You don't have to look hard to find someone who's off dairy: just about every wellness influencer seems to avoid it, and every friendship circle has at least one member (maybe it's you) who's experimented with giving it up.

There are plenty of good reasons not to eat dairy: for health, either because of an allergy or intolerance; for environmental or ethical causes; or because you just don't like it. (I, for example, have never understood the temptation of a cheese plate. A hunk of brie, gouda, camembert, whatever — zero appeal. To some, this makes me a freak.)

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Survey research conducted by Dairy Australia indicates that one in seven people say they avoid dairy, even though the number of people who can't consume it for medical reasons is closer to one in 20. Among younger Australians, half reported that social media contributed to their decision to reduce or give up dairy altogether.

Advanced accredited practising dietitian Melanie McGrice says she's observed a mixed attitudes about dairy among her patients: some factor it in as an unremarkable part of their diet, some hold it up as a guilty treat food (that cheese plate again), and others believe it's bad for their health — sometimes mistakenly.

"The one that I hear quite regularly is people will think it's inflammatory, which is an absolute myth," McGrice tells Coach.

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It is true that chronic inflammation is linked to a cascade of health problems. But McGrice says there's no evidence dairy causes inflammation, citing a 2017 systemic review that examined the highest quality scientific studies into the matter.

"It found that [dairy] was actually beneficial for inflammation — dairy is actually anti-inflammatory as opposed to a cause of inflammation," McGrice said.

Concern about weight gain is another reason people, particularly women, renounce dairy — but again, systematic reviews suggest there's little evidence that consuming dairy increases body weight.

"Dairy doesn't cause weight gain, unless of course you're consuming humongous amounts of it," says McGrice — but that's true of every food group.

"If you're having [dairy] as part of a healthy diet, it's unlikely to cause weight gain ... because it has a low glycemic index, it's got this whey protein that's really filling, and it is moderate to low fat," she adds.

Another common health reason to forego dairy is an intolerance to lactose, the sugar naturally present in milk that's broken down in the gut by an enzyme called lactase. But if your body doesn't produce enough lactase — most adult humans' bodies don't — the lactose instead ferments, and can cause moderate-to-severe abdominal distress.

But lactose intolerance isn't the same as a dairy allergy: while the former can lead to, uh, unpleasantness, it won't endanger your long-term health or life like an allergy can.

"Intolerances might cause a little bit of bloating, but they don't do us any harm," says McGrice. "They can be worse for some people than others … but, for many people, it's just a little bit of bloating and really, that's actually a good thing because bloating often means that that's good for our gut microbiome."

Even if you're lactose intolerant, it's likely you can consume some types of dairy. While milk is high in lactose — a single glass has enough to badly mess with the lactose intolerant — McGrice explains that yoