The All-American Meal: Eating Sh!t and Drinking Pus
“Dairy products shouldn’t occupy a prominent place in our diet, nor should they be the centerpiece of the national strategy to prevent osteoporosis.”
~Dr. Walter Willett, Harvard University
While eating pizza and old-fashioned vanilla ice cream is considered a quintessential American tradition, eating pus is not. Yet this happens at almost every meal, as the average American eats about six hundred pounds of milk, cheese, and butter per year.1 Americans consume more dairy products than any other food, including meat. When we realize that there is pus in every dairy product we eat, along with as many as 420 other chemicals, including rocket fuel, thirty-five types of hormones, and genetically modified growth hormones, dairy isn’t so tasty after all. That’s right, pus—as in the same pus that oozes from acne zits and infections, flame retardants, and about seventeen antibiotic cocktails are in our milk, butter, and cheese. We are confident that every doctor would agree that these ingredients will not make our bones big and strong. The same industrial methods and lax governmental regulations that are allowing feces to be packed with our meat are also allowing natural and added toxins from dairy cows into our milk and dairy products. It becomes not just unpalatable to think about—dairy is causing major health issues (think cancer, arthritis, and heart disease) and sucking up our tax dollars.
Got Pus?
Cow’s milk is touted as an angelic superfood that we cannot live without. Dairy is not just revered for its so-called superpowers to make us healthy and strong, but also as a comfort food in the form of milk, cookies, and cheese. From a young age, we have been indoctrinated to have dairy products and milk at every meal. Every school-aged child is served a carton of milk at lunch and encouraged to drink three glasses a day. But the brightly colored containers that depict happy cows on green pastures or jumping over the moon with joy are devoid of any evidence of the industry practices used to produce milk products and the list of harmful ingredients those packages contain.2
What the dairy industry fails to tell us is that with every sip of milk we are swallowing pus. Think of that next time you pour milk over your cereal. Pus contains bacteria, white blood cells, and tissue debris. It oozes from infection sites and is one of the body’s defense mechanisms against infection. Pus is extremely resilient. It cannot be boiled, steamed, or frozen out of the milk. Even though we cannot see it, we drink it.
The USDA and the dairy industry are well aware that there is pus in our milk and dairy products. The USDA has kindly limited the amount of pus “allowed” in each liter of milk. The USDA refers to pus in milk as the somatic cell count, or SCC, which is the measurement of white blood cells per milliliter of milk.3 To be specific, there are about 135 million pus cells in every eight-ounce glass of milk. Let’s be real here. Debating the pus limit or talking about how many millions of cells are in one glass is futile. The pus limit should be zero. Pus is gross, disgusting, and should not be allowed in our food and drink. Agreed?
The more important questions are where does all this pus come from and why is it allowed in dairy? Pus gets into our milk from cruel and unnecessary dairy practices used to produce more milk out of each cow, which results in excessive milking, unsanitary conditions, and the injection of growth hormones. Just like the meat industry, dairy has gone from pasture-based farming to housing thousands of cows in confined, crowded, factory-like conditions. In California, the leading dairy-producing state, 95 percent of dairy products come from dairy factories.4
Today’s dairy cows spend their short lives hooked up to machines that consistently milk them throughout the day. As one can’t get milk without a baby, these cows also spend the majority of their years pregnant and giving birth. Although this milk is intended for their babies, as is every mother’s milk, these cows never feed their babies. Instead we drink their babies’ milk. Seems a little greedy, especially since we wouldn’t let any other animals steal milk from our babies.
This harsh life takes a toll on the dairy cows that now barely live to see their sixth birthdays. Dairy cows used to live to be about twenty years old. These days, dairy cows are slaughtered at around five to seven years of age, because they are crippled from calcium depletion, cannot stand due to painful foot infections, or have been so overmilked they are no longer producing the desired quantities. Since dairy cows are so exhausted and riddled with infection by the time they are slaughtered for food, they make up our lower-grade meats, such as hamburger meat. We eat these beaten-down creatures.
rBGH: Milking the Pus for All It’s Worth
Today dairy cows produce about one hundred pounds of milk a day.5 In 2012, individual dairy cows produced about 21,697 pounds of milk that year. This is a 120 percent increase from just thirty years ago.6 The dairy cows aren’t magically producing more milk. Monsanto—the company known for its genetically modified corn and soybeans—came up with a growth-hormone stimulant called recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), also referred to as recombinant bovine somatotrophine (rBST), that increases the Insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-1, in cows, so they can produce more milk. Cows injected with the growth stimulant produce up to 25 percent more milk per day. Despite studies that showed that rBGH was a public-health risk, as IGF-1 is directly associated with increased cancer, the FDA approved the use of rBGH, which is marketed under the name of Prosilac, in 1993.7 Prosilac and rBGH is one of the main reasons there are pus, blood, and antibiotics in our milk.
