Big Dairy’s Top 10 Lies

70-95 percent of Blacks, Asians, Native Americans, Latinx folk, and Ashkenazi Jews suffer from lactose intolerance. Lactose Intolerance is a debilitating condition that causes gas, bloating, nausea, cramping, diarrhea, stomach pain, and in severe cases, vomiting. And yet BIG DAIRY continues to market milk and other dairy products to people of color.Coffee chains like Starbucks & Dunkin’ charge extra for plant-based milks. And the National School Lunch Program forces children of color to take a carton of milk with their lunch.

This is a form of structural racism called dietary racism. And we think it’s time BIG DAIRY and their collaborators (like the Federal Government) stopped discriminating against people of color.   

Our tip to you: completely avoid lactose by ditching dairy–milk, cheese, butter, cream, and yogurt. Click here to read Switch4Good expert Dr. Angie Sadeghi’s breakdown of lactose intolerance. If you think you might be lactose intolerant, take our test to find out!

Dairy contributes massively o heart disease (America’s top killer), type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s disease. Cheese is especially dangerous, since cheese is typically 70 percent fat.

Despite BIG DAIRY’s claims that milk builds strong bones, research shows dairy products have little or no benefit for bone health. According to a systematic review published in the British Medical Journal, most studies fail to show any link between dairy intake and prevention of broken bones. A study of more than 96,000 people found the more milk men consume as teenagers, the more bone fractures they experience as adults. 

Multiple studies have also linked dairy to increased risk of cancer. Research funded by the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the World Cancer Research Fund, found women who consumed 1/4 to 1/3 cup of cow’s milk per day had a 30% increased chance for breast cancer. One cup per day increased the risk by 50%. And 2-3 cups per day led to an 80% increased chance of breast cancer. Regular consumption of dairy products has also been linked to prostate cancer

Maybe BIG DAIRY should change their slogan to: “Milk. It Does Your Body Very, Very Bad.”

Bok choy, kale, arugula, collard greens, sesame seeds, tofu, edamame, fortified orange juice, and plant milk all offer highly assimilable calcium that your body can actually use to strengthen your bones and teeth.

In fact, drinking milk and eating dairy products results in an overall net loss of calcium, as the acidity of those products causes your body to leach alkaline minerals (such as calcium) from your bones to buffer the increased acidity in your bloodstream. Choose only plant-based calcium sources if you want a net gain of this important bone-building mineral.

Dairy is the most common single cause of fatal anaphylaxis in children. This allergy is more prevalent than peanuts, tree nuts, shellfish, and eggs. Other symptoms include rash, hives, wheezing, eczema, and iron deficiency. This can wreak havoc on a child’s immune system, and cause persistent respiratory and gastrointestinal problems. 

1 in 3 children are lactose intolerant and cannot digest lactose, the sugar found in dairy. Consuming cow’s milk leads to debilitating symptoms such as diarrhea, abdominal pain and bloating, nausea and vomiting, and more.

And even for children without obvious allergies or intolerances, dairy has been linked to a 41% increased risk of chronic acne. Drinking cow’s milk also increases our levels of circulating IGF-1, which in children can lead to childhood obesity and type 2 diabetes.

One large-scale Harvard study followed 72,000 women for two decades and found no evidence that drinking milk can prevent bone fractures or osteoporosis.

Don’t be fooled by BIG DAIRY’s ads claiming cow’s milk strengthens bones. Science tells a different story. According to a study published in the British Medical Journal, those getting the USDA “recommended” 3+ glasses per day had a whopping 60% greater hip fracture rate.

So, yeah, cow’s milk can actually make bones more brittle, not stronger. How can this be? Researchers suggest the milk sugar D-galactose promotes oxidative stress and inflammation, which are both linked to loss of muscle and bone. Additionally, while phosphorus is essential for calcium absorption, too much can be counter-productive. Cow’s milk is so high in phosphorus that it can actually lead to calcium resorption from the bones.

Our tip to you: for truly strong bones, eat more fruits and vegetables! The foods highest in calcium and 50% more bioavailable than the calcium in cows’ milk are almonds, kidney beans, and most dark, leafy greens. Diets higher in fruits and vegetables have been shown to lead to denser bones in younger and older adults.

