If making one easy change in your diet would improve your health and reduce suffering, would your choice not be easy? It is true – just choosing soya and other healthy foods instead of milk, ghee and dairy products can make a world of difference.

Modern Dairies Turn Cows Into Milk Machines
Gone are the days when cows roamed freely, were milked by hand and were recognised as part of our families, culture and ecosystem. Today, cattle in tabelas spend their lives confined to narrow stalls, where they are forced to stand in their own excrement and are impregnated and milked over and over again. To boost milk production, some farmers give cows injections of oxytocin – a banned substance that is harmful to both cows and humans – or they painfully shove sticks into the cow’s uterus. When their worn-out bodies can no longer produce milk, cows are discarded, sent to illegal slaughter or abandoned on roads to starve to death.

Cows create milk for the same reason that all mammals do: to feed their babies – not other species. Calves born to cows on tabelas are usually killed for leather or tied up and left to starve to death. Other calves’ stomachs are slit while they are still alive for rennet, the acid that is extracted for making cheese.

Milk: A Human Health Risk
Think milk does the human body good? Think again.

• The fat and cholesterol in dairy products not only pack on the pounds, but they also clog arteries, agitate hormone levels and feed tumours. Dairy products are linked to heart disease, cancer and adult-onset (type II) diabetes.
• Milk is bad for your bones – its excessive animal protein leaches calcium from bones, making them brittle and easily broken. A ground-breaking Harvard study of more than 75,000 nurses found that the women who drank the most milk had the most bone fractures.
• About 33 per cent of Indians, including 70 per cent of South Indians, are lactose-intolerant – milk gives them painful bloating, gas, stomach cramps and diarrhoea.
• Dairy products are frequently contaminated with pesticides, hormones and antibiotics. Farmers often inject cows with prolactin and oxytocin, which seep into milk and cause spasms, muscle contractions and hormonal imbalances in humans.