The verdict is in on milk, and it doesn’t look good for the Nanny Culture. The September 2001 issue of Consumer Reports magazine includes a “Your Health” report evaluating the various health-related claims made about cow’s milk – both pro and con. On the anti-milk side of the debate, Consumer Reports cited People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) as contentious agitators bent on challenging the notion that milk is essentially good for us.
The results of Consumer Reports’ examination?
Milk “is high in calcium and vitamin D – essential nutrients for building and maintaining strong bones.”
Consumers who want a heart-healthy diet can “choose skim or low-fat milk” without any worry about clogging their coronary arteries.
Evidence of a milk-to-prostate-cancer link (championed by PETA) is “inconclusive,” and consumers should still drink “two to three servings a day” as the US Department of Agriculture recommends.
“Lactose-intolerant individuals can drink lactose-free or enzyme-treated milk,” and those who choose to can even “try gradually adapting to dairy by regularly consuming a little milk or yogurt with food and, if that causes no symptoms, consuming them more often and in larger amounts.
Despite PCRM’s dire warnings that milk is to blame for colic, allergies, and type 1 diabetes, CU found that it is still “an efficient way for children over age one (as well as teens) to get their calcium and other needed nutrients.”
There’s no word yet on any reaction from “evolutionary biologist” Michael Hansen, who is the lead researcher at the Consumer Policy Institute, a semi-autonomous division of Consumers Union, which publishes Consumer Reports. Hansen has become one of the world’s foremost critics of milk’s presence in the typical American diet, and he has mounted a personal Jihad against the use of FDA-approved bovine growth hormone (BGH) in milk-giving cows.
