Milk Might Not Be Doing You Much Good
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
That logic could be applied to literally anything. Is beef good for you? Most Americans aren't protein deficient and beef has a lot of saturated fat in it. Is chicken good for you? Most Americans aren't protein deficient. Are carrots good for you? Most Americans aren't Vitamin A-deficient. etc.
Milk is fine. Not everyone can tolerate it. You don't need to drink a gallon a day to stay alive. But it's a perfectly fine part of a normal diet. And for kids who are sometimes fussy eaters, yeah, milk can actually make the difference between getting enough calories or not.
Most people can remove any one or two things from their diet and they won't suddenly get scurvy or pellagra.
But when I stopped working out, I soon stopped drinking milk and now I hardly touch the stuff except for a little in coffee or the occasional milkshake. As far as I can tell, it made no difference in my health.
I'm becoming a fat fuck, but that's lack of exercise, not lack of milk ;-)
I'm kind of upset that this is an argument here. It's as if the author thinks that because you drink a beverage instead of eat it, it can't make you any less hungry, and therefore you keep on eating and drinking and get fat.
If anything, when I drink a glass of milk I feel more satiated (less hungry) than I would for a lot of foods. Beverages can definitely make you feel full.
In addition, I've seen a good amount of evidence that protein (in milk or other foods) produces more satiation per unit calorie than carbs or fat. I'm too lazy to cite my sources right now, but a google search shows some merit to the idea that milk helps you lose weight.
Instead of low-fat milk, we should drink low-sugar milk. It is the milk sugar, lactose, that many people are intolerant to. If you want to get a feeling for how much sugar is in milk, try lactose free milk some time. It is made by introducing lactase which breaks the complex lactose down into simple galactose, and it tastes like a bowl of lucky charms.
Recently I have switched to drinking half-and-half instead, when I want some milk. I may even try out heavy cream eventually. Half and half has less sugar and more fat than whole milk. Consuming fat is a great way to dampen the glycemic index of sugary foods, so I think heavy cream or half and half is a much better mate to cookies than regular milk would be.
whole milk: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/6... half and half: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/4... heavy cream: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/5...
As for weight of muscles, the dry weight of muscle of someone who is fat will probably consist of more fat than protein, but muscle synthesis is driven by amino acids (the constituent parts of proteins), and the muscle fibres which is what gives you your strength is pretty much all protein.
Everyone will store some fat in cells in/around their muscles, but getting more fat in your diet has very limited effect on your ability to synthesise muscle. You may appear to get bigger muscles due to added fat, but you won't get stronger (and you'll lose definition, which is more of a body builder concern).
Basically you need amino acids, and while the body can synthesise a good chunk of the needed amino acids from other food-stuffs, if you want to add muscle there's nothing that's as efficient as getting protein, optionally supplemented with some amino acids (getting the optimal proportion of the "big three" amino acids for adding muscle - leucine, valine and isoleucine - from food sources is hard; once you get to advanced levels of lifting, you may be able eek out some tiny added benefits from branched-chain amino acid supplements that contain just those).
Evidence, or "fad diet claims"? Because the only actual satiety testing I've seen does not support the keto mythology on the subject. In fact, boiled potatoes come out 50% higher in satiety than beef. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7498104
Personally, I was a long-time vegetarian, and am now a pescetarian. I am also a very active person, training in power lifting and Brazilian jiu jitsu several times a week. I drink whole milk daily because it is calorie and protein dense, not because I think it has some magical properties.
Which does not mean there's necessarily anything wrong with it.
More to the point: if we didn't drink the milk of the mothers, neither the mothers nor the calves would exist at all; we wouldn't maintain millions of head of cattle for nostalgia. I'm not at all clear that's morally superior.
Also, considering that many of the current cattle breeds are largely human creations, I don't think there's the same moral imperative to continue their existence like I believe there is with "natural" species, or even with animal breeds which could survive on their own.
I do agree with your overall point, as ethical reasons where why I was a vegetarian for ten years. But going vegan was, personally, a bridge too far. My quality of life was impacted too much by removing eggs and dairy as they were my main sources of protein - and still are.
I can normally avoid it though. Soy/tofu/tempeh, oats, nuts, legumes and quinoa are my major sources (quinoa can be hard to find though). I imagine soy-products might be less popular in Brazil?
It does feel a little weird for the first week or two, but after about a month, I was pretty used to it, and sodas taste kinda over-sugared now.
My diet advice, for what it's worth - if you do nothing else, dump sugary drinks, including soda, fruit juices, energy drinks, etc in favor of water. It's pretty easy as long as you don't try to change everything else at the same time, and every school of thought on nutrition I'm aware of agrees that they're awful. It's also kinda nice to not have to carry everything you drink home from the store.
