Is Milk Good For Kids?

This is a post about Milk. The beverage you see advertisements for often, that your mother probably told you to drink up, that is supposed to be good for your bones, health, and just about everything.
But is it?

Wow thanks milk industry, thanks for telling me milk has protein and is STRONG.
But I'm not buying into your lies, I know the truth!

They say milk is good for you because...CALCIUM! Every child needs Calcium, right? Where else do you get it from other than milk?
Lets prove your doctor, and your mother, wrong----with science!
To spare you the mumbo jumbo and clutter of data which you can find above (or below), I'll give you what matters: The finding!

Conclusions:

High milk intake was associated with higher mortality in one cohort of women and in another cohort of men, and with higher fracture incidence in women. Given the observational study designs with the inherent possibility of residual confounding and reverse causation phenomena, a cautious interpretation of the results is recommended.

Huh? What do you mean cautious interpretations?
That's a scientisty way of saying "don't adjust your life in case we're wrong, but that's what the data shows!"
So lets have another study!

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE:

After controlling for known risk factors and current milk consumption, each additional glass of milk per day during teenage years was associated with a significant 9% higher risk of hip fracture in men (RR = 1.09; 95% CI, 1.01-1.17).
Greater milk consumption during teenage years was not associated with a lower risk of hip fracture in older adults. The positive association observed in men was partially mediated through attained height.

So okay, it clearly doesn't help prevent osteoporoses and simply taking it away from your kids diet likely improves their chance of not breaking their bones up, that's GREAT!

So why did your mother tell you it was good? Doctors and propaganda. Why did the doctors tell you it was good? Propaganda and Dairy Industry funding, plus their mother.
But lets keep it on the people who matter, the kids, not those greedy universities and corporates.

Huh, a chart.
This is where my next point lies,, puberty.
You may be going "huh" right about now, but here's the thing: The average age of puberty is dropping, and has been more and more as the years go by. Since that study was completed in 1960 it has dropped many years more.

So what's the issue?
Well, I'm sure you'd like your little balls of joy to stay little balls of joy for as long as possible, and well, to put it bluntly Puberty changes people, and I would say that change is mostly negative. I certainly would prefer them to stay kids for as long as possible.
But again, lets focus on who matters here, the kids, not us.

Time for that science :)

In summary, this large-scale systematic assessment robustly confirms the associations between early puberty timing and T2D/cardiovascular disease in women and demonstrates concordant associations with early puberty timing in men. Furthermore, the findings implicate links between puberty timing across a broad range of disease associations in men and women, many reported for the first time.

So what does this mean?
It means that not only is milk not good for your child's bones, but it most likely will end their childhood sooner and cause more diseases and death in later life, as well as quicken their aging process.
What else?

I don't want to beat the bush and drag this on longer than it has to, so I'll break down the other big myth about diary, which all dairy is bad for children and adults, not just milk.
PROTEIN!

Human beings need very little protein, so this is a biggest joke of them all, as well as the general obsession with protein.
A fully grown adult male or female doesn't need more than 30g/day and 50grams to ensure absorption of enough is recommended.

This is one of the WHO's (World Health Organizations) charts/guidelines scaled to average teenager-adult weights. These are adjusted to absorbtion, meaning these amounts assume some is not absorbed.
To ensure perfectly adequate protein "medium" and not "minimum" is recommended, as typically people eat excess protein and therefore typical is unadvised.

So go tomorrow count your child's meals, rough estimates, and see if your child, who's probably lower than those weights, is getting enough, once scaled to their weight.
Or, don't, because there's a population that doesn't have any dairy, ever, and is found to have their diet, the Vegan diet, adequate in all stages of life.

To toss some more evidence at you, here is a source for the percentage of each nutrient healthy human breast milk has.

Mature human milk contains 3%--5% fat, 0.8%--0.9% protein, 6.9%--7.2% carbohydrate calculated as lactose, and 0.2% mineral constituents expressed as ash. Its energy content is 60--75 kcal/100 ml.

To translate this into calories, this would be about 7% protein, 30% fat, 53% carbohydrates.
This is for your baby.
Your infant, your toddler.
When they're growing the most, the quickest, and needing to develop overall everything that will be theirs for the rest of their lives.
They have 7% protein.
White potatoes are 7.6% protein.
Whole wheat noodles are 15.4%
Skim milk is 43%, raw milk and whole milk is 23% or so.

I hope I've made my case to you and you decide that there's no need for milk, cheese, butter, cream, or any sort of dairy derivative in your child's diet.
If you don't want to go and dive into the vegan cult, that's fine. When your child is at a party, you don't need to bring your own cupcakes for your child, they aren't going to die from a little dairy.
But if it's at your home, or you have the option when you're out, say no to dairy.

The only milk your child should be having is YOUR milk. Children naturally lose their lactose tolerance after the first few years of life for a reason; this has only recently changed in people who've had many generations guzzling the bovine juice, and there's a reason we used to be that way.

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Disclaimer: While I may be a vegan, and value all life equally, that's different for kids. For whatever reason I place them far above any animal, or other people, and while it may be unethical I'd do horrible crimes in their name if I had to. What I mean is in no way am I trying to save the animals in this article; continue feeding your child honey, while I may disagree honey is not harmful to their health. But dairy is.

If you're unfamiliar with how to make the switch, of alternatives, or think your child can complain I'd be more than happy to give you tips on that too, and I'll likely be making another post on this soon.

As always, this post was spontaneously generated over the course of a number of hours of my freetime on a random day, and I haven't made a lick of editing to it, as I believe genuine words are more powerful than well thought manipulative ones. If even one of you parents make the switch, or are pushed a little further to doing so, my time was more than well spent. Thank you.
Also, as always but something I have never mentioned, all my content is free to be shared or mentioned anywhere for non-commercial purposes. Everything is dear to me and something I simply want to spread the message of, any further benefit is simply a plus.

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All source scan be found (science wise) in the blue-linked in their related category/topic.

Picture sources are as follows:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5 was off a pdf the WHO distributed some years ago
#6

PS - All of this applies to you natural milk lovers too, raw milk is still milk and it still has these nutritional profiles and hormones. The same applies to you goat milk people. It's better than bovine (cow), but it's still really really bad especially due to the puberty issue.
Furthermore, anything read in this article applies to adults too, although the topic was more oriented at kids these basics (such as the estrogen in cow milk) doesn't go away and still affects adults, including men, and due to the estrogen being animal-based it affects us men, unlike phyto-estrogen which (largely) cannot due to being plant-derived and incompatible with our receptors.