Question for vegans?!
Question for vegans?
I have been a vegetarian for quite some time now but I eat a lot of dairy products. I always thought that cows SHOULD be milked and that it was healthy for them. Now that I've been reading a lot of things in the vegan forum on this site, I have been wondering, what are the negative points of purchasing and ingesting dairy products? I know I'm going to regret asking this because dairy is pretty much the biggest source of vitamins for me. But I really want to know. Maybe I'm just not educated enough in this field. Oh, and please dont paste any links because I'm sick of vegan/vegetarian haters pasting links on here that lead to prank web sites. Just let me have a general idea of what the problem is. I may join you guys.
Additional Details3 months ago
Come on, I'm still open to answers. I haven't really had my question correctly answered. Feel free to give me the down low ; )
Answers:
3 months ago
Come on, I'm still open to answers. I haven't really had my question correctly answered. Feel free to give me the down low ; )
Yes... milk is Mother Nature's "perfect food" ...for a calf... until it is weaned.
Everything you know about cow's milk and dairy is probably part of a Dairy industry MYTH.
Cow's milk is an unhealthy fluid from diseased animals that contains a wide range of dangerous and disease-causing substances that have a cumulative negative effect on all who consume it.
MILK'S BASIC CONTENTS
*ALL* cow's milk (regular and 'organic') has 59 active hormones, scores of allergens, fat and cholesterol.
Most cow's milk has measurable quantities of herbicides, pesticides, dioxins (up to 200 times the safe levels), up to 52 powerful antibiotics (perhaps 53, with LS-50), blood, pus, feces, bacteria and viruses. (Cow's milk can have traces of anything the cow ate... including such things as radioactive fallout from nuke testing ... (the 50's strontium-90 problem).
LEADING CAUSES OF DEATH IN AMERICA
http://webapp.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadc... (1998)
Rank Total Description
1 724,859 Heart Disease (think fats/cholesterol: meat/dairy)
2 541,532 Malignant Neoplasms (cancer: think toxins/milk/dairy)
2a 250,000 Medical system (drugs/etc. think ignorance/incompetence)
3 158,448 Cerebro-vascular (think meat milk and dairy)
4 112,584 Bronchitis Emphysema Asthma (think toxins/milk/dairy)
5 97,835 Unintentional Injuries and Adverse Effects
6 91,871 Pneumonia & Influenza (think weak immune systems and
mucus)
7 64,751 Diabetes (think milk/dairy)
7a 40,000+ Highway slaughter (men, women and children)
8 30,575 Suicide (think behavioral problems)
9 26,182 Nephritis (Bright's disease: inflammation of the
kidneys)
10 25,192 Liver Disease (think alcohol and other toxins)
(2a and 7a were added for completeness)
(note: Number 13 on the CDC list is -18,272 Homicide & Legal Intervention-. It is curious that the CDC would readily list law enforcement and homicides... and not the 250,000 deaths caused by the medical system!)
CANCER FUEL
Of those 59 hormones one is a powerful GROWTH hormone called Insulin- like Growth Factor ONE (IGF-1). By a freak of nature it is identical in cows and humans. Consider this hormone to be a "fuel cell" for any cancer... (the medical world says IGF-1 is a key factor in the rapid growth and proliferation of breast, prostate and colon cancers, and we suspect that most likely it will be found to promote ALL cancers).
IGF-1 is a normal part of ALL milk... the newborn is SUPPOSED to grow quickly! What makes the 50% of obese American consumers think they need MORE growth? Consumers don't think anything about it because they do not have a clue to the problem... nor do most of our doctors.
(See http://www.notmilk.com/igf1time.txt........ for a time line)
QUANTITY
Each bite of hard cheese has TEN TIMES whatever was in that sip of milk... because it takes ten pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese. Each bite of ice cream has 12 times ... and every swipe of butter 21 times whatever is contained in the fat molecules in a sip of milk.
MONSANTO AND rbGH (Posilac)
Monsanto Chemical Co., maker of fine poisons such as DDT, agent orange, Roundup and more... spent around half a billion dollars inventing a shot to inject into cows... to force a cow to produce MORE milk (for an already glutted taxpayer subsidized market).
