Posted on 04/13/2005 3:35:11 PM PDT by freepatriot32
Unless you're among the bean-sprout-sized minority of Americans who describe themselves as "vegans" (vegetarians who also won't touch milk, cheese, yogurt, butter, or even a dollop of honey), you may have been alarmed by the publicity surrounding an article appearing last month in the journal Pediatrics. The anti-milk piece -- written by activists from the PETA-affiliated Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) -- concluded that feeding milk to children is unnecessary, and that there are better ways (kale, tofu, turnip greens, or spinach, for instance) for kids to get the calcium they need. In reaching this result, PCRM relied on only a few dozen of the nearly 1,000 available studies about milk and bone health, while ignoring the practical problem of getting children to eat the eight cups of cooked spinach required to replace the calcium in a small glass of milk. Does this attack on milk sound like the leading edge of an animal-rights campaign? It is.
Neal Barnard, co-author of the Pediatrics article, is PCRM's president. He's a non-practicing psychiatrist, not a pediatrician. Barnard is also president of the PETA Foundation ( click here to see its tax return, and scroll to page 25) -- the organization that owns PETA's real estate, issues its payroll checks, and funds its many overseas offices. This means Barnard is arguably one of the two most powerful people at PETA.
No wonder Neal Barnard's research claims that there is "no evidence to support the notion that milk is a preferred source of calcium." That's exactly what you'd expect PETA to say. The same PETA that believes a dairy cow's life is as valuable as that of any human being.
A Pediatrics editorial accompanying PCRM's study put things in a more constructive perspective:
The National Academy of Sciences [says] that the immediate goal of pediatric health care providers is still to achieve maximum peak bone mass in our adolescent patients. What is the best way to achieve this goal? A calcium intake of 1300 mg/day will cause no harm that we know of, and the National Academy of Sciences has set an upper limit of 2500 mg/day for this age group. The easiest way to achieve this level of intake is to consume dairy products. Another voice of reason came in 2001 from a "Special Committee" assigned by the USDA to evaluate PCRM's complaints against the popular "milk moustache" advertising campaign. According to the committee's findings of "scientific consensus":
[I]ncreased calcium intake, especially from dairy products, increases bone density in childhood and adolescence ... [C]ow milk consumption at currently recommended intakes is likely to be beneficial [for bone health at all stages of the life cycle." The coup de grace came in the form of Congressional testimony offered in 2003 by Creighton University medical professor Robert Heaney, a world-renowned expert on osteoporosis and bone health. There is ample evidence, Heaney told Congress, that "there are effectively no substitutes for dairy foods if we are to meet the nutritional needs of our school age children ... The arguments raised against the healthfulness of milk are scientifically groundless." Heaney continued:
I think it is useful to recognize the origin of the anti-milk campaign -- and it is literally a campaign. If one checks carefully, one finds that behind most of the stories is an organization called the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and its sister organization, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). These are animal rights organizations that oppose the use of any animal product -- leather, fur, meat, or milk. Despite being "outed" as a PETA affiliate before the U.S. Congress, PCRM's hostility toward dairy foods continues unabated. In one of his books, Barnard writes that feeding kids meat and milk "is a form of child abuse." (That same message now shows up on PETA billboards.) Ten years later, Barnard wrote that milk was itself an addictive drug. "Cheese," he told a Food and Drug Administration panel, is "dairy crack" and "the purest form of the [milk] drug." [Click here for video and forward to 03:24:38.]
Just how dedicated is the "Physicians Committee" to exiling milk from Americans' diets?
PCRM publicly objected to a U.S. Senator's proposal to put milk vending machines in every American public school.
PCRM contends that juvenile diabetes is caused by milk consumption -- a claim that endocrinologist Dr. Ines Guttman-Bauman of Children's National Medical Center calls "complete nonsense." PCRM also alleges milk's complicity in everything from asthma and allergies to breast cancer.
