I’m finally getting around to reading Skinny Bitch, the New York Times Best Seller about losing weight on a healthy vegan diet. I just started it, but skipped ahead to read the chapter on dairy called The Dairy Disaster because I was curious what they would say. Here’s an excerpt:
When a woman gives birth, her body produces milk and she nurses her child. Breast milk can grow an 8-pound newborn into a 24-pound toddler. Sounds pretty fattening, huh? It is. By design, it is intended to allow for the biggest growth spurt of a person’s entire life. Breast milk alone can accommodate for a 300 percent weight gain in a 12 month period. When her child is anywhere from 12 to 24 months old, a mother stops breast feeding. Her milk dries up. The child will never drink breast milk ever again.
Cows, like all mammals, are much the same. Their bodies produce milk only when they give birth. Contrary to popular belief, they do not need to be milked – ever. Their udders, like women’s breasts, exist even when there is no milk in them. There is one major difference, however. Cows’ milk, by design, grows a 90-pound calf into a 2,000-pound cow over the course of 2 years. It allows calves to double their birth weight in forty-seven days and leaves their four stomachs feeling full. Sounds even more fattening than human milk, right? It is. It should be. Cows are bigger than humans. And the inner workings of their bodies are completely different than ours, which they should be. They are cows. We are humans. Duh.
The authors go on to discuss how humans aren’t meant to drink milk after childhood because we lack the enzymes necessary to process lactose, and yet everyone is convinced we need to drink milk and consume dairy products to be healthy. Even my doctor the other day asked me how I was getting calcium if I wasn’t eating dairy. Um, my DOCTOR asked me that. That made me sad. It just goes to show you how great of a job the dairy industry has done at convincing us we need dairy.
As the authors state a little bit later, “We are the only species on the planet that drinks milk as adults. We are also the only species on the planet that drinks the milk of another species.” Interesting, isn’t it? When you look at it from that perspective, it’s really WEIRD that humans drink cows’ milk. That was kind of the thing that got me to quit eating dairy – I mean, not only is it horrible for the cows both physically and emotionally to be constantly impregnated and milked by machines instead of getting to nurse their young, it’s also really unnatural thing for humans to do. I’m sold – how about you?
Did they mention casein? It’s the ingredient in cow’s milk that keeps the calves coming back for more. It’s addictive by design. It’s apparently addictive to humans as well and that’s part of the “OMG HOW DO YOU LIVE WITHOUT CHEESE?” nonsense.
s.
Yep! Later on in the chapter they talk about how casein is what makes baby cows and baby humans WANT milk so that they keep growing – how it’s like an addiction. I mean, it IS an addiction. Anyway, yes, they discuss that as well. It’s a good book, although the chapter about the abuses in slaughter houses was VERY upsetting. It’s not enough that they’re being killed, the workers (some) TORTURE them on purpose first. 😦
I ❤ SB and quote it often. Here is my favorite book-quote:
“You are eating suffering, horror and murder. You are eating cruelty. You are what you eat. You cannot be thin and beautiful with a glowing complexion when you eat fear, grief and rage.” – Skinny Bitch
LOVE this!!
Amen to that! I made that point to my chiropractor today while letting him browse through my copy of “Thanking the Monkey.”
Great quote, thanks for sharing.
s.
LOVE skinny bitch!!! and yes, the chapter about the abuse was very hard for me to read. i already knew most of it but i forced myself to read it so that i wouldn’t be tempted to ever go back to dairy. when i feel weak, all it takes is one paragraph about the realities of what animals go through and that’s it!
I think what you’re seeing in these abuse cases is certainly the exception. There are abused kids every day as well, but this doesn’t mean all parents are bad. I do agree the abuse for some of the animals has been horrible and the farmers need to be prosecuted, but it’s sad that all dairy farmers get a black eye for the couple of idiots out there.
Dairy Loans – I didn’t actually say much about the abuse that was recently publicized at slaughter houses and stuff, if that’s what you’re talking about. My point, and the point that Skinny Bitch made is that drinking cow’s milk is really unnatural – unless of course you’re a calf, which we’re not. I am sure that many farmers treat their dairy cows better than what we’ve seen or heard about, but I don’t believe that means the whole industry gets a pass. You still have to separate calves from their mothers; you still milk the mothers far beyond their natural capacity; and you still have to forcibly impregnate them. What’s more, the male calves are “useless” and often go to veal farms. Lastly, all these poor animals end up at slaughter houses regardless of how they’re treated prior to getting there. So while I understand your point that not all these animals are poked around with forklifts, I still don’t think it’s right for us to steal their milk, take away their babies, and send them off to slaughter in the end…
The “Skinny Bitch” quote about drinking milk as an adult being “weird” has been very effective in my conversations with non-vegans. There’s just something about it that make’s sense.
I love your response to Dairy Loans (weird website of theirs, by the way…), Mindy. That’s so very true, and I cite those same things when those points are brought up to me by omnis or ovo-lacto vegetarians. Even IF some animals are treated well (though a lot aren’t, and the consumer can never be 100% positive unless they live on the farm), the animals are still abused emotionally throughout the lives & sent to slaughter in the end. Plus, the veal connection is just too much.
