Is Drinking Milk Absurd?
Is drinking milk absurd for humans – are cheese and yoghurt any better? An unbiased look into the health effects of dairy – and whether illnesses in post-war Japan should be a warning sign for the West.
Definitive dairy guidance from leading experts. Plus, will residents at on old people’s home - led by 97-year-old Phyllis - embrace putting almond or soya milk anywhere near their tea?
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BBC voiceover:
BBC sounds music, radio, podcasts.
Gary:
You alright mate?
Tim Samuels:
Morning.
Gary:
Gary.
Tim Samuels:
Gary, Tim, nice to meet you. Oh god, it’s horrible today, isn’t it?
Gary:
Lovely!
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Turns out if you get up in the middle of the night, brave the freezing rain, it's amazing what you can find.
Tim Samuels:
This is a proper old school milk float isn't it?
Gary:
Oh yeah.
Tim Samuels:
It's a teeny tiny milk float with probably about, what, how many crates are there?
Gary the Milkman:
[counts] Just under 1000 pints. People now are more into all this new organic, almond, Oatly milk, world-friendly milk, plastic-friendly milk. You know, it’s like all this… But yeah, I'd say it’s all changed in a year.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Yep, as milk continues to fall out of favour, the non-dairy alternatives are soaring. They've already gobbled up 12% of the milk (ish) market.
Tim Samuels:
Would you be happy if one day you were just delivering non-dairy milks on the back of here?
Gary:
As long as it pays me a profit and my ratio is 40% then, yeah, I don't care, I'd deliver coal if you want.
Tim Samuels:
what sort of milk do you have yourself?
Gary the milkman:
I don't, I don't drink it.
Tim Samuels:
Have you got lactose intolerance?
Gary:
Have I? Yeah, just bad… I like it but it doesn't like me which is a shame because... and that’s only recently, only about last 10 years, I used to love a pint of milk. Not a great advert, is it? But that's the way it is.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
A lactose intolerance milkman, maybe it's a sign.
[musical introduction]
BBC Voiceover:
From the BBC this is All Hail Kale, a discerning yet loving look at all things wellness with Tim Samuels.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
A sign that dairy should be having its day...
ARCHIVE CLIPS:
Maybe time to put down the glass. A new study raises the possibility, think about this, that high milk consumption may be linked with more bone fractures and a higher death rate. What?!
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
That it's time to deteet...
ARCHIVE CLIPS:
Dr Neil Barnard:
People who tended to avoid cheese had better sperm counts. The people who are big cheese folks had pretty low sperm counts.
Professor David Levitsky:
And there are some serious risks of taking it. It increases potentially weight gain, it increases cancer risk, it may increase fracture risk, it may actually cause other problems in children like constipation.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
But is there actually any hard science that milk is malevolent? Are all milk products equally suspect? Surely a little piece of cheese won't cause an epidemic of kiddie constipation? Can we definitively establish whether or not dairy is scary?
[Telephone rings]
Dr Veronica Ades:
Hi Tim, this is kind of a late call. Is this an emergency?
Tim Samuels:
Um, well, you know, emergency, it's a relative term, I don't know how you work your triage system at hospital but you know, I guess it’s not that pressing, I suppose it's an issue that's been around for about six to eight thousand years?
Dr Veronica Ades:
Uh huh. So, no. What's up?
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Dr. Veronica Ades, obstetrician, gynaecologist, Assistant Professor at New York University School of Medicine, Harvard graduate and the only doctor friend of mine who doesn't screen my calls.
Tim Samuels:
Milk... are we, as humans, meant to drink it?
Dr Veronica Ades:
Yeah I drink milk, yeah. I can't say I, you know, pour myself a glass on the regular but I put it in my cereal, I have milk.
Tim Samuels:
Yeah, you don't have any qualms about it?
Dr Veronica Ades:
No. In fact, I have switched to whole milk from reduced fat.
