Plant Sterols in Milk

On July 12, 2007, the Bloomington Herald Times reported in an article that Kroger would begin carrying "Active Lifestyle Milk" including plant sterols. Plant Sterols have been shown to reduce blood cholesterol levels. The article states that sterols are "a natural ingredient found in such foods as soybeans, corn, seeds and nuts." It fails to mention that industrial food manufacturers are approved to use sterols from "tall oil" - an effluent from wood pulp manufacturing. Phytosterols in water downstream from wood pulp processors has been shown to cause endocrine damage, "sex inversion" and hermaphroditism in fish. Other estrogenic-like effects have been documented including uterine tissue growth stimulation (hence their folk-medicine reputation as abortifacients), anti-fertility, and bone leaching. The American Dietetic Association Evidence Library indicates a general reduction of important nutrients in the blood of humans consuming unnatural doses of plant sterols (you would eat 450 tomatoes, or 150 apples, or 43 cups of peanuts to get the natural plant sterols in two servings of this milk containing highly-processed plant sterols.) Do some homework and you may be satisfied that the short-term human studies that show benign results outweigh any risks. Alternatively, consider real, naturally and locally produced dairy products. See www.realmilk.com for more info. After exhaustive searches of Food and Drug Administration databases, industry reports and various studies and database such as the American Dietetic Association, we could find none that studied the the long- or even mid-term safety of these highly processed additives (the longest human study we found was 8 weeks with a maximum intake of about 4 grams/day). When we searched through the safety sections of these research papers and regulatory submissions, we repeatedly found reference only to the efficacy of these substances in reducing cholesterol and, sometimes, references to the short term studies. We could find no research or human trials on the safety of this product in children, for whom cholesterol is a critical substance for building brain & nerve tissues.

WAPF brochure on cholesterol (scroll down for inside of the trifold)

WAPF article on plant sterols