I didn't really realise lactose intolerance was a thing until I was in mid 20's and moved to the UK.
Many probably don't realize it until they "acquire" it themselves. Or maybe they just start feeling bloated after drinking a lot of milk or eating ice cream, and don't really consider that it might be a mild intolerance.
As far as I know, about 4% or so of the population in Scandinavia is lactose intolerant now, after increased immigration from parts of the world with more widespread lactose intolerance have increased the percentage substantially.
It was simply not on our radar until perhaps the mid 90's.
As for milk... could always tolerate it cold, but not heated (mom microwaves it). Looks like more than half the human population is lactose intolerant:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e...
Milk commercials are so over the top, in bay area radio commercials depict it for people growing up into super heroes (I kid you not).
You should switch from sugary drinks to water and fruit. It takes about 3 weeks to adjust. ( and avoid chocolate milk )
The calorie contents of Pepsi is not that far removed from many fruit juice products. Some, like lemonades, can often be higher in sugars than Pepsi.
A lack of that feeling will make you feel less good. Experts say it takes up to a month for that imbalance to normalize.
Great talk about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLnlhLNa28&feature=youtu.be...
Until I realised what was going on, when I was taking breaks from using 360mg very other day - so equivalent to 5-6 cups of coffee - to boost my weight lifting in periods, I had week long bouts of diarrhoea, intense headaches, shakes setting in in the evening (so severe I had to time my painkillers, or I'd have problems swallowing them because I had difficulty holding my hands steady enough to drink a glass of water), fever, and night sweats.
Caffeine can be a nasty drug to go cold turkey from if your intake has been high. Best bet is to step down gradually (not a long period - over a week or two), coupled with pre-emptively taking paracetamol/acetaminophen in the early evening.
Often, someone who gets a lot of caffeine and starts experiencing symptoms like above may be experiencing withdrawal without being aware.
I need to do find some similar method to stop eating bread now :)
And less healthy than the water our ancestors drank exclusively for millions of years before we domesticated animals (except for babies and their mothers' milk).
And you can't directly compare something that causes acute disease (dirty water) with something that causes chronic disease (soda).
Isn't all foodstuff this way? I watched a BBC documentary a number of years ago about a woman who had reportedly lived entirely on crisps (potato chips) for years[0]. She wasn't entirely healthy by any means, but it speaks to the resilience of our biology when you can get by on basically anything provided you get enough calories and a few vitamins.
Once you get past a bit of common sense, the whole notion of "healthy food" and "unhealthy food" often looks pretty ridiculous. It's really not worth time debating the negligible pros and cons of one particular food item.
Disclaimer: I've been drinking a pint of semi-skimmed every night since I was a child... which according to Wolfram Alpha is almost a quarter of the volume of a Gray Whale
[0] http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2011/feb/12/eaten-on...
I've read that you can survive indefinitely on a diet of potatoes and milk. I don't remember a specific source, but a quick google search seems to back that up.
There is literally no up-side to drinking milk, only purported risks. Thus, IMO the only reason to drink it is if you REALLY REALLY REALLY like the taste and can't imagine your life without it.
Also, interestingly - I personally have seen absolutely zero studies that showed milk benefits, that was not funded by the dairy farmers.
I think that Healthcare Triage does a pretty excellent job of presenting information. Just don't want anyone to consider them separate sources, as it's the same guy. :)
Rip: You need to drink one gallon of full fat milk everyday. It's almost mandatory.
Audience Member: I'm lactose intolerant, could I substitute yogurt for milk?
Rip: Gallon of yogurt.
The article's second-to-last paragraph tells you everything. We believe in milk because it's profitable for diary producers to promote it, which they do.
> Politics are certainly at play here [...] the vast majority of Dairy Management’s funding for its marketing strategies comes from the producers themselves. The U.S.D.A.'s role in promoting dairy was firmly established in the 1983 Dairy Production and Stabilization Act, which made it the business of the government to carry out a “coordinated program of promotion designed to strengthen the dairy industry’s position in the marketplace and to maintain and expand domestic and foreign markets and uses for fluid milk and dairy products.”
A cow's liver also serves a very specific evolutionary purpose for the cow, but I've never seen anyone say, "Why would anyone think of eating a cow's liver, evolved to detoxify the cow, not feed people?"
Use 2 hands, one on each side of the cup. Open mouth. Lift arms, remembering to keep back straight. Pour. DRINK DRINK DRINK DRINK
Ask HN: How do you drink milk?