Do you drink cows milk?
Sows (female pigs) are difficult to milk. They are grumpy and don't like to be touched, plus their teats are much smaller than a cow's, so it's harder to get milk from them. They also produce less milk than a cow. For all these reasons, there has never been a culture of milking pigs.
The other reason is because of coagulation, which is the process of turning milk (a liquid) into cheese (a solid). Pigs' milk does not coagulate, it stays runny, so it is impossible to turn it into cheese.
Do we really need to drink milk then?
If allergy specialists say our bodies cannot cope with drinking milk, do we really need it in our diet?
NO: says a leading allergy expert
Professor Jonathan Brostoff is a leading authority on allergies and food intolerances, from King's College, London. He believes that humans do not need to drink cow's milk once we have left childhood.
He says, 'We are not programmed for cows' milk. We are the only species that continue to drink milk after we have stopped breastfeeding and we are the only species that drinks another species' milk!'
One way that humans can be intolerant to milk is that they do not produce the right enzyme to break down the sugar in milk. Professor Brostoff says that 75 per cent of the world's population - mainly found in India, Africa and China - do not produce this enzyme after the age of 11 or 12, making them milk intolerant.
'Being milk intolerant is normal,' he says. 'It is only in Western Europe that we can tolerate milk as adults due to a genetic mutation.'
If most humans are milk intolerant, Professor Brostoff therefore supports the idea of eliminating it from your diet. 'People may suffer from chronic aching joints or a bloated stomach for years and think that's normal. But when they cut milk out of their diet and feel a million times better, they realise that, that is what is normal.'
Critics say that removing milk from the diet means that we are missing out on vital vitamins and nutrients, but Professor Brostoff says, 'Animals do not drink milk after being weaned and they can manage without it. You can find calcium and the vitamins in milk, in other areas of the diet or by taking a calcium supplement.'
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