Milk CAUSES osteoporosis??

[paximperium]

The chemistry of this particular "hoax", "untruth", "woo" puzzles me. I use milk because it has free calcium, to reach the needed calcium levels for my body to grow with strong bones. Ok. Then someone pointed out that milk is supposed to have protein that causes your blood to become more acidic. Ok. but ain't soy milk more dangerous then? AFAIK it has more protein than cow's milk. I have no data source for this whatsoever, I'm just curious.

Nah, its from a plant. Plants proteins are not as dangerous as animal proteins because animal proteins are poison and filled with evil dark festering pus and cruel seal clubbing, monkey brain eating and dog kicking, meat eating, planet destroying people.

...and yes, I'm being sarcastic since it is impossible to tell at times. It takes a special fanatic to consider lying as perfectly justified. Creationist, anti-vaccinations, anti-GM food, anti-sex ed. etc. are just delusional liars who seem perfectly fine with lying to support their cause. Just read these anti-milk or ultra-vegan websites for a taste of this mindset.

 

[dudalb]

Nah, its from a plant. Plants proteins are not as dangerous as animal proteins because animal proteins are poison and filled with evil dark festering pus and cruel seal clubbing, monkey brain eating and dog kicking, meat eating, planet destroying people.

...and yes, I'm being sarcastic since it is impossible to tell at times. It takes a special fanatic to consider lying as perfectly justified. Creationist, anti-vaccinations, anti-GM food, anti-sex ed. etc. are just delusional liars who seem perfectly fine with lying to support their cause. Just read these anti-milk or ultra-vegan websites for a taste of this mindset.

So I am not the only one who considers PETA to be a bunch of wackjobs?

BTW we have one PETA fanatic who posts here at JREF. He is really annoyning. I am surprised he has not shown up here but he pretty much sticks to politics where he posts his rants.

 

[Goshawk]

I am now questioning the statement that osteoporosis is not seen in India or China (it may be due to access to medical care).

It may also be due to shorter life spans. If you die from something else before osteoporosis has a chance to develop, then you simply show up in the statistics as "someone who did not get osteoporosis", but the reason is not given.

This is why it's important not to put your life on the line vis-a-vis statistics, because they can say pretty much whatever you want them to say.

 

[paximperium]

So I am not the only one who considers PETA to be a bunch of wackjobs?

BTW we have one PETA fanatic who posts here at JREF. He is really annoyning. I am surprised he has not shown up here but he pretty much sticks to politics where he posts his rants.

You talking about the "You believe in Animal Rights thread"? I give most people a short talking to and if they keep spewing garbage, I get bored and move on. PETA are controlled by nuts. Had to deal with their kin when I did basic science research in an animal lab. I'm more a fan of the SPCA.

 

[Arthur Denton]

I think animals shall not suffer while dying, I mean, kill them fast. But for every animal you don't eat, I'm gonna eat three, all the way. I love meat, even though it is sometimes an inefficient way to grow food. But I must agree that often PETA and Greenpeace are a tad nuts when reacting to potential threats, and they often overreact.

Milk is good for you, though.

 

[sanguine]

It may also be due to shorter life spans. If you die from something else before osteoporosis has a chance to develop, then you simply show up in the statistics as "someone who did not get osteoporosis", but the reason is not given.

This.

You can't suffer from osteoporosis if you die of Leishmaniasis or dysentery. I'll be interested in watching what happens with osteoporosis and similar conditions in China as the wealthier middle class expands there.

 

[Aquila]

Thank you for pointing out that people in the "developing" countries (do we even call them that any more?) might not live as long, and that the causes of osteoporosis might be other than nutritional (genetics, age and size). Here is one of those info pages which first allerted me to all this. I think the author of this web site got the info originally from John Robbins' book The Food Revolution.

according to http://www.livrite.com/speaker.htm

 Countries with the highest consumption of dairy products: Finland, Sweden, United States, England
 Countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis: Finland, Sweden, United States, England
 Daily calcium intake for African Americans: More than 1,000 mg
 Daily calcium intake for black South Africans: 196 mg.
 Hip fracture rate for African Americans compared to black South Africans: 9 times greater

 Calcium intake in rural China: One-half that of people in the United States
 Bone fracture rate in rural China: One-fifth that of people in the United States

 Foods that when eaten produce calcium loss through urinary excretion: Animal protein, salt, and coffee
 Amount of calcium lost in the urine of a woman after eating a hamburger: 28 milligrams
 Amount of calcium lost in the urine of a woman after drinking a cup of coffee: 2 milligrams

 

[Chris Haynes]

So even though India is the largest dairy producer in the world, it does not compare for consumption of dairy?

