Is dairy overrated?

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None other than the NYTimes’s Mark Bittman sounds like a vegan polemi­cist:

Most humans never tasted fresh milk from any source other than their mother for almost all of human his­tory, and fresh cow’s milk could not be rou­tinely avail­able to urban­ites with­out indus­trial pro­duc­tion. The fed­eral gov­ern­ment not only sup­ports the milk indus­try by spend­ing more money on dairy than any other item in the school lunch pro­gram, but by con­tribut­ing free pro­pa­ganda as well as sub­si­dies amount­ing to well over $4 bil­lion in the last 10 years.

These aren’t new argu­ments, but Bittman presents them well, cit­ing his own expe­ri­ences. And of course it makes a dif­fer­ence that he’s a charm­ing, high pro­file Times columnist.

  • Macken­zie Morgan

    As some­one who can’t con­sume dairy with­out tak­ing dou­ble or quadru­ple (depend­ing on the food) doses of lit­tle lac­tase sup­ple­ments (and then re-upping the dosage if I con­tinue eat­ing more than 20–30 min­utes) because I, like the vast major­ity of humans alive today, lack a West­ern Euro­pean genetic muta­tion: yes, dairy is overrated.

    I main­tained a mostly vegan diet for about a year, when even the lit­tle pills were com­pletely inef­fec­tive. I knew which restau­rants to visit, I had my own set of “quick things to cook for din­ner,” and I just plain got used to it. One impor­tant thing is to remem­ber that over 90% of East Asians are lac­tose intol­er­ant. That means their cui­sine is safe. Cur­ries, bibim­bap, and Japan­ese food are dietary sta­ples. The lit­tle pills are still not super effec­tive, but if I’m out at a gath­er­ing with no vegan options, a few hours of bloat­ing and pain (what I get when I take the pills) is bet­ter than without.

    • http://www.martinkelley.com/ Mar­tin Kelley

      You’re far from alone. I was sur­prised by Bittman’s stats about just how wide­spread lac­tose intol­er­ance is: “as many as 50 mil­lion peo­ple are lac­tose intol­er­ant, includ­ing 90 per­cent of all Asian-Americans and 75 per­cent of all African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews.”

      • Macken­zie Morgan

        So then when you con­sider “gov­ern­ment cheese”… You’re a poor kid, get­ting the free/reduced school lunches, which are full of sub­si­dized, left­over gov­ern­ment cheese. If you’re African Amer­i­can, there’s this nice high chance that all that gov­ern­ment cheese has you in a world of pain/bloating through­out your after­noon classes, which is *exactly* the right state for con­cen­trat­ing on your stud­ies and learn­ing, right? Sure, it’s pos­si­ble to avoid the dairy parts of a school lunch and get juice instead…if you get a doc­tor to write a note about your lac­tose intolerance…which means pay­ing to go to the doctor.