Is Milk a Vital, Lifelong Ingredient within a Healthy Lifestyle?

Vern Scott
10 min readSep 10, 2024

There are some modern health indictments against cow’s milk for adults, in addition to bovine demonizations related to greenhouse gas concerns. Though in adulthood I’ve cut down on dairy, it is still a big part of my diet (mostly to get muscle-building protein and probiotics). The environment could probably benefit from “less cows”, but the concerns seem overblown. As a kid from a dairy-family (and culture) it seems the reality is a bunch of urbanites hating on something they don’t quite understand. Here’s my case for the merits of cow’s milk.

The foster-mother of the human race

Most Professional Athletics are Big Milk Drinkers: I’ll begin with a Sports Illustrated article discussing the popularity of cow’s milk among professional athletes. It’s basically no accident that these athletes are big and strong. Wilt Chamberlain, Ted Williams, Manute Bol, Tom Brady, Mario Andretti, Michael Phelps were/are big milk drinkers, among MANY others. It was not hard for the industry to get them into “Got Milk” commercials either.

Dairy Countries Correlate with Longer Life: Adding to the above, I submit the world map showing the high and low dairy consumption countries. High dairy consumption (especially in places like Northern Europe and North America) correlate with taller people and longer lifespans. However, these countries also have higher incomes…

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Vern Scott

Scott lives in the SF Bay Area and writes confidently about Engineering, History, Politics, and Health