Is animal milk healthy?

It is unnatural for humans to drink milk.

Question: Is animal milk healthy?
Position‹4 of 4: It doesn't matter, we shouldn't drink milk regardless.
Argument‹2 of 3›: It is unnatural for humans to drink milk.

Other mammals do not drink milk past childhood, and it's unnatural that we do.

The argument

No species of animal drinks milk after infancy naturally. Milk is produced by mammals to feed their young, and once young mammals grow up, they stop drinking milk, and the mothers stop producing it. By drinking milk after infancy, and drinking milk from another species, humans are upsetting the natural order. Only a genetic mutation that much of the world’s population does not possess allows us to drink cow’s milk. It is meant for infant cows, which have largely different digestive systems and nutritional needs than humans, and it is unnatural for us to drink it.

Premises

[P1]No species naturally consumes milk after infancy, and milk is biologically intended to nourish the young of the species that produces it. [P2] Cow's milk is specifically suited to the digestive systems and nutritional needs of infant cows, not adult humans, and only a genetic mutation absent in much of the world's population allows humans to digest it. [C] Therefore, regardless of health claims, humans should not drink animal milk because doing so is unnatural.

Counter-arguments

-Many humans have evolved to drink cow’s milk, and evolution is a natural process. -It doesn’t matter if it is natural or not, drinking milk can still be beneficial to humans.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise appeals to nature, which does not establish what is good — cooking, clothing, spectacles and antibiotics all fail the same test — and the factual claim is loose, since adult mammals will drink milk where it is available. [Rejecting P2] Lactase persistence is an evolved adaptation that arose independently in several populations rather than a defect, and evolution is itself a natural process, so the mutation tells against the premise rather than for it; the digestive difference concerns lactose tolerance specifically, not a general unsuitability. [Rejecting C] Even granting that the practice is unnatural, that is a claim about origin rather than effect — the question asks whether milk is healthy, which naturalness does not answer.

Framing

Something that does not occur in nature is unnatural and wrong.