They've just released studies that say skim milk and low-fat milk increases the likelihood of prostate cancer?!? So I'm supposed to drink whole milk, which is fattening?
It just isn't fair.
PAd
Posted by Peter David at January 4, 2008 10:21 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingEverything will kill you :)
Eat, drink and be merry - but in moderation.
Dear,
Read the WHOLE article. The paragraph at the bottom says that the study is suspect.
love-
Yr. Wife
Having seen so many nutrition standards go through utter reversal, in addition to the government manipulation of nutrition standards for the aid of the farmers, I've taken to seeing the whole field as being more like a political field than a scientific one. There've been some good articles lately looking at the question of whether dietary fat is really a problem... or whether it traces back to a single doctor of influence making it his personal dietary whipping boy.
I grow ever closer to believing that the stress involved in such focused dieting (as opposed to a general "eat less" sensibility) including adapting to each new claim, outweighs the value gained.
Everything causes something. All studies are limited in their scope and utility (otherwise they wouldn't be useful at all). Live for today.
That said...which do you have the most risk factors for? Prostate Cancer or heart disease? I'd try to hedge my bets with that in mind.
Then again, 2% is quite tasty and has less fat than whole milk. You could split the difference.
Death comes to us all in the end...in the mean-time you've got to eat SOMETHING. I'm with the guy recommending beer.
More dangerous substances: http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html
Hrm... Red wine is supposed to be good for us.
How about that instead? We can support our local vineyards on Long Island!
As for the "eat less" method, that only works if you eat wisely as well. One serving of regular lasagna still has more fat/calories than one serving of veggie lasagna.
Science is not a one-study, one-article endeavor. Science takes years of painstaking work before a consensus can be reaches. If all you have is one study, Peter, I'd say you should take it with a big ol' grain of salt, and reserve judgment on it.
>b>Hrm... Red wine is supposed to be good for us.
How about that instead? We can support our local vineyards on Long Island!
I dunno - I just don't think red wine would work as well on Cheerios.
(I also suspect my 2-year-old would be dissatisfied with starting the day off with a glass of chocolate red wine and some cereal...)
But a big ol' grain of salt may raise his blood pressure!
And red wine tastes horrible on Cap'n Crunch.
You probably don't need milk anyway. They've got a pill for everything.
what dosn't kill you makes you Klingon.
or something like that.
Got gr'ak?
Check out Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories. He goes into EXTENSIVE (cited) details about how the whole low-fat thing was a crock from the start. Fat doesn't make you fat, insulin in your bloodstream stores fat. Reduce insulin (by reducing carbs) and you reduce storing fat. That's a gross oversimplification. I've been reducing carbs (not hugely, just keeping them to about 20-25g per mail 3-5/day) and eating eggs, cheese, whole milk (well, half and half in my coffee) and such and I've lost over 45 pounds so far. YMMV.
Gods, i sound like an Internet ad. Sorry about that :)
If all you have is one study, Peter, I'd say you should take it with a big ol' grain of salt, and reserve judgment on it.
I can't. Salt makes me retain water.
PAD
Switch to goat's milk.
My wife has, mostly, and has our kids on it. I'm slower to give up my skim in my cereal.
Eat more tomatoes.
The current conventional wisdom is that 10 spoonfuls of tomato sauce a week will cut your prostate cancer risk substantially, like a half. A pasta dinner a week sounds like it will cover that gap.
Let's do the math. 1 cup of whole milk has 146 calories. 1 cup of skim milk has 86 calories. This is a difference of 60 calories.
You can burn 60 calories in 10 minutes of semi-active play with your kids. Or 20 minutes of vacuuming the floor.
Live dangerously. Drink the milk, and play with your kids.
Luigi Novi said, "Peter, I'd say you should take it with a big ol' grain of salt, and reserve judgment on it."
Luigi,
This is just a guess, but I suspect PAD was in satirical and/or sardonic mode when he wrote his entry; that he's commenting on what is essentially "Murphy's Law" of good nutrition- "A is good and B is bad. No wait, B is good and A is bad. No, wait. A and B are both good unless combined with C. No wait..."- that leaves people who try to eat healthy foods (and drink healthy drinks) saying, "aw, come on!" Especially if the new studies or "dietary rules" or whatever it might be this week create Catch-22 situations like the one he described above.
