Americans should drink three cups of milk a day, the government says. Kiesha Diggs ignores that advice. Diggs, who is black, is lactose-intolerant, meaning she can’t easily digest dairy products. Three cups of milk would wreak havoc on her intestines.

“Bloating, gas, diarrhea. The whole thing,” said Diggs, 36, of Atlanta.

Her sons Denzell and Armonni have the same problem. So do as many as 75 percent of African-Americans and 90 percent of Asian-Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Government dietary guidelines include advice for people with lactose intolerance that note other calcium-containing foods like fish, broccoli and fortified orange juice. But critics say information on milk alternatives is sometimes buried.

The debate was raised a notch this past month when a vegetarian advocacy group filed a lawsuit aimed at getting milk producers to label their products with a warning that milk may cause digestive problems in lactose-intolerant people.

Milk industry officials called the lawsuit frivolous, and said scaring people away from milk is not good health policy.
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People on both sides agree that it’s a public health problem, because many people who cut milk out of their diet don’t replace it with other sources of calcium and nutrients.

However, they don’t agree on how to deal with it.
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“There is no real understanding that there’s a substitute (for milk),” said [Joyce] Guinyard.
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“Since nutritionists are not ready to give up recommending milk as a nourishing food, I guess the message is to help people who see themselves as lactose-intolerant to take a cup of milk,” said David Schardt, nutritionist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

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