We recently watched the documentary “Got the Facts on Milk?”, and we found it to be very well done, enjoyable, and informative. Find a copy, watch it, and take notes!
As many of you are hopefully aware, not everyone accepts dairy as the health food it is lauded to be. In fact, many nutrition and health experts (including our nutritionists) discourage the regular consumption of dairy products as they are not conducive to a healthy lifestyle. You may have read or heard of books on this subject like “Milk the Deadly Poison” and “Whitewash”.
What this documentary does so very well is not to provide a bulletproof argument against the consumption of dairy products. Rather they ask some very pointed questions about dairy products, advertising, the dairy industry, and our government. Throughout the documentary they ask these questions of average individuals, dairy producers, nutrition experts, and USDA representatives (the underlying narrative being: “these are the questions that you, the consumer, should be asking”). In our opinion this is a much more powerful approach, because instead of providing information and encouraging argument, GTFO Milk asks questions and encourages discussion.
GTFO Milk asks some very good questions, including:
– Should you consume dairy products?
– Where did you learn that dairy products are healthy?
– Why do we need calcium, and where can you get it?
– How is milk produced?
– Do dairy products promote weight loss?
– Is it necessary to promote the consumption of dairy products in our schools?
– What is the environmental impact of the dairy industry?
All the while they sprinkle in facts from the experts:
– Dairy is the most common food allergen, linked with asthma, acne, hives, eczema, nausea, and diarrhea.
– Humans are the only specie of mammal to consume milk from another animal.
– 75% of the world is lactose intolerant (making it “normal”).
– Cows do not produce continuous amounts of milk naturally (they must be kept pregnant).
– Our bodies are designed to be weaned from milk very early in life.
– The regular consumption of dairy products is linked with many types of cancers.
– Dairy products are riddled with saturated fat, cholesterol, and sugar.
– Countries who consume the most dairy have the highest rates of osteoporosis.
Also, they did a very nice job of drawing a parallel between tobacco marketing in the fifties and sixties and how dairy products are currently advertised today. In another few years, will we be looking back on dairy use and scoff in the same way we look down our noses at tobacco users now?
We strongly recommend you watch this documentary with an open mind, and truly hope that it will encourage you to ask some of these questions for yourself, leading you to question conventional wisdom and do some research on your own. Do not simply take our word for it, or the word of the producers of GTFO Milk. Do your own research, apply commonsense, and come to your own conclusion. If more people did just that, the way Americans look at food would be vastly different.