Rick
Rice Milk. Only way to go. And much tastier than soy. And better for your heart without the fat. And organic. Come on, we need to keep you around for a while.
I was raised on skim, and whole milk just tastes too fatty to me. But I prefer 2%, and drank it for a long time. When I had to go on my diet in 2006, I eventually switched to 1%...tastes about the same, fewer calories, and it's not like I'm drinking a 24 oz mug of milk with meals anymore (more like 6 oz most of the time) due to the carb issue.
That said, I'm really hoping they hurry up with alternative prostate exam techniques that don't require barium shakes and fasting, since I have no one to drive my hunger-shaking self to and from the doctor's office.
"Let's do the math. 1 cup of whole milk has 146 calories. 1 cup of skim milk has 86 calories. This is a difference of 60 calories.
You can burn 60 calories in 10 minutes of semi-active play with your kids. Or 20 minutes of vacuuming the floor."
Actually, no, you've just run across one of the biggest lies in the food industry.
When people talk about the amount of calories you burn doing a particular exorcise, that's "calories."
When food lables tell you the calories in the food, those are actually "Calories". Notice the capital C.
That capital C means that they aren't calories, they are kilocalories. Crazy as it sounds, your whole milk doesn't have 146 calories, it has 146 *thousand* calories.
Chap tells his doctor he wants to live as long as possible.
"OK, just cut out red meat, alcohol, smoking, rich foods, wild sex ..." and so on.
To which the patient replies "Oh I already don't do any of those."
Doctor ponders for a moment then enquires "And you want to live longer ... why?"
Nat Gertler: "And red wine tastes horrible on Cap'n Crunch."
Try a single-malt scotch instead.
Its probably the wonderful pesticides from whatever the cows are eating, and the even more wonderful antibiotics in the milk causing the cancer.
And Im sure whole milk does the same thing. As others have said: organic, or other forms of milk are the way to go.
I'm shocked that a substance created by an animal to feed its young could, in any way, be harmful to humans, who themselves aren't supposed to drink milk past infancy! SHOCKED!
In the wise words of Dr. Spaceman: Science is whatever we want it to be.
I saw a bumper sticker once years ago that summed it up and has always stuck with me:
"Eat healthy. Stay fit. Die anyway."
Lapislaz: "Let's do the math. 1 cup of whole milk has 146 calories. 1 cup of skim milk has 86 calories. This is a difference of 60 calories. You can burn 60 calories in 10 minutes of semi-active play with your kids. Or 20 minutes of vacuuming the floor."
Jason M. Bryant: "When people talk about the amount of calories you burn doing a particular exorcise, that's "calories." When food lables tell you the calories in the food, those are actually "Calories". Notice the capital C. That capital C means that they aren't calories, they are kilocalories."
While the calorie/Calorie distinction is accurate, it seems highly unlikely that the above exercise numbers are in calories and the food energy in Calories (kilocalories).
If that were the case, then the food energy from just one cup of skim milk would require over 200 hours of semi-active play (or 400 hours of vacuuming) to burn off. At that rate it would be almost impossible for anyone to ever do enough exercise to burn off the energy from the food they eat.
I suggested to a friend several years ago that the Food Pyramid was a bad model to follow. She got mad and told me that I was wrong, that she worked for Head Start and knew these things as part of her training in preparing meals for her young students.
About 3 years later, out came the new Food Pyramid, which was similar to what I had told her. I never did say I told you so, but I sure would have felt better if I had.
-----
Unless you have a jones for milk, you are better off without it. In the past 10 years, I have probably had less than a quart of white milk. I do, about 3 or 4 times a year, enjoy a Nestle's Chocolate Milk.
Reminds me of a short story i wrote in which all diet articles are put out by Hell to torment us ("We have six months to run with the high-sugar diet plans, then we switch and go back to low sugar, high-protein.")
Andy Affleck said:
"Check out Taubes book Good Calories, Bad Calories. He goes into EXTENSIVE (cited) details about how the whole low-fat thing was a crock from the start. Fat doesn't make you fat, insulin in your bloodstream stores fat. Reduce insulin (by reducing carbs) and you reduce storing fat."
-----
I agree, Andy, yet my doctor, a doctor for 20 years now, just told me last week that I should go on a low-fat diet.
Until we educate the doctors, the entire population were never get educated.
