Raise your hand if you have seen these ads before.
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| David Beckham drinks milk and forgets to wipe off his upper lip. |
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| Danica Patrick drinks milk and leaves it on her face. |
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| Taylor Swift equally drinks milk and flaunts the residue. |
Ok, put your hands down.
So if you have read the ads, like I did, what we can assume is:
- David Beckham does NOT work out, he simply drinks milk.
- NASCAR drivers work out (did you know this, because I didn’t.)
- In the music industry apparently the most important decision to make is whether or not to drink milk, because this is how Taylor Swift got famous, skinny, and muscular all at the same time.
Does this make sense to you?
Milk has been for quite a long time our staple source of calcium.
The United States is habitually grazing the top of the list in milk production, consumption, and exporting.
If milk builds strong bones, than shouldn’t we have some of the strongest bones in the world? After all, we are at the top of the list in milk consumption.
This idea has made many scientists from some of the top universities (Harvard Medical, Cornell, Stanford, Yale, Tufts…etc) question milk as our source of calcium and decide to do some more research.
Their findings,
there is no significant research to prove that milk consumption strengthens bones and a growing body of research that shows milk does the opposite.
*These are not my opinions, nor the opinions of the Doctors that performed the studies. This is objective data.
Click:
Lactose intolerance: diagnosis, genetic, and clinical factors
Think about it.
If we drink the most milk, we should have the strongest bones (because that is what milk is supposed to do), but we have some of the weakest bones in world. There is a flaw in this logic.
When you walk into your local pharmacy go check out the supplement and vitamin sections. Count how many calcium supplements are there for you to purchase over the counter.
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| Pill Man |
Why are there so many of these supplements here?
Do your own research, figure this one out, but in the meantime I have some vital advice.
Get your calcium from the food you eat.
This is a list of the some of the top calcium enriched foods to eat
(that don’t cause osteoporosis):
(that don’t cause osteoporosis):
So the next time you see a “Got Milk” advertisement channel your inner Anchor Man Ron Burgundy…
Your blog is so inspiring Jon! Always, always, always. Thank you for this. I love how passionate and intelligent you are about this subject.
I'm all for not drinking milk, but there are some pretty impressive assumptions throughout this post. Normally I avoid the comment thread, but since you bring up flawed logic in this very post, I think this one is fair game.
1. Beckham's ad in no way insinuates he does not workout. It does imply milk got him that body, but not to the exclusion of exercise. He is, after all, a professional footballer. Even the dullest consumer knows an elite athlete don't get abs like that from consuming.
2. Taylor Swift's ad in no way implies that choosing milk is how she got famous, fit, etc. It's quite the opposite: because she's in the music biz—and therefore decisive—she's sharpened her decision-making skills and chooses to drink milk. The ad actually says the opposite of what you posit.
3. If milk did indeed increase bone strength, it's an unfounded conclusion that the nation with the highest milk consumption would also have the strongest bones, as you state it would. That's like saying nations with the highest smoking rates (Greece) have the most lung cancer (Hungary; Greece doesn't even make the top 10). Other factors—huge factors like exercise and genetics—are at play in both of these. By presenting us with a straw man argument (i.e. If milk increases bone strength, how come our bones aren't really really strong?) you do your more astute readers a disservice.
Being pro-compassion and all veggie doesn't mean you can't include some meat in your well-intentioned arguments.
Anonymous, thank you for reading the blog. Given my educational background and the assumption that you are in fact one of the astute readers, I would normally conclude that you would be able to pick up on the humor.
Speaking of disservice, in Beckham's ad it says "some studies suggest teens who choose it (milk) tend to be leaner". Most individuals will take this as fact, which in the research world "some", means absolutely nothing. This is a disservice.
You mention Beckham and Swift but not Danica Patrick, so I will assume that you too did not know NASCAR drivers worked out, you didn't know who she was, or you caught on to the humor in this case.
Taylor's ad throws in an additional fact that drinking milk over sugary drinks tends to yield leaner children. If we are going to put down correlation studies, than we must not pick and choose which ones will like and dislike, because that correlation is flawed as well.
I understand the whole "correlation doesn't equal causation" theory and I do not argue it. BUT, I will pose questions to instigate dialogue like this, and make people research for themselves.
Lets face it, Taylor Swift may be decisive (because of being a musician, although there are no studies proving that musicians are more decisive than another profession)but as a population we have trouble making informed, mindful, and healthy decisions, so ads, like these, do a disservice.
Milk has calcium, which we need. No argument with those facts. The only opinion I stand by is that there are much better ways of receiving this calcium.
I don't know what the reference to meat is, the post is about milk.
Regardless, of your feedback and my response, I do thank you for posting a comment. It will help readers develop perspective.
Anonymous – please pick up a copy of The China Study or watch Forks Over Knives before making a comment like this. We do not need the flesh of an animal, their breastmilk, or their eggs to survive. We just don't. Please, I implore you to check out a few different supported resources on the subject, because Jon is thoroughly educated on this subject.