In my last post, I mentioned my belief in avoiding dairy. This video, from a few years ago, mentions just a few of the reasons why.
Humans are the only mammals who drink the milk of another species, and the only mammals who drink milk at all past infancy/young childhood. Besides all the other factors touched upon in the video, our bodies just weren't designed to drink cow's milk.
I have heard/read about avoiding dairy before, but I'm still not sold on it being evil. That could be because I have a strong love for all things dairy, but it's also in part because I believe in moderation. You could certainly make a case for a lot of stuff being poisonous or evil (meat, alcohol, soy to name just a few), and too much of just about anything can lead to problems of one kind or another.
ReplyDeleteHumans are the only mammals that eat/drink a lot of things, which doesn't make it right per se, but that alone doesn't make it wrong either. A dog or cat will drink milk if it's on offer -- same with things like cheese. If a dog could milk a cow, would it? lol I don't know.
I think the key for me is to choose dairy products that are organic, and have them in moderation.
I did want to caveat what I said in my first post -- moderation doesn't apply to all things for me, as I do try to avoid things created in a lab all the time. If it's a man-made ingredient, it's not really food. I thought maybe my comment sounded a little like those HFCS commercials: "As long as you have it in moderation, it's fine!" Which is not what I meant at all.
ReplyDeleteHm, I guess I shouldn't have used the "Humans are the only mammals that drink milk" as a selling point :) since that is really only one small factor of many for me. I completely agree with you about moderation, as well as the other foods you mentioned - soy, meat, alcohol. Those are all foods with their own problems to be sure.
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I don't completely avoid dairy, but in a perfect world I would. For me, it's just weighing the good and the bad. I don't think milk is evil, but it is linked with too many health concerns to ignore, and just doesn't have the benefits to make up for it. A lot of people praise it for its calcium, for instance, but there are much better sources of calcium than milk.
So yes, I do think dairy should be avoided as much as possible, because there's a lot of reasons NOT to eat it, and not really any compelling reasons in favor of eating it (from a health standpoint. I know it tastes good :))