Peter David: I can't. Salt makes me retain water.
Luigi Novi: LOL.
Rick Keating: This is just a guess, but I suspect PAD was in satirical and/or sardonic mode when he wrote his entry...
Luigi Novi: I suspected as much, but forgot to include an acknowledging qualifier to that effect in my last post. Thanks.
So I'm supposed to drink whole milk, which is fattening?
It just isn't fair.
PAd
Oh, you could probably handle the fattier milk, since even your signature's lost weight.
;-)
Well, since I don't really drink much milk ANYWAY--(messes with my lungs something NASTY)I have to say I'm surprised that none of the overly bright people who're good with puns posted that all these contradictory reports on cow juice has gotten them udderly confused.
Just sayin', is all.
Heck, as much milk as I drink I figure I'm lucky to have made it this long either way.
Put enough Quik in it and it all tastes about the same anyway.
Milk = prostate cancer.
No milk = rickets.
On the other hand, remember that thing on the Colbert Report they did about the hormones and crap that is given to cows, causing pus in the milk and other yummy things like that?
My personal strategy is to just try to avoid starvation or dehydration at this point by putting whatever's handy into my body and see how that works out. If, one day, my posts here suddenly cease, you may take that as an indication that it didn't work out too well.
Pj wrote: "Rice Milk. Only way to go. And much tastier than soy. And better for your heart without the fat. And organic. Come on, we need to keep you around for a while."
Bleh. Being lactose intollerant, my options are limited, but I can't stand rice milk. The vanilla flavored soy is more my thing.
"If that were the case, then the food energy from just one cup of skim milk would require over 200 hours of semi-active play (or 400 hours of vacuuming) to burn off. At that rate it would be almost impossible for anyone to ever do enough exercise to burn off the energy from the food they eat."
I figured someone would think of that.
The "calorie" vs "Calorie" think is true, you can look it up in tons of places, but your observation is a good one. The reason we don't need that ridiculous amount of exercise is because exercise also affects how many calories we burn *in general*.
When you do a fair bit of exorcise, your metabolism speeds up. That makes you burn more calories even after the exorcise is done. So if you work out for a half hour in the morning, the next few hours of sitting at your desk will burn off more calories than they would have if you hadn't exorcised.
Plus, muscle takes more energy to maintain than fat. So if you stay in shape your body will generally need to use up more fuel just to maintain itself.
It's all very complex. My earlier point was not that a little exorcise won't burn off whole milk. I was just pointing out that food labels are misleading and the whole process is a bit complicated.
Does anyone have a link to this study? I'm really curious to read it.
I'm on a meal plan (not a diet, because this is meant to be a permanent change) right now where I am not supposed to consume any milk or milk products. I'm one of those "normal" humans who gradually lost my ability to digest milk properly once I no longer needed to subsist on my mother's breast milk. Though I only admitted it recently.
Because of issues with estrogen and insulin however, I also can't drink soy OR rice milk (I'm not supposed to consume soy at all, in fact). So, all the nutrients (including calcium) that other people might be getting from milk if they are digesting it properly, I get from veggies and meats and beans, etc.
I also had to cut back or cut out a lot of high-carb foods because of the insulin issues. Pasta is a strict no-no, as are most breads, because my stomach basically turns them into huge bags of sugar that go straight into my blood stream. Rice and starchy vegetables are "once in awhile" foods. Most processed foods are also gone because they contain way too much sugar and salt in them and it's almost impossible to find any that don't have in them something I'm not supposed to be eating anyway.
The result: After 5 months on this meal plan I've lost nearly 30 pounds. I feel better, I sleep better, I have more energy, and I have no, er, "fiber" issues, if you know what I mean. People also say I look younger, I've even been carded at the movie theatre a few times (I'm almost 30), I have to take their word on that though.
Sabrina
I think everyone is missing something here---one of the early posters mentioned "veggie lasagna".
Last I checked, this was still America and no self-respectable right, left of independant wing American would eat "veggie lasagna" unless it was in conjunction with water boarding or thumb screw torture.
If Garfield was dead, he'd be rolling in his grave.
My mom always said that "they" would eventually discover that everything was bad for us and we'd be better off never leaving our rocking chairs on the front porch. To which I later added, "No, there's too much chance of falling out of a rocking chair and hurting yourself."
