It's National Chocolate Milk Day today but given the dairy industry's efforts, it would seem that very few people are bothered about milk-themed festivities. That's a good thing - milk is not something that's cause for celebration, being bad news for our health, for cows, and for the environment. The only thing it's good for is the baby calf it was intended for.
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Cow's milk has received good press over the years, becoming synonymous with fit athletes, strong bones and your favourite celebrity with a white moustache. But if we weren't exposed to so many positive advertising campaigns we might think of drinking milk from another animal as quite strange.
Cow's milk has one purpose - to help a baby calf grow into a full-grown cow in a small space of time. Yet it is marketed as a healthy food for humans.
From a very young age, children are taught that milk contains calcium which makes your bones grow strong. Yet the food pyramids we are taught from were created by the very people who benefit from consumers buying milk.
If the information given to us had been less biased, we would all know that spinach has just as much calcium as dairy. It would be common knowledge that the calcium in greens is absorbed much more easily by our bodies. Thus, people will benefit more from eating broccoli or kale than they would drinking a glass of milk.
The other ingredients in milk are often left out too, such as antibiotics, cholesterol, and growth hormones to name a few - yum.
Lactose intolerance is not something that only affects a handful of people, and is actually experienced by around 70% of humans. This increases to 100% in some countries- so there are whole populations who survive purely on plant-based sources of calcium.
If the stuff we were told as kids were true, these people would be suffering from weak, brittle bones. Yet, osteoporosis and hip fractures are experienced more in countries where people drink more milk.
There's still a myth floating around that milking cows is beneficial to them - otherwise they would just explode. The reality is that cows are just like humans when it comes to producing milk. They have to give birth in order to lactate, so cows are artificially inseminated in order to keep the milk flowing.
Mothers and babies are separated almost right way and any male babies are sent to be killed for veal or killed outright. This is far removed from the perfectly portrayed family in the adverts who drink the white stuff.
Milk comes at a cost. It's costing humans their health, and inflicting pain and suffering on animals. Another cost is to the environment. Cows generate a large amount of greenhouse gases which are a major contributor to global warming.
The dairy industry is also being supported by the taxpayer. Dairy farmers in England receive about £24,000 a year in subsidies from the government, which equates to around a third of their income.
There are so many plant-based options that you can try in place of milk on National Chocolate Milkshake Day - soya, almond, hazelnut, coconut and rice. Plus they're all intended for humans, not for baby animals, and the fact is they taste much better.
Inspired by an article by Elena Orde (Editor of The Vegan)
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