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Is Milk Actually Good for Adults?

This article from the New York Times discusses the new wave of research about milk and it’s consumption by adults. More specifically, it delves deeper into how there is a current misperception in today’s media that drinking milk as an adult is beneficial when there is really no research to support this claim for the general populous. The author also argues that the United States is continuing to propagate this lie due to the massive industry that is milk in America in order to hopefully convince foreign countries to import it. The big impact of this article though is not on the milk itself, but on how this new source of information could create a huge reverse direct benefit information cascade. The author argues that while the government and dairy industry spread the so-called benefits of milk and how it is “good for bones, contains calcium and vitamin D, and “does a body good,”” in actuality there is no research proving any of this and that in fact drinking milk as an adult can actually have negative consequences for the consumer such as a higher risk of hip fractures. Due to this dichotomy, the dairy industry could be on the brink of a major downswing.

http://preventdisease.com/news/13/120213_Consumption-of-Milk-As-Teen-Not-Associated-With-Stronger-Bones-May-Increase-Fracture-Risk.shtml

As can be seen from the link above, this is an example of the reverse cascade that may possibly occur. Note, the actual industry is much more complicated than this as there are many other economic and social factors as well, but this is a simplified summary for our purposes. Going back to what we learned in class, there are only two real possible outcomes: to drink or not to drink. As noted above, recent research has been showing over and over again that milk is not beneficial as an adult for the most part and actually may be detrimental. As this information begins to spread and more and more adults stop drinking milk due to the direct benefit they get from not consuming excess calories that may be detrimental to them, a reverse information cascade will occur as people will begin to stop following the misinformation and will start to follow their peers who are now ceasing to drink milk in adulthood. This will then lead to other major economic shake-ups as there are many products based around the milk industry as well that may be affected by the decline of dairy. The real question going forward though is whether or not the political, social, and economic climate will allow for the dairy industry to survive solely on the benefit that children get from consuming dairy products if this reversal does occur.

Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/18/upshot/got-milk-might-not-be-doing-you-much-good.html?abt=0002&abg=0

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