Milk Calcium is Good for Bones: Myth or Fact? Three Revealing Studies!

At discussions around vegan nutrition, the myth about milk and calcium and the debate about whether milk is good for bones almost always takes center stage, isn’t it? 

Luckily, most people recognize the need for healthy eating habits. Since we have been told from a very early age that calcium from milk is important for building healthy bones, we have taken it very very seriously and why not.

Therefore, the notion that one must have milk to get calcium because calcium, which is synonymous with milk, makes our bones strong, has passed from one generation to the other. It has also got deeply seated in popular culture. For example, people cannot imagine desserts without milk. It is almost blasphemous to suggest to someone about a dairy-free vegan lifestyle.

Interestingly, scientific evidence does not prove a positive correlation between milk and strong bones. Studies suggest that dairy does just the opposite – makes our bones weak.

Through this article, we take the opportunity to cite three significant large scale studies that have refuted any direct correlation between dairy and bone health. We hope this piece of writing will help answer questions such as:

Why do so many people suffer from bone-related conditions when they have regularly consumed dairy throughout their lives?

Additionally, why do people take calcium supplements despite drinking a mandatory glass of milk every day?

Why do most children need to be persuaded to drink milk?

Wondered why flavoring is added to milk to make it more palatable to children?

If it is natural to drink cow’s milk – which is milk from another species, children should have naturally accepted it without persuasion and flavoring, isn’t it?

Let us dive deeper into the subject.

Study 1: Milk consumption and hip fractures in postmenopausal women

The first study titled Calcium, vitamin D, milk consumption, and hip fractures: a prospective study among postmenopausal women was published in the February 2003 edition of The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. This study followed 72,337 postmenopausal women over 18 years. It demonstrated that dairy foods such as milk (whole, low fat, and skim), cheese (cottage or ricotta, cream cheese, and other cheese), cream or sour cream, yogurt, ice cream, and frozen yogurt or low-fat ice cream did not reduce the risk of hip fractures in the group. What the study instead found was that “an adequate vitamin D intake is associated with a lower risk of osteoporotic hip fractures in postmenopausal women.” Not many people know that vitamin D is a critical factor for calcium absorption.

Study 2: Milk consumption and stress fractures among female adolescents

Another study titled Vitamin D, Calcium, and Dairy Intakes and Stress Fractures Among Female Adolescents published in JAMA Pediatrics in July 2012 demonstrated that adolescent girls who consumed calcium mostly in the form of dairy products stood at a higher risk of bone fractures than those who consumed less dairy. This study tracked 6712 girls aged 9 to 15 for five years. The study, also highlighting the importance of vitamin D concluded, “Vitamin D intake is associated with lower stress fracture risk among adolescent girls who engage in high levels of high-impact activity. Neither calcium intake nor dairy intake was prospectively associated with stress fracture risk.”

Study 3: Milk consumption in teenage years and hip fractures as older adults

Yet another study titled, Milk Consumption During Teenage Years and Risk of Hip Fractures in Older Adults published in JAMA Pediatrics in January 2014, negated any positive correlation between milk and bone health. This study involved 96,000 participants who were followed over 22 years. The study concluded that “greater milk consumption during teenage years was not associated with a lower risk of hip fracture in older adults.” Additionally, the study found that “each additional glass of milk per day during teenage years was associated with a significant 9% higher risk of hip fracture in men.”

These results thwart all the efforts we put into coaxing and force-feeding milk to our children by creating fear in them. We teach them that their bones will be strong with regular consumption of the white beverage. This lays the foundations for what constitutes the myth about milk and calcium.

Is milk really Nature’s perfect food?

Milk is Nature’s first food and therefore, the perfect food for individuals belonging to the same species. Hence, for a human infant, a human mother’s milk is the perfect food. For a calf, the mother cow’s milk is the perfect food, and so on. That is how Nature has designed milk for infants of each species.

A lactating mother’s milk from any species lasts until infants meet their needs and are ready for other foods. However in the case of humans, while they wean their babies off their milk, they latch them on to the milk of another species for the rest of the child’s life. ‘Milk-is-for-strong-bones-because-it-has-calcium’ is the operating principle based on which the milk-drinking habit in human adults forms. This principle also becomes the basis for the myth about milk and calcium.

