LETTER: Not all diseases linked to dairy

On November 16 you published a letter from one Mark Hunt, an evidently vegan reader, declaring that '˜the evidence is stacking up against any consumption of milk.

‘The links between dairy products and many diseases are scientifically proven’.

I was dismayed to find no put-down of this fantasy from some doctor in the November 23 issue.

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Here are some diseases that have no link with dairy products whatever: chickenpox, influenza, measles, German measles, mumps, whooping cough; scarlet fever, diphtheria, smallpox; tuberculosis (unless you choose to drink unpasteurised milk – or food made from it – from one of the very few herds with a cow, undetected, carrying the TB bacterium).

Those are all of what were normally called ‘diseases’ prevalent in Britain in the past 100 years or so.

Go abroad, and we can add: malaria, dengue, typhus, typhoid, cholera, lassa fever, ebola, plague – and no doubt others.

Sure, you can catch some of these from infected milk, as with TB.

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But that is no fault of milk as such – the usual source is infected water.

Should we all stop drinking water?

Yes, consumption of overmuch dairy food can damage your blood circulation, but ‘overmuch’ isn’t ‘any’.

There are genuine arguments for veganism. They don’t include alarmist pseudo-scientific claptrap.

And, for the record, no, I don’t keep cows, run a dairy or even sell ice-cream.

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