Most minority Americans are lactose intolerant--unable to digest the milk sugar lactose--so the choice of cow's milk as food is a bad one. Health professionals estimate that at least 90 percent of all Asian-Americans, 70 percent of African-Americans and Native Americans and 50 percent of Hispanics are lactose intolerant. In other words, milk makes them sick.

Lactose intolerance is common among all Americans except those of northern European descent. However, it's likely that most of us have heard nary a discouraging word about milk. In fact, the latest version of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines recommends, among other things, that all Americans above the age of 2 consume from two to three servings of dairy products each day. The guidelines, which are designed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, form the basis of all public--and most private--nutrition programs, including the school breakfast and lunch programs, the food stamp program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.

"Although it may be unintentional, the U.S. Dietary Guidelines as they exist are really a fundamental form of institutionalized racism in a rather destructive and insidious format," explained Dr. Milton Mills, co-author of a two-part article in the March/April 1999 editions of the Journal of the National Medical Association (an organization of 20,000 African-American physicians) that takes the federal government to task for its nutritional malfeasance.

Mills contends that the USDA's indifference to lactose intolerance is reflective of the federal government's lack of concern for the particular health needs of minorities. In addition to the USDA's refusal to encourage non-dairy sources of calcium (the essential nutrient that milk promoters tout), the agency also downplays the overwhelming evidence linking meat and dairy producers to many of the ailments that disproportionately affect American minorities. Health professionals have found links between the diseases that occur in higher frequency among African-Americans--like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and prostate cancer--and diets high in the fat and cholesterol that are found in the animal and dairy products the guidelines recommend.

Mills also is a member of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington-D.C. based group that promotes preventive nutrition and has been in the forefront of the struggle to improve dietary standards. In fact, the group filed a lawsuit in December against two government agencies (USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services) alleging racial bias and conflict of interest in the formulation of the dietary guidelines and the associated "Food Guide Pyramid." The pyramid was developed as a graphic supplement to the written guidelines, displaying a pattern of food consumption and recommended servings that purportedly will encourage the most healthy diet. The suit charges that American minorities are badly served by dietary guidelines that take little notice of their particular needs. Those needs are ignored partly because six of the 10 advisory committee members who devise the guidelines have explicit links to the meat, dairy or egg industries, according to the suit. "Having them on the very panel that is supposed to decide what's healthy for Americans to eat is like having Joe Camel on a committee designed to help people quit smoking," said PCMR president, Dr. Neal D. Barnard. While all Americans are ill served by the guidelines, Barnard noted, the problems are intensified in groups that are hardest hit by chronic, diet-related diseases. Among other things, the goals of the lawsuit are: to encourage the dietary guidelines committee to make recommendations that recognize the role diet plays in contributing to the high rates of chronic diseases among Americans in general and disproportionately among minorities; to encourage the committee to make dairy products optional in the Dietary Guidelines; and to ensure that federal agencies choose members for all dietary guidelines advisory committees who do not have inappropriate relationships to any food industries.

The federal government insists that the food industry exerted no inappropriate pressure to design the guidelines. What's more, the National Dairy Council and the International Dairy Foods Association vigorously (and understandably) dispute claims that milk products are dangerous.

But critics of the guidelines contend the nutritional evidence is clear and damning. Although their arguments are strong, celebrities with milk mustaches have louder voices.

Copyright 2000 Chicago Tribune

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