A bit of additional information about some terms mentioned in previous
Milk write-ups.
1. Protector of Mankind and
why address a related topic: if
humans should/ought to drink milk or not. In the "modern
western society" it's
not done to
breasfeed babies, or accepted for just a couple of months, whereas in other parts of the
world this may continue up to three years.
(side info: It is
healthy for the
baby as well as the
mother to breastfeed. For the baby, because of the
nutritional value, developing the
flora in the intestine and their
immune system. The mother will have less chance to develop
breast cancer in a later stage in life.)
This would suggest that after those 3 years you won't need milk anymore. This is true for people with a
darker skin colour, but not for the white people. People with a darker skin produce more
vitamin D, more than white people who spend time in the sun. But the
physiology of the white people have to
compensate for that loss. This is done via drinking of milk: the
lactose (milk sugar)
separation (via
beta-galactosidase) and uptake of the resulting
glucose and
galactose is related to this vitamin D production (the processes involved are not really clear at the moment of writing) (and facilitating
calcuim uptake too). Further, this ability is NOT a
gene mutation. All people on earth do have the
enzyme beta-galactosidase when they're born, and will use that enzyme while they're breastfeeded. However, when you don't drink milk anymore, there's no use for the body to keep on producing the enzyme, aka: it is a
relative deficiency.
This relative deficiency is considered an
illness (...) and called
lactose intolerance: instead of nicely separating the two sugars, the flora will
ferment it
anaerobically, attracting water and producing CO
2 and a little bit of CH
4 (
carbon dioxide and
methane). hiha, you're a
bioreactor ;-)
2. bs says "
cows which have been pumped up with
human growth hormone, which is just really gross to me." Well, nope. Cows are pumped up with
BST, an acromy for
Bovine SomatoTropine, which is a cow growth hormone, and legal in the
United States, but not in the
European Union, although the US wants to push it into our throats during every
GATT discussions and
threatens with
sanctions. Besides, there's more BST remaining in the
meat than in the milk.
Maybe even more
doubtful is the use of the
vaccination/
immunization treatments of the livestock which is
correlated (a
statistically significant positive relation) to the ever increasing occurence of
milk protein allergy because of the transferred
antibodies via the milk (uhm,
researchers think it's the antibodies to blame, they're not 100% sure about that).