I've heard all sorts of nasty things about Milk, but never that it caused acne. *shrug*

The truth is, it's unnatural for adult mammals to drink milk, much less the milk of another species like humans do. Milk is basically nature's infant formula, and we're *supposed* to outgrow it. In fact, I've read that *most* people in the world are so-called "lactose intolerant", meaning they react badly to the lactose in milk products. It's actually the natural state to lose your "tolerance" for lactose as you grow from infancy to adulthood--it's nature's way to wean infants from their mother's milk. From what I heard, it's only those of us with a certain defective gene (mostly people with northern European ancestry from what I remember) that don't lose our tolerance for lactose as we grow older, and can continue to drink milk normally.

As for any actual *dangers* in drinking milk, about the only one that has any widespread acceptance are that whole milk contains a lot of fat, and fat is like, bad for you and stuff. Milk also contains lots of natural sugars, which also don't do a whole lot for you. Basically, like I said, it's well-formulated for an infant (cow, that is) but probably not the best balance of nutrients and carbs and fat for an adult.

One of the more controversial dangers of milk is that it contains lots of hormones that apparently can stimulate early onset of puberty, among other things. Also, cows are often fed lots of anti-biotics, which find their way into the milk we drink, which feeds the growing over-use of anti-biotics and the subsequent rise of resistent strains of diseases. I've linked to a story on a decidedly anti-milk website (although the story apparently comes from the San Francisco Chronicle) about some of this. It's an interesting read. But if you really want to have some fun, go to the main notmilk.com website and check out the craptacular web design!

-- Dave