Cow's milk is often touted on television as the "perfect food." It is supposedly needed by everyone. "If you don't drink milk, your bones will become brittle from osteoporosis" hint many advertisers and even some physicians. Yet, cow's milk consumption has been shown to contribute to many of the health problems commonly encountered in our society. Excessive consumption of cow's milk is often one of the major factors contributing to susceptibility to common infections.

According to Dr. Schmidt in his book Childhood Ear Infections, simply eliminating dairy products is often all that's required to solve the riddle of recurrent ear problems in children. These sentiments are echoed by Dr. Fred Pullen, an ear, nose and throat specialist in Miami, Florida. Patients are referred to Dr. Pullen for the sole purpose of having tubes surgically implanted in their eardrums. Before undergoing surgery, however, all patients are first placed on a diet that eliminates dairy products. The result: "three-fourths [of these children] never need tubes."

If one does even the smallest amount of research, it becomes evident that there is a wealth of information on this topic. One well-written book is Principles of Nutrition by Whitman H. Jordan, published by the Macmillan Company of New York in 1912. On page 266 Jordan describes a German study detaling the tie outcome of 49,362 children born in Berlin during 1890. Before the end of one year, 12,623 of those children died. Of those who died, 8,008 were fed on cow's milk. Only 1,588 had been breast fed. Let me quote from this 86 year old book:

"Further statistics show of those fed on mother's milk one in thirteen died, while of those brought up by hand (bottle fed), one out of every two died."

These figures require no comment. Do not think that cow's milk is only harmful to children, though. The problems with cow's milk are so numerous that noted professor of pediatrics at John Hopkins School of Medicine, Dr. Frank Oski, wrote a book entitled Please, Don't Drink Your Milk. The following are health conditions either directly caused by or associated with cow's milk consumption, taken from MILK IS GOOD FOR __________ by Robert M. Kradjian, M.D.: