The US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is in the process of reviewing comments and feedback for the upcoming 2020-2025 federal dietary guidelines. The recommendations contained in these guidelines will become institutionalized for the next five years and will serve as guiding principles for schools, businesses, the food service industry, dietitians, and policymakers. Given this profound reach, the upcoming guidelines will drastically impact the food choices and health of Americans nationwide.
Please join us in demanding that the Committee take action to ensure the improved health of all Americans by removing dairy as a food group from the upcoming dietary guidelines. Dairy is not a health food; on the contrary, it negatively impacts the health of many children and adults, a disproportionate amount of whom are people of color. The Canadian government recognized this and took action by removing dairy as a food group from its 2018 Food Guide. Now, it’s time for the US to follow suit.
The most common food allergy is milk, which accounts for 98 percent of all food allergy cases, many of which begin in early infancy. Giving mother’s milk from other animals to human babies loads them with ratios of hormones, proteins, sugars and acids that are biologically inappropriate. Dairy is thus associated with a host of common maladies in infants and children, and numerous diseases in adults. As the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine notes, “Milk from cows and goats is quite different in composition than human breast milk and, therefore, should not be fed to human infants. Human milk, which is designed specifically for promoting infant health, is much lower in protein, calcium, and sodium, and higher in mono- and polyunsaturated fats, carbohydrates, folate, and vitamin C.”
Chart shows approximate constituents of mother’s milk of various species of mammals in ml/mg per liter of milk. Via Mothers Against Dairy.Research shows that dairy is a major cause of colic, childhood allergies, asthma, ear infections, eczema, cholesterol buildup in arteries (the precursor to heart disease), obesity, and is increasingly linked to childhood diabetes and several cancers. Dr. T. Colin Campbell has studied the relationship between diet and disease for more than forty years, and, although he grew up on a dairy farm, now teaches that casein, the main protein in milk and dairy products, is the most significant carcinogen we consume. Dr. Campbell’s legacy, the China Project, is the most comprehensive long-term global study of health and nutrition ever conducted.
Why is dairy such a common allergy in infants and children? For the same reason that 2/3 of the global population is “lactose intolerant,” a term which misleadingly frames the inability to digest milk protein as an anomaly or disorder, when in fact it is the normal, healthy response to milk protein entering the body beyond the age of weaning, especially when the milk in question comes from other species of animals.
In addition to being very specifically baby/infant food, mammalian milk is “species specific,” meaning the milk of each species is specially formulated to perfectly meet the unique nutritional needs of the growing young *of that species.* Human milk contains exactly the right ratio of fatty acids, lactose, protein and amino acids for human infant development, whereas cow’s milk contains concentrations of hormones and proteins designed to turn an 80-pound calf into an 800-pound cow by one year of age.
Seen in this light, it should come as no surprise that sixty-five percent of the world’s population is intolerant to cows’ milk, including a staggering 86 percent of people of African descent, 70 percent of Latinx, and 95 percent of people of East Asian heritage. But what is surprising is that the government is aware of these figures, yet it continues to recommend dairy as a food group in its nationally accepted US Dietary Guidelines.
Please help us change that by submitting your signature and a comment to the Dietary Guidelines Committee by June 1. You can craft your own comment or use the pre-filled comment provided by Switch4Good. It’s that easy! Please add your voice today, then share this post and encourage others to do the same.