While Monsanto claims that rBST is perfectly safe because BST is a hormone already found in cows, studies from the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association, the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the European Commission’s Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare tell a very different story. They found that rBGH increases the risk of the infection mastitis, which increases the amount of pus in milk. Monsanto’s original trials of the drug also showed that their toxic effects increased lesions and mastitis. While “an increased risk of mastitis” is listed as a side effect on the Prosilac label, Monsanto continues to deny any health risks associated with its wonder drug.8 Apparently distorting the truth can be profitable.
Mastitis is a very painful udder infection that produces liters of milk laced with pus, blood, and bacteria. About half of the dairy cows in America suffer from mastitis. Since mastitis requires antibiotic treatment, milk also contains a slew of antibiotic residues from up to twenty different antibiotics used to treat the infection. As the USDA only tests for about six antibiotic residues, more antibiotics than we care to think about are making their way onto our menus. When tested, dairy cows that became meat had residues from more than six antibiotics in their milk.
What could be hiding in your gallon of milk? Any of the following medications: “Ampicillin, Amoxicillin, Chloramphenicol, desfuroylceftiofur cysteine disulfide, Dihydrostreptomycin, Florfenicol, fluoroquinolones, Gentamicin Sulfate, Lincomycin, Neomycin, Oxytetracycline, Penicillin, pirlimycin, Spectinomycin, Tetracycline, Tilmicosin, and other compounds.”9 Penicillin is the most tested antibiotic in milk because there is a common allergy to it. How do antibiotic allergies develop? Overuse and abuse. Clearly this blatant abuse is going to limit the number of antibiotics available to us. The scary thought is every time you add a splash of milk to your coffee or eat some cheese, you have no idea how many antibiotics you are being exposed to.
The European Union, along with Canada and the United Nations, has banned the use of rBGH in cows because of the dangerous side effects. Despite industry claims that rBST is identical, it is actually at least 5 percent different from the natural hormone. This percentage, albeit small, makes a world of difference. Not only does the rBST milk contain higher IGF-1 and antibiotic-residue levels, but it also causes differences in the actual milk composition between the long- and short-chain fatty acids.10 In fact, milk that contains the genetically modified hormones is known to go sour more quickly. This should be a clear sign that the contaminated toxins are not for human consumption. Yet to this day, the FDA has not banned its use in the United States. The FDA is aware of the harmful effects of Prosilac, both from Monsanto’s own unpublished studies and from the numerous petitions the FDA has received from scientists and researchers evidencing the shoddy research backing rBGH’s health claims.
Drinking Pus Makes You Sick
The United States has unwisely decided not to follow in the footsteps of other industrialized countries that have banned the growth hormone rBGH even though the negative-health implications are blatantly apparent.
According to Dr. Stephen F. Sundlof, who was a director of the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine back in 1999, a few years after the drug was approved, “We review all new evidence as it comes to light, and so far nothing has caused us to believe rBGH is a hazard.”11 What studies were they looking at when they came to this conclusion? Current studies, as well as those dating back to 1996, in the International Journal of Health Services found that milk from cows injected with rBGH have up to ten times the IGF-1 levels of unadulterated milk.
Why should we be worried about IGF-1? Insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-1, is a natural hormone found in both humans and cows that is responsible for stimulating cell division. Yet increased levels of IGF-1 can promote unwanted growth such as abnormal cell division leading to malignant-tumor growth, or cancer. Cows already have a higher level of these growth factors, which is a health risk. RBGH boosts these IGF-1 levels, which then passes from the cows’ bodies into our milk. Higher IGF-1 levels have been shown to increase breast cancer in over nineteen studies, colon cancer in ten publications, and prostate cancer in seven publications.12 More worrisome is that increased IGF-1 levels can block our bodies’ natural defense mechanisms against fighting off early stages of cancer, known as apoptosis. Just one glass of milk a day can boost the risk of breast cancer 10 percent in adolescent girls.13 Put simply, rBGH is a cancer-causing agent. If the FDA won’t protect us from its harm, we need to protect ourselves.
