On Food and Cooking

Many women in industrialized countries lose
so much bone mass after menopause that
they’re at high risk for serious fractures.
Dietary calcium clearly helps prevent this
potentially dangerous loss, or osteoporosis.
Milk and dairy products are the major source
of calcium in dairying countries, and U.S.
government panels have recommended that
adults consume the equivalent of a quart
(liter) of milk daily to prevent osteoporosis.
This recommendation represents an
extraordinary concentration of a single food,
and an unnatural one — remember that the
ability to drink milk in adulthood, and the
habit of doing so, is an aberration limited to
people of northern European descent. A quart
of milk supplies two-thirds of a day’s
recommended protein, and would displace
from the diet other foods — vegetables, fruits,
grains, meats, and fish — that provide their
own important nutritional benefits. And there
clearly must be other ways of maintaining