Will the more milk you drink, the more calcium you will lack?

Milk has always been recognized as a healthy drink, but a "milk hazard theory" popular on the Internet recently pointed out that drinking milk has no great effect on health, but has certain harms. This anti-trend view caused an uproar among the public. So, does it make sense?

Is excess protein harmful?

As we all know, milk contains a lot of protein. Therefore, the first point of view of the "Milk Hazard Theory" is that excessive intake of protein is harmful to the human body. It also points out that the protein in milk is almost all casein, which is difficult for the body to digest and can cause indigestion, hyperacidity, and Stomach pain and other symptoms.

The first half of this point of view is correct. The human body needs 75 to 85 grams of protein every day. Excessive protein absorption is indeed harmful to health. But for Chinese people, the protein they absorb from food does not mainly come from milk. Instead, more than half comes from rice, flour and other staple foods with high protein content, and the rest comes from meat (containing 15%-20% protein). ), as well as beans and soy products (soybeans contain 35%-40% protein, dried tofu contains about 20% protein, and tofu contains about 5%), eggs (protein content is about 13%), and finally milk (protein content 3%). A cup (200 ml) of milk contains only 7.5 grams of protein, which accounts for only 10% of the daily recommended amount for a man with light physical activity. Therefore, to control protein intake, drinking less milk will not play a big role at all.

It is said that the protein in milk is difficult to absorb. In fact, this is mainly for babies under one year old and cannot be applied to adults. In terms of absorption difficulty, milk is 3 times higher than breast milk, beef is 9 times higher than breast milk, and soybeans are 30 times higher than breast milk. If we can’t drink milk, shouldn’t we be even less able to eat beef, soybeans and other foods?

Will the more you drink milk, the more calcium you will lack?

The second point of view of the "milk harm theory" is that milk is an acidic food and will produce a large amount of acidic substances during metabolism, which needs to be consumed by the human body. Calcium and other alkaline substances neutralize, thus causing calcium loss. The rate of calcium supplementation in milk cannot keep up with the rate of calcium loss. Therefore, the more milk you drink, the more calcium you will be deficient in.

The premise of this view is wrong: milk is not an acidic food. Although the sulfur, phosphorus and other elements in milk will produce acidic substances after metabolism, it also contains a large amount of alkaline elements such as calcium, magnesium and potassium. As a result of the overall balance, alkalinity still dominates. Since the premises are not established, the idea that drinking milk will cause calcium loss is even more untenable. Surveys in our country also prove that most osteoporosis people live in rural areas and other areas where they do not drink milk, rather than in areas where they often drink milk.

Can milk cause diabetes and skin allergies?

The third point of view of the "milk harm theory" is that milk can cause diabetes and skin allergies, citing the authoritative foreign magazine "Diabetes". The article proves that children who drink more than half a kilogram of milk every day are five times more likely to develop diabetes than children who drink less milk. There is indeed some research on this internationally, but it is only for children and cannot prove that adults will also develop diabetes. In the same way, medical research has found that feeding 4-6 month old children with milk may increase the incidence of skin allergies, and it cannot be concluded that they cannot drink milk when they grow up.

The "Milk Harm Theory" also says that drinking milk can cause lactose intolerance, which is an even more inaccurate statement. Lactose intolerance is an intestinal digestive reaction caused by sudden consumption of milk after many years of not being exposed to milk. The solution is to give the baby a small amount of milk or yogurt regularly from the age of 1 to 3 after weaning to maintain lactase activity, so that no obvious lactose intolerance will occur.

Is drinking more milk more likely to cause breast cancer?

The last alarmist view of the "milk harm theory" is that "drinking more milk is more likely to cause breast cancer." This is based on the World Breast Cancer Society Ottawa Conference. A research report pointed out that after cows are injected with growth hormone, a growth hormone called IGF1 will appear in the milk, and it is the culprit of breast cancer. But we also know that there are many factors that influence the onset of breast cancer, and milk intake is not the most dangerous one among them. Moreover, it is safe to drink ordinary milk. Only milk produced by cows treated with growth hormone may promote the occurrence of breast cancer.

So why beat all the milk to death with one stick?

Chinese people don’t drink enough milk

Indeed, a high-protein and high-fat dietary lifestyle is an important reason for the high incidence of various chronic diseases. But why don’t we reduce our diet of fish and meat and limit milk? Do Chinese people really drink too much milk? According to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2003, the world's annual per capita milk consumption was 94 kilograms, the United States was 268 kilograms, the European Union was 320 kilograms, Japan was 65 kilograms, and China was only 13.4 kilograms. Such a small amount of consumption is only equivalent to drinking two small spoons of milk every day. Even in Beijing, the city that drinks the most milk in the country, it only reaches 47 kilograms per capita per year. It is really unreasonable to say how much disaster this little milk will cause.

For Chinese people, if they want to reduce their fat intake, the most important thing is to reduce the consumption of meat and fats, not to reduce the amount of milk they drink. Moreover, for a large number of rural residents and low-income residents, their primary problem is not excess fat, let alone drinking less milk, but how to get enough protein and calcium through drinking milk.