How Do We Decide.
By Tim Triche, Jr.
Milk in New Zealand

I came across an article recently which solidified a lot of what I have been reading lately (in between studying and working out a lot to kill the stress) about calcium, phosphorus, excretion studies, and Haversian system degeneration from calcium loss. I'm disturbed by what I've seen in the journals and scientific literature, and before anyone dares to blast "those know-nothing Western
scientists", I'd like to remind you that so-called common sense is often heavily influenced by advertising. Dairy advertising, in this case.

I like milk a lot. I have a glass of cold skim milk with any meal where I eat peanut butter or cookies or the like, and that's a lot of meals, for me (most breakfasts, for example, I have a raisin bagel with PB, strawberries, water, and a glass of milk). As I edge closer and closer to being a vegetarian full-time, milk has begun to replace meat as my primary source of concentrated protein. So I'm not going off on milk for spite or malice.

But the association of bone degeneration with calcium loss (Walker, 1965) has led to a recent media blitz from the dairy industry encouraging consumers to drink lots of milk to prevent osteoporosis in old age, especially for women. (Fitzsimons, 1995)

This is simply not the way to prevent progressive skeletal weakening. Milk and other proteinaceous foods can actually cause calcium to be _lost_ in the kidneys as excessive urea is filtered, though it is unlikely that the overall balance of Ca+2 is negative. (G & G, 1989) Furthermore, excess protein can cause binary calculi (kidney stones) to form even in the absence of excessive Ca+2. So there are good reasons not to add more milk to a typical American diet, which already gets 40% of its calories from fat (primary source: ground beef), 20% from protein - already quite adequate; 12% is enough for most elite athletes, let alone sedentary adults (Heany, 1993) - and the remaining 40% from carbohydrates, of which approximately half are mono- and disaccharides, i.e. "simple sugars". (NRC, 1989) Despite the dairy industry's vested interest in promoting milk as a cure for osteoporosis, the sad fact is that they are lying to you.

Phosphorus supplementation will not do the trick, either. Although it does reduce the urinary excretion of calcium in healthy patients, it causes faecal excretion of Ca+2 to rise. (Recker & Heany, 1983) So we are back to where we started in terms of waste <--> Ca+2 <--> bone influx and efflux. Phosphorus is not the answer to broken hips and hunched backs.

What, you might ask, _is_ the answer to fighting osteoporosis and skeletal degeneration in later life? I am not so brazen as to submit "the" answer, but I will forward one answer to the question. Consulting the appropriate studies will confirm the belief that it is a solid answer, but we cannot rule out many other possible treatments.

Exercise and good dietary habits are the keys to health, in many respects. It may come as no small surprise to the meat and dairy industry-indoctrinated public that certain populations consuming less than half the RDA for calcium (1200 mg as of 1989) have a much lower incidence of bone matrix degeneration and osteoporosis than their "adequately" nourished, Ca+2 and P(i) stocked
American counterparts.

The Bantus of northern Africa consume a diet almost devoid of dairy products, and low in protein, averaging only 350 mg daily. In spite of this, tooth loss and broken bones are rare among the Bantus, and life expectancy is over 65 years, vastly greater than that for most populations of similar circumstance and income. Osteoporosis among the Bantu is almost unknown - except for those who move to America. (Fitzsimons, 1995)

What about drinking extra milk for extra protein? Only if you would like to urinate and see blood in your toilet bowl one morning. Kidney dysfunction is painful and irreversible in many cases. And that, in short, is where excess protein goes - it is deaminated in the liver, with the nitrogenous end being bound into urea and excreted actively by ports in the Loop of Henle, and the deaminated
CHO skeleton is used for energy or stored as fat. This is what ketogenesis is all about - when there is inadequate carbohydrate to fuel activity, proteins and fats are deaminated and acetylated for use in the Krebs cycle. It's a painful process and feels like hell, both for you and for your organs. We, as Americans, Europeans, and Australians with the finances to read USENET news, are unlikely to ever even _meet_ someone with kwashiorkor (protein deficiency), let alone experience it ourself. It's simply unknown outside of parts of Asia and Africa, where the only food eaten is a vegetable (cassava root in Africa) with almost no protein...and even then, only when it is not fermented, as in the ngiri and dawa dawa processes of alkaline bacterial preparation.

PROTEIN DEFICIENCY IS ALMOST ALWAYS SECONDARY TO OVERALL MALNUTRITION.

My answer, then, is to exercise vigorously and regularly, try not to over eat, especially steaks, ice cream, and other high-fat and high-protein foods, and to emphasize vegetable sources of calcium in the diet. How about broccoli? (Margen et al., 1992) It contains more calcium, per calorie, than corned beef (Fitzsimons, 1995), and at the same time it provides numerous phytochemicals that may aid in delaying carcinogenesis and promotion - i.e., "cancer-fighters". Even milk cannot offer this advantage. And meat may be carcinogenic when consumed to excess (Campbell et al., 1994). So perhaps it's time to look towards other sources of Ca+2 in the diet besides milk.

I cannot emphasize enough that vigorous activity, done over a lifetime, may be the most protective action you can take to reduce your risk of skeletal degeneration. Excretion and bone-loss studies (Shepard et al., 1992) show that athletes retain more dietary and ossified calcium than their sedentary counterparts by a wide margin, and studies with middle-aged runners have confirmed this. (Costill et al., ??) Furthermore, weight-bearing and resistance exercise in women raises the serum concentrations of testosterone, not enough to cause masculinization, but certainly enough to add to retention of Ca+2 and tensile strength increases in muscle. (Shepard et al., 1992) Muscular girths are not significantly affected except in very rare cases and in examples of women athletes using androgens (steroids). So get up, go outside, run around, do whatever, and _enjoy yourself_ regularly - it will improve your quality of life today and tomorrow. Save the milk for the chocolate chip cookies.

Editors Comment. In New Zealand all milk is pasteurised, this is a heat treatment process intended to eliminate any viruses ar bacteria in the milk. Many people feel concerned that this reduces the bio-availability of the nutrients in the milk. Of course the bottom line here is that cows milk is for calves. Human milk is for human babies. As human adults cows milk is an unsuitable food.

Whole milk - Silver top bottles, this is supposed to be only pasteurised milk that has not had any other treatment.

Skimmed Milk- green top milk has most of the milk fat removed and we consider this form of milk to be the safest to consume in small quantities.

Standard Milk - Blue top - we consider this to be dangerous to health as in the processing the milt is treated so that the molecules of milk fat are shattered. This means that we are ingesting parts of molecules which the body reads as digested. This leads to the body absorbing undigested fat/ protein and it is thought that this could be a major cause of cancer.

A1 & A2 Milk a dispute at present, however A2 milk may be healthier, read more.

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