Unfortunately, they created *FIVE* errors in their Frankenstein Posilac (rbGH) shot that direly affected all test animals... but that important report (Richard, Odaglia & Deslex, 1989) has been hidden from everyone under Clinton's Trade Secrets act. The Canadians read enough of this report (before it was stolen) to reject rbGH for their country.
Monsanto's Posilac creates additional IGF-1 in milk: up to 80% more.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) insists that IGF-1 is destroyed in the stomach. If that were true, the FDA has proven that breast feeding cannot work. Common sense says their "finding" is ridiculous because this growth factor DOES make the baby calf grow (rapidly, as mother natured intended). Visit the Dairy Education Board at http://www.notmilk.com/deb/100399.html..... to review a DAIRY study that confirms what the FDA has lied about this for years.
IGF-1 INCREASES
This study involved two groups. One group consuming 12 ounces of milk a day and the other consuming the USDA recommended allowance of 24 ounces (three cups). This report notes that the participants consuming 12 ounces more milk per day... HAD A 10% RISE IN IGF-1 IN THEIR BLOOD SERUM! Now, consider that PER DAY, from ALL sources, the typical milk/dairy consumer ingests approximately 39% of daily diet from dairy... and that 10% increase becomes the "tip of the iceberg". We have NO idea of the non-dairy versus full-dairy difference but considering cancer rates... it has to be significant.
FAT
Whole milk 49% of the calories are from fat.
"2%" milk 35% of the calories are from fat.
Cheddar cheese 74% of the calories are from fat.
Butter 100% of the calories are from fat.
Most folks suspect that butter is all fat. Most folks have no concept of the just how much fat is in the rest of milk and dairy. Perhaps the 54% of Americans who are obese need to comprehend that milk, ice cream, cheeses, yogurts, and all the OTHER products that use milk derivatives (casein, whey, lactose, colostrum) are most likely a significant cause for their weight and health problem.
CALCIUM
Calcium? Where do the COWS get calcium for their big bones? Yes... from plants! The calcium they consume from plants has a large amount of magnesium... necessary for the body to absorb and USE the calcium.
The calcium in cow's milk is basically useless because it has insufficient magnesium content (those nations with the highest amount of milk/dairy consumption also have the highest rates of osteoporosis. Proof? How about a controlled study of 78,000 nurses over a period of 12 years?
Read more about it at:
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/030799.html..... Article on the 78,000 nurse study
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/092098.html..... CALCIUM AND BONE DISEASE
http://www.notmilk.com/badbones.html....... WHO GETS BONE DISEASE?
http://www.notmilk.com/bonehead.txt........ CRIPPLING BONEHEADS
http://www.notmilk.com/calcium/index.htm... Consolidated info
Cows milk has three times the calcium as does human breast milk. No matter, neither are very usable because in order to be absorbed and used their MUST be an equal quantity of MAGNESIUM (as exists in the greens that cows eat to get all the calcium they need for their big bones). Milk has only enough magnesium to absorb around 11% (33mg per cup) of calcium.
Per the USDA 8 ounces (one cup) of cows milk contains:
Calcium, Ca mg 291.336
Magnesium, Mg mg 32.794
The USDA recommends 1200mg of calcium per day. The USDA recommended three cups of milk a day only have 900mg of calcium. Some argue that only 1/3 of the magnesium is necessary. Mother nature seems to suggest it should be one to one. If the ratio for proper absorption were 1/3 magnesium to one calcium then no more than 300mg of that 900mg of calcium is usable. If, in fact, it is a one to one ratio... only 98.38mg of calcium is usable.
It is not a matter of how much calcium one ingests... but how much one does not lose.
PROTEIN
Milk can be thought of as "liquid meat" because of its high protein content which, in concert with other proteins, may actually LEACH calcium from the body. Countries that consume high protein diets (meat, milk and dairy) have the highest rates of osteoporosis.
THE 'WHOLESOME' PROTEIN MYTH
87% of milk is water. That makes it VERY expensive water.
