Alissa Hamilton - Got Milked?: The Great Dairy Deception and Why Youll Thrive Without Milk

For Oscar, keep piling your plate high with broccoli and maybe one day youll be a world-class athlete just like your grandfather

Got Milked? is based on the research, observations, and opinions of the author, who is not a health professional. This book is not, and should by no means be considered, a substitute for the advice of a qualified medical professional, who should always be consulted before beginning any diet or other health program.

This book has been carefully researched, and all efforts have been made to ensure factual accuracy as of the date published. The author and the publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects arising from the use or application of material in this book.

I havent given Oscar milk. Hes two now. What do I do???

That was Maxines burning question when she, her mother Tina, her firstborn, Oscar, and her soon-to-be-second-born, Tobias, paid me a visit in August 2012.

Maxine was my best friend growing up. But it had been a while. After high school she followed Tina back to Amsterdam, where Tina was born. The August visit was a kind of reunion. The three and three-quarters of them, and my big sister, Kara, came over to my place for dinner, where Maxines quandary started the memories rolling.

When I was little, drink your milk was a common refrain in most of my friends homes. I was always turning down glasses of milk when I went over to play with the kids down the street. But Maxines house was different. Her mother, Tina, who lived on tulip bulbs as a child in Amsterdam during World War II, had grown plenty strong without milk. Maybe thats why she didnt treat milk the same way that the parents of my other friends did: as an essential part of breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every kid snack in between. And yet here was Maxine wondering Milk? and Tina, curious, If not cows milk, then what?

Substitute any nutritious, calcium-packed food for milk and Maxines question sounds silly:

I havent given Oscar kale. Hes two now. What do I do???

You and I both know that Oscar will survive without kale, or salmon, or even broccoli, for that matter. Maybe hell learn to like kale later. If he doesnt, all is not lost. There are plenty of other nutrient-dense vegetables to choose from.

As it turns out, Oscar was already loving broccoli when I met him. Broccoli is pretty much all he had for dinner. Maybe his body instinctively knew what many parents dont: broccoli is calcium rich. Maybe his bones were telling him: I want calcium, give me broccoli. Or maybe he just liked the familiar, slightly sweet taste and super green color. For whatever reason, he wanted seconds, and then thirds. Im pretty sure if Maxine had conditioned him to drink milk with his dinner, he wouldnt have had room for all the greens he playfully fingered before devouring.

While we all know that Oscar will be just fine if, by the age of two, he hasnt had tofu, the same is not true if we know he hasnt had an ounce of cows milk, or the products made from it. Cows milk has been promoted as a food without substitute, as being necessary and not interchangeable with foods outside the dairy group. Many of us sense that all is right when we pour milk on our cereal for breakfast. When I got to talking with Michelle, my college friend from Minnesota, about milk, she mentioned straight off that her grandmother thinks a meal without milk is incomplete. So does Michelle. Years of nudging from our elders, combined with government dairy recommendations and dairy-industry advertisements have implanted in our minds a way of thinking about milk that is hard to supplant. Milk is on our minds and tables.

Upon closer examination, the North American preoccupation with milk as vital betrays something more worrisome than a mere buy-in to dairy industry advertising. It signals a nationwide surrendering to fuzzy logic. The erroneous reasoning that has (mis)guided North Americans for decades runs as follows: calcium is essential for growing strong bones; milk is high in calcium; therefore, if we dont drink milk, our bones will lack the calcium they need to be strong, and we will suffer the broken health consequences. Spelled out this way, the leap in logic that every prospective law student tries to avoid when taking the standardized Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) is unmistakable: while milk is high in calcium, milk is not the only source of calcium; therefore, just because milk is high in calcium and calcium is essential for strong bones and good health does not mean milk is essential for strong bones and good health.

Descriptions by the National Dairy Council and other dairy promoters of milks unique nutrient package as comprising nine essential nutrients have only reinforced the popular misconception that milk is an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. To harried parents who are half-listening and chasing after toddlers or juggling tween routines, multitasking means eliminating the unnecessary and sometimes, mistakenly, the essence: milk has nine essential nutrients gets clipped to milk is essential. The USDA defines an essential nutrient as a dietary substance required for healthy body functioning. Milk, which many healthy, functioning bodies live without, doesnt meet this fundamental definition of an essential nutrient.

Milks status as the ultimate health food is too embedded in the national psyche for logic and cautious reading to budge conventional thinking. Not even the research and resulting recommendations of Harvard physicians have been enough to move the North American mindset outside of the milk box. For years Dr. David S. Ludwig, professor of pediatrics at the Harvard Medical School (HMS) and professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and his colleague, Dr. Walter C. Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at HSPH and a professor of medicine at HMS, have been challenging the U.S. Department of Agricultures (USDA) dietary recommendations regarding milk, which have remained relatively consistent since World War II, when the USDA started getting serious about telling Americans how to eat.

These recommendations can be found at ChooseMyPlate.gov, an interactive government website designed to illuminate its MyPlate icon, which the USDA introduced in 2011 to replace its less intuitive Food Guide Pyramid. The icon illustrates five food groups: Fruits; Vegetables; Grains; Protein; and Dairy. Depicted as a blue circle just touching the plate where youd find a glass, the Dairy category reads visually, if not literally, as milk. Whether you conflate the two or not, Dairy is the only food group that is made up entirely of one food, milk. If the USDA has its way, you will obtain a substantial portion of your daily calories from this single food and the products made from it. Click on Dairy, and then on How Much is Needed and youll find that the answer is a lot. According to the guidelines at the time of this books publication, children two to three years old should be consuming two cups of dairy per day; children four to eight, two and a half cups per day; and everyone else, three cups per day.

Doing the math shows thats not just a lot of milk; its also a lot of sugar and, depending on how you take your milk, a lot of fat. You might want to have a pencil and paper, or at least a calculator, handy here. Im going to assume that you are older than eight and among the majority who, according to the USDA, should be consuming three cups of dairy every day. Now lets say you choose to meet your daily dairy quota with a low-calorie product such as skim milk. Youre still allocating a hefty 240 calories every day to one food, which is more than 10 percent of the daily calories of an average diet. And thats the conservative scenario. The reality is that not too many people enjoy skim milk. If you and your family are like most, you probably cant bear the watery stuff without added sugar and flavor. Moving to the more likely case, well start with you and consider the kids later.