Tim Samuels:
Wow, you're doubling down on milk.
Dr Veronica Ades:
Yeah, I guess so.
Tim Samuels:
But you've gone all in.
Dr Veronica Ades:
Come at me.
Tim Samuels:
That's so controversial these days, I thought everyone was giving up milk.
Dr Veronica Ades:
I guess they are but everybody wants to give up something, you know?
Dr David Levitsky:
Are you aware that most of the people in the world, most of the adults in the world, can't really digest milk because they're lactose intolerant?
Tim Samuels [voiceover]:
David Levitsky is a Professor of Nutrition and Psychology at Cornell, no less. So, never one to miss out on some Ivy League therapy…
Tim Samuels:
I mean, it's funny you say that. I was diagnosed aged 10 or 11 with lactose intolerance but you know, if we're going to delve a little deeper here, I wonder whether you know, I was... my dad's second marriage wasn't going well at the time, there were arguments at home, there was a divorce pending, I just thought maybe there was a kind of reaction to that. What would you say as a therapist?
Professor David Levitsky:
Now I would say it's probably your heritage. It's only the people from Northwestern Europe, who maintain amount of lactase, which is an enzyme in your intestinal value that allows you to digest milk. Most adults can't digest milk. For most people in the world, that lactase decreases so by the time you're an adolescent, you can't really just drink a glass of milk by itself. As an adult, I doubt if you could just drink a glass of milk and feel well after that. So you're not odd.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
You're not odd. There's a first for a therapy session. I had no idea that most of us aren't evolved to handle milk.
Professor David Levitsky:
If you came from Asia or Africa, you're in with the rest of the crowd.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
So who's actually meant to drink milk?
Professor David Levitsky:
Northwestern Europeans because when they first migrated from Africa and went into Northwestern Europe, milk was the main source of protein. So they evolved that, to handle as adults, milk products, but the rest of the world where they have lots of vegetables all year round, they didn't have to drink milk anymore.
Tim Samuels:
But surely we had milk in our diets before the lobby came along?
Professor David Levitsky:
Absolutely. Yes, but it was not marketed the way it is today.
Tim Samuels:
So if it's something which most of us aren't designed to drink, how, as a global culture have we become so hooked on dairy?
Professor David Levitsky:
You must know about the power of the American dairy industry?
ARCHIVE CLIP: One of America's mightiest spacecraft blasts off. [Music plays] Big ambitions need milk to grow on and to realise those ambitions, young adults need fresh whole milk with their meals to help balance their diet. For milk is nature's vitality beverage.
Professor David Levitsky:
Meat is a very big industry in the United States. And if you want to make milk you have to make more calves. You make more calves, you have more milk to give, and you have to sell it and the United States is very good at marketing. For years, we used to have the idea that milk is the perfect food. That is nonsense. There is no perfect food.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Whilst American kids were being wooed with becoming future astronauts, I was being cajoled by the prospect of one day only playing football for...
ARCHIVE CLIP:
Child 1:
Accrington Stanley? Accrington Stanley? Who are they?
Child 2:
Exactly.
Child 1:
Nah, get off!
Child 2:
Gimme some!
Child 1:
Get off!
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Maybe my failure to play in goal for Man City can be blamed on not drinking enough milk as a kid. Thirty odd years ago, I was diagnosed as lactose intolerant but based on zero medical input I kind of assumed I'd grown out of it. Just as you should never look a therapy gift horse in the mouth, so too the chance for a trip to Harley Street.
Tim Samuels:
Oh, a pillow. You don't get this on the NHS.
Dr Enam Abood:
There you go, put yourself back. Comfortable?
Tim Samuels:
Sure.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
So it's onto the couch of the really lovely Dr. Anam Abood at the Harley Street Health Centre.
Dr Anam Abood:
Milk or dairy is made of two components, the protein and the sugar.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
For a breath test.
Dr Anam Abood:
The breath test is going to check if you have lactose intolerance or allergy to lactose, which is the sugar of the milk.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
A blood test.