 

[Chris Haynes]

I just noticed that there is lots of research on osteoporosis done in China. It seems to be a concern. I found a paper (using the review tab of PubMed because there were so many papers) that is available online:
http://www.ismni.org/jmni/pdf/27/06KUNG.pdf

It is J Musculoskelet Neuronal Interact. 2007 Jan-Mar;7(1):26-32. Links

Genetic and environmental determinants of osteoporosis.

Kung AW, Huang QY.
Department of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China. [email protected]
(sorry, goofy cut and paste). Anyway, it says

The estimated life-time risk of a Chinese woman having an osteoporotic fracture is 32%​

​

. It is projected that by 2050, more than 50% of the world’s hip fractures will occur in Asia, mainly in China.​

Sorry, but I'll believe Chinese medical researchers more than some guy with a website that says "livrite" when it comes to subjects on Chinese health.

​

 

[Eos of the Eons]

omigosh, stop the presses, yet ANOTHER website full of lies and paranoia on the net. Pfft. Might as well become one of those nutty folks that never eat and expect some sort of epiphany. Nuts. Everything IS bad for you, but your body has evolved to handle the bad to get the good. Heck, might as well learn how the body actually works so that you can evaluate the nutjob sites on the net. Hey, there's good sites on the net too.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-protein-diets/AN00847

Too much of any good thing can be bad for you. Just stay away from all or nothing websites written up by fanatical doomsayers.

Lessons on website evaluations:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/webeval/webeval.html
http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/posters/chromosome/evaluate.shtml
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/evaluatinghealthinformation.html

 

[Chris Haynes]

...according to http://www.livrite.com/speaker.htm

 Countries with the highest consumption of dairy products: Finland, Sweden, United States, England
...

So I did a bit more digging on dairy consumption. It took a bit, but I found a paper from 2003 with a table of protein foods consumption for lots of countries:
http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/reprint/133/11/4048S

Now, it is sorted by meat consumption. But it does not take much to import it into a spreadsheet and just sort by milk. None of those countries made it in the top ten. The US was #29, and Finland was #15. And I was surprised that the Netherlands was not on your list, it came in at #11.

The title of the table is "Consumption of meat, milk, eggs and fish by country (kg/capita/y). (Data from FAO)"

Here is part of my spread sheet:
country_____milk
Albania_____242.2
Somalia_____187.4
Romania_____176.8
Ireland_____174.8
Kazakhstan_____174.2
Kyrgyzstan_____173.9
Ukraine_____150.4
Cyprus_____148.9
Yugoslavia,_____146.9
Costa Rica_____143.5
Netherlands_____140
Estonia_____137.7
Uzbekistan_____131.9
Uruguay_____131.6
Finland_____131.3
Belarus_____130.2
Latvia_____127.4
Bulgaria_____125.2
Russian_____124.9
Mongolia_____124.7
Turkmenistan_____122.4
Mauritania_____121.4
United Kingdom_____121.1
United Arab Emirates_____120.9
Iceland_____120.6
Dominica_____119.2
Brazil_____118.7
Sudan_____117.6
U.S._____117.3
Bosnia and Herzegovina_____116.8

(I seem to be having trouble using the table function... )

I think there is a problem with your source of information. Now, I don't care whether or not you drink milk. My younger sister has been lactose intolerant her entire life, all she has had to do was take some calcium while she was pregnant.

Milk is also not the only source of calcium. There is plenty in good soup stock (oh, and bones get soft when they are simmered for a while, I make all my own soup stock).

But I think you need to look for better information.

 

[Chris Haynes]

So even though India is the largest dairy producer in the world, it does not compare for consumption of dairy?

Actually, India was #88:
India----47.5
(kg/capita/year)

It may produce lots of milk, but there is that whole large population in poverty thing.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

It's probably already been posted but I haven't read through all the posts. The pH of your body (blood, intracellular and intercellular fluids) is critical to all the chemical reactions that one needs to survive. Get too far out of the narrow normal pH range and you die, instantly. Your heart will stop among other things.

 

[Soapy Sam]

What is meant by "milk" in this context?
Full fat? Semi skimmed? Skimmed? UHT?

 

[Chris Haynes]

I assumed that it was anything that was milked from a domestic mammal, and processed. I assume the data included goat cheese, yak butter tea, drinking milk, yogurt, butter, ghee, any cheese, buttermilk, chai, clotted cream and on and on.