In 2002, PCRM filed a legal petition against the U.S. Department of Agriculture, claiming school lunches that include milk "discriminate against minorities. "
On a vegetarian message board in December, a PCRM nutritionist issued a plea for help collecting examples of how schools encourage kids to drink milk. "We're looking for anything promoting dairy milk," she wrote, "from posters to classroom materials. If any of your kids have digital cameras or cameras on their cell phones and could take pics of what they see, that would be great."
This month, PCRM asked its supporters for help gathering information that could be used to sue dairy producers. "PCRM," the group's e-mail read, "would like to bring a lawsuit against the dairy industry for false advertising."
Last month's Pediatrics study carried a curious disclaimer that declared PCRM's authors had "no conflict of interest." If being a part of the animal-rights movement (and maintaining alliances with the movement's violent fringe, as we discussed yesterday) doesn't disqualify you from analyzing the nutritional benefits of milk, it's hard to imagine what would.
well who better to give MEDICAL advise for children? I mean really why would you consider listening to a pediatrician for what is best for your child when you can take the advice of a non practising psychiatrist?I really hope for his sake that his malpractice insurance is paid up.
I suggest every child be given a milk goat at birth.
And when you grow up you can have goat cheese. :)
Yummy
I've never tried goat milk, is it tasty?
For Those Interested in the Research of Dr. Weston A. Price |
Having had a lot of it as a youngster, I agree. Goat milk is a great alternative to pasteurized dairy.
Vey yummy. Just finished a salad topped with olive oil & vinegar dressing and chevre cheese crumbles. Oh yummy yummy.
while ignoring the practical problem of getting children to eat the eight cups of cooked spinach required to replace the calcium in a small glass of milk.
Popeye is spinning in his grave!
Mmmmmm....me want a grilled dairy crack sandwich.
Nobody tells me anything!
I - did - not - know - that!
Thanks for the update.
Any idea what Scooby Do is up to these days?
LMAO!
you just about made me choke to death on my grilled CHEESE (as in made with dairy. up yours PCRM. :-p)sandwich when you put that mental image in my head of small school children sitting down to breakfast and nana pouring a big steaming pile of spinach and turnip greens on thier cheerios. :-)My advise is to take your grandchildren over to this non practising phychiatrist who isnt a real doctor but plays one in front of congress and have him feed the children all the good nutritional food he wants and then see how quick he drops them off at your house with a free gallon of milk in each childs backback.
Yes that is a good thing what he really needs to do is get his marxist tofu od'ed brain to a practicing phychiatrist real quick there may be a chance to save 9 or 10 brain cells if he gets couseling
During one period of time, I had 2 cows giving milk and then got the first milk goat.
I put all the milk away and 3 days later fed it to the animals, drank cow milk.
Then one day, we drank the goat milk and never went back to the cow milk.
A goats milk is thicer, a mere fraction thicker, this is due to the fact that fat is suspended throughout the milk at delivery, their cream does not move to the top as quickly as the cow milk does.
If goat milk does not taste sweet and GOOD, then don't drink it. It won't be the goats fault, but rather the milk handlers fault, for not keeping it clean.
Sick people and babies can drink goat milk when nothing else works.
When you drink goat milk, you do not have the allergy problems and it is amazing how a baby will grow and never be sick on it.
One thing it does with babies, is stop that runny nose some are prone to.
If I had a baby, it would be on goat milk or cow milk, NOT soy waste, err called milk.
In the 1920's England was doing studies, on the possibility that goat milk did not cause the mysterious crib deaths that still happen today.
Some think that the deaths are due to an allergy to cow milk.
The death is due to the flim created, choking off the wind pipe.
OK, more than an answer to is it good? Yes.
I love this, turned a Peta thread into a goat thread, fantastic justice.
I will attempt to find my goat cheese recipe, it came to me from the lady at the Yuma Date Gardens, who located my King Louie for me.
Used a good vinegar or lemon juice and made gallons of it each day. Even made it for others who kept goats.
Fresh cheese, with Jalapeno peppers in it, is so good.
Add a couple fresh home grown tomatos and fresh baked bread and that is heaven.
Thank you for making me smile.
I'm really curious...
Do Vegan's eat honey?
Those poor enslaved bees are prisoners in those boxes....then they have their food for their larvae ripped out for us selfish humans.
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