THEBACKFORTY
By Sharon Laidlaw
Cancer-fighting boost
Your children will thank you later for making them finish that tall glass of milk after every meal
O
ur recent reader survey showed the Back Forty column routinely attracts more than 70 per cent of readers. I’d like to think this column is well read because of the emphasis on dairy research and how milk and milk products are good for one’s health. Since the last issue, my e-mail inbox has been inundated with research studies extolling milk’s benefits for a host of diseases. One such study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, revealed drinking milk may help fight colon cancer. New Zealand researchers have found a link in men and women who drank milk daily in school between 1937 and 1967 and a reduced bowel cancer risk in adulthood. They discovered the adults were 30 per cent less likely to get a tumour if they had drunk milk every day for six years or more in their early school years. New Zealand ran a school milk program in the 1930s until the late 1960s. The researchers found bowel cancer risk reduction was greatest for people who drank 300 millilitres or more of milk daily. Although New Zealand has one of the highest colorectal cancer rates in the world, data shows disease incidence in those born between 1941 and
A New Zealand study found children born between 1941 and 1953 who drank 300 millilitres or more of milk daily in their early school years were 30 per cent less likely to get bowel cancer later in life. 1953 is about 50 per cent lower than those born before this time period. Eating food with milk could affect calcium absorption and school milk consumption “might have been advantageous because it was often consumed with food,” one researcher said. Further studies are needed to examine the effects of childhood milk consumption and calcium intake on an adult diet, the researchers said.
50 | March 2011 | MilkPRODUCER
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Milk Producer - March 2011