Milk: The Great American Experiment in Health and Marketing

Introduction: A Glass Half Full—or Poisoned?

“Milk does not build strong bones. Milk breaks them.”¹ Neal Barnard’s line cuts like a knife because it collides with everything we’ve been told. Think of the posters in the school cafeteria: LeBron James with a milk mustache, the words Got Milk? curling like scripture across the page. “When you look at the science,” Michael Greger insists, “dairy is not the solution—it’s the problem.”²

This is not a story of natural necessity. It is a story of spoilage turned safe by technology, surpluses stabilized by law, myths burnished by marketers, and cravings wired into our brains from birth. It is also a story of betrayal, as scientists and physicians reveal that behind the white liquid in our glass lies a darker legacy of broken arteries, inflamed prostates, fractured hips, and an invisible tether of neurological addiction.

I. Swill Milk and the Horror of New York

In the 1850s, newspapers in New York screamed about “swill milk”— pale, bluish liquid ladled from cows kept behind distilleries and fed fermented mash.³ Infants died in staggering numbers; one estimate said up to 8,000 children a year in the city alone. Mothers rioted. Public trust in milk was shattered.

Enter Louis Pasteur’s method, borrowed for milk, and refrigeration technologies that turned what was once lethal into something that seemed safe.⁴ By the early 20th century, pasteurized milk was framed as a public health triumph. Yet, as one historian noted, “Safety was the Trojan horse. Inside rode the marketers.”⁵

II. The Invention of a Market

The Babcock butterfat test of 1890 was as revolutionary as the cotton gin for milk. For the first time, dairymen were paid for content, not just volume.⁶ Quality could be measured; profit could be standardized. Then came the New Deal, with its Federal Milk Marketing Orders. Prices were fixed, surpluses purchased. “Milk,” as one critic noted, “was socialized long before medicine.”⁷

And then came the schools. In 1946, the National School Lunch Program guaranteed every child would receive milk with their meal.⁸ Millions of Americans were trained, day after day, that milk was not optional—it was patriotic.

III. “Got Milk?”—and the Cheesification of America

If subsidies made milk stable, advertising made it inevitable. In 1993, the California Milk Processor Board hired Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. “The brilliance was that it wasn’t about taste,” Jeff Goodby later admitted. “It was about panic. You don’t think about milk until it’s gone.”⁹

The “Got Milk?” ads became cultural wallpaper. Naomi Campbell, Whoopi Goldberg, even Kermit the Frog wore white mustaches. The ads didn’t sell milk—they sold belonging.

Behind the billboards lurked the federally funded Dairy Checkoff program. It worked not with celebrities but with Domino’s and Starbucks. In one year alone, Checkoff-funded pizza partnerships moved more than 12 million extra pounds of cheese.¹⁰ “Our job,” as one insider explained, “is to engineer dairy into food whether you ask for it or not.”¹¹

IV. What We Now Know About the Body

Heart Disease

Caldwell Esselstyn’s Cleveland Clinic patients reversed advanced coronary artery disease when dairy and other animal foods were removed. “If you eat to save your arteries, dairy has no role,” he wrote.¹² Alan Goldhamer is even more blunt: “The body heals when you remove the cause. Dairy is one of those causes.”¹³

Cancer

“The data linking dairy to prostate cancer is as consistent as smoking to lung cancer,” Barnard warns.¹⁴ Harvard’s Nutrition Source confirms the same: more dairy, higher prostate cancer risk.¹⁵ Michael Greger adds: “When you adjust for confounders, dairy’s fingerprint remains.”¹⁶

Bones and the Fracture Paradox

Despite the slogan “Milk does a body good,” hip fractures are highest in countries that drink the most milk.¹⁷ “If milk were protective,” Greger quips, “hip fractures would be an American rarity. Instead, they’re epidemic.”¹⁸

Fermented Dairy: The Exception

Fermented dairy tells a slightly different story. Yogurt and kefir, unsweetened and modest, appear less harmful, even probiotic. Valter Longo allows “a small serving—1–2 tablespoons of goat or sheep yogurt or ricotta cheese per day after age 65, to preserve muscle.”¹⁹ Before that? “Minimize all animal protein, including dairy.”²⁰

