Dairy dilemmas
May 6, 2010
Filed under Columnists, Patrick Holford
Why I’m not a fan of milk
If told you I was in my fifties and still breastfeeding – from another animal – you’d think I was strange. Humans are the only species who drink milk as adults, a habit that is against our evolutionary design – and for good reason.
Milk is the most common food allergen. High dairy consumers also have more breast, prostate and colorectal cancer, and more cardiovascular disease. The reasons for this are pointing towards milk and its hormonal effect. It’s all to do with three critical hormones:
- insulin
- insulin-like growth factor (IGF)
- oestrogens
A typical western diet leads to an overload of all three. Insulin is the hormone that helps control blood sugar levels by taking excess sugar out of the blood and delivering it to cells to make energy, or to the liver to turn into fat. The body also makes IGF, which is present in both breast milk and cow’s milk. The most active form, IGF-1, is a potent stimulator of growth, encouraging hormone-sensitive cells to grow. That’s why loads of dairy products early in life make you taller.
IGF-1 levels are normally high during childhood, peaking during puberty to stimulate sexual maturation, and then fall off rapidly. Insulin levels should be relatively low if you’re eating a low glycaemic load (GL) diet, but the typical western diet leads to ‘insulin resistance’. The combination of high insulin levels, insulin resistance and high IGF-1 levels is strongly linked to weight gain; diabetes; high blood pressure; heart disease; dementia; cancer; increased risk of allergy; auto-immune diseases and both teenage and adult acne.
‘Industrialised’ milk production by pregnant cows contributes to insulin resistance, as well as increasing your oestrogen overload, as these animals are kept permanently pregnant for up to five years. The amount of extra hormones that a high milk consumer receives is almost equivalent to what you’d get from oral contraceptives.
I also recommend staying away from milk protein drinks and growth hormone. Whey, the main protein in milk, promotes high insulin levels, while casein, the other protein, increases IGF-1 levels. Body builders often take growth hormone, which can encourage muscle growth, but at a cost. It directly raises IGF-1 levels and, in my opinion, is best avoided.
If you don’t drink milk, eat plenty of nuts, seeds and beans, which are high in calcium. A decent multivitamin/mineral will give you an extra 200mg and many alternative milk drinks have added calcium, too. You won’t go short.
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I agree for the most part.
There are, however, some reasons for dairy consumption, in particular for strength and power athletes for exactly the growth promoting reasons. In that case, dairy should be consumed in its rawest and most unprocessed form: raw milk from grass fed cows, alternatively organic (full cream) milk for safest use and full benefit.
About the recommendation of eating beans (and to some extend seeds): That is just plain horrible advice and also pretty ironic if you state that drinking milk is “a habit that is against our evolutionary design”. Beans (just as grains and potatoes) are nothing we evolved on: They contain antinutrients (which means they are poisonous) in its raw form and humans only started eating them about 10.000 years ago when they figured out that we can get rid off some of the poison by cooking them. For more info about this, search for info about the “Paleo” way of eating (which is the way of eating according to our evolutionary design): Milk is out according to that way, but so are beans.