Milk Does a Body Bad?

1.67
I'm no longer a fan of milk. Don't get me wrong, I love a cold glass of whole milk (like once a year); to me, it tastes like drinking ice cream. A friend and I were having breakfast yesterday and it came up about limiting or eliminating dairy from our diet. I said we've gone significantly dairy-free as a family, and have reaped huge health benefits. Our kids are more healthy now, where they used to have any number of colds, bugs, stomach aches and passing illnesses, not to mention all the facial and skin irritation and breakouts. It's like we can literally turn on sickness and turn it off, just by how much dairy we eat (or don't eat).

I know what you're thinking... "Muller, that's sounds off-the-wall... milk 'does a body good', and we've been bombarded with 'Got Milk?' for decades... surely a dairy-free perspective is radical and ill- conceived..." Don't judge too quickly, though. I think everything is born out in experience; our own cause-and-effect evidence should win the day. Have you tried to go substantially dairy-free for 4-6 weeks to see what would happen?


I'm sure a next thought is, "where will I get my calcium?" We've been lulled into thinking dairy products are our best and only available option for calcium. Did you know that simple whole foods like sesame seeds, romaine, collard greens, spinach, kale, sardines and even broccoli are great sources of calcium? Big Dairy has us all mind-numbed into thinking that milk is the one and only source of calcium... I beg to differ.


A significant draw-back with dairy, which very few people in our western culture know or talk about, is that we invite inflammation and sickness into our bodies whenever we consume it. Check out some of these expert perspectives on the drawbacks of dairy in our diet:

Dr. Amy Myers - The Dangers of Dairy (on MindBodyGreen.com) 
Dr. Mark Hyman - Dairy: 6 Reasons You Should Avoid It
Dr. Joel Fuhrman - Protect Yourself Against Osteoporosis 

Need further evidence? Jen found this article on FoxNews recently:
3 daily glasses of milk linked to higher mortality rate in women

For decades, we've been overwhelmed with marketing on benefits of dairy, but the truth is, dairy is a significant source of inflammation and stress on our immune system and health. And calcium is readily available in a multitude of healthful whole foods if we simply do a little research. So give it your own test, and see if limiting dairy brings you some healthful benefits. I bet it will.

By the Way

I often say that cow's milk is a perfect food for one recipient: a baby cow. As humans, a mother's milk is the perfect food for a human baby for the first year or two; that's the way God designed it to work. Realize that there are whole cultures on our globe which consider the consumption of cow's milk to be not only strange, but gross. Why would we consume the milk of a 2,000 pound bovine? Ewww...

I've even heard it said that in California dairy is maligned in the same way as cigarettes (folks from the west coast, feel free to weigh in with a comment...) Dairy consumption is well out of the mainstream in those more progressive foodie locales. Maybe pushing against dairy is a bit ahead of the curve... check in with me in 15 years and we'll see...