Growing up, my mom always made me drink milk every morning because she claimed it was good for me. Since I was young I just drank it with no questions, but recently questions have been raised as to whether or not milk is even good for you. So now I wonder, is milk really good for you?
There have been many different studies about the health benefits of milk and what it can do to one’s body. While there are health benefits to milk, the results of these studies have been a little scary. Drinking milk as kid is such a cliché that almost everyone does it, but in recent studies, it has been shown that milk can impair a child’s ability to absorb iron and even cause subtle blood loss from the digestive tract. This results in a high risk of iron deficiency. Because milk is usually a drink for kids, it contains IGF-1, which affects growth and other functions. However, it has been shown that higher levels of IGF-1 can also stimulate cancer cells.
While it is known that milk helps bones, in other studies it has been shown that milk actually has little to no affect whereas physical activity proves as a bigger factor. Not only does milk not help your bones, but it can actually negatively affect them by depleting the calcium from your bones. Calcium is an acid neutralizer while milk acidifies the body’s pH. So, the calcium in our bones is being used to neutralize the effect of milk. This negative affect can lead to higher increase of fracture rate in the bones.
For years, the milk industry has advertised how good milk is for you with their “got milk?” and “milk does a body good” ads. However, they neglect to mention the risks of drinking milk and the negative impact it can have on your health. They fail to mention how they inject the cows with antibiotics and genetically engineered forms of growth hormones, which in turn, affect us by drinking their milk.
Milk has been one of the most popular grocery items for everyone, whether its for cooking or for your kids to drink every morning. It is important that people look into the real facts about milk instead of following the normal cliché that “milk gives you strong bones.” The milk industry may fail to mention these downfalls, but with a little research it is easy to see that milk really doesn’t do the body good.
