Monday, March 01, 2010

Analyzing Dairy Claims

It's high time to again pimp The Real Fitness Nerd, one of the publications where I occasionally scribe. The credit goes to Denis Faye in this instance for his straight dope attack on dairy claims.

Having a cow over cheesy dairy claims

Instead of summarizing I'm going to suggest you go and read it. If you like, subscribe to the Nerd as your critical eye to what's happening in the fitness and nutrition world.

I've cast doubt on the dairy industry's integrity myself (search my articles and mailbag). This inevitably motivates an attack from the uninformed masses that are led to believe that humans can't exist without dairy. No exception here, where one reader tries to defend the industry's claim that milk is an important source of vitamin D. Nice to see Denis ferret out the bullshit.

6 comments:

TheThinker said...

This kind of frustrates me, what if dairy is something you need for calories?
Personally I eat around 3400 calories everyday and at least 2 servings of dairy. I am off chicken and am a pescatarian. How would you rate dairy if its only purpose is calorie intake and hasn't caused harm to you?

Steve Edwards said...

We're not saying that there's necessarily anything wrong with dairy, only that's it's not necessary. Some dairy, especially when it's unpasteurized from healthy cows is a great source of nutrients. Unfortunately that is hard to find.

Cindy Ward said...

I stopped drinking milk several months ago. I still consume minimal amounts of cheese and yogurt.
I try to keep my nutrition well balanced so I cover my needs...I also take Activit and Core Cal-Mag for backup! :)
I loved the article!

Anonymous said...

I would like to comment on the fact that Humans are the only mamals that continue to consume milk BEYOND the nursing/weaning stage... It is natural for an infant of any kind, human or mamalian form to suck and receive nutrition through "mothers" milk, however, once we begin consuming and digesting whole foods, we are to wean ourselves from milk...
We are also the only species that not only continues to consume milk into and thru adulthood but we are also the only species to consume the milk of another species... SO NOT NATURAL, in my opinion...

Steve Edwards said...

There is no argument that we need dairy. I mean, the American Dairy Council makes claims that we need it but that's bullocks given billions of people world wide don't consume dairy.

The milk argument, however, is speculative because many animals seem to enjoy milk when they can get it. There just isn't a way for them to get it. So, yes, it's not natural but you could use that position for anything that's bagged, cooked, canned, seasoned, etc.

I try not to consume too much dairy, especially pasteurized dairy, but also am not ready to slam it as a food group for every person. It can have a lot of nutritional value and I don't recall hearing of any real problems with it until we began poor farming practices.

Anonymous said...

It's funny, but after 30+ trips to Asia . . . I noticed that I always lose weight when over there. And I eat very well over there. But, then it dawned on me - I eat very little, if any, dairy. Certainly no cheese - which makes up too much of my diet at home. I'm just not convinced that the human body should be consuming milk products from a cow's tit.

-Josh