Monday, April 20, 2015

How we got duped into believing milk is necessary for healthy bones...

Several years ago, Alissa Hamilton investigated America's love affair with orange juice in her book Squeezed. She uncovered all sorts of misconceptions about the breakfast staple's virtuousness (most of the health claims about orange juice and vitamin C are inflated) and its origins (most OJ actually comes from Brazil, not Florida).

Now Hamilton has trained her sight on another much-loved beverage: milk. In Got Milked? she argues that milk is not the healthy bone-builder governments and the dairy industry have led us to believe. I spoke with her about our big milk misconceptions, how milk became such a pervasive commodity, and whether there are better places to get calcium.

Julia Belluz: First you waged war on the orange juice industry in Squeezed. Now you're suggesting we're getting bilked by the milk industry. Why did you look at milk?


Alissa Hamilton: The book started to take shape when my best friend growing up was visiting in the summer with her mom and two-and-a-half-year-old son. Neither of us grew up in households where milk was essential with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We didn’t have parents who pushed milk on us.

So I was really surprised when she said, "I haven’t given Oscar milk yet, and he’s two and a half now. What do I do?" She had this uncharacteristic desperation in her voice. When I looked at her funny and reminded her that we didn’t have glasses of milk growing up, she seemed kind of confused. On an academic level, she knows nobody needs milk to be healthy and grow tall and strong. But she seemed to have bought into this idea that if you don’t drink milk, you’re missing something. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Squeezed: the truth about orange juice...
  2. New evidence in the case against pasteurized milk...
  3. Six good reasons to avoid conventional grocery store milk...
  4. 75% of earth's population is lactose intolerant for a reason: dairy products are...
  5. Why drinking milk is a rocket fuel for cancer...
  6. Why all the milk industry's health claims have been proven wrong...
  7. Drinking milk is unnatural, unhealthy and unwise...
  8. This is where your milk, beef and veal may be coming from...
  9. Giving up milk and dairy products results in better health...

No comments:

Post a Comment