Dr Anam Abood:
The blood test is going to check you for any allergy to the protein, the second component of the milk.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
And a personal test for not fainting, especially not into any bushes outside hospital entrances. Again.
Dr Anam Abood:
You have fantastic veins.
Tim Samuels:
Oh really?
Dr Anam Abood:
Oh, absolutely.
Tim Samuels:
No one's ever told me that before.
Dr Anam Abood:
You have great veins. They're a phlebotomist's dream.
Tim Samuels:
Do you think I could put that on a dating profile?
Dr Anam Abood:
You could do that.
Tim Samuels:
Great veins, any phlebotomists out there?
Dr Anam Abood:
Are welcome indeed.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
With the tests off to the labs, I in no way googled the term phlebotomist dating site, and returned to the cliffhanger posed by Professor Levitsky. If most of us aren't designed to have milk, at least in the quantities being pushed down our throats by a formidable lobby, does that actually mean that milk is bad for us? Is dairy doing us harm? A pretty fundamental question, seeing as we've been told for decades that...
ARCHIVE CLIP: Milk, it does the body good.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
To see if some sort of scientific consensus can be reached, I brought together three heavy hitters in nutrition. Professor Levitsky, our chap from Cornell, Dr. Walter Willett, a Professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and physician and esteemed clinical nutritionist, Dr. Michael Greger from the NutritionFacts, nonprofit.
Dr Michael Greger:
You don't even need to have a degree to understand that look, milk is for babies by definition, right? There's no animal on the planet that drinks milk after weaning. And then to drink milk of another species? That doesn't make any sense on the most basic level and you know, we shouldn't be surprised that this kind of you know, hormonal stew which is great for putting a couple hundred pounds on a calf, on a baby calf, might not be the best thing for people to eat.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Levitsky, Cornell.
Professor David Levitsky:
We could live very well as adults. Children are different. Children definitely have a requirement for all the calcium that milk gives. But as an adult, we can't even use that calcium in most cases. So there really is no need, nutritional need, for milk as an adult.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Willett, Harvard.
Dr Walter Willett:
Milk is a really interesting topic that's very complex. And that means we can't say it's good or bad. It's not like tobacco or sugar sweetened beverages where there's no benefit and it's all harm. Milk is nutritionally amazing. Just think of it, that young humans can consume nothing but milk for the first year of their life and grow and develop. The question is, is that good in the large amounts that many people are consuming it when consumed throughout life?
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
So far, so just about in agreement that the mammarial secretions of another species seems a strange thing for us to have latched onto. But let's get into the data. Scary or not? Those wary of dairy say you just have to look East.
ARCHIVE CLIP
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
A Japanese school girl gets swept away down the school corridor in a sea of love letters after a sip of milk has made her beautiful. The same campaign promises that milk can make you big and strong, ending with the phrase “ask milk”. But one thing to ask milk is about what's happened in Japan after World War Two. Willett, Harvard.
Dr Walter Willett:
Japan is interesting, dairy consumption was extremely low after the Second World War in Japan and there was a conscious effort to promote high dairy consumption. Their consumption went way up. And children have grown much taller. Probably because milk, as we know, is growth-promoting and it does lead to more rapid gain and height in taller adults. From a cancer standpoint, more rapid growth, more rapid acceleration of cell multiplication throughout life would be, in principle, bad for cancer risk. So what we've seen happen in Japan is that cancer rates have shot up for breast cancer, colorectal cancer and some other cancers.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Those cancer rates really did shoot up. Prostate mortality levels amongst men multiplied sixteenfold from 1950 to 2010. Breast cancer rates doubled amongst Japanese women. Western dairy rich diets equals Western cancers? Levitsky, Cornell, not so sure.
Professor David Levitsky:
Milk and cancer, the only relation I can see, high cheese, high cream, high fat diet is going to make you fatter and there is an association between being fatter and certain kinds of cancers.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
But Greger, NutritionFacts, isn’t having any of this benign business.