Broken down into its basic groups... WHOLE MILK is:
WATER FAT CASEIN OTHER PROTEIN
87% 3.25% 4% 1% 4.75
(note: that is 3.25% "milkfat" which includes the 87% water.)
80% of the protein in milk is casein. Casein is a powerful binder... a
polymer used to make plastics... and a glue that is better used to make
sturdy furniture or hold beer bottle labels in place. It is in
thousands of processed foods as a binder... as "something" caseinate.
Casein is a powerful allergen... a histamine that creates lots of
mucus. The only medicine in Olympic athlete Flo-Jo's body was Benedryl,
a power antihistamine she took to combat her last meal... pizza.
For the whole Flo-Jo story:
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/092198.html,....
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/111598.html..... and
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/112398.html..... for the whole story.
BACTERIA
Cow's milk is allowed to have feces in it. This is a major source for bacteria. Milk is typically pasteurized more than once before it gets to your table... each time for only 15 seconds at 162 degrees Fahrenheit.
To sanitize water one is told to boil it (212 degrees F) for several minutes. That is a tremendous disparity, isn't it!
Keep in mind that at room temperature the number of bacteria in milk DOUBLE around every 20 minutes. No wonder milk turns rotten very quickly.
PUS
ONE cubic centimeter (cc) of commercial cow's milk is allowed to have up to 750,000 somatic cells (common name is "PUS") and 20,000 live bacteria... before it is kept off the market.
That amounts to a whopping 20 million live squiggly bacteria and up to 750 MILLION pus cells per liter (bit more than a quart).
1 cup = 236.5882cc 177,441,150 pus cells ~ 4,731,600 bacteria
24 oz (3 glasses) = 532,323,450 pus cells ~ 14,220,000 bacteria
(the "recommended" daily intake)
The EU and the Canadians allow for a less "tasty" 400,000,000 pus cells per liter.
Typically these levels are lower... but they COULD reach these levels and still get to YOUR table.
CHOLESTEROL
The cholesterol content of those three glasses of milk is equal to what one would get from 53 slices of bacon. Do you know of any doctor who recommends that much bacon per day?
KOSHER
Is cow's milk and dairy "Kosher"? Consider this:
"D-3 always is derived from an animal. The sunlight reaction that converts 7-dehydrocholesterol to vitamin D-3 is a 'pure' chemical reaction that occurs in your skin in certain cells."
"The provitamin known as 7-dehydrocholesterol is extracted and isolated from the skins of mammals and purified." (Marian Herbert of the Vitamin D Workshop U of C)
Vitamin D-3 can come from four different sources:
Pig skin, sheep skin, raw fish liver, and pig brains. Most of the time, Vitamin D-3 is extracted from pig skin and sold to dairy processors.
Short answer to "is milk kosher" - probably not.
OTHER 'STUFF'
Fat and cholesterol. Lots of it. Per the dairy influenced USDA "food pyramid" all milk, dairy and meats should represent no more than 8% of the diet. Statistically, by volume of sales in a nation of 281 million Americans, it works out to almost 40% of the diet for MILK AND DAIRY.. without the meat.
The milk of each of the over 4,700 mammals on earth is formulated specifically for that species. There are special lactoferrins and immunoglobulins (cow specific immunizing stuff) that in humans serve as allergens.
LEUKEMIA
According to Hoards Dairyman (Volume 147, number 4)... 89% of America's dairy herds have the leukemia virus. (more at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/me...
DIABETES
The protein lactalbumin, has been identified as a key factor in diabetes (and a major reason for NOT giving cows milk to infants).
CROHN'S DISEASE
Mycobacterium paratuberculosis causes a bovine disease called "Johne's."
Cows diagnosed with Johne's Disease have diarrhea, and heavy fecal shedding of bacteria. This bacteria becomes cultured in milk, and is not destroyed by pasteurization. Occasionally, the milk-borne bacteria will begin to grow in the human host, and the results are irritable bowel syndrome and Crohn's Disease.
MAD COW DISEASE
There may also be prions (pronounced PREons) in the milk and meat. This is crystalline substance that acts like a virus... with an "incubation" period of from 5 to 30 years. The end result is MAD COW DISEASE!
