Posted on 07/24/2012 6:40:50 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
(Updated) The war on milk has shifted fronts. First it was sugar-laden chocolate milk, which parents and school administrators battled in recent years to remove from school-lunch menus. Now, it’s plain old moo that’s under fire.
On Thursday, a national doctors group petitioned the U.S. government to remove milk as a required food group from the National School Lunch Program, the federally assisted program that has provided lunch to millions of public school kids since 1946. The doctors’ reasoning: milk doesn’t help protect kids’ bones.
The promotion of milk to help build strong bones in kids is, “in effect, the promotion of an ineffective placebo,” writes the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in its petition [PDF]. “Milk is high in sugar, high in fat and high in animal protein” — all of which counters its purported benefits to bone health, the committee argues.
The PCRM notes that dairy products, including milk, are the No. 1 source of saturated fat in Americans’ diets. Drinking milk for the calcium it contains is therefore a losing strategy, especially since people can get their daily recommended calcium from other, more nutritious foods. And for millions of Americans who are allergic to milk — including 1.3 million children — or intolerant to the lactose it contains, drinking milk carries potentially severe health risks.
“One of the only reasons people talk about dairy, or promote it at all, is because it is going to help build strong bones,” says Dr. Neal Barnard, president of the PCRM. “Research has now made it abundantly clear that milk doesn’t build strong bones. Whether we are talking about children who are forming bones or older people who are trying to keep their bone integrity, milk doesn’t have a beneficial effect on either one.”
(Excerpt) Read more at healthland.time.com ...
In the 1950’s we learned that milk was nature’s most perfect food, with eggs at number two, and meat at number 3.
Milk is probably the most healthy item on school lunch menus. The government approved school lunch which often consists of breaded nuggets of fused chicken parts or cardboard like pizza with greasy peperoni made from boar hogs with meat too fat for anything else and cheese made from that nasty milk is infinitely better.
“I’m betting most dairy farmers don’t drink Kool Aid.”
I suspect they do. Dairy farming is tightly regulated, price controlled, and subsidized. Watch what the dairy farmers do if any of this is discontinued.
(even then I thought "why should they get part of my swag?" lol)
Problem is not the food, it’s the schools. Shut them down.
NIH says, "An estimated 30 million to 50 million American adults are lactose intolerant." That's 10-17% generally and it's far higher in various ethnic groups.
It’s funny since those “smart-boards” are the least “green” of the options.
The simple solution is to get the government out of the food-forcing business, and let intelligent parents and the local organizations they control decide what their kids will eat.
When it comes down to real-world choices - especially among the “elites” and the taxpayer-supported classes - “green” doesn’t matter nearly as much as “cool,” both literally and figuratively.
And just think of all the money that could be saved if the Guvment would ban that. Why, everyone knows that dihydrogen monoxide induced deterioration is the major cause of expenditure for infrastructure repair...
By the way, I think I see some rust forming on that new car. And watch out for that pothole...
My son’s allergic to cow milk and soy, so he gets calcium from spinach and calcium-fortified OJ, which he loves. At 6, he’s as rambunctious and filled with daredevilry as other kids his age and hasn’t broken a bone yet - whereas his friends have.
Point being, responsible parents know what’s best for their kids, take precautions and make adjustments to their kids diets as necessary; and DON’T need the state telling them how to do it!
If that were so, the liberals would be pushing for more milk in schools, not less.
Better — kill the school breakfast, lunch, and dinner programs. Make the kids carry their own food from home. Fire everyone associated in any way and any level associated with the program in the schools.
when you have to compete with unregulated suppliers who have access to slave labor, in an environment so overly regulated that you need to have a lawyer on staff, a subsidy might just be the only way the playing field can be less tilted against you.
I think that government at all levels should just abandon all pretense and announce that their primary purpose and objective is to suck all the joy out of life, wherever they might find any.
Are there unregulated milk suppliers?
I don’t know about Canadian ones but I would suspect Mexican ones are.
Thanks for the ping!
Smuggling milk?
Example: OJ. US producers can't be expected to compete with Brazil; the regulatory costs here are too high. But a way to alleviate the regulatory costs is with a subsidy. It's rank redistribution, but that's the way it is.
Before people automatically dismiss subsidies as a payoff to farmers, they might want to consider the rationale for them to begin with, as it might be legitimate under the circumstances.
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