Dr Michael Greger:
You can get this crippling artery function within hours of consumption. This was first done in Bogle’s lab originally with sausage and egg mcmuffins from McDonald's but then they were like, well what is it, is it the fat with the products, and they do a series of studies since then, and they can measure artery function and show that just drinking dairy fat... so then they tried cheesecake and that also crippled artery function. Well is that the sugar, is it the dairy? Then they just did the straight dairy and got that same crippling artery function, which starts to go away four five, six hours later, but then lunchtime, you whack your arteries with another load of meat, eggs and dairy and get a, you know, another spike of inflammation, stiffening of our artery function. And so this is not just like, you know... we're correlating large numbers of people that drink milk or not, and maybe they also have other confounding factors. No. Interventional studies can show literally, not like decades down the road adverse effects to your health, but literally within hours of it going into your mouth.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Willett, Harvard, is in camp cancer.
Dr Walter Willett:
There are controlled feeding studies where we give people say, three servings of dairy a day and control group, and we see the blood levels of insulin like growth factor, and those who have high dairy intake, go up. And we know that that growth factor is related to higher risk of prostate cancer and probably breast cancer, probably some other cancers, as well. So the evidence is actually quite good that high consumption of dairy increases prostate cancer risk. People living in the milk-producing countries of the world have had shorter life expectancy than people living, say, in the Mediterranean and other areas where there was a small amount of dairy but nowhere near the large amounts consumed in Northern Europe. Basically, milk has allowed us to live in cold places and reproduce but if we're interested in living into our eighties and being maximally healthy, it may not be the best food to rely on for a large part of our diet.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Two to one then for dairy being on the deathly side of things, but with phrases like "shortened life expectancy" being bandied around, maybe three opinions just isn't enough. So, we emailed a few more nutritionists... well, 232 more.
[Music plays]
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Sorry farmers, with milk reeling on the ropes, what to put in my tea? Which of the alternative milks being delivered by lactose intolerant milkmen across London? A decision of such magnitude should only be made by those with some serious life experience.
Phyllis:
I've always loved milk, and always drunk lots of it, even in wartime when it was rationed.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Phylis is one of five residents of The Hawthorns Retirement Village in Braintree, Essex, I’ve brought together to put alternative milks through their paces.
Phyllis:
When I have a cup of tea, it's about a third milk. Even now I've got... brought some down in my walker there.
Tim Samuels:
You're carrying some milk around with you?
Phyllis:
Yes, I do. Yeah.
Tim Samuels:
Are you are you a milk dealer? Are you selling it to other other residents?
Phyllis:
No, no, no, I drink it all myself. [laughs]
Tim Samuels:
Okay. And some people say that if you drink milk, you won't live as long but you're 97 and you're carrying around your own supply of milk on you.
Phyllis:
Yes, that's right.
Tim Samuels:
Can’t have done you any harm.
Phyllis:
No, no, and I’ve still got all my own teeth.
Tim Samuels:
Yes?
Phyllis:
And my own knees.
Tim Samuels:
Good.
Phyllis:
And hips.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Phyllis, Joe, John, Rhoda, Marianne. Crack palettes, whose tea has never been touched by anything but the bovine.
Tim Samuels:
Have any of you ever tried any of these alternative forms of milk? No? I'm getting a lot of blank faces.
Joe:
It's a nice range you got there but I prefer the normal milk, you know?
Tim Samuels:
Well you haven't even tasted this yet, you've just taken against it from the look of it.
Joe:
Well, you asked me my opinion, I’m going to give you it.
Tim Samuels:
I’m looking for an open mind here, Joe.
Tim Samuels:
So this is the almond one for you, John.
John:
Almond flavoured water.
Tim Samuels:
What are your marks out of ten for that one?
John:
Five.
Tim Samuels:
Not too much, ok Phyllis, this is you tasting coconut.
