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U.S guidelines encouraging Americans to consume dairy are racist, according to a leading physician.
Dr. Milton Mills – who is best known for his appearance in documentary What the Health – stars in this video by health advocacy organization Switch4Good.
The video looks at how dairy recommendations disproportionately affect people of color, who have a higher likelihood of lactose intolerance than white people.
‘Really outrageous’
The video shows footage of Dr. Milton Mills speaking to the 2020 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee last year. The Committee, which is comprised of nationally recognized nutrition and medical researchers, academics, and practitioners, updates the dietary guidelines every five years. It invites experts to speak and share current scientific and medical evidence in nutrition.
According to Dr. Mills, he has seen illness caused by the committee’s guidelines. “The vast majority of people of color in this country are intolerant to the lactose that’s in milk. Yet because they think they have to eat this stuff, they go out, eat it, get sick, and think they have some sort of intestinal problem. When I encourage them to stop eating dairy, their problems clear up,” he said.
“It’s really outrageous to encourage people to eat foods we know will make them sick, particularly when the number one reason advanced for dairy foods is its calcium content. But African American women are genetically protected against getting osteoporosis. So we’re making them sick for no good reason.”
‘Unconscionable’
Dotsie Bausch is a silver medal-winning Olympian and executive director of Switch4Good. Speaking about the inclusion of dairy in dietary guidelines in the video, she says: “In white people, or people who have been milking cows – which are inherently mostly Northern European white people – we actually have a genetic mutation that keeps that lactase enzyme turned on through adulthood.
“So we are the abnormal ones. And a lot of America’s population, as well as the world’s population, who cannot tolerate cow’s milk in a much higher percentage is 86 percent of African descent. And 95-98 percent of people of Asian heritage can’t tolerate lactose or the casein in cow’s milk at all.
“And so, we presented this idea of food injustice to the committee to say, ‘hey listen, a really large majority of your people can’t tolerate this and it’s actually making them very sick’…For the USDA to continue to put its stamp of approval on a product that is unnecessary and unhealthy and rooted in a highly oppressive system is unconscionable.”
You can watch the full video here