We have no way of knowing whether the milk carton in our hands contains rBGH because of labeling restrictions created by Monsanto. They claim listing rBGH on labels would be discriminatory.14 Who knew that stating a food product was healthier and didn’t contain toxins was discriminatory? Monsanto somehow successfully sued Baskin-Robbins to prevent it from stating that its ice cream does not contain growth hormones. It even launched a marketing campaign called “Milk is Milk” to try to defend the allegations of the differences in their genetically engineered milk.15 Unfortunately for Monsanto, its campaign can’t fool us. Think health is Monsanto’s concern or priority? Monsanto is making money in spite of the health risks.
The problem is that our milk products, like hamburgers, are not produced by one cow, but many cows. So the chances of having antibiotic residue, pus, and increased levels of cancer-causing growth factors in every single dairy product we eat are extremely high, if not guaranteed. To be safe, we should assume every dairy product contains disgusting ingredients that are a disaster for our health.
Milk Money from the Taxpayer
The irony of it all is that there is not a milk shortage. We would think so with the way dairy farmers continue to use the growth stimulants to manipulate cows to produce an overabundance of milk. The reality is that there is a milk surplus and has been for years.
Since instituting the income-support program in 2002, the government has guaranteed that it will step in and buy the remaining surplus of milk each year in order to keep dairy prices from crashing. This program keeps dairy prices high and insulated from the fluxes in actual demand. Also in 2002, the government kindly decided to use tax dollars to pay the dairy farmers funds through the Milk Income Loss Contract Program when market prices are below a certain threshold.16 On top of the handouts dairy farmers are given, the Senate leaders decided in 2001 to introduce a plan that would give an additional $2 billion in subsidies to dairy farmers to help them through 2006. Most recently in 2009, on top of the $1 billion that had been paid in the Income Support and Price Support programs to dairy farmers, Congress decided to give away an additional $350 million of your hard-earned money to dairy farmers for handling a milk surplus. The amount of subsidies given to dairy farmers to keep them insulated from price influxes and keep them in business can cost taxpayers about $2.5 billion each year.17
To be clear, our tax dollars are being spent on buying up rBGH and pus-laden milk to keep Monsanto and dairy farmers in a business that makes us sick. This milk is sent into cold storage where it just sits there. In 2009, the government bought up $91 million dollars’ worth of milk powder due to the milk surplus and declining milk sales that year.18 Warehouses were stacked with sacks of milk powder that might not ever be used. The government gives milk that doesn’t go into cold storage to the National School Lunch Program, where our children are urged to drink toxin- and antibiotic-laced milk products.
David Stockman, the budget director for former President Reagan, admitted that these dairy subsidies are “probably the single most worthless, lacking in merit program in the entire federal budget.”19 We couldn’t agree more. Our dairy products should be subject to the same supply and demand as other commodities. There is absolutely zero reason or logic in promoting dairy production. To say that this is a wasteful and unhealthy cycle all in the name of scoring high prices for the corporations is an understatement.
The Dangers of Dairy
The questions we are most commonly greeted with after describing to others their milk mustaches are a sign of infection are: “Aren’t dairy products good for our bones?” and “What about calcium?” Put simply, we don’t need dairy for calcium or strong bones. In fact, over three hundred studies find dairy does the opposite. The shocking facts are that rather than making us healthy and strong, cow’s milk can cause brittle bones and make us fat.