HOMOGENIZATION
Large fat molecules cannot get through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream. The cream no longer rises... because homogenization breaks up those large molecules into small ones that DO get into the bloodstream! This becomes an expressway for any fat-borne toxins (lead, dioxin's, etc.) into your (otherwise) most protected organs.
CUMULATIVE EFFECTS
How does this impact humans who consume cow's milk and dairy? Obesity (over 50% of Americans and rising), heart disease, cancer, allergies, digestive problems, diabetes, asthma, desensitization to antibiotics, behavioral problems, and the constant ingestion of dioxin's, herbicides, pesticides (and anything else the cow eats that is not good for any critter), that winds up getting stored in HUMAN fat... is not healthy by any measure.
Those who resist believing the truth should understand that MOST of the world's population CANNOT tolerate the lactose in cow's milk. Up to 95% of the black population, around 53% of the Hispanics, etc.) So much for cow's milk being "natures perfect food" for humans! Mother nature knows better.
Common sense question: Where was this massive "milk is a must" before refrigeration, pasteurization and mass transportation? Back when cows gave only 1-4 pounds a day it was quickly made into BUTTER and cheese! Now that those same cows have been tweaked and shot-up with Posilac to produce up to 55 or more pounds of milk per day... almost all year long... it is suddenly (after many thousands of years) a daily "staple". NOT!
POLLUTION
There are around 9.2 million dairy cows in the United states. Each dairy cow ingests around 330 pounds of feed (perhaps 50 pounds) and water (around 280 pounds or 33 gallons) per day. Allowing for the best dairy production of 55 pounds of milk per day (over ten times what mother nature designed the cow to produce) that means that what remains becomes "slurry".
That means around 275 pound of urine and feces per day... per cow, for a daily total of 2.53 BILLION pounds of pollution. Per year... that amounts to around 923 billion pounds of UNTREATED pollution entering our streams, rivers, lakes... and drinking water systems.
Cows are hot-blooded mammals. Like all other mammals they pass gas. Somewhat like elephants their compartmented digestive system is rather inefficient... which leads to the creation of MORE gas. During a Discovery Channel documentary on elephants a parting quip was that the average adult elephant passes enough methane gas per day to run a car about 20 miles.
Cows are not much better. The English New Scientist (page 5 -31.8.96) mentions that cattle produce around 48 kilograms (105 pounds) of methane each per year and that more bubbles out of the animals' manure. Dairy cows eat more because they produce milk. With 9.2 million dairy cows times a minimum of 100 pounds of methane gas per year... that amounts almost a billion pounds of methane gas released into the atmosphere each year. With around 100 million beef cattle... pigs, sheep, and other "factory farmed" animals it should not be difficult to fathom the extent of this problem.
This means that "Beef is a greenhouse-intensive food" and a major cause of global warming (with dairy a significant part of the problem).
Another major point is:
"Milk is a very strong pollutant: it is about 400 times more polluting than untreated sewage. To put it another way, 1,000 gallons of milk has the same polluting potential as the untreated sewage from a town of 7,000 people." Morlais Owen. Chief Scientist for Welsh Water. North Wales Weekly News. 24.3.88.
SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED
Q: What is WHEY?
A: Whey results when the FAT and CASEIN are removed from milk.
In making cheese, the curds become the cheese.
Whey's main components are bovine serum albumin and lactalbumin.
There are other hormones contained in whey.
Q: What happens to the:
59 hormones, scores of allergens herbicides, pesticides, dioxins
up to 52 antibiotics
When made into cheese?
A: Everything gets concentrated.
When made into butter?
A: The allergens get lost: but the dioxin's and
pesticides and antibiotics remain in the fat.
In the digestive system?
A: Steroid hormones survive, as do dioxins and antibiotics.
In homogenized milk, protein hormones survive... depending upon the
gastric pH, some protein hormones in cheese survive, but not all...
eleven steroid hormones survive.
AND WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
Eventually, everything is broken down, but not before the chemical messengers (hormones) "deliver their message."
Each of those hormones and proteins acts differently and has different rates of degradation. BOTTOM LINE... they all survive to a certain degree... and the effects are cumulative.
