Dairy products and athletic performance - good or bad?
Dairy products and athletic performance - good or bad?
Milk, cheese and yoghurt have been at the centre of our diets for so long the assumption they are good, natural and healthy goes almost without question, particularly when so many dairy industry marketing campaigns like ‘Got Milk?’ in the US and ‘Make Mine Milk’ in the UK reinforce this. Yet for serious performance and serious health, evidence against dairy is stacking up, meaning that when it comes to the issue of dairy products and athletic performance, the answer is increasingly showing dairy should be avoided.
What are moo looking at? Cows set to party as dairy consumption drops
Dairy products and athletic performance: drugs, hormones & illness
Industrially produced milk - 95% of the milk on the market or more - comes from unwell animals living artificically short lives while loaded with meds and hormones to keep them functional in low grade living conditions while being kept permanently pregnant to produce milk.
These meds and hormones then end up in your milk/cheese/yoghurt. Even if you do stick with milk and dairy, this alone is reason enough to make any you do consume certified organic.
Dairy products and athletic performance: links to disease
There have been major studies showing strong links between dairy consumption and cancer since the 1970s, with particular focus on prostate cancer. One study indicated dairy consumption can lead to a 34% increase in the likelihood of a man getting prostate cancer.
There is also a strong link between dairy and dairy foods, and incidence of autoimmune diseases, particularly arthritis with milk proteins - whether from milk, yoghurt, cheese or whey protein - being one of the biggest culprits.
Cancer and arthritis never made anyone faster, unless we’re talking about a race to the nearest hospital ward that is.
Dairy products and athletic performance: milk doesn’t build bones
Milk = healthy bones, right? After all, bones like calcium and milk has calcium. Therefore, duh, more milk means more strong bones? Logical sense for sure, but science is increasingly leaving this in tatters.
Among the torpedoes taking this one out are a study showing increased milk consumption is linked to increased bone fractures, plus the damning evidence that the regions in the world with the highest levels of dairy consumption (North America, Northern Europe) also have the highest levels of osteoporosis, while those with the lowest dairy use (Africa, India, Japan) have the lowest rates.
A large part of the contribution to this is the fact dairy products contains high levels of D-galactose, which in animals has been proven to accelerate ageing, chronic inflammation and decreased immune response while shortening life span.
Ditch the dairy and jump for joy as power and performance step up, while illness risks go down. Boom!
Conclusion
The conclusion for us is simple: cut dairy completely wherever possible, and go certified organic with it everywhere else. The risks to performance today and lifelong health tomorrow with dairy consumption just aren’t worth it. It’s also really easy to avoid - check out our tips below to make simple shifts for your own health and performance.
Reduce or cut dairy consumption in 3 easy steps:
1 Try alternative milkss: this covers the biggest hurdle most folks have to dropping milk in one swoop and means breakfast cereal, porridge, tea and coffee can all be sorted in seconds.
Loads of options exist - soy, coconut, almond, etc - but we find oat milk is usually the easiest winner working a treat in tea, coffee and cereal - two weeks in we bet you won't even notice the difference.
2 What about the cheese?
Swapping out cheese is probably the toughest challenge anyone moving away from dairy faces, but even this is getting way easier nowadays with major sandwich chains like Pret a Manger offering tasty non-cheese vegetarian sarnies based around hummus, avocado, etc, and even mainstream restaurants like Pizza Express firing out non-cheese pizzas as demand booms.
The humble avo, a rocking substitute for cheese in veggie sandwiches and snacks giving a hearty and healthy hit of calories and great fats. Mmm, hmm, tasty
3 Whey protein?
Just think of this as ‘no-whey’ protein as in ‘no way am I eating that’.
Formerly a by-product of cheese production that cost the dairy industry thousands to dispose of as it polluted rivers, it was first turned into cattle feed to save disposal costs before someone worked out athletes would pay much more for it. Powdered and processed to within an inch of its life and packed with multiple ultraprocessed additives making most whey proteins on the market ultraprocessed foods.
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