And I say Bravo for Mark!

Mark Bittman, New York Times

During the past few weeks, Mark Bittman has written two articles about milk. The first was his reporting of a personal “test withdrawal” from milk. The second article not only reported on his success with giving up milk, but the success of hundreds of other people who commented on his first article.

As you might expect, the 1300 comments posted after his first article resonated with lots of people who’d done some experimenting with the elimination of dairy themselves and therefore Mark reports that their stories were “overwhelmingly in tune with his own experience.” But in the second article, Mark raised the discussion to a whole new level—reporting not only on how well his “test” was going for him—but also on the many similarly positive anecdotes that he got from his readers.

Perfect for baby cows—not for humans.

To say the least, this time, he got a few more people riled up. One guy said that Mark was no longer welcome in Indiana and I’m sure he ruffled a lot of physicians’ feathers when he suggested that they only knew how to treat symptoms. Here is an excerpt from his latest article:

As for heartburn, he writes: It would appear that the medical establishment is among the last places you’d want to turn for advice. Nearly everyone who complained of heartburn, for example, later resolved by eliminating dairy, had a story of a doctor (usually a gastroenterologist) prescribing a proton pump inhibitor, or P.P.I., a drug (among the most prescribed in the United States) that blocks the production of acid in the stomach.

But — like statins — P.P.I.s don’t address underlying problems, nor are they “cures.” They address only the symptom, not its cause, and they are only effective while the user takes them. Thus in the last few days I’ve read scores of stories like mine, some of which told of involuntary or incidental withdrawal of dairy from the diet — a trip to China (where milk remains less common), or a vacation with non-milk-drinking friends or family — when symptoms disappeared, followed by their return upon resumption of a “normal” diet.

By telling people more about taking charge of their health, we can turn a projected serious doctor shortage into a doctor surplus.

Bravo for Mark. Now he has further stirred the pot as he begins to challenge the heart and soul of the “system” medical dogma and the practice of treating everything with drugs—that only address the symptom, not the cause.

He’s also talking about the broader problems of agriculture and medicine working together to produce the most food possible, regardless of the environmental and health consequences. These next two paragraphs sum up our entire problem in just a few sentences. Well done, Mark:

The stories here expose problems both with agriculture and with medicine. Once American agriculture became fixated on producing the most crops possible, regardless of the cost to land, water, air, animals and people, one of the jobs of the Department of Agriculture became figuring out how to sell all that produce.

Thus selling and therefore consuming milk and other dairy — whether it’s good for you as an individual or not — became an all-American task. But the job of an agriculture department should not be to sell whatever crops our farmers can grow most efficiently, it should be to encourage the growth of crops that will benefit the greatest number of Americans. Those crops are not corn and soy, grown largely to create hyper-processed food or animal feed (and in turn animal products), but an increasing variety of plants that can be directly eaten by humans.

The Bottom Line. We need many more of these kinds of articles, written by the highly-respected mainstream journalists like Mark Bittman. We need to tell people about all of their health problems that are driven by our toxic diet. And we need to tell them enough times so that they begin to believe it. 

Some people responding to Mark’s article were down-right angry that they hadn’t been told these health “secrets” before. Well, maybe they’ll be hearing a lot more of these “secrets” in the future.

• Source article. More on Milk, Mark Bittman – NYTimes.com.
• My earlier blog on Mark’s first milk article. Got Milk? You Don’t Need It – NYTimes
• My blog on an earlier Bittman column. Meatless Monday, Mark Bittman & the USDA
• My blog on doctor shortage. Projected “doctor shortage” driven by new health law.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

• The movie that’s changing the lives of millions: Forks Over Knives DVD 
• Healthy Eating, Healthy World, The “big picture” about food (our book)
• An essential scientific resource: The China Study by Dr. T. Colin Campbell
• Dr. McDougall’s new book, The Starch Solution, with lots of great recipes.

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

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J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

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Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation