Throughout the schools of North America, children are taught that milk products are an essential part of a balanced diet. Walk into any school and you will find posters of dairy products in every classroom. Cow balloons, giant milk cartons and sports celebrities donning tall white glasses of frothy milk, all generously supplied by the Dairy Board. There is even a National Dairy Awareness Week to celebrate how much milk has become a part of our North American culture. It is like Grandma’s apple pie. Milk, the most perfect food. But is it?

CALCIUM
Of all the minerals, calcium is the most abundant in the body, accounting for 3.2% of the earth's crust. Its main use when accompanied by phosphorus, magnesium and vitamins A, C and D is in building and maintaining bones and teeth. It is a vital mineral in regulating the heartbeat, muscle development, preventing muscle cramps, protecting against blood clotting, protecting against colon cancer, helping in the transmission of nerve impulses, and contributing to enzyme function. It inhibits the absorption of lead into bones and teeth, eases restless sleep and regulates the passage of nutrients through the cell wall. Calcium is also used in balancing the pH level in the body.

Considering that there is such an intense fear of calcium deficiency in North America, you would think that it is a difficult mineral to find. You would pity generations before us and modern nations that have not had the luxury of abundant dairy products that we enjoy in our North American diet. Peoples and cultures with rotting teeth and brittle bones, yet nothing could be further from the truth.

Calcium is in every natural food that we eat. And, believe it or not, there are actually foods that are higher in calcium than our beloved milk. Little sesame seeds do not have the backing of a massive Dairy Board to advertise their nutritional quality. Yet a cup of these humble little seeds contains 2,200 mg. of calcium compared with the 280 mg. of calcium in a cup of milk.

All green leafy vegetables, cabbage, asparagus, broccoli, collards, brewers’ yeast, dulse, figs, oats, prunes, soy products, blackstrap molasses and Sucanat, to mention only a few, contain generous amounts of this essential mineral. All life on earth contains calcium. The important question to ask is, "how much calcium do we need?"

CALCIUM NEEDS
On Pitcairn Island, in the Pacific, they tried unsuccessfully to introduce the dairy cow. The attempt failed because of the Island’s rough terrain. These people had lived their lives without dairy products, so it was no great loss.

You might wonder if this lack of dairy products had any impact on health, if they were sick or weak from missing all those nutrients in milk. No! they are far from sick. A visiting physician declared, it would be difficult to find a comparable population anywhere in the world as healthy, robust, and physically fit as these people.

This exceptional health, combined with longevity, has drawn investigators who have made extensive studies on the Islanders. They found old men of seventy who could scramble up the rope ladders of the ships like men of twenty. Researchers reason that this health is attributed to diet. Pitcairn Islanders are Seventh Day Adventists and, basically, vegetarians with the inclusion of some fish.

Determining your calcium need is like trying to figure out how much water it takes to fill a five-gallon pail with a hole in it. The amount of water needed to maintain a full pail would depend on the size of the hole.

Our acid-forming North American diet is the hole in the pail. It forces our body to consume massive amounts of calcium to maintain a pH balance in the blood. Coffee, tea, table salt, meat, eggs, milk, cheese, pop, bread, and junk food all force the body to produce copious amounts of acid.

Calcium neutralizes strong stomach acids. It is the active ingredient used in antacid pills to relieve stomach pain caused by acid indigestion. Calcium, in the form of limestone, will neutralize acid rain. Within the body, it is used to maintain the correct acid balance of the blood. Our blood can function only at a specific pH level. If the blood acid level moves up or down, the body goes into an alarmed state. Hydrochloric acid is needed to digest ham, cheese, meats, eggs and processed foods. Calcium is secreted to alkalize this acidic digestive mixture when it enters the bloodstream. Afterward, it is excreted with other metabolic wastes. On the way out, calcium compounds can lodge in the kidneys causing kidney stones, or in the gall bladder producing gallstones.

Another way that a high-protein diet depletes calcium is through excess protein turning into urea in the liver. Urea creates a diuretic action in the kidney, leaching minerals which include calcium through the urine.

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a long term study observing a diet consisting of 75 grams of protein per day, along with 1,400 mg. of calcium. It was discovered that a greater amount of calcium was lost through urine than was being absorbed into the body, creating a negative calcium balance. This study confirmed what many health specialists suspected. Protein consumption has the greatest impact on calcium depletion of the bones, even greater than the level of calcium intake through diet.

The Bantu women of Africa live on a sparse diet of vegetable sources. A diet completely free of dairy foods. Their average intake of calcium is 250 to 400 mg a day. This is far lower than the 800 mg. recommended by the RDA. They give birth to as many as ten babies during their life. Each child is breast-fed for ten months. Although childbearing causes an intense calcium drain, osteoporosis is unknown to these people. When Bantu women migrate to the city and adopt a protein-rich diet, osteoporosis and other diseases become a threat to their health.

In 1984, the Medical Tribune reported studies by Michigan State and other universities regarding bone densities. It was the most extensive study yet undertaken. They discovered that, in the United States, at age 65, male vegetarians averaged a 3% bone loss. Male meat-eaters averaged a 7% bone loss. Female vegetarians averaged an 18% bone loss. Female meat-eaters averaged a 35% bone loss. The conclusion was that vegetarians were found to have significantly stronger bones.

The Inuit people, who live on a very high-protein diet, have the greatest calcium intake of any population. Yet, they also have one of the highest rates of osteoporosis.

Osteoporosis is a result of a negative calcium balance caused by the body using calcium to neutralize the continuous quantities of acidic mixtures that enter the bloodstream.

The countries consuming the greatest amount of calcium through milk products are suffering the most from calcium deficiencies. These countries have the highest incidence of osteoporosis. Why would the countries with an overflowing supply of calcium-laden milk have the highest rate of calcium-deficiency diseases?

To answer this, let us first consider how much calcium we are getting from milk.

Milk’s available calcium is cut in half through the process of pasteurization. Low-fat milk makes calcium unabsorbable because fat is an essential part of the transportation and absorption of calcium. Refined sugar increases the amount of calcium lost through urine. The absorption of calcium in the intestine is diminished in the presence of sugar. Salt has been shown to increase calcium levels in the urine.

Both cow’s and mother’s milk are high in enzymes. There is an enzyme which separates calcium and phosphorus, allowing the calcium to be readily available to the body. Pasteurizing milk destroys these important enzymes.

Meat and soft drinks are high in phosphorus which binds with calcium making it useless to the body. Coffee, tea, and chocolate have been shown to increase calcium loss in the urine.