The science supporting dairy as healthy is junk science. The current recommendations for drinking three glasses of milk per day are not based on scientific findings. Recently the Federal Trade Commission asked the USDA, “Got Proof?” for their milk-mustache ads that prominently feature celebrities and athletes and claim that milk does the body good. Yet the USDA could not substantiate any of those claims. In fact, they found that milk does not boost athletic performance and there is zero evidence that it prevents osteoporosis and promotes strong bones. What does milk do? Filled with saturated fat, cancer-causing casein, and natural growth hormones, dairy contributes to heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, type 1 diabetes, chronic constipation, sinus infections, ear infections, arthritis, allergies, osteoporosis, anemia (in children), Parkinson’s disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, multiple sclerosis, asthma, acne, eczema, and irritable bowel syndrome.20
Pediatricians around the world are concluding that after children are weaned from their mothers’ milk, they by nature no longer need milk. Dairy is actually the leading food allergen in our children. Increasingly, studies are finding that weaning our children on cow’s milk is setting them up for lifetimes of health problems. The most common childhood ailments, such as ear infections, strep throat, and attention deficit disorder (ADD), are all from feeding our children the most imperfect food. Feeding children dairy at an early age is disrupting the normal functioning of their pancreases and contributing to epidemic levels of type 1 diabetes. It seems those white mustaches aren’t so glamorous after all.
Researching the funding for milk-promoting studies often reveals the National Dairy Council behind the science. Talk about a conflict of interest and unbiased resource. Unbiased studies such as a recent Harvard University study found that milk does not help children maintain healthy bones. “Got Milk?” does not translate to “Got Strong Bones?” In fact, the children who consumed the most dairy had the most bone fractures.21
All of the claims that dairy promotes healthy bones, prevents osteoporosis, and increases growth are unfounded.22 The dairy industry and milk companies have had to retract almost all of their advertising claims, because milk is not essential to a healthy body and does not make you lose weight. In fact, 75 percent of the world’s population is lactose intolerant. If dairy accomplishes none of these benefits, then it seems we need to rethink the public-health concerns that are associated with eating dairy products.
A Hearty Problem
Studies find that dairy contains the highest levels of saturated fat, or bad fat, and high levels of cholesterol that lead to heart problems. Heart disease is the number-one killer in the United States, claiming one in two people’s lives. Studies show a clear link between milk consumption and heart disease.23 Cheese is 70 percent fat, most of which is saturated fat. A little-known fact is that saturated fat causes the liver to produce more cholesterol. Clearly, eating dairy products is an unending cycle of abuse for our hearts.
Now, many people say they don’t drink whole milk, just skim milk to avoid the saturated fat. Friends, skim milk is just taking the fat out and leaving the sugar and cancer-causing casein. That glass of milk just got a calorie load akin to a soda. We all know sugar plays no role in promoting athletic performance or strong bones, as sugary drinks are linked to type 2 diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.24
Say Hello to Clear, Radiant Skin
Hey teenagers, let’s talk about that out-of-control acne. Acne affects about forty million Americans who spend about two billion dollars on treatments.25 How many prescriptions, pills, and remedies have we all tried to get rid of those painful, red bumps that dot our beautiful faces? Dairy is a leading contributor to acne. It creates an acidic pH environment in our bodies that clogs pores and is loaded with both natural and genetically modified hormones.26 Seriously, save your money and ditch the dairy and cheese for healthy-looking, radiant skin!
Sadly, breast cancer is a major problem in the United States. Most people know someone who has suffered from or, in many cases, lost the battle to breast cancer. While breast cancer was previously a problem generally associated with postmenopausal women, today an increasing number of younger women are being diagnosed with breast cancer. One in eight women now has breast cancer, and only 10 percent of those cases are related to genetics. This means 90 percent of breast cancer cases are related to problems in our environment, namely our food supply. Dr. Epstein, who found that rBGH can lead to early breast development in infants and children, aptly summed up the game the FDA and Monsanto are playing with our health when he said, “The entire nation is being subjected to an experiment involving large-scale adulteration of an age old dietary staple by a poorly characterized and unlabeled biotechnology product. Disturbingly, this experiment benefits only a very small segment of the agrochemical industry while providing no matching benefits to consumers.”27
But even in its natural, unadulterated state, dairy has growth-promoting factors that make the most hospitable environment for cancer. Fats and proteins, abundant in dairy products, cause hormonal levels to rise, which increases breast cancer risk.28 Specifically, casein is a naturally forming animal protein in milk that Dr. T. Colin Campbell found plays a significant role in breast cancer. As casein intake increases, so does the risk of developing cancer.29 In comparison, when patients were given soy protein, the risk of developing breast cancer decreased.
