There is one food you may be surprised to learn, that is directly linked to breast cancer—and that is pasteurized dairy in the form of milk or milk products.
The risk lies in consuming milk from cows treated with a synthetic, genetically engineered growth hormone called rBGH, and unfortunately, this applies to about one third of the dairy cows in America.
When you consume dairy products from these cows, every product made from their milk is contaminated with this dangerous hormone—be it cheese, ice cream, yogurt, butter—or just plain milk.
Cows are injected with rBGH to boost their milk production.
But science has proven this practice, although profitable to the industry, comes at a high price to you, as well as to dairy cows. RBGH, or recombinant bovine growth hormone, is a synthetic version of natural bovine somatotropin (BST), a hormone produced in cows’ pituitary glands.
RBGH is the largest selling dairy animal drug in America.
But it is banned in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and in the 27 countries of the European Union because of its dangers to human health. Many have tried to inform the public of the risks of using this hormone in dairy cows, but their attempts have been met with overwhelming opposition by the powerful dairy and pharmaceutical industries, and their government liaisons.
In our house we do try to always buy hormone free and/or organic milk.. and raw milk when I can get to the farm. We try to choose raw milk cheese when we can and organic, hormone free yoghurt. But I cannot count the number of times we eat out and all this goes out of the window. It seems impolite to ask what milk or cheese they use when we are in a restaurant, but I should really try hard to put my English-ness aside sometimes and demand to know where the get their dairy products. Likewise, the next time I buy ice-cream I will try to remember to ask for the record, if they know whether it contains growth hormones. If we all did the same, we might eventually get the industry to change it’s ways.