Phyllis:
Well it's nice and creamy, but too sweet for my taste.
Tim Samuels:
Soya.
John:
That's revolting. One. Well, half.
Tim Samuels:
Soya?
Phyllis:
It's horrible.
John:
I would imagine the powdered milk we had during the war was very much like that. I can't really remember it but that was powder of course and we mixed water with it and tasted like more liquid powder and that's what that tastes like.
Tim Samuels:
Rhoda, your thoughts on oat?
Rhoda:
I would give it about seven out of ten.
Tim Samuels:
With mounting excitement we come to the finale which is brown rice.
Marianne:
It's like drinking bitter cream, yeah.
Joe:
Yes, very rich. No, no I don't like that one.
Tim Samuels:
If I’ve got to take away your cup of tea, I’m gonna make you drink a glass of this instead, who is your vote gonna go for, for the alternative milk Olympics, here at Hawthorns?
John:
I would find it much easier to make do with water rather than any of them. But if I had to have one, then I would say the coconut-flavoured one is probably the best.
Rhoda:
The only one I would choose is the coconut milk.
Tim Samuels:
So I can crown the coconut milk champion, a reluctant champion, no one's really cheering it, onto the podium.
John:
I would say provided you keep off drinking that stuff, you may live to be as old as we are.
Answerphone sounds.
Enam Abood:
Hello, Tim, this is Enam Abood speaking, Dr Abood. I hope you're very well. I would like to let you know about your results. You are definitely lactose intolerant. This has been confirmed by the lab. However, you are not allergic or intolerant to milk proteins. They've checked the intolerance against cow milk, sheep milk and goat’s milk and your results are negative for the three. If you have any questions, please feel free to give me a call and we can discuss further. All the best, take care, bye.
Answerphone sounds.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Hmm... But if I'm okay with milk protein, does that mean cheese is still on the menu? I do hope so.
Professor David Levitsky:
Comforting foods?
Tim Samuels:
Soup, but with some cheese melted in it.
Professor David Levitsky:
Okay, how about pleasure?
Tim Samuels:
Fondue, dripping with melted cheese.
Professor David Levitsky:
Real bias already in your answers.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Crumbly feta, squeaky halloumi, a cheeky babybel before bed. My everyday friends, though some would say they're more addictive frenemies.
ARCHIVE CLIPS:
Dr Neal Barnard:
But cheese has what are called casomorphins. These are opiates that come from the protein and milk but they're concentrated in cheese. And that could be where that warm, fuzzy, visceral relaxing experience is coming from. Is it a food or is it a drug?
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
That even requires its own steps programme, if not the full twelve.
ARCHIVE CLIPS:
Dr Neal Barnard:
Let's help you break free we got three steps for breaking your cheese addiction.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Willett, Harvard, and Levitsky, Cornell, didn't buy any of this cheese addiction.
Professor David Levitsky:
No, the idea of food addiction is ridiculous. There's nothing that I know of and I think I know this literature, that is in a milk product or cheese that can cause addiction.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
But it does beg the question, if dairy is bad for you, is all dairy as bad as each other? Willett, Harvard.
Dr Walter Willett:
Cheese does not seem to have the same growth-promoting effects that milk does. So again, if I'm going to choose a dairy product to have I'll usually have it as yoghurt, which may have some benefits in terms of microbiome impacts, or cheese, which does not seem to have the same growth-promoting effects as milk does.
Tim Samuels:
I mean, I'm off to pop the champagne and hug a piece of Brie after you've said this.
Dr Walter Willett:
[laughs] Have your brie in moderation and enjoy.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Levitsky Cornell.
Professor David Levitsky:
I do like cheese. I eat a moderate amount. Before each meal my wife puts out cheese and crackers with a glass of wine and I enjoy it but I don't eat a lot of it.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Is a little cheese okay? Gregor, NutritionFacts.
