I don't drink animal milk at all and soy milk especially the fortified kind is better for your heart and gives you tons of vitamins... much better for you in the long run...

about the gynecomastia... how many asian men do you know with big tits? Enough said

That's great news! Thanks, Taku. These weightlifters, sheezh. And the stuff they take! Yipers!

-Robert, gulping a cool one-vanilla soy milk, of course.

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

Not to harp on weight lifters but, increase use of steroids leads to shunting into the pathway to make estrogens... leading to shrunken nuts, and other feminization effects... Something to think about next time

The only thing to be concerned about is with infants. The only milk infants should be digesting is human milk from their mother's breast. Incredible that in the 1950's the official A.M.A. position was that mothers should be giving their children cow's milk since human milk didn't contain enough protein. This recommendation was based upon "studies" sponsored by the dairy industry, which "coincidently" was a strong financial supporter of the A.M.A. Just another embarrassment that the A.M.A. would rather pretend never happened.

Adult humans are the only mammals that drink milk. In fact most people on the planet are lactose intolerant and can't. Fortified soy milk is probably much better for adult humans than is cows milk. However, neither cow's milk nor soy based baby formulas (which have been vigorously marketed to third world mothers) are a substitute for breast feeding.

This is not just a scientific issue but a moral issue.

Incidently, an interesting comparison of the difference between human, cow's and goat milk can be found on this site. http://biology.clc.uc.edu/...ese/milk_content.htm

The only time that breast milk is not appropriate is in the case of HIV+ mothers, there is vertical transmission through breast milk. Unfortunately this has been a source of AIDS transmission in Africa.

If you want other examples of horrible marketing, the nestle corp heavily marketed a powdered milk formula in rural brazil to be used as an infant formula. This formula was non fortified and totally inadequate for infants which lead to gross malnutrition. Plus this stuff was nto cheap. The biggest tragedy was that the people bought into the marketign so much so that when publc health officials tried to get people to stop using this and to start breast feedign they wouldn't becuase they thought this formula was so much greater...

"Temporarily out of unfunny jokes "

The AIDS transmission is relatively new in comparison. Baby formulas were being marketed in third world countries years before. The Nestle/Brazil story suports my comment about corporate responsibility/morality vs profits.

Oops the temporarily funny joke thing is just my signature... not meant to say that any of the corporate irresponsibility is funny in anyway...

I just heard this one the other day (true story) Med school applicant is in an interview. Interviewer asks him why did you leave your high paying job at Pepsi? the answer was. I was sick of what they had us do... his job was to go to cities in south America and find the saltiest potato chips in the area. Pepsi would then go in and buy that chip company. The effect was to increase the people's salt load while increasing their phosphates from the soda... very bad for the long term health of anyone...

definately food for thought

I don't drink cow's milk for one simple reason. Cow's milk is Perfectly designed to get a calf to gain over a hundred pounds in less than a year. I'm not a calf, and I don't want to gain over a hundred pounds in a year.

Soy? I don't know. I tend to like rice-derived products better...not so grainy, and a little sweeter than soy.

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Quid quid latine dictum sit altum videtur
(That which is said in Latin sounds profound)

Greg: I like your sig! Well, that site is certainly sobering. I guess we haven't found the "perfect food" yet. On balance, perhaps I'm better off drinking more soy and less dairy milk provided I'm also taking a multivitamin (with zinc especially). My brain has reached a nearly perfect state of dessication anyway. :),

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank