Cow vs Bean

When I say I'm vegan and I do not drink cow's milk, instead that i drink plant based milks, I usually hear that people cannot give up their precious milk. I hear that cow's milk

is better, 
has more protein, 
is a better source of calcium, 
is natural,
is good for your bones,
is hormone free (that soya has estrogen that causes breast cancer),
that plant based milks are only good due to their supplementing, 
and if you are lactose intolerant you can even get milk without lactose!

So let's check these comments:
To start off I took two known brands of milk and compared the two. Regular milks with no special labels or extra fortified anything.

So soy milk has 

• 30% less calories per 100ml
• 50% less fat and only 10% of the total amount of the saturated fats existing in cow's milk (triglycerides; believed to be one of the most common causes of cardiovascular diseases)
• has fibre (au contraire to cow's milk that does not contain fibre)
• It has practically the same amount of vitamin B12
• Almost 50% less sugar than cow's milk (the sugar in milk is called lactose) 
• practically the same amount of calcium as cow's milk
• 0% cholesterol (this is only found in animal derived foods)

But it's hormone free (soya is bad for you): cow's milk is never hormone free! It might be free from artificial hormone injection but have you ever seen what hormones during pregnancy do to a woman? Well do you think it's different just because a cow is pregnant? Hormone levels rise up to trigger and sustain all the body changes that a female cow goes through during pregnancy and lactation. And all of this (all of what she eats, grass or made made food with antibiotics) goes into her milk. That milk that is supposed to make a baby calf grown 500% their size in the first 12 weeks. That's it, hormones that make you grow bigger, i mean the calf... or whoever is drinking the milk. So milk from a lactating female can never be hormone free.

Soy is a bean; soy does not have estrogen. Studies show that soy acts like estrogen (acts like, it is not the same; due to having isoflavones) in our body and some cancers grow in the presence of estrogen. (But you know what is estrogen and in a much much high quantity? Milk from a lactating female - e.g. Cow!. Milk and cheese are products that contact a high amount of estrogen, just look at how many men have developed man boobs in the last century due to their dietary choices to have cheese on everything.) But back to the bean, there are no studies that show that high consumption of soy beans are linked to higher occurrences of cancer, in fact populations in Asia that eat a lot of soy derived products such as Soy sauce, Tofu, soya milk suffer much less from cancer than western societies.

Lactose is bad for people who are intolerant to it, but now we get lactose free milk!

I hate it when people speak of lactose intolerance like it were a disease. It's not; it's what is normal.

Lactose intolerance happens at a certain age, estimated around 3-6 years old when you have weaned. Since you are not consuming milk (that has lactose) your bowel stops producing lactase (the enzime that brakes down the sugar Lactose). Our bowel is an inteligent organ on its own: it produces the enzimes we need based on the type of foods we eat; it gets stressed when we suffer from mental stress; it adapts the bowel movements and force applied to contract depending on how much fat and fibre you eat; it looses or forget certain abilities if you start eating wrong... and so much more! 

In the past we were weaned and we stopped consuming(or at least in the quantities we are used to now!) milk. We also are prone to loose lactase if our bodies are too acidic (which happens when we consume too much animal products, the ideal condition in our body to produce lactase is when our pH is near to 6, which is basic).

So when we loose lactase we are unable to properly brake down lactose and therefore is travels further into the gastrointestinal tract undergoing fermentation by bacteria, resulting in the production of gas and discomfort. (this is not the same as dairy allergy!)

Usually adult humans are supposed to be lactose intolerant, as they do not need to consume lactose rich products but some world populations have mutated throughout the years and have continued to produce lactase into adulthood and hence are able to eat cheese and milk without feeling discomfort.

But back to Lactose-Free Milk. There is no such thing as lactose free milk: to achieve this end product producers add lactase to the milk, therefore breaking down the sugar lactose into simple sugars (glucose and galactose) that are easily absorved by our body. So this means we are not consuming lactose free milk but instead Milk with Added Lactase, and instead of having the body break it down into simple sugar we already are consuming processed sugars milk.

It is natural!

Is it? We are the only animal on the planet to consume milk (from another species) into adulthood. I know a lot of people will say that other animals do not travel, have cars or mobile phones. But really... do you think it is natural to drink from a cow's tit and take away her newborn baby for whom this milk was produced for?

It has more protein (or better quality protein):

We have already compared above that cow's milk has not more protein. Better protein; higher quality protein? 

So do you know what a protein is? A protein is a string of essential amino acids, essential because our bodies cannot produce them. The nine amino acids humans cannot synthesize are phenylalanine, valine, threonine, tryptophan, methionine, leucine, isoleucine, lysine, andhistidine

Proteins have several functions in our body such as repair tissue,

Once formed, proteins only exist for a certain period of time - they have an average lifespan of 1–2 days in mammalian cells.

You do not need to eat these amino acids as a complete protein string (as you find in soy beans, cows milk, meat, fish), you can eat them individually and our body will string them up and form proteins to use. That is why it is so important to eat a wholefood, varied diet!

When people talk about protein quality they mean the protein is better because the percentages of all amino acids are similar, when they refer that a protein is not as good they refer to the fact that some plant protein sources do not have all amino acids quantities in the same proportion to each other, one or more amino acids might exist in less quantity then others. Animal proteins are better for that fact if you want to source your protein just from one food (just as meat) because we are eating the body of an animal, made of proteins that are similar to the ones we have in our body. But this doesn't mean the quality of the amino acids is worse in plant based sources, it just means you need to compensate with another source > and that's again where the wholefoods plant based varied diet comes in play. As long as you source nutrients from a lot of different sources you do not need to be worried about the amino acid quantity because your body will use all the amino acids you eat (in all foods) and build proteins from them.

But its good for your bones!

We have already compared above that cow's milk has not more calcium than plant based soya milk.

In a 12-year Harvard study of 78,000 women, those who drank milk three times a day actually broke more bones than women who rarely drank milk, why?
(see Debunking the Milk Myth )

Here’s how it happens. Like all animal protein, milk acidifies the body pH which in turn triggers a biological correction. You see, calcium is an excellent acid neutralizer and the biggest storage of calcium in the body is – you guessed it… in the bones. So the very same calcium that our bones need to stay strong is utilized to neutralize the acidifying effect of milk. Once calcium is pulled out of the bones, it leaves the body via the urine, so that the surprising net result after this is an actual calcium deficit.
Knowing this, you’ll understand why statistics show that countries with the lowest consumption of dairy products also have the lowest fracture incidence in their population (there’s more on this later).