What’s Wrong with Cow’s Milk?

We always come across advertisements asking us to drink more cows’ milk to prevent osteoporosis and to protect our bone strength. The facts and figures provided as follows are scary. In US, 10 million individuals suffer from osteoporosis; 18 million have low bone mass; 1150 people are dying every month in UK as a result of hip fractures (National Osteoporosis Society); Malaysian women consume less than 50% of their required calcium needs. (research conducted by UPM and University of Otago, New Zealand).

From young age I am aware of the important of calcium and for that reason I usually consumed more cow’s milk compare to my peer will do. But one things make me curious is why my bone mineral density (BMD) is lower compare to my mum when we went for a free bone mineral density test provided by one of the famous daily milk product?

What’s wrong here? At the age of 23, I accidentally come to a workshop provided a nutrition MLM company. They give me shocking news that by drinking cow’s milk does not prevent osteoporosis, in fact cow’s milk can lead to osteoporosis. According to Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (2005) that “the level of dairy product consumption in the United States is among the highest in the world, and yet osteoporosis and fracture rates are also among the highest”.

Why? Scientists have known that diets that are high in protein cause calcium to be lost through the urine. The fact is cow’s milk is high in protein; it contains 3 times protein much higher than human milk.

All those marketing gimmick have mislead us on the important of drinking cow’s milk. Why can’t they tell us the truth? It is sad to see more and more teenage nowadays are having scoliosis problems compare to previous. Can we do something to fix this?

If you want to know more dark side of milk, you can read "What They Don't Tell You about Milk" published by Consumers Association of Penang".