Milk industry claims cow's milk results in weight loss; bad science meets dishonest marketing

Tuesday, May 25, 2004 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: weight loss, cow's milk, nutrition

The milk industry has launched a full court press to hype the supposed weight loss benefits of drinking milk. They're running print ads, hiring celebrities to wear goofy-looking milk moustaches, and paying nutritionists to give distorted speeches about the benefits of milk. The problem is, there's absolutely no convincing evidence that milk helps with weight loss at all. In fact, all the evidence about cow's milk shows it to be a nutritional disaster for the human body: it's missing essential oils necessary for brain function, it lacks critical minerals (like magnesium) needed for the human body, and worst of all, practically all human beings are allergic to cow's milk, which is why the substance causes so much asthma, chronic sinus infections, and constipation.

But don't let scientific facts stand in the way of a national marketing campaign. The milk industry is out to sell some milk, regardless of the facts. That's what I call bad science mixed with dishonest marketing. Granted, if children switch from drinking soft drinks to milk, they will very likely lose weight, but "milk" isn't the reason: it's the fact that they've avoided soft drinks. The same children would lose even more weight if they drank pure water instead of milk. Cow's milk isn't a weight loss substance. In fact, thanks to its homogenized fat content and difficult-to-digest proteins, it's actually something that tends to pack on the pounds.

Still, the milk marketing machine will conveniently neglect to mention the facts surrounding nutritional reality and, instead, focus on a five-second soundbite that goes something like this, "Kids who drank more milk lost weight!" And from that, the public will arrive at the erroneous conclusion that milk is good for them.

The number of cases of asthma, chronic sinus infections, cardiovascular disease and chronic constipation caused each year by the consumption of cow's milk must be staggering. Even beyond that, how many infant deaths are caused by cow's milk consumption? At the very least, it is well known that cow's milk causes tens of thousands of ear infections in infants each year, and many of those lead to further complications that compromise the child's health down the road.

My advice is that all human beings should avoid the milk of another species. Anthropologists have found absolutely no evidence that ancient man sucked on the teats of furry animals. Yuck!