Even WebMD, which is favorable to the industry, admits, “The studies were supported by a grant from the National Dairy Council and National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board.” The researchers of this 2006 “groundbreaking” study also added a major caveat: This study was presented at a medical conference. The findings should be considered preliminary as they have not yet undergone the “peer review” process, in which outside experts scrutinize the data prior to publication in a medical journal. 

The “study” used just nine subjects and compared chocolate milk only to Gatorade and Endurox R4-0–not against real food alternatives. There was no control group. Its flawed methodology “proved” only that chocolate milk was almost as good as Gatorade. Experts do not, in fact, agree with the pro-milk conclusions (see here and here).

Chocolate milk is recommended to athletes because of its supposedly ideal ratio of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. But not all carbohydrates, fat, and proteins are created equal, and those of chocolate milk are some of the worst kinds. For instance, the carbohydrates in chocolate milk consist of added processed white sugar and corn syrup. The fat is mostly saturated fat. And the protein is a highly problematic 82% casein and 20% whey. 

The most glaring issue with the study is the comparison to water. While water is essential for hydration, it contains no calories or nutrients, two necessary components for muscle repair and recovery.

The waste from a dairy farm of 2,500 cows is equivalent to the waste from a city of 411,000 people, or 110 million pounds of waste a year. What’s more, animal agriculture makes us 1/4 of the global water footprint, 19% of which comes from dairy cows.

Dairy cows also produce harmful greenhouse gas emissions that contribute significantly to climate change. Not to mention the loss of land and soil degradation from careless handling of fertilizers. A study by Oxford University found that producing a glass of dairy milk every day for a year requires 7,000 square feet of land–ten times more oat milk.

Communities are suffering from extreme air pollution and contaminated drinking water due to harmful greenhouse gasses and runoff from nearby dairy farms. Dairy farming is not only harmful to cows, it is threatening the future of our planet and the health of human beings.

Compared to meat, dairy is so often seen as the lesser of two evils. But the harsh reality is that there’s just as much cruelty taking place on dairy farms as on any other factory farm. Cross dairy off your shopping list. Replace it with delicious plant-based milks and butters, for all our sakes.

The truth is the vast majority of milk comes from the 9.42 million cows in the U.S. that are raised on giant factory farms, where milk, veal, and low-grade beef production come before animal welfare. Cows can develop painful conditions like mastitis (an infection of the udder) and overgrown hooves while they are subjected to barbaric practices like de-horning and udder singeing. As many as half of all cows used for milk become lame.

After female cows can no longer give birth, they are shipped to slaughterhouses to be killed and their flesh turned into low-grade beef products and pet food. The dairy industry is inextricably linked to the meat industry, no matter the scale of the commercial operation. And “local farmers” are definitely not sharing the spoils.

The sad truth is, whether the milk you drink is organic, local, or chock-full-of-rBST, it is the result of baby calves being torn from their mothers so that you can drink their milk instead.

In order to produce enough milk to meet human demands and stay profitable, dairy cows are kept pregnant or lactating for the majority of their lives. It is anything but natural. “Cows are not ‘designed’ to produce milk like that. They do not give milk because they are happy. They do it because we force them to,” author Élise Desaulniers writes. This often leads to painful yet untreated mastitis, adding an additional layer of suffering to their shortened lives.

After they’ve spent years being forcibly impregnated, having their babies stolen, and enduring constant physical and psychological abuse? All dairy cows are eventually slaughtered and “processed” into beef products–years before their natural life expectancy. The dairy industry is inextricably linked to the meat industry. Male calves are considered byproducts of the dairy industry and cast aside so that milk can be harvested from their mothers and sold. At these facilities, female calves will likely become dairy cows themselves. But male calves will be sold for meat, confined and sold for veal, or left to die. To the industry, their lives are worth nothing and their suffering is just part of the business.

If you’re vegetarian, you may not be eating fast-food burgers, but that doesn’t mean you’re not funding them. By purchasing milk and cheese products, you’re supporting cheap beef. In many cases, when dairy cows are considered “spent,” and produce less milk as a result of repeated pregnancies and births, they are sold for cheap cuts of beef, many ending up as fast-food hamburgers.