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Home > Portable Practical Pediatrics > Don’t Drink Your Milk, by Frank Oski MD (Book Review Pedcast)


	Podcast:		Portable Practical Pediatrics
	Episode:		Don’t Drink Your Milk, by Frank Oski MD (Book Review Pedcast)
	Category:		Kids & family
	Duration:		00:00:00
	Publish Date:		2015-12-28 08:38:29
	Description:		Help support DocSmo.com by buying this reviewed book using this affiliate link. You get Amazon’s best price and DocSmo.com earns a small affiliate marketing fee. Thank you. A friend of mine who you may know, Dr. Sheila Kilbane, a frequent guest on docsmo.com, recently gave me a book that she considers a classic of childhood nutrition. The book was written by a pediatrician that every pediatrician of my era is familiar with, Dr. Frank Oski. Dr. Oski was not only the Chairman of Pediatrics at John's Hopkins Medical Center but also the author of numerous articles, textbooks of pediatrics and a parenting book titled The Practical Pediatrician. Dr. Oski was about as mainstream pediatrics as they came and one very smart fellow. So why was Dr. Kilbane so interested in me reading what Dr. Oski had to say about children and dairy intake? I knew that Dr. Kilbane believes that children should not consume any dairy after their first birthday and that she believed that the milk from cows is very harmful to the health of children and adults for that matter. I guess she figured I was old enough and ready to her the truth about the milk of cows as food for humans. Well I did read it and here goes, my review and thoughts of Dr. Oski's book, Don't Drink Your Milk. Dr. Frank Oski's book approaches the subject of the nutritional value of milk the way you would expect an academic pediatrician would, sighting articles and research to justify his positions. He contends that his research revealed to him that not only is cow's milk not nutritious for children or adults, but that it actually causes a lot of physical harm. Here is a synopsis of what Dr. Oski's take on the the research that he presents; The saturated fat found in cow's milk is a major cause of heart attacks and strokes in the western world where it is consumed throughout life. Most children and adults develop lactose intolerance, that is the inability to digest the sugar in cow's milk after infancy and therefore cannot digest the sugar lactose, that is so abundant in cow's milk. Lactose intolerant children and adults become sick when they consume lactose. Milk is a very high calorie food but lacks iron, an essential nutrient that children need. Consuming a lot of cow's milk starves these children of needed iron and makes them susceptible to iron deficiency's devastating effects on a growing child including developmental delays and frequent infections. Many infants and young children are allergic to the proteins in cow's milk therefore causing a serious gut allergy called allergic colitis. So why, with all this medical evidence of serious harm coming from the consumption of cow's milk, does the Academy of Pediatrics, the USDA, and the Center for Disease Control continue to insist that children should get three servings of lean dairy each day after the age of two years? Dr. Oski addresses this dilemma with a blunt discussion of the power of marketing. He contends that the dairy industry has a vested interest in keeping the American population drinking milk and that marketing that message works! Here we are, 48 years after the first edition of Don't Drink Your Milk was published and we are still debating the same argument. The dairy industry is either right (milk is an essential and great food) or the dairy industry marketing machine is able to drown out the truth about the health problems associated with milk consumption. Dr. Oski is now dead and gone, having died in 1996 of prostate cancer. What a shame and how ironic that he would die of a disease that many now believe can be fueled by the milk protein called casein that is found so abundantly in cow's milk. For more on that subject, I refer you to my book review of The China Study, by Dr.T Colin Campbell. So what are parents and pediatricians going to do with all the indicting evidence that Dr. Oski, an extremely well informed pediatrician, presents in his book, Don't Drink your Milk?
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