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Body Stuff with Dr. Jen Gunter

Is drinking milk essential for building strong bones?

Body Stuff with Dr. Jen Gunter

TED

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Got milk? When it comes to building strong bones, you shouldn’t just stick to the dairy aisle—but many people are starting to skip it all together, with a demonic narrative evolving around milk in recent years. So which should we believe? To find out, Jen travels to the hills of Mongolia to learn all about lactase and breaks down the basics of what makes bones weak, and where to find the key ingredient to make them stronger (spoiler: it’s not in your grocery cart). Read the full text transcript for this episode at go.ted.com/BSTscript4

Transcript

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0:00.0

Ted Audio Collective

0:07.0

Hey listener, a quick favor. We are conducting an audience survey and we'd be really grateful if you could take just a few minutes to respond.

0:14.0

Please visit survey.prx.org slash Ted to take the survey today. That's survey.prx.org slash Ted. Thanks.

0:25.0

We have been told so much about milk.

0:29.0

We were told that milk was good for your bones. I remember my mom always made me drink it. It was supposed to be very good for my health.

0:37.0

Think about all of the milk messages you've heard in your life.

0:43.0

My dad's mother had just the largest hunch in her back and that was used as a fear tactic.

0:51.0

Sit up straight, drink your milk. We had people from farms that would visit our elementary school and tell us about the positives of milk.

1:00.0

I remember advertising when I was a kid that milk is critical for healthy mind and body. Strong bones, calcium, things like that.

1:08.0

And I think there was a series of TV ads later with celebrities showing their milk buster.

1:14.0

You remember those got milk ads, right? Everyone from Beyoncé to Harrison Ford was in them.

1:24.0

They had a message you probably also heard from your school cafeterias, your parents and grandparents, even your doctors.

1:32.0

You must drink milk to have healthy bones.

1:36.0

What's the logic behind all this?

1:40.0

Here's the basic explanation that most of us have received.

1:44.0

Milk has calcium in your bones, need calcium, so make sure to drink your milk.

1:50.0

Otherwise your bones are going to be weak and fragile and you won't grow up big, strong and tall.

1:56.0

But it turns out milk isn't a magic bullet for healthy bones.

2:02.0

I'm Dr. Jen Gunter. From the Ted Audio Collective, this is Body Stuff.

2:17.0

While I was doing some research for my book, The Metapos Manifesto, I realized that the relationship between milk and bone health is actually pretty complex.

2:29.0

I came across a paper with a little tidbit of information that really shocked me.

2:36.0

The paper had a graph that showed a surprising trend.

...

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