!! ^^^^^^ :drinker:

Dairy sources that are low in fat have been shown to help fat loss.

How about sustainable long term health?

*shrug* Go to some nursing homes or talk to people who are in their 80's and 90's and ask them what their diets were. Ask them how they have eaten pretty much all of their lives. Do it. Go. NOW. Because most of those folks will tell you they grew up eating meat -- and not just the pretties but the organs, too, like brains and liver. They will tell you they drank whole fat milk and real butter along with their veggies (and even their veggies were carrots, potatoes, green beans and maybe cabbage) and very little to no fruit. I have a large family -- something like 11 or 13 uncles and aunts on just ONE SIDE. They have ALL lived into their late 80's and most into their 90's. All grew up and continued to live and eat meat and drink dairy milk. Including my hearty Granny who lived until the age of 99. She was in a healthy weight range, active, and on NO medications. NONE. And for almost her entire life, she lived on what you would consider an unhealthy diet because it contained meat and dairy. Most of which was combined and included lots of fat and sugar! She loved to bake. Back to my point. She ate all of these things and they constructed most of my diet, too because we all literally lived right next to each other so eating together was a thing. When I gained weight, it wasn't because of meat or dairy or fat -- it was simply due to portion sizes. She never had an issue with that. We all ate the same things, but at some point, we quit paying attention to portion sizes and just flat out ate too much. Dairy isn't the problem and neither is meat. The problem is flat out the over-consumption of food in general. Even if it is 'healthy'. That and barring any medical conditions.

*Edit to add that I say nursing homes because that is the greatest concentration of older folks I can think of. Or senior living centers. Unless you're like me and live in an area where the population of retirees is high.

THIS!!! ^^^^^^ :drinker:

You seem to come from a long line of people with long lives. That's a good thing for you because scientists believe longevity is in part inherited (of course, getting hit by a bus would severely screw with the DNA but that's for another forum! )



This is Buster Martin. He died in 2011 at the age of either 101 or 104 (some question remains as to the exact year of his birth. He says 1906.) Either way, he had a good, long run. Please notice the two objects he is holding. That's right a mug of ale and a cigarette. He claims to have started both at about age 12. Oh, yes, he also ran a marathon at age 101 (by his estimation). I have no real inside information but I'm guessing he at real eggs, butter, whole milk, saturated fat and everything else since that was the custom during his lifetime.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-13068053

Some of it is just in the genes.