Over 74% Indians are lactose intolerant

Lactose is a type of sugar in mammalian milk. A study done by researchers at the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences found that over 74% of the subjects were “lactose mal-absorbers,” which means they cannot digest milk. However, interestingly, human babies can break down the lactose in their mother’s milk.

According to the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the symptoms of lactose intolerance include bloating, diarrhea, gas, nausea, and abdomen pain. Many people live their entire lives with these symptoms, feeling miserable, yet having accepted them as part of life. The fact is that the remedy is quite simple. NIDDK states the treatment for lactose indolence as thus: “In most cases, you can manage the symptoms of lactose intolerance by changing your diet to limit or avoid foods and drinks that contain lactose, such as milk and milk products.”

Continued dairy consumption also has terrible long term effects. According to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), “Milk and other dairy products are the top source of saturated fat…., contributing to heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. Studies have also linked dairy to an increased risk of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers.”

Myth about milk and calcium: India, dairy, and bone health

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that India, despite consuming copious amount of dairy, is the “osteoporotic capital in the world” (International Journal of Orthopaedics Sciences), with arthritis impacting 15% of the population (Arthritis-India), and according to Dr. Vikram I Shah, knee replacement surgeon, India is seeing an arthritis epidemic. In 2018, Dr. Shah also noted that “knee arthritis is expected to emerge as the fourth most common cause of physical disability in India in the next one decade.”

Hence osteoporosis, arthritis, and knee cap replacements have become very common in our society and are on the rise. However sadly, people perceive these conditions as old-age maladies. The focus is only on treating these conditions. The awareness that they can be altogether prevented by making simple lifestyle changes is, by and large, absent.

Why is the calcium from milk inefficient in protecting our bones?

A simple theory explains this. The body extracts calcium from one of the two sources: food or the bones. Over 99 percent of total body calcium is found in teeth and bones. When food fails to meet the body’s calcium requirements, it loans calcium from the bones. Over some time, this causes bone loss and the associated ailments.

To cut a long story short, our diet is the number factor in deciding how the body will absorb or flush out calcium. To make matters worse, the calcium in our bodies decline with acid-forming food (dairy, meat, fish, and eggs) that tend to leach calcium from the bones.

Unfortunately, people with poor calcium levels are put on supplements. But the fact is that our bodies do not adequately absorb inorganic forms of calcium from these supplement pills. To have significant absorption via the supplemental route, one needs to consume massive amounts of supplements. However, there is a catch here – even if we consume copious amounts of supplements daily to reach our Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA), it will cause our energy levels to drop soon after, similar to sugar. (NutritionFacts.org, a non-commercial, science-based public service provided by Dr. Michael Greger.)

We can’t trick our bodies.

Conclusion: Myth about milk and calcium

In discussing the deep-seated myth about milk and calcium, let’s understand that it is important to have these conversations with the goal of finding solutions. The good news is that we can easily take calcium directly from the source. This can be done by cutting off the intermediary who are cows in this case. The source is very obviously – plants – which is what cows eat.

The bioavailability of calcium from plant-based sources is pretty good. They have the added advantage of being free of cholesterol and saturated fats.

Vitamin D is a critical factor for calcium absorption as mentioned earlier in this article. We will not get into detail about vitamin D here. The SHARAN article on vitamin D well summarizes how to meet vitamin D requirements.

Can we easily get the calcium we need on a simple household Indian plant-based diet? Yes, vegetables, pulses, millets such as ragi (finger millet), etc. are affordable to a wide cross-section of people, isn’t it? Hence, on a standard Indian plant-based meal with adequate exposure to vitamin D, calcium shouldn’t be much of a concern.

To sum up, our focus should be on consuming plant-based sources of calcium with high bioavailability, ensuring adequate absorption of vitamin D, and also ensuring that we do not lose calcium by consuming acid-forming foods like dairy and meat. The following illustration by Sejal Parikh depicts some simple Indian foods that have way more calcium than milk. Let’s keep it handy!