MY THESIS
I believe that cow milk is not meant to be drunk by humans, and that its production and consumption is damaging to both humans and cows. This is an important matter because milk is a very common food in the everyday lives of millions of people, considering the fact that milk is placed in the 3rd level of the food pyramid, which means that it is recommended by most nutritionists to have 3 to 5 servings of milk everyday.
Allergies are very sensitive immune responses to substances that either enter or come in contact with the body. Eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and gluten all can hurt the immune system, to the point of causing deadly reactions called anaphylaxis. Milk is different, considering that most people who have bad reactions to milk aren't actually allergic to it. We know this because it's not their immune system that's responding to the milk.
According to recent research done by Elizabeth Weise shared by “ABC News”, somewhat less than 40% of people in the world retain the ability to digest lactose after childhood. People who are lactose intolerant cannot digest lactose, the main sugar found in milk. Human beings produce an enzyme called “lactase”, which permits us to digest lactose. Between the ages of two and five, people usually stop producing this enzyme because they stop breastfeeding. When a lactose intolerant person drinks milk, the undigested lactose ends up in the colon, where it ferments and causes a series of problems1.
Being able to digest milk is simply not normal. Thanks to our creative ingenuity and perhaps even our survival needs, we adopted the questionable habit of drinking another species’ milk. Cow’s milk is “custom-designed” for calves; nobody can dispute that cow’s milk is an excellent food source for them, given that they weigh around 100 pounds at birth, and that they typically gain approximately eight times their weight by the time they are weaned. But unlike humans, once calves are weaned, they never drink milk again. And the same applies to every other mammal on this planet2.
The milk available to a typical consumer is also usually processed. Until the end of the 19th century in Europe and the beginning of the 20th century in the US, milk was consumed unpasteurized or raw. Later on, milk processing became the industry’s standard. At present, both cows and their milk go through a series of standard procedures before arriving to local stores, such as rearing, harvesting, pasteurization and homogenisation. Usually a lactating cow is reared in a dairy farm being fed grain, hay, or silage (conserved forage) in close quarters known as confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Once it is of age and ready for production, the cow is milked usually at least twice a day, with a machine that mimics the act of a young calf by creating a pulsating vacuum around the teat, which causes the milk to be released from the udder. Then the milk is tested for antibiotics, and it goes through processes such as pasteurization and homogenization. Pasteurization involves heating every particle of milk to a specific temperature for a specified period of time and cooling it again without allowing recontamination, and homogenization involves pushing the raw milk through an atomizer to form tiny particles so that the fat is dispersed evenly throughout the milk, stopping the fat from floating to the top of the container. It has also been proved that pasteurization in many cases decreases that quality of the milk, because it reduces or eliminates some valuable enzymes and vitamins (such as A, C, B6 and B12)3.
Nowadays, milking cows are regularly given antibiotics to prevent infections and most are also injected with a genetically engineered form of bovine growth hormone (rBGH), a synthetic hormone used to artificially increase milk production. This synthetic hormone affects both cow and human health. It affects cow health by increasing the risk of mastitis by 25%, affecting reproductive functions, increasing the risk of clinical lameness by 50%, and shortening the lives of cows. Milk from rBGH-treated cows contains higher levels of Insulin Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), and even though humans naturally have IGF-1, elevated levels in the human body have been linked to colon and breast cancer.
Here are 3 quotes that support my argument:
“Being able to digest milk is so strange that scientists say we shouldn't really call lactose intolerance a disease, because that presumes it's abnormal. Instead, they call it lactase persistence, indicating what's really weird is the ability to continue to drink milk.”
- Elisabeth Weise and USA TODAY, “Sixty percent of adults can't drink milk”, 2015
“Drinking rBGH milk would thus be expected to significantly increase IGF-1 blood levels and consequently to increase risks of developing breast cancer and promoting its invasiveness.”
- Samuel Epstein, MD, “Monsanto’s Hormonal Milk Poses Serious Risks of Breast Cancer, Besides Other Cancers”, June 21, 1998
–Dr Michael Klaper MD, RawNut's Blog, “Human’s milk is for humans. Cow’s milk is for calves.”
THE ANTITHESIS (OPPOSING SIDE)
The opposition’s argument is that milk is a necessary food in our everyday lives because it provides essential nutrients like calcium, protein and vitamins, and that processes such as pasteurization and homogenization are imperative for hygienic and therefore health matters. They believe that once milk goes through these processes it should be re-fortified with nutrients such as vitamin A, D and some enzymes, given that they are commonly reduced in the process. They also believe that injecting cows with recombinant bovine growth hormone is a good thing because that way cows will produce more milk and therefore milk will be cheaper and affordable to low income families4. Lactose intolerance affects Asian, African, and Mulatto communities mostly, and therefore the opposition consists essentially of Anglo and European communities5.
SYNTHESIS
I believe that both sides can agree upon the fact that even though bovine growth hormone potentially makes milk cheaper and more affordable, it is not good for both cows and humans. They also agree upon the principle of lactose persistence, and that more than half of the earth’s population cannot digest milk which leads to diseases. Even though the opposition presents its information in a misleading way by saying that “1 out of 10 people are lactose intolerant” without there being any proof behind it, both sides of the argument should agree that the great majority of humanity cannot digest lactose, given that there is available research online which provides solid proof for this affirmation. They also agree upon the fact that re-fortifying nutrients back into the milk after pasteurization, if done in a very delicate way, can result positively in our health. Lastly, both sides can also agree that even though milk is not the most appropriate food to get the nutrients we need from, it is a very affordable option and therefore provides these nutrients to millions of persons all around the world who cannot afford a better alternative. For different reasons, processed milk nowadays that is available for most of the population is not as healthy as it could be, but it is available nonetheless6.
This synthesis moves beyond the argument between both sides because it focuses on our main priority, which in this case is our mental and physical health. It is not healthy to drink milk from a cow that has been injected with bovine growth hormone, given that it has been proved that it is linked with colon and breast cancer; and given that injecting bovine growth hormone to a cow usually leads to mastitis, it makes it morally unhealthy for us to consume it under my point of view. But, if it is impossible to afford a healthier option to ingest the nutrients we need from, then the healthiest option would be to drink milk.
This synthesis has transformed my point of view on the subject because it has helped me realize that after all milk provides some nutrients that we need in our everyday lives to many people of low income who cannot afford a healthier alternative. I realized that farmers have a lot of pressure to keep the price of their milk as low as possible, which makes them have to treat cows in a way that is not healthy for them. This helped me notice that if farmers wouldn’t be subsidized by the government, and if they didn’t have so much pressure over them, milk would indeed be much more healthy than what we find today mostly available. It has also helped me understand what bovine growth hormone really is, and I have arrived to the conclusion that I would like to do everything I can to not support milk that comes from farms that use this hormone.
I made a presentation about this topic where I present my argument, the opposing argument, and the synthesis in a more interactive way, adding images to all of the arguments and conclusion.
1 http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/science/2009-08-30-lactose-intolerance_n.htm ↩
1 http://www.drvanitamathew.com/post/milk-the-biggest-myth/2029 ↩
1 https://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/ ↩
1 http://milk.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000972 ↩
1 http://milk.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000661 ↩
1 http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/is-milk-healthy ↩
