Discovering Dairy Alternatives - How Foods Fight Cancer

Discovering Dairy Alternatives - How Foods Fight Cancer

People following Western diets tend to
have high cancer rates and have begun to
blame not only meat and other fatty foods,
but also dairy products.

Most North Americans and Europeans grow up with the idea that
milk is a healthful beverage, and the dairy industry has certainly
done its best to promote that idea. However, researchers seeking
to understand why people following Western diets tend to have high cancer
rates have begun to blame not only meat and other fatty foods, but
also dairy products.

In 1998, Harvard researchers reported findings in a large group of
health professionals. Those who typically consumed more than two servings
of milk per day had a 60 percent increased risk of prostate cancer
compared to those who generally avoided milk.1 Two years later, a
Harvard study on another large group of men showed much the same
thing—milk drinkers had significantly more prostate cancer.2 Many other
studies have had similar findings, and researchers have also examined the
role of dairy products—positive or negative—in other forms of cancer.

Why would dairy products influence cancer risk? Is the problem due
to hormones or other chemicals in milk, or is it due to the basic nutrient
makeup of milk—its fat or protein, perhaps? What does this mean for people
who have been diagnosed with cancer already? And if milk does have
health risks, what should we use instead?