Most of the claims made for the curative virtues of the milk diet are false. Milk contains no excess of vitamins or minerals that will compensate for the use of devitalized foods and is wrongly classed as a "protective food."

Laboratory rats fed on an exclusive milk diet developed anemia. The protracted use of an exclusive milk diet tends finally to render children susceptible to so-called infections in later life, even to develop tuberculosis. Berg, experimenting on humans, found that when only so much milk is given to these as is required to supply them with the bodily protein requirement, the excess of alkalies in the milk did not suffice either for growing youth or adult human beings. Berg, says "natural milk contains acid-rich proteins, and unless these proteins are fully utilized by the body (as they are in the suckling undergoing normal growth) the total surplus of bases is not placed at the disposal of the organism." Lyman and Raymond, experimenting on rabbits, which are very sensitive to acids, found that on a diet of cow's milk, the animals died of acidosis; but when sodium citrate was added to the food, the acidosis disappeared and the urine contained less ammonia. "Milk," says Berg, "is well known to be adequate in respect to inorganic constituents (minerals) only for the earliest period of life; but for adults is rendered adequate by the addition of a little iron. In my own experience, however, as far as adults are concerned, the richness of milk in protein makes the excess of alkali in this food inadequate."

The milk diet requires a lot of juggling to make it serve at all. It produces constipation in about 80% of those who employ it, and diarrhea in perhaps 10%. It causes much gas, abdominal distension and discomfort. It causes nausea in many, bowel inpaction in a few, catarrh in many, increased blood pressure in all and places a heavy tax upon the heart, liver, stomach, intestine, kidneys, lungs and glands of the body. Most patients gain weight rapidly on it, but such weight is not a gain in healthy flesh and is almost never permanent. It completely wrecks many patients.