One Small Thing: Milk

One morning, my mother watched me pour half a cup of milk.
"That's all your drinking?" she asked.
I nodded hesitantly.
"But that is not enough for a growing girl like you", my mother replied and poured me a full cup of milk.

Milk is an essential for the human body. It contains calcium and protein which helps bones develop and grow. However, now, milk may not be so healthy. There are many chemicals like pesticide in the milk to make it last longer and keep bacteria away. These chemicals are harmful to the body and can cause defections. Also, milk has 59 active hormones including allergens, fat, cholesterol and insulin. Insulin can easily cause cancer and it sometimes referred to "fuel cell" of cancer.

The industry feeds the cows high protein, soy-based feed to make them have enlarged pituitary glands which allows cows to produce milk more rapidly. Cows usually eat green grass so giving them the feed is very unhealthy for them. Since the cows became so unhealthy, the industry gives the cows many antibiotics which ends up in the milk.

In order to produce more milk, cows are fed genetically engineered synthetic growth hormones, they also are fed genetically modified organism (GMO) feed to reduce the cost. The cows might hold traces of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) a highly contagious and incurable form of prion, its origin is unknown. Milk might not be a safe food anymore.

Cow milk is specifically designed for calves and has many different substances. Calves are much bigger than human babies so cow milk has 3 times more protein than a human needs. Breast milk is designed for humans and is very nourishing for babies but it is also very different from cow's milk. Also, every mammal on earth except humans stop drinking milk once they are weaned so perhaps humans should stop drinking too much milk.

On the other hand, do we even need that much milk? The instinct to drink other animal's milk came from our ancestors when they could not find enough food and protein so they turned to other animals' milk. Now a days, we have more than enough food to feed the entire world and it is easy to come by vitamins and protein. We have a variety of foods and drinks can substitute milk and we can get our daily value of calcium by eating snacks like yogurt and cheese.

Looking at my milk, I told my mother that milk may not be as healthy as she thought. Not all of our heartless plans work as we intend; nor do all of our good intentions. Spoiled children, for example.