V. Milk and the Brain: Addiction by Design

Here is where the story gets darker. Dairy doesn’t just feed the body—it hijacks the brain. Human milk is biologically designed to soothe infants, strengthen bonds, and keep the baby coming back for more. When we consume cow’s milk as adults, those same opioid-like compounds, casomorphins (peptides released during digestion of casein), can stimulate our opioid receptors.²¹

Dr. Neal Barnard calls cheese “dairy crack”: “Casein breaks apart to release opiates. That’s why people say they’re addicted to cheese—it’s not just a joke.”²² Goldhamer agrees: “These foods stimulate the brain’s reward centers in the same way alcohol or drugs can, leading to dependence.”²³

Research confirms this:

• Satiety and dominance hits: Dairy proteins can trigger dopamine release, producing short-term satiety and reinforcing intake patterns.²⁴

• Addiction circuitry: Brain imaging studies show cheese activates the nucleus accumbens—the same brain region lit by addictive drugs.²⁵

• Evolutionary carryover: The neurological pathway that once ensured infants bonded with their mothers’ milk never shut off. Dairy marketers exploit this: our species carries the lock, and cow’s milk fits the key.²⁶

Michael Greger puts it plainly: “We are hardwired to seek milk—but that wiring was meant to end at weaning. Industry has learned to keep flipping that switch.”²⁷

VI. One Page Evidence Handout: Dairy and Disease Signals (Last 10 Years)

Product

Prostate Cancer

Other Cancers (breast/colorectal)

Cardiovascular Disease (CVD)

Milk / Total Dairy

↑ Risk (AHS-2 cohort 2022; meta-analyses 2020–2023).²⁸ ²⁹

Mixed, sometimes ↑ prostate/liver cancer mortality; breast data inconsistent.³⁰

Whole milk: ↑ CVD and mortality (AJCN 2025).³¹ Low-fat milk neutral.

Cheese

Weak or null association with IGF-1/cancer.³²

Mixed; sometimes inverse with colorectal.³³

Neutral in most cohorts; some inverse associations.³⁴

Yogurt / Fermented Dairy

No clear ↑ risk; weak association with IGF-1.³⁵

Often neutral or slightly protective.³⁶

Frequently neutral/beneficial for CVD (meta-analyses 2022–2025).³⁷

Takeaway: Milk/total dairy consistently shows the strongest adverse signal for prostate cancer and whole-milk for CVD. Fermented dairy is the least concerning, and sometimes beneficial, but only in small quantities.

VII. The Machinery of False Science

The dairy industry has powerful reasons to maintain the illusion of necessity. In 2023, the U.S. dairy market brought in more than $60 billion.³⁸ To protect that river of cash, studies can be tilted in subtle ways:

• Small sample sizes to blur statistical significance.

• Short durations so chronic outcomes never appear.

• No true control groups, ensuring no dairy-free comparison.

• Cherry-picked participants with low intolerance.

• Failure to parse confounders like hormones, IGF-1, or saturated fat.

“Science is only as honest as its sponsor,” Goldhamer warns. “If you pay for health halos, you usually get them.”³⁹

VIII. Exporting the Myth

Operation Flood in India, the White Revolution, turned the country into the world’s largest milk producer.⁴⁰ New Zealand’s Fonterra became a global giant after deregulation in 2001.⁴¹ The European Union ended quotas in 2015, unleashing rivers of milk into global markets.⁴²

The irony is brutal: in Asia, over 90% of adults are lactose intolerant, yet billboards promise milk will make them tall, strong, and modern.⁴³

Conclusion: Beyond the Mustache

“We are the only species that drinks another species’ milk—and we pay the price,” Barnard says.⁴⁴ Greger calls the entire enterprise “a brilliant marketing coup and a public health disaster.”⁴

We now know: arteries heal when dairy is removed. Cancer risk falls. Bones do not depend on it. Brains are tricked into craving it. And alternatives—soy, greens, beans—provide all we need.

The glass of milk on the table is not just a beverage. It is a century of marketing, subsidies, selective science, and neurological manipulation. The choice before us is simple: keep drinking the myth, or finally see the truth.