OTHER HEATH-TRASHING SUBSTANCES IN COW'S MILK
Whey: Blood proteins. Bovine serum lactalbumin has been identified as a trigger for diabetes and other autoimmune diseases.
Lactose: Two sugars. Glucose and galactose. Galactose has been indentified as a trigger for glaucoma. There are several columns that cover lactose (covering galactose and galactosemia):
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/090599.txt...... Dr. Gordon: Heart Disease
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/me... Lactose is dangerous
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/me... Ben's heart
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/me... Female Cancers
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/notmilk/me... Lactose intolerance
Colostrum (cow's first milk): Loaded with hormones, particularly IGF-I, along with loads of immunizing agents for COW DISEASES.
Answers courtesy of the NOTMILKMAN. ([email protected])
MILK...What a surprise!
Read what a NOTMILK guest book respondent said:
http://www.notmilk.com/gbooktalk.txt.......
For more of the WHOLE truth... visit:
For all past newsletters visit with a wealth of information:
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/column.html.....
and for the Daily Squirts of NOTMILK wisdom...
http://www.notmilk.com/deb/squirts.html....
Diabetics please read http://www.notmilk.com/deb/011099.html.....
Read up on "mad cow disease"? Visit
http://www.milkgate.com for what may well be mankind's NEXT plague.
http://www.notmilk.com/milkinfo.txt........ my 2400 word overview (this file)
http://www.notmilk.com/wholemilk.txt....... USDA facts, and what they omitted
http://www.notmilk.com/52reasons.txt....... A reason for every week of the year
Perhaps the BEST single reference:
http://www.notmilk.com/a-z.txt
Extensive reasons by ailment/topic
QUOTES
"It's not natural for humans to drink cow's milk. Humans milk is for humans. Cow's milk is for calves. You have no more need of cow's milk than you do rats milk, horses milk or elephant's milk. Cow's milk is a high fat fluid exquisitely designed to turn a 65 lb baby calf into a 400 lb cow. That's what cow's milk is for!" --Dr Michael Klaper MD
"I no longer recommend dairy products after the age of 2 years. Other calcium sources offer many advantages that dairy products do not have." --Dr. Benjamin Spock
mmmmmmmmmm............. vegetarians taste better
I took a biology class at my local college, and it was our professor's belief that "milk is for babies of each species", and that basically adults shouldn't be drinking milk.
Logically, I don't think that milking is harming the cows, but it probably isn't great for them either.
If you don't already, make sure you are drinking milk from cows raised withough antibiotics. I always buy organic dairy products from free-range animals.
Good question my dear!
Dairy cows, as you have undoubtedly read (unless on an organic, small fam- farm) are kept in horrible condition, hooked up to machines that cause infection and discomfort in their udder regions... and once they are old they they are slaughtered anyways and their male calfs are killed right away (unless they are fortunate enough to become veal)
thats a very brief summary of the aniamal rights side...
as for health, dairy is full of fat! any kind of milk is for growing babies of all mammals!! not for adults or even teens..
and studies on the animal protein casein(sp?) which is foudn in dairy has been linked to cancer...
hormones fed to cows to keep them lactating may be excreted into the milk!
Traces of pus and blood are found in milk...
I forget if it was ben or jerry, but one of them had to have major heart surjery which he attributed to eating lots of ice cream
dairy does not provide much vitamins, take a multi-vitamin, or eat lots of green and orange veggies!
most people are lactosintolerent to some degree...repeated exposerue to dairy is not good for your large intestine and may lead to colon cancer!
I am not a Vegan or a vegetarian, but I "fight" for the rights of everyone to eat what they want. Vegans say that taking ANYTHING from animals is wrong, however, I know that it hurts cows not to be milked. My husband, who I jokingly call a Meatgen (no vegetable products) reminded me that if humans are not "milked" constantly after lactation it hurts, but you can get it to stop hurting after you stop breast feeding. However it is most commonly believed, amongst non-Vegans, that eggs and dairy are the most animal friendly animal products out there.
