Diabetes rates are reaching epidemic proportions in developed countries where junk diets and obesity is common. Diabetes is a serious and debilitating disease caused by the body’s failure to control blood sugar levels. This is referred to as ‘insulin resistance’.
A study by the University of Cardiff in the United Kingdom (2007) stated that a daily consumption of a pint of milk a day protects men against diabetes and heart disease. However, a closer examination of the research reveals that the study is flawed and without merit.
Jon Barron (of The Baseline of Health Foundation) analyzed the data from the study and his comments are summarized in the five points below:
1. The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. It looked at how insulin resistance was affected by dairy milk consumption. A total 2,375 men were tracked between the ages of 45 and 59 over a 20-year period to see whether eating dairy products reduces the risk of insulin resistance. According to the study, the more milk they consumed, the lower the risk.
2. In fact, although the study tracked a decreased risk of insulin resistance with increased dairy consumption, it found little actual correlation between dairy consumption and the incidence of diabetes itself. There were only 7 more cases of diabetes among the lowest consumers of dairy versus the highest. The incidence of heart disease was not tracked.
3. Unfortunately, people who had diabetes at the start of the study were not included in the results. We therefore don’t know if their condition improved or deteriorated as a result of milk consumption. Such information would have been significant in determining the overall health value of dairy milk in relation to insulin resistance.
4. A big failing in the research was the lack of references to the overall diet of participants. The data only refers to the amount of milk and dairy products people were consuming, nothing else. If you drink more milk, you’re bound to drink less of something else. Conversely, if you drink less milk, you are likely to drink more of something else. If that something else is sweetened tea, coffee, soda pop, milk shake, etc. then that can be a major factor in the incidence of diabetes.
5. It seems that the so-called health benefits attributed to milk in the study may have nothing to do with milk at all. They may instead be a reflection of a better diet. It is likely that the men drinking milk were consuming less sugary foods, but the study doesn’t tell us either way. Clearly, without the data, the study is meaningless and misleading.
When you look at the research into diabetes there are many studies (too numerous to mention here) linking milk consumption with a higher incidence of diabetes, and there are virtually no studies suggesting that milk prevents diabetes.
In the book ‘Nurturing Traditions’ (1999), the author Sally Fallon makes the following comment:
‘There is some evidence that pasteurization alters milk lactase (a form of sugar), making it more readily absorbable. This and the fact that pasteurized milk puts an unnecessary strain on the pancreas to produce digestive enzymes, may explain why milk consumption has been linked to diabetes’.
This is confirmed by other research. It is known that lactose undergoes condensation and molecular changes as a result of heat treatment. Lactose in milk feeds glucose into the bloodstream, and this in turn can over time create insulin resistance.
The risk of diabetes is even greater for organic milk consumers. This is so because most organic milk (over 80 percent) is sold as UHT milk. In the USA virtually all organic milk is UHT! The ultra high pasteurization temperature of UHT is double that of regular milk. This means that organic UHT milk is more likely to overburden the bloodstream with glucose, increasing the risk of diabetes.
See below for information about a new book ‘Organic Milk Myth’ which covers this subject in detail.
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