Milk: No Mucus, No Asthma

Today I found not one but two separate and independent articles debunking some of the myths that are associated with milk (and sometimes deliberately promulgated by the anti-milk community). Good going, newspapers: there may be hope for you yet.

One was from Australia's FoodWeek.com.au.

The National Asthma Council has teamed up with Dairy Australia to encourage people with asthma to dip into dairy this summer and bust the myth that dairy foods can trigger or exacerbate asthma.

"The fact is, dairy foods do not cause asthma," said the council’s director, Dr Janet Rimmer, a respiratory physician and allergist from Sydney.

"There is no medical evidence to connect the two – but despite this, some people with asthma cling to the old wives’ tale and may restrict or completely remove dairy foods from their diet.

And in the U.S. Contra Costa Times, Ed Blonz knocks down the oft-repeated nonsense that milk causes a buildup of mucus.

There was a study in the February 1993 issue of the journal Appetite that tested for a milk-mucus effect in 169 people, 70 of whom believed that milk produces mucus. The scientists compared milk with a soy-based drink that tasted identical. (They had done a pre-test to establish that people could not identify the different beverages.) They found that there was no difference in the subjects' perception of mucus production. The scientists concluded that it was the sensory characteristics of the beverage -- and not the presence of milk -- that gave rise to the sensation of coating of the tongue and throat.

Skip ahead to December 2005, and a supplement to Journal of the American College of Nutrition focusing on many aspects of the relationship between dairy consumption and health. One of the articles in this issue reviewed evidence that milk consumption might lead to an increased production of mucus, or that it might contribute to asthma. All participants were prescreened for a milk allergy. The paper concluded that there was no support for a connection between milk and mucus production, or milk and asthma.

Meanwhile, back in Australia:

"What tends to happen is that people confuse the coating that milk can leave on the back of the throat with mucus," Dr Rimmer explained.

Simple confusion, and another myth debunked.

A good day's work for all.