Hi everyone...my name is Kara Christensen and I'm a freshman journalism
major who's recently become aware of problems with milk consumption.

I've enjoyed reading all your posts and thought it was about time I
contributed. When I read a recent post saying milk gives good calcium and
protein, I thought I'd share what I know about why that's not true.

Milk is NOT a good source of calcium for two reasons:
1)It has too much protein
15% of calories in milk are protein (compared with 5% in breast milk)
Why is this bad? Too much protein causes the acid level of the blood to
rise, and to combat this, our bodies take CALCIUM and other nutrients OUT OF
OUR BONES in order to buffer this acid. So, basically, drinking a glass of
milk causes you to LOSE calcium.
2) Milk does not have enough magnesium
Magnesium is essential for calcium absorption-- if not enough of it is
present in a product, our bodies can consume approx. only 25% of the calcium
in that product. Though milk does have "a lot" of calcium, the amount we can
absorb is greatly outweighed by the amount we lose because of the excess
protein. The excess calcium "floating around in our bodies" may contribute
to kidney stones, arthirtis, gout, or buildup on arterial walls that can
lead to artherosclerotic (sp?) plaque.
So...even if you're not lactose intolerant or allergic to milk, milk is
still NOT good to drink.
Good sources of calcium AND magnesium are green leafy vegetables, fortified
fruit juices, etc.

I gave a speech on this last week and it was not well received, as one might
imagine. If you want to know more, here's two really good sources (where I
got most of my info):

Milk: The Deadly Poison by Robert Cohen
and
Moooove Over Milk published by "Let's Eat" (I'm not sure if it's still in
production)

Anyway, sorry if you guys already know this stuff but I thought I'd share
just in case.

Kara :^)
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