Dr Michael Greger:
You don't see the same kind of adverse effects associated with other dairy products that you do with yoghurt consumption that may be due to confounders you know people who eat yoghurt may have other healthy behaviours than people who eat ice cream. But if you do try to control for those other lifestyle factors you do seem to see a more benign profile when it comes to yoghurt, compared to the others and the worst would be cheese.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Bollocks. And the icing on the now malignant cheesecake came after I eventually caught up with Dr. Abood about the lactose tests. Turns out being tolerant to milk protein still means you're allergic to all dairy, but you can digest milk, cheese, yoghurt, etc, if you pop a lactate enzyme pill at the same time. It all seems terribly complicated. Having been reared on the simple notion that milk is goodness in a glass, it increasingly seems anything but. So, back to our three experts to try and reach some sort of final consensus. All agree milk is a strange substance for adult humans to consume. Two of the three firmly believe that dairy can cause the sorts of diseases you really don't want to get. Yoghurt seems to be more benign than other forms. But what's the bottom line? Their parting advice? Levitsky, Cornell.
Professor David Levitsky:
You can eat any food in moderation, it's not going to kill you. Okay, we can tolerate it. It's when we consume too much of it that we get into trouble.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Willett, Harvard.
Dr Walter Willett:
I don't think we're at a point yet to put warnings on the side of milk cartons. But I think this is an area where our guidelines probably should suggest moderation, not high consumption of dairy.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
And Gregor, NutritionFacts.
Dr Michael Greger:
Look, if you're going to do something bad, you might as well just really enjoy it and really, you know, savour it and make it for a special occasion rather than the day to day.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
Yep, think I'm pretty much done with milk, a bit of cheese and butter, the odd yoghurt washed down with a lactate pill chaser, but no more milk in tea, or coffee. And it's almonds or cashew with my morning oats. Oh, if you're wondering what happened to the 232 other nutritionists we reached out to, well, a whopping 14 replied. They were generally pro-yoghurt and one listed their favourite cheese as Abba... Maybe in the end, we don't need 218 non-replying nutritionists just a slightly different and more Eastern approach to what we put in our bodies. Sadhguru has every inch the flowing white beard you'd want in an Indian Yogi and mystic. I've seen him pack out an arena in London, people falling at his feet. But I want to know, how does he decide what's allowed past those wise whiskers?
Sadhguru:
You're eating senselessly, without feeling the body, without asking the body. You're just pumping food because your doctor says so, your nutrition man says so. These people keep changing their opinions every two years. Isn't it so? When it comes to food, you must ask the body with what kind of food your body's most comfortable. That is the food the body should be given. Food is not about your mind, your mind will say all kinds of nonsense. If you eat something, if it makes you really alert, that's good food to eat. If any food makes you lethargic, the system is having trouble handling it right now. All the Mcdonalds, people, if you should go there, along with the food they're serving you coke and coffee because they know very well if they serve you food without these two things you may fall asleep right there on the table. You must eat the right kind of food. The kind of food with which the body’s happy.
Tim Samuels (voiceover):
if you want a bit more Sadhguru in your life he features in a documentary I made about what men think in India on BBC sounds. Thanks to Sadhguru, Morton dairy, Gary the milkman, the Hawthorns Retirement Community in Braintree, the gospel touch choir, Natascha McElhone, our production team Sera Baker, Nick Minter, Roser Jorba Soler, Barney Roundtree from Reduced Listening, Ali Rezakhani and Gloria Abramoff. Original music by Xavior Roide. All Hail Kale is made by Tonic Productions for BBC sounds. I'm Tim Samuels. Till next time.
Tim Samuels:
Maybe I've grown up watching too much Benny Hill but have you read any proposals on your rounds?
Gary:
No, I should be so lucky! No, but if you're right to customers… I’ve got one lady who keeps offering me in for a cup of tea but that's only because she owes me about eighty pounds and I'm saying I won’t come in until my eighty pounds is paid.