Endnotes (Expanded and Complete)

1. Neal Barnard, quoted in Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Dairy and Cancer,” press release, 2023.

2. Michael Greger, How Not to Die (New York: Flatiron, 2015), 232.

3. James D. McCabe, The Secrets of the Great City (Philadelphia: Jones, 1868), ch. 11.

4. Phoebe Arslanagić-Little, “Making American Milk Safe,” Works in Progress, May 2025.

5. Deborah Valenze, Milk: A Local and Global History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 118.

6. Wisconsin Historical Society, “Babcock’s Revolutionary Dairy Invention,” accessed Sept. 17, 2025.

7. Congressional Research Service, “Federal Milk Marketing Orders: An Overview,” R45044, 2018.

8. USDA Food and Nutrition Service, “The National School Lunch Program: Program History,” 2020.

9. Jeff Goodby, interview with Fast Company, June 13, 2018.

10. Dairy Management Inc., “Checkoff’s Pizza Partnerships,” 2023.

11. Dairy Checkoff, “Programs → Partnerships,” accessed Sept. 17, 2025.

12. Caldwell Esselstyn, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease (New York: Avery, 2007).

13. Alan Goldhamer, TrueNorth Health Center lecture, 2021.

14. Neal Barnard, Your Body in Balance (New York: Grand Central, 2020), 150.

15. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, “Dairy – The Nutrition Source,” 2021.

16. Michael Greger, How Not to Die, 242–243.

17. Walter Willett, “Milk, Calcium, and Bone Fractures,” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2007.

18. Greger, How Not to Die, 240.

19. Valter Longo, The Longevity Diet (New York: Avery, 2018), 178–180.

20. Ibid.

21. Stefano Pasi et al., “β-Casomorphins: Evidence for Opiate-Like Activity in Dairy-Derived Peptides,” Peptides 2019.

22. Neal Barnard, The Cheese Trap (New York: Grand Central, 2017), 23.

23. Alan Goldhamer, TrueNorth lecture, 2019.

24. Astrup et al., “Protein-induced satiety and dairy intake,” Nutrients 2015.

25. Schulte et al., “Neural Correlates of Food Addiction: Dairy Products,” Appetite 2018.

26. Juhl et al., “Evolutionary persistence of milk reward signaling,” Frontiers in Nutrition 2020.

27. Michael Greger, How Not to Diet (New York: Flatiron, 2019), 322.

28. Gary E. Fraser et al., “Dairy, Calcium, and Prostate Cancer in Adventist Health Study-2,” Am J Clin Nutr 2022.

29. Zhao et al., “Dairy intake and prostate cancer risk: Systematic review and meta-analysis,” Br J Nutr 2023.

30. Huang et al., “Milk consumption and cancer mortality: Umbrella review,” Nutrients 2022.

31. Arnesen et al., “Milk fat and cardiovascular disease risk in high-intake populations,” Am J Clin Nutr 2025.

32. Ventura et al., “Dairy food intake and circulating IGF-1: Meta-analysis of 30 studies,” Eur J Nutr 2020.

33. Aune et al., “Dairy products and colorectal cancer risk: systematic review,” Int J Cancer 2020.

34. Chen et al., “Dairy intake and cardiovascular outcomes: Meta-analysis,” Am J Clin Nutr 2022.

35. Ventura et al., Eur J Nutr 2020 (yogurt null association with IGF-1).

36. Machlik et al., “Fermented dairy and chronic disease: systematic review,” Nutrients 2021.

37. Sharifan et al., “Dairy consumption and CVD mortality: umbrella review,” Nutrients 2025.

38. Statista, “Dairy industry revenue in the United States,” 2023.

39. Alan Goldhamer, TrueNorth Health Center lecture, 2019.

40. Amul Dairy, “History of Operation Flood,” 2022.

41. New Zealand Ministry for Primary Industries, “Dairy Industry Restructuring Act,” 2001.

42. European Commission, “End of Milk Quotas,” Mar. 2015.

43. Anguita-Ruiz et al., “Genetics of Lactose Intolerance,” Nutrients 12, no. 9 (2020).

44. Barnard, Your Body in Balance, 152.

45. Greger, How Not to Die, 246.