Moderation in all things.
Veggie lasagna rules! Garfield, I couldn't care less about (now Get Fuzzy ...)
I love milk but I don't drink anything but organic, because of the hormone issues.
As for soy, the best article on nutrition I saw last year was a right-wing Web site explaining that soy is causing a wave of homosexuality by messing with our hormones (they were serious, I'm not).
The "calorie" vs "Calorie" think is true, you can look it up in tons of places
No, it's not true as you've posited it. While there are some places that may use an "Calories" to refer to kilocalories, there are also plenty of places that use the lower-case, "calories", to refer to kilocalories as well... and the "calories" referred to in exercise discussions are indeed kilocalories.
Milk won't kill you unless it's soymilk the stuff infants drink which contains esterogen. This is why boys growing up today talk like girls on the internet.
Skip the cow's milk. Why not go for something closer nutritionally to mother's milk?
Pig's milk or chimpanzee's milk. Doesn't that make more sense?
I mean, bovine mammary fluids are designed to make a calf into a huge cow in less than a year. How can that possibly be bad for you?
As to Taubes book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories," it's nice to know that peer-reviewed research by Drs. Esselstyn and Ornish, in which they REVERSED heart disease through low-fat vegan diets, doesn't impact his beliefs at all. Why should science matter when you're selling a book?
Jeesh....
While I'm not saying that Taube's work is beyond criticism - I've not even read it - I will note that logically showing that a low-fat vegan diet reverses heart disease does not mean that a higher-fat diet causes heart disease. For one thing, a cure is different from a preventative; a splint can help heal a broken bone, but it doesn't mean that wearing splints will help prevent your bone from breaking in the first place. And the difference between a standard diet and a "low-fat vegan diet" is not just the fat.
Have you actually read Taube's book and know that he ignores that study? Not that one study tends to make for a broader scientific truth...
Oh, and quickly pulling up descriptions of the key Esselstyn study (I now see that Esselstyn and Ornish are separate studies), it doesn't exactly look like real good science. 11 patients, with no control group in the study itself, no double-blindedness? Doesn't sound rigorous.
And the concern of what "bovine mammary fluids" are designed to do? Leaving out the religious question of "design", we're left with the question of what you advocate. Corn is just as much "designed" to created a new field of corn; is that what we want in our bodies?
Check out my interview with Dr. Esselstyn at: http://www.madcowboy.com
Rather than go back'n'forth here, which is probably inappropriate, perhaps reading what he had to say as I tried to poke holes in his work will help.
BTW: cow's milk is for cows, not for humans. If you wouldn't drink rat's milk, or dog milk, why would you drink cow's milk?
Just a thought...
By that logic, the only source of nutrition that's "for humans" is human milk, and I don't think it advisable that we go through life consuming nothing but that.
Nat Gertler: By that logic, the only source of nutrition that's "for humans" is human milk, and I don't think it advisable that we go through life consuming nothing but that.
I dont think my 70 year old mother would like that logic either. Yuck!!!!
"dog milk"
"Nothing wrong with dog's milk. Full of goodness, full of vitamins, full of marrowbone jelly."
:)
If you want to have a safe milk, go with Raw Milk. Studies have found Raw Milk to be very similar to our blood vessels. In short it feeds us. There are parasites in cow's milk, but you can kill them with Propolis and Honey. Seriously, it really works. And you'd never have to worry about lactose intolerance.
Consequently, it's the processes done to milk more than anything else that makes milk unhealthy.
"Consequently, it's the processes done to milk more than anything else that makes milk unhealthy."
And chocolaty!
Most animal products are super yucky for you. Drink soy milk, rice milk, or hemp milk.
"If you wouldn't drink rat's milk, or dog milk, why would you drink cow's milk?"
LOL! Maybe because dog's milk and rat's milk would be too difficult, inefficient and (therefore expensive) to harvest?
I think the mongols proved that humans will eat just about anything that they can get their hands on if it makes them more competative.
Actually, drinking ANY milk is probably what causes cancer.
Here are two well respected sources in the scientific community that both provide scientific evidence that milk may not be good for us (adults) to drink. At all.
The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating (The entire first chapter is on that page)
Basically, any health benefits that milk gives us can be duplicated by eating green leafy vegetables. Read the lit yourself and make your own decisions.