The Benefits and Risks of Drinking Milk
You’ve probably always heard that drinking milk is essential for growth. Also, it helps your bones and teeth stay healthy. However, drinking milk and consuming dairy products can also cause certain health problems.
Nevertheless, it’s not all bad news. After all, consuming milk is also beneficial in many ways. We’ll explain more throughout this article.
What are the benefits of drinking milk?
Milk has been a part of the human diet in most civilizations for thousands of years. In fact, humans began consuming milk about 11,000 years ago, when we started domesticating livestock. However, milk for human consumption is often treated with ultra-high temperature processing, which causes slight variations in its composition.
Milk is one of nature’s main sources of calcium. It’s very important for babies. Calcium is essential for bone formation and maintenance, among other things.
Also, this food provides other important minerals. This is why milk is one of the most complete foods there is.
Also, milk is a raw material for the production of many dairy products such as butter, cheese, yogurt, cream, or curd. Since the number-one consumed milk in the word is cow milk, we decided to focus on its composition:
The composition of milk
- Water: The majority component. Milk is made up of 80-87% water.
- Carbohydrates: Lactose is the main sugar in milk. This component is one of the reasons why it’s risky to drink milk.
- Proteins: The proteins in milk are considered of high biological value and contain many essential amino acids. Milk is made up of 3-4% protein.
- Fat: This makes up 3 to 6% of milk. However, this varies greatly depending on cow nutrition and breed. Overall, 90% of the fat in milk is in the form of triglycerides.
- Vitamins: Among all the vitamins milk contains, vitamin A, vitamin D, riboflavin (B2), cyanocobalamin, and thiamine are worthy of special mention.
- Minerals: Milk is very rich in minerals which are usually in the form of salts. Milk contains calcium, potassium, phosphorus, iodine, sodium, chloride, magnesium, and zinc.
The risks of drinking milk
As we mentioned earlier in this article, consuming milk also carries many risks that should be considered. Some of them are:
1. Lactose intolerance
1 in 2 people is lactose intolerant. As we mentioned above, lactose is the main sugar in milk. However, most people don’t know they’re intolerant to this substance and continue consuming milk.
In this regard, a high percentage of the world’s population is lactose intolerant. Thus, lactose intolerance isn’t a disease, but a normal state. This is because, between the ages of two and four, our body begins to stop synthesizing the enzyme lactase, which is responsible for the digestion of lactose.
Since humans usually continue drinking milk, the lactose they consume isn’t digested, meaning it remains in the intestine where it’s fermented by colon bacteria. This leads to gas, pain, and sometimes diarrhea.
2. Calcium malabsorption after drinking milk
Consuming animal proteins makes the blood’s pH acid. As a reaction, the body uses part of the calcium in the bones to neutralize the acidity. It’s been shown that consuming dairy products or calcium-rich foods isn’t a protective factor against the risk of fracture.
Although milk contains essential nutrients, you don’t need to drink milk to get them. In fact, vegetables are some of the most calcium-rich foods.
Discover: Plant-Based Foods Rich in Calcium
3. Drinking milk increases the risk of allergies and asthma
Cow’s milk has three times more proteins than human milk, and some of them are very hard to digest.
In some people, these proteins (such as casein) adhere to intestinal lymphatic vessels, which prevents the absorption of nutrients. Thus, they can cause immune system problems, allergies, and asthma.
Conclusion
It’s important to know if you’re lactose intolerant or not to avoid any milk consumption-related complications. However, consuming this food moderately (only after ruling out lactose intolerance) is beneficial for the body.
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Burt LA, Billington EO, Rose MS, Raymond DA, Hanley DA, Boyd SK. Effect of High-Dose Vitamin D Supplementation on Volumetric Bone Density and Bone Strength: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. 2019 Aug 27;322(8):736-745. doi: 10.1001/jama.2019.11889. Erratum in: JAMA. 2019 Nov 19;322(19):1925. PMID: 31454046; PMCID: PMC6714464.
- Oak SJ, Jha R. The effects of probiotics in lactose intolerance: A systematic review. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr. 2019;59(11):1675-1683. doi: 10.1080/10408398.2018.1425977. Epub 2018 Feb 9. PMID: 29425071.
- Aparicio Vizuete A, Rodríguez-Rodríguez E, Lorenzo Mora AM, Sánchez-Rodríguez P, Ortega RM, López-Sobaler AM. Mitos y falacias en relación al consumo de productos lácteos [Myths and fallacies in relation to the consumption of dairy products]. Nutr Hosp. 2019 Aug 27;36(Spec No3):20-24. Spanish. doi: 10.20960/nh.02801. PMID: 31368336.
