Another opinion that I've clung to is that products that require extensive advertising must somehow require constant pressure on the consumer and therefore mustn't be able to stand on their own merit. Such products as the two well known colas and milk itself fit this category of products in my view. Consequently, I've never recommended that my patients consume milk as a means to skeletal health. Sure there is a lot of calcium in milk: however, once it is pasteurized and homogenized I believe that the calcium loses its bioavailability to the human digestive system especially that of adults. It has been said that milk is the number one dietary cause of constipation and bad breath.
Now I read in the October 2000 issue of The Backletter that "the body of scientific evidence appears inadequate to support a recommendation of daily intake of dairy foods to promote bone health" and that "dairy foods did not have a statistically significant impact on bone health in most major studies". Furthermore this article goes on to state that although consumption of dairy products raises calcium intakes, it doesn't make for stronger bones. A study coming out of Harvard University of 77,000 women failed to find any evidence that women with diets high in diary had reduced their risk of fractures to the hips or arms. In fact, the data suggested that the opposite tends to be true: higher levels of dairy foods in the diet cause a slightly higher risk of fractures in women. This is thought to be due to the leaching effect that a higher protein diet has on the calcium in bones. People who consume greater amounts of dairy foods are also eating higher amounts of animal protein.
The step from calcium consumption to bone growth is a complex and involved biochemical process, which no one completely understands as yet. It is naïve to think that by merely taking extra calcium that you will build bones. There is much more to the process than that. When I hear that some professional who while discussing bone density concerns has told a person to eat antacids I want to scream. Most antacids are made from calcium carbonate which is just about completely inabsorbable by the human gut.
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