Practical Issues > Health - Index > Vegan Index

You know it like the Pledge of Allegiance:
Milk helps build strong teeth and bones.

But does it really? Or, as nutrition researchers from Harvard and Cornell Universities are radically suggesting: Have we all been duped by the dairy industry's slick, celebrity-driven "Got milk?" advertising campaign?

Milk, the sacred cow of the American diet, is under attack, and not just by animal-rights activists. Though federal dietary guidelines and most mainstream nutrition experts recommend that people age 9 or older drink three glasses of milk a day, researchers are examining the role of dairy in our every day health.
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The debate centers on whether milk is really the best�or even a necessary�source.
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But researchers Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University, said there is little evidence that shows boosting your calcium intake to the currently recommended levels will prevent fractures.

Willett, who coauthored "The Nurses' Health Studies," found that women with the highest calcium consumption from dairy products actually had substantially more fractures than women who drank less milk.

Campbell, who like Willett comes from a dairy-farming family, found the same thing after spending several decades surveying health-related effects of a plant-based diet and death rates from cancer in Asian countries.

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full story: http://www.uecrescent.org/articles/stories/ public/200602/17/0003VVff_odds__ends.html