For nearly a century, Americans have been told that milk “does a body good.” Generations of children were raised to believe that strong bones came from a cold glass of cow’s milk, often served with government-backed nutritional charts and industry-funded ad campaigns. The dairy carton became a symbol of health itself—white, pure, and unquestioned.

But what if it was all a myth?

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recently published findings that should make every milk drinker pause before pouring. After decades of longitudinal studies, they found no evidence that cow’s milk prevents osteoporosis—the very rationale used to justify its daily consumption. “High calcium intake doesn’t actually appear to lower a person’s risk for osteoporosis,” the researchers concluded. In fact, they found something even more startling: the more milk people drank, the higher their likelihood of fractures and bone loss.

In other words, the foundation of the milk myth—strong bones—crumbles under scientific scrutiny.

Harvard’s data is part of a growing body of independent research challenging the dairy industry’s long-standing narrative. For decades, marketing campaigns have equated milk with vitality and strength, while quietly funding studies that obscure inconvenient truths. Yet, the same Harvard researchers found that people who ate a daily serving of green, leafy vegetables—spinach, kale, collards, broccoli—cut their risk of hip fracture in half compared to those who ate them only once a week. These foods, not milk, turn out to be among nature’s most efficient calcium sources.

The body doesn’t need milk to be healthy. In many ways, milk can make us less so.

Lactose intolerance, for instance, affects a majority of the global population. High levels of saturated fat in dairy products have been linked to cardiovascular disease. Even more troubling, multiple studies have identified a correlation between heavy milk consumption and increased risk of ovarian and prostate cancers. Harvard researchers found that men who drank two or more glasses of milk a day were nearly twice as likely to develop advanced prostate cancer as those who drank none.

That’s a sobering price for something sold as wholesome.

It’s also worth asking: why, exactly, do we drink milk from another species at all? No other adult mammal drinks milk—certainly not the milk of a different animal. The very idea is biologically odd, yet it has been normalized through decades of advertising and government subsidies. We don’t question it because we grew up with it.

But step outside the cultural haze, and the absurdity becomes hard to ignore. Cows produce milk for their calves, not for us. To keep the milk flowing, dairy cows are repeatedly impregnated, their calves taken away within hours of birth so the milk can be harvested for human consumption. It is an industrial cycle of exploitation that would shock anyone who saw it up close.

I haven’t had a glass of cow’s milk since 1990. My health is excellent—my blood panels pristine. I drink plant-based milk made from oats, soy, or almonds. It tastes better, it doesn’t contain cholesterol or hormones, and it doesn’t rely on cruelty to sustain itself. Most importantly, it aligns with the evidence—and with my ethics.

We’ve been told for decades that milk is essential, even patriotic, a pillar of human nutrition. It’s not. It’s an outdated habit backed by powerful marketing and institutional inertia. The truth is that everything we were told milk provides—calcium, protein, vitality—can be obtained more safely, cleanly, and compassionately from plants.

Maybe it’s time to retire the slogan that “milk does a body good.” Science tells us otherwise. Conscience does, too.