In Japan, every year since 1946 tens-of thousands of persons are
interviewed and their diets carefully analyzed along with their weights
and heights and other factors such as cancer rates and age of puberty
(the last measured by the onset of menstruation in young girls).  This
study includes detailed personal interviews and is well respected and
accepted by scientists.  In 1975, 21,707 persons from 6,093 households
were included in the sampling.  The results of the study were published
in a respected scientific journal, PREVENTIVE MEDICINE (Yasuo Kagawa,
Department of Biochemistry, Jichi Medical School, Japan, 7, 205-217,
1978).

Japan had been devastated by losing a war and was occupied by American
troops.  Americanization included dietary changes.  Milk and dairy
products, relatively unknown to Japan, were becoming a significant part
of the Japanese diet.  According to this study, the per-capita yearly
dietary intake of dairy products in 1950 was only 5.5 pounds.  Twenty-
five years later the average Japanese ate 117.4 pounds of milk and dairy
products.  The consumption of milk and dairy products (containing
powerful growth hormones) represented the biggest dietary change for the
Japanese people, according to table #1 on page 206 of that study.

Tables 7 and 8 are even more revealing.  While milk and dairy
consumption increased by twenty-one times, from 1950 to 1975, cerebral
vascular disease (strokes) increased 38 percent.  Heart disease
increased 35 percent, breast cancer rates increased 77 percent. 
Colon cancer increased 77 percent.  Lung cancer increased by three hundred
percent.

What happened to young girls and the impact of milk consumption on
puberty is even more dramatic.  In 1950 the average twelve-year old girl
was 4'6" tall and weighed 71 pounds.  By 1975 the average Japanese girl,
after guzzling a daily diet of milk and dairy products containing 59
different bioactive hormones, had grown an average of 4 1/2 inches and
gained 19 pounds.  In 1950 the average Japanese girl had her first
menstrual cycle at the age of 15.2 years.  Twenty five years later,
after a daily intake of estrogen and progesterone from milk, the average
Japanese girl was ovulating at the age of 12.2 years, three years
younger.

Never before had such a dramatic dietary change been seen in such a
unique population study.  Such statistics, which do not lie, remained
buried in this 1978 scientific publication and are revealed in this
newsletter for the first time.  MILK - The Deadly Poison.

(A heart-felt "thank you" to Vicki Griffin, Ph.D., for giving me the
reference to the above noted Japanese study.)

NOTE:  There were other significant CHANGES in the Japanese diet from
1950-1975.  Japanese ate less grains and more meat.  Here is a summary
of those per-capita food consumption changes.

                          1950                1975

Milk and Dairy           5.5 lbs             117.4 lbs
Meat and Poultry         6.8 lbs              51.6 lbs

Rice                   272.3 lbs             199.6 lbs
Barley                  51.4 lbs               1.2 lbs
Green-Yellow Veggies    60.8 lbs              38.8 lbs
Potatoes               102.6 lbs              49.0 lbs


SUMMARY:  Milk/Dairy/Meat consumption increased from
          12.3 pounds per person to 169 pounds per person,
          an increase of 1,274 percent!

          Grains, potatoes and green/yellow vegetables
          decreased from 487.1 pounds to 288.6,
          a decrease of 41 percent.

Robert Cohen
Executive Director
Dairy Education Board
http://www.notmilk.com