Discussion about Milk and Milk Produced in Alberta

Since childhood, milk has been a huge part of my nutritional life. I drink milk with almost every meal. Whether it be milk and cereal for breakfast, or a glass of milk with dinner, I am always drinking milk. For this reason, I chose to research some of the benefits, and in particular, some of the possible health risks that people may look past. This paper will discuss Alberta milk, the nutritional aspects of milk, some environmental factors, and possible health risks, in particular, how milk effects diabetes.

All the milk purchased in Alberta stores is produced from Alberta farmers. There are about 570 producers in Alberta, all together with around 80,000 cows on the farms. Up to 95% of the cows are of Holstein breed. They produce 650,000,000 litres of milk each year, becoming the fourth largest milk production industry in Canada. In addition, every year the milk is hauled over 8 million kilometers all across Alberta because each herd is milked at least twice a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. Finally, the milk is processed at one of the 22 plants in Alberta. This allows about 10,000 Albertans to rely on its own diary industry for their own specific uses, such as use by vegetarians, researchers, nutritionists, and milk haulers. For these reasons, the Alberta dairy industry is considered to be needed for the fact that there is a lot of milk being consumed (Alberta Milk, 2013).

Milk is considered to be a very nutritional food source containing protein, carbohydrates, fat, vitamins and minerals, particularly calcium and phosphorous; therefore, it can be regarded as a complete source of energy. Compared to other animals, whole cow’s milk is considered to be the richest in calcium and Vitamin D. Historically, cow’s milk ...

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... insulin and glucose (Lacroix & Li-Chan, 2013, p.412).

Milk has, majority of the time, been seen as a nutritional food source. However, due to increases in many health risks people are wondering if there are negative outcomes stemming from this nutritional source. Many of the cases suggest not feeding milk to infants until after 12 month to allow further maturation of the body and defensive system. Although there has been research conducted, more research needs to take place in order to find out the sole cause of the risks. One may pose the question that perhaps with the increasing population in Alberta due to the oil industry, there may be many shortcuts made to faster produce our food sources. Specifically, in this case, cattle food change may alter the effects and nutrients of the milk it produces, thus creating a domino downward effect going up the food chain.