The dairy chapter in “Skinny Bitch” is super interesting, and makes so much sense! It’s so strange that humans are “supposed” to stop making the enzyme to digest dairy after weaning from their mothers, yet when someone is “lactose intolerant,” we consider it a disorder…
Excellent response to Dairy Loans, Mindy. I’ve been using the casein addiction approach when people ask me how I live without cheese and other dairy products, as well as the animal abuse information.
I’m lactose intolerant and it’s true that people treat it like a disease. My entire family tends to be lactose intolerant, but some of them will eat dairy anyway and suffer the consequences just to be “normal.” I think that’s plain stupid. It’s a GIFT. Dairy might’ve been the hardest part of becoming vegan for me, but it was a snap.
s.
This is actually a pretty silly argument against milk drinking (and hey, I’m vegan!).
Humans do all sorts of “unnatural” things all time, including, uh, being vegan. If we still lived in caves, we’d all be natural omnivores. How much meat we ate would probably vary greatly depending on our environment, but at the very least we’d probably eat dead animals we found still fresh, and things like bugs.
Among other unnatural things we do are campaigning for an end to violence against humans, abortions, progressive taxation, and making cake.
Saying something is bad because it’s unnatural is ridiculous. First of all, what does “unnatural” mean here? Usually it means something humans learned to do. If we don’t like it, we call it “unnatural”.
As far as lactase, that’s a sort of half truth. Many, many modern humans do retain the ability to digest milk into adulthood. This is a beneficial mutation that become prevalent in societies that started drinking milk. This is why Europeans, with a long history of milk consumption, have a much lower incidence of lactose intolerance than Native Americans or East Asians. BTW, I’m getting this from Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactose_intolerance_by_group
The best arguments against milk are twofold. First, it’s cruel in and of itself, and milk production makes veal production economically viable. Second, we don’t need it, that’s for sure. Clearly, there are plenty of health diets around the world that don’t include any dairy whatsoever.
We are huge fans of Skinny Bitch – in fact, if it weren’t for those Skinny Bitches, I would STILL be completely unaware of the garb I was feeding my body! The Skinny Bitches inspired me to learn more about health and nutrition. and just FYI I hear comments about Calcium and Protein all the time -it’s interesting that people who feed their face garb all day long question ME about eating healthy nutritious (delicious) vegan food.
So I was browsing the web and happened to come across this website:
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/skinny-diet-not-big-on-meatw-sweets
Going right along with the ignorance of doctors and so called nutritionist in this country, you will see what WebMD – a site that many people turn to for medical answers -has to say about Skinny Bitch.
Sick.
Dave – I think that “unnatural” here means that if you look across all species to see if this behavior exists across the board, you’ll quickly see that it doesn’t, generally speaking. What’s more is that our ancestors probably had to deal with feeling pretty crappy after eating dairy for a long time for us to finally be able to digest it successfully (ie, develop a tolerance). Perhaps back then it was more of a necessity (lack of other foods?), but the point is that they had to keep doing it despite getting sick from it. That’s sort of what I mean when I say “unnatural”. I realize that you could also take that to mean that living “naturally” would mean we’d all be naked and living in the forest – not exactly what I meant, though.
In addition, if you asked the average person if it would be normal/natural/whatever for us to drink dogs’ milk, they would cringe and probably tell you that’s “unnatural” or something. Maybe I’m not explaining myself very well….
That said, of course the main reason not to eat dairy is that it’s cruel to the animals, and even if someone proved to me that humans drinking cows’ milk was “natural”, I still wouldn’t do it because of the pain it inflicts on the animals, and because, like you said, I don’t need it anyway.
I think it is sad,that all dairy,beef,chicken,pig,goat,sheep,lamb,llama farmers get a bad rap basied on what a couple of a***holes do!FARMERS ARE GOOD PEOPLE FOR THE MOST PART AND DO WHAT THEY DO BECAUSE THEY LOVE THE WORK.Beleive me they are not in it to get RICH ESPECIALLY DAIRY FARMERS,yes we kill animals but what about befor the vegan movement?I agree something dose have to be done with them companies that hurt animals and the employees who think it is funny.But this is the thing that turns most people off from peta even me WHO IS A DIE HARD LOVER OF ANIMALS,AD DON’T LIKE TO SEE THEM HURT.
Pamela,
You have to understand something about us vegans and vegetarians, when we say we love animals and don’t want to see them hurt, we mean it. You say that but then sentences before say “yes we do kill them”….Which one is it? Are you willing to kill animals AND claim you care about them? How do you think they are killed? Nicely? Can you even murder something nicely? You don’t make sense. And what gives YOU the right to decide if something lives or dies for your consumption?? Loving animals does not mean that you can kill them. There is a huge hippocracy in your statement….and I hear it a lot in people who “love” animals…..
Um, yes. Boooo dairy. I’ve been dairy-free for 5 months now and have never felt better. I’ve not read the book, but I’m sure they discuss the health risks of dairy, too? Dairy products exacerbate mucous and inflammatory conditions like asthma and arthritis. And our bodies are so unprepared to ingest the proteins in dairy that it can even lead to auto-immune disease. The best part is… all that crap about calcium and bone loss prevention is a CROCK. You are more likely to get osteoporosis if you depend on protein-laden dairy products for calcium. Sigh…
And yes, my doctor shows alarm when I say I don’t eat dairy, also. Concerning.
Here’s the research I did about dairy: http://thisamericandiet.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/the-case-against-dairy-part-2/