By taking the artificial growth hormones out of our milk products and, even better, removing dairy completely from our diets, we could do more for breast cancer awareness than all the pink ribbons on our food products. We need to start a new movement that actually focuses on prevention. Next time we run with our fellow mothers, sisters, and daughters for the cure, bring banners that say, “Dodge the Dairy.” Others deserve to know that we possibly have the cure for 90 percent of breast cancer cases. Imagine how many mothers and daughters would be cured if we actually implemented it?
One of the more concerning myths about dairy is the claim that it promotes strong bones. Women and young girls have grown up under the illusion that if we don’t drink milk or eat yogurt to get calcium, we will develop osteoporosis. Osteoporosis, or the weakening of our bones, causes 1.5 million fractures per year, of which three hundred thousand are broken hips.30 However, there has yet to be a study that proves consuming dairy is a deterrent to osteoporosis. Reviews of over fifty studies by the American Academy of Pediatrics concluded that there was little evidence to support the claim that children need milk for strong, healthy bones. A study by the National Dairy Council found that the high protein content in dairy actually leaches calcium from our bones. This means dairy doesn’t prevent osteoporosis but actually promotes it. The United States has the highest consumption of dairy products and the highest rates of osteoporosis.31
When Japanese women began adopting the Western diet, the rates of osteoporosis increased as their dairy intake did. In reality, the countries with the highest dairy intake have the highest rates of osteoporosis and are still obsessed with calcium intake from dairy. We are caught in a calcium paradox. Ironic, isn’t it?
The truth is that dairy products are not a good source of calcium, because they are damaging to our bone health. Let us explain. We are so hyped up about getting enough calcium that we are actually getting too much and from the wrong sources.32 There are two ways our body gets calcium—from eating calcium-rich foods (from plants, the good way!) or leaching calcium stored in the bones.33 Our bodies like to stay in an alkaline-balanced state, but animal products produce acidic environments in our bodies. The body quickly needs to regulate and restore its preferred alkaline pH state that keeps it functioning properly. To do so, our bodies draw calcium from our bones to stabilize our inner pH balance.34 Put simply, too much protein-rich animal foods cause our bodies to take calcium away from our bones, achieving the very thing we are aiming to prevent in the first place—brittle bones.
Friends, we are making ourselves sick by aiming to do the right thing for our health with the wrong information! Stop worrying about calcium and protein intake. As Harvard studies indicate, there are much better sources for calcium than dairy. We can get enough calcium and protein from eating leafy green foods such as kale, collard greens, and broccoli. An added benefit of these vegetables is that they are high in vitamin K, which regulates calcium.35 Clearly, the beneficiaries of consuming animal products are the dairy and meat industries themselves and big pharma. Out with the false information that we have been fed for too long and in with the real science!
Ditch the Dairy
While hard to believe, the truth is that dairy products, with their genetic modifications, added contaminants, and their natural use of growing a calf into a full-sized cow, are linked to a whole host of health problems, including autoimmune diseases, gastrointestinal diseases, asthma, and cancers. While we have touched on the basics of the dangers of consuming dairy and how it is responsible for contributing to America’s failing health, we suggest you read The China Study by Dr. Colin T. Campbell, The Food Revolution by John Robbins, Whitewash by Joseph Keon, and Milk: The Deadly Poison by Robert Cohen.
There is absolutely no benefit from eating dairy. Science doesn’t support it, our health is suffering from it, and our pocketbooks are emptying because of it. Do yourself a favor and drop that dairy!
Know your Sh!t Solutions:
1) Try holding the cheese on your pizza. Use hummus, pesto, or the many, varying, vegan-cheese flavors instead. Some of our favorite brands include Treeline, Daiya, Follow Your Heart, and Kite Hill.
2) There are healthier alternatives to those creamy foods we love. Avocado, a true superfood, makes an excellent creamy substitute. A sample of avocado’s health benefits includes a healthy heart, sharp mind, and anti-aging and anti-inflammatory agents.
3) Toss cashews, almonds, walnuts, or other nuts into a blender with lima or cannelloni beans, and spice it up with your favorite herbs and flavors as a fabulous spread for just about anything.
4) You don’t have to give up bagels and cream cheese. Tofutti and Galaxy make amazing vegan cream cheeses in a variety of flavors.
5) Replace your milk (and pus!) with soy, rice, or almond-based milks. With so many brand choices to select from, it is hard to pick a favorite.