The problem is that almost everyone knows a self styled Vegetarian or Vegan, who is constantly handing out pamphlets showing slaughter houses in graphic Technicolor and who make PETA look like a BBQ-ing club. These are also people who don't know how to eat a vegetable diet that gives them enough protean not to look like a walking skeleton.
When you say that dairy is the biggest source of vitamins, you are actually saying that you only eat dairy and junk food. I think what you mean to say is that dairy is your biggest source of protean. You get tons of vitamins from the vegetables you eat, like leafy greens, salad vegetables, soy products.
The world would be so much better if more people knew the truth about eating lifestyles, and how people can live normal healthy lives by eating well and in the right amounts.
Cows have been bred to produce milk, therefore they have to be milked during lactation. Other techniques include inducing pregnancy or introduction of hormones to induce lactation. These are the techniques that people have used to produce more milk, they are not what would happen normally.
I just don't eat it because it doesn't belong to me and no they don't need to be milked the farm impregnates them(than takes away there baby) just so they keep giving milk but once a cow can't get pregnant anymore they kill it and plus they load the cows with hormones.
I have a different philosophy than most vegans. I live a vegan lifestyle, but I enjoy fresh raw milk, straight from the cow. I consider it a gift. Yes, they need to be milked, or they become engorged. If you choose to drink milk, try to make sure it is raw, unpasturized, and from a happy cow. I enjoy raw butter, and raw cheese. Check out rawmilk.com or the weston price foundation, for sources where you can buy raw milk. Commercial milk is full of antibiotics, steroids, and growth hormones, and synthetic "nutrition", Raw milk can often be obtained from a food co op, or local dairy. If dairy is an important part of your diet, there is no need to give it up-just find better sources, where you get dairy from happy cows. I feel the same way about eggs-they are a gift from well cared for chickens
Read this...it explains it all.
http://www.milksucks.com/index2.asp...
I just wanted to add the misinformation given in the post above mine. "I live a vegan lifestyle". A person who lives a vegan lifestyle does not drink milk, eat cheese or butter. Keep in mind that the same poster also eats fish and admits it..therefore is not even a vegetarian.
Full fat milk is loaded with fat and great for calves..but certainly not for humans. Fats like these are connected to heart disease.
I think the answers you have received so far are pretty good (besides Beebs, and I think I will respond to that one personally later). I would just like to add a couple things from an abolitionist point of view.
Cow's and Chickens suffer a great deal on a factory farm, cow's have their calf's ripped away from them and sold into veal. They are kept constantly impregnated, and once their milk production starts to wane they are sent to slaughter. The idea that milk does not kill cows is false. Chickens endure a quite similar story in regards to egg production.
After reading everyone else's posts and now this one, you may be asking yourself what's the best thing you can do for these cows and chickens. Go organic? Buy "free-range?" The best thing you could do would be to go Vegan. By being Vegan you decrease demand for these products just a little bit more. Every Vegan does. The more people you and I encourage to go Vegan the less demand their is. We are effectively striking at the root of the problem.
Our other option is to try and enact welfare reforms to make the exploitation of these animals more 'humane'. The problem with this is that animals are property. Property law is very important in this country.
The key point about this is, the interests of property (animals) will never be judged as equally or more important that that of the property owners (factory farms). What this tells us is, no matter how much we fight for reform, as long as animals remain property they will never be afforded protections that make any real difference to their welfare. Our goal must be to create more Vegans and reduce demand.
If any of this was interesting to you, please visit the links below.
I've just made the move from vegetarianism to veganism. The substitutes (tofutti, especially) can be bad enough to make you vomit. However I do have a moral issue with dairy products. I found out that by drinking milk I'm supporting the veal industry as dairy cows only lactate because they've been recently pregnant and their male calves are all turned into veal. Also egg laying hens are enclosed in cages that are too close to each other and many are driven insane as a result of this. They therefore have to have parts of their beaks removed so they do not peck each other to death. Also, organic food is a big lie. In order for something to be termed organic they merely have to have access to the outside for a short period of time each day, but the truth is most of these animals are too conditioned to leave their nests as they don't know what the outside it. PETA is very radical but, unfortunately, a lot of what they say has truth to it. You can learn a lot from their websites milksucks.com and goveg.com.