 

[paximperium]

I assumed that it was anything that was milked from a domestic mammal, and processed. I assume the data included goat cheese, yak butter tea, drinking milk, yogurt, butter, ghee, any cheese, buttermilk, chai, clotted cream and on and on.

You are forgetting the dangers of Human Breast Milk.

 

[Aquila]

There is a genetic component. From http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/osteoporosis.html ....

I am now questioning the statement that osteoporosis is not seen in India or China (it may be due to access to medical care).

Plus India is a major dairy producer and user, http://www.indiadairy.com/ind_world_number_one_milk_producer.html. Ghee is a type of butter, many sauces are yogurt based, and then there is chai (tea in milk). Looking around I happened upon a pretty cool site for food:
http://www.food-india.com/

Also, another form of calcium is from bones. In China soup is consumed, and much of that soup is created by making a stock of bones from chickens, fish and beef. The stock also forms a basis for many sauces. The simmering of bones releases calcium:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0ISW/is_259-260/ai_n10299306/pg_7

Funnily enough when I turned on my TV yesterday there was a Globetrekker program about India, where a young Indian/American gal was traveling around with a wok and untensils, and cooking in the street. She was also interviewing chefs and tasting their curries. Yes, Indian food uses a lot of yogurt from the cows which are of course sacred, so they don't kill them, just use the milk for food and economics.

Maybe you guys are right; osteoporosis, being mainly a woman thing, linked to hormone loss at menopause, is not a medical priority in a country where poverty and hygiene are more important. I did see one thing on the program which was surprising and illustrates another poster's wondering whether some of the diseases seen in Western countries would show up in India/Asia as they got more affluent:

There was a scene in Goa, looked like a quite affluent beach club where natives were having lunch in a big tent. They were sampling lots of different curries, some of which, as a side, included French Fries! Also, some of the people at the restaurant looked quite over-weight. Apparently India is changing.

 

[Chris Haynes]

You are forgetting the dangers of Human Breast Milk.

Funny you should say that... someone once tried to tell me that my son's seizures were from drinking milk. I told him that a two-day old newborn was only drinking breast milk, so then he tried to blame it on me drinking cow milk.

The thing is that, while many people do have problems with milk (the genetics of whole families prevent the production of lactase), it does not mean everyone will have trouble with milk.

 

[Aquila]

What is meant by "milk" in this context?
Full fat? Semi skimmed? Skimmed? UHT?

Years ago, when people got their milk directly from cows on a farm, there was none of this categorization. Thankfully, Pasteur discovered the process to kill bacteria, so we then had pasteurized milk, and then (in the 1960s?) the diet was invented, which was mainly about not gaining weight by reducing fat in food.

Then we had growth hormones added to cow's food, and antibiotics so that the cows could survive close living conditions in mechanized milk factories. So now we have to read the labels to see what we're ingesting. The milk question involves much more than calcium and osteoporosis - and unfortunately any questions about the science of digestion become entangled with the politics of agriculture.

I don't think that there is any doubt that cow's milk is a very good, if not essential food for growing children, after they have been weaned from their mother's breast milk - although there are some purists who would even argue that cow's milk is naturally just for cows, not humans. But for adults, there seem to be so many health concerns which out-balance milk's calcium supply. When I was pregnant with both my children, my ob/gyn said that I could get enough calcium for both myself and baby from vegetables (I also took vitamins and suppliments).

Many people seem to be switching to soy milk now. But even that has been critisized because of the estrogen - like chemical in it, which apparently has an adverse effect on men.

 

[Chris Haynes]

.... I did see one thing on the program which was surprising and illustrates another poster's wondering whether some of the diseases seen in Western countries would show up in India/Asia as they got more affluent:

There was a scene in Goa, looked like a quite affluent beach club where natives were having lunch in a big tent. They were sampling lots of different curries, some of which, as a side, included French Fries! Also, some of the people at the restaurant looked quite over-weight. Apparently India is changing.

My brother recently finished a two year assignment for the US Embassy in New Dehli, India. It is an incredible changing country with lots of issues that we cannot even imagine. In his nice neighborhood near the embassies water was only available for a couple hours per day. So houses have pumps to pull in as much as they can from the system which is then stored on roof top tanks. Because of the pressure, the pumps also pull in sewage. The kitchens have distillers to treat and boil the water before it is used.

A good book on India he recommended:
Being Indian : inside the real India by Pavan Varma (it seems to be out of print, sorry)