Another SIde Effect of the Standard American Diet

In this blog, I spend a lot of time talking about the major health problems that go along with the standard American diet. There is no doubt that a western diet leads to multiple chronic health problems, obesity, and early death. I have seen it with my own eyes, both in myself and in my patients, many of whom suffer from hypertension, diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and various forms of cancer.

Today I was thinking about some of the other side effects of the western diet, mostly due to my daughter. Yesterday, she went to a small carnival at her elementary school, with a friend of hers. Christy and I were not there with her. She was with the parent of her friend.

Although our children are not completely vegan, only a tiny percent of their daily calories come from animal products. In general, they eat a diet of whole, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. At the little carnival, as you might imagine, the foods available were not the kinds we would usually feed her. She ate a couple of hot dogs, as well as several dessert foods made with processed sugar and flour.

Later that night, my daughter complained of abdominal pain. She had crampy abdominal pain, as well as several episodes of diarrhea. This lasted most of the night, and went away after about 12 hours or so. By morning she was all better.

I know what you are thinking: little kid ate too much and got a tummy ache. I was thinking the same thing, until I remembered that I used to get the same symptoms. Before I switched to a vegan diet, when I was very overweight, I used to get abdominal cramps and diarrhea so frequently that I had diagnosed myself with Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Until today I had never thought about it, but those symptoms stopped immediately after I switched to a whole foods vegan diet.

Apparently Irritable Bowel Syndrome is yet another side dish served with the standard american diet. If you have IBS, and don't believe what I am writing, I challenge you to switch to a whole foods vegan diet, and prove me wrong.

M. Jacob Ott

Milk: It Does(n't Do) a Body Good

Milk. I can think of no food or beverage that is more aggressively marketed. There are milk commercials on TV, celebrities sporting milk moustaches in magazines, and everyone knows the old slogan: "milk: it does a body good."

Milk is almost universally admired, and holds almost sacred status as a health food. Kids are told by their health teachers and parents to drink lots of milk, to build strong bones. Athletes are told to drink milk to help build muscle and give them energy. There is even a glass of milk on the picture beside the government's new plate graphic, which replaced the food pyramid. It would seem to indicate that milk should be a part of everybody's daily diet.

It's true that milk is the best thing for you and contains everything you need to grow and be healthy... if you happen to be an infant cow. That is the point most of us miss. Milk comes out of the mammary glands of adult cows, and is meant to be consumed by infant cows. Cows themselves even stop drinking milk within months of birth. In fact, humans are the only mammals who continue to consume milk past the stage of infancy.

In adults, milk can cause many problems. First and foremost, almost 30% of people are lactose intolerant. They lack the enzyme that breaks down the sugar. This leads to bloating, abdominal pain, and gas after eating or drinking dairy products. Why, you ask, would we lack this enzyme? Probably because we are not meant to eat lactose. It is basically only found in milk, which we are not meant to drink after we reach about 12 months of age.

As if that isn't enough, milk proteins can cause allergic reactions. Behind nuts, milk is one of the most allergenic substances in adults. In addition, those same milk proteins in experimental models can lead to the development and promotion of cancer. Animals fed milk proteins developed cancer at much higher rates than those fed only vegetable proteins.

Finally, people suffer from their own misconceptions about milk. If you ask almost anyone what food has the most calcium, they will say milk. Kale and bell peppers have approximately 100 times as much calcium as milk. Ask anyone what the most important thing they can do to prevent bone loss is, and they will say "drink milk." In reality, milk has little to do with bone formation, and load bearing exercise is the most important factor leading to strong bone development. Even if milk isn't actually bad for you, the misinformation which is sold about milk can be.

The last nail in the milk coffin is this simple fact: if the claims are true, and milk is important in preventing osteoporosis, then the countries that drink the most milk should be the ones who also have the lowest osteoporosis rates. Below is a graph of hip fractures (which are mostly caused by osteoporosis) vs milk consumption:

As you can see, the United States, which has by far the highest rate of hip fractures, also has one of the highest rates of milk consumption. Why does Hong Kong, who consumes less than half of the milk of the US have half the rate of hip fractures? Quite simply, because milk does not prevent bone loss.

I have nothing against milk. It just shouldn't be consumed by anyone except infant cows.

M. Jacob Ott