Cursed if we do and cursed if we don't, or as one generation put it, sometimes you can't win for losing. The health conscious get told to get plenty of calcium to prevent the weakening and loss of bone called osteoporosis—yet some of the main sources hawked by nutritionists are milk and cheese and yogurt. So what's wrong with that? After all, they have a goodly amount of calcium, and cow and goat milk products have a long history in the Chihuahuan Desert.
But milk and cheese and yogurt also are loaded with fat, as is momma cow. The growth of coronary arterial disease correlates quite nicely with the introduction of milk and fatty meat into the human diet. Furthermore, raising large domestic animals is highly inefficient—as a rough average, the energy we get out in the form of food is only about 10% of the energy we put in as fertilizer, management practices, and transportation.
You don't suppose, do you, the fact that no other mammal continues
to drink milk after infancy is some kind of message?
Contributor: Arthur H. Harris, Laboratory for Environmental Biology, Centennial Museum, University of Texas at El Paso.
Desert Diary is a joint production of the Centennial Museum and KTEP National Public Radio at the University of Texas at El Paso.
Faergeman, O. 2003. Coronary artery disease: Genes, drugs, and the agricultural connection. Elsevier, 152 pp.