My dad has been bugging me with this for a while, refusing to buy milk because he found on the internet it gives cancer, is this really true? if not, can someone provide me links to studies and proofs that it does in fact not give cancer?
I am guessing he heard this from an observational study. Observational evidence does not imply a causal relationship. To show that milk causes cancer, someone would need to conduct a controlled experiment. I don’t think one like this has been done before.
Its likely that it cannot really be proved conclusively either way. As the positive associations with cancer are often very weak or inconclusive and may well be associatated with other parts of western diet. Animal products and meat are often linked with prostrate cancer but the issue seems to be more likely with highly processed barbecued/smoked meats. Overall risks are greatest with age/race/geography/family history although diet is a weaker a part it does seem to be there.
so studies like these done in the adventist community have some issues, they are a christian group with an anti meat and dairy philosophy and are active in the nutrition space, however there are many risks of healthy user bias affecting the results as they often dont smoke or drink for example.
people are saying is it the fat, is it the calcium but it seems unclear, there are also sugars to consider as there is not an association with cheese and yoghurt where bacteria consume the sugar to make the final product.
one study or even a group of studies is not enough to prove categorically that something isa true, this is why we do meta anaylsis to get a better idea of all the scattered study results.
the uk cancer research for example says this
“Prostate cancer risk and dairy
Research has not proven whether dairy or calcium has a direct effect on prostate cancer risk. There are some studies that have found an increased risk in people who have large amounts of dairy. But there’s not enough good evidence for this.”
Science is often not that keen to prove a negative so studies that DONT show a thing are less common
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8255404/
this site seems to have a reasonable overview with links to various studies
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/dairy-and-cancer
It won’t unless you have milk with added things in it or if the cow your drinking from is unhealthy.
Whole milk is very nutrient dense relative to most foods.
The oldest father recorded in the world was a man from India who had kids at 94 and he reported that he drunk a liter of milk a day. Not such a bad prostrate huh.
Cancer is caused by toxicity and damage, drink good milk from good cows and make sure the only ingredient is milk and you’ll be fine.
Milk in the US is full of toxins, hormones, steroids and antibiotics. It is likely a health risk. In Canada, we feed our milking cows grass and no antibiotics or steroids unless the animal is ill and then we quarantine it for 2 weeks. We don’t just load ALL cows with hormones or antibiotics. The milk tastes better and is much healthier than the American variety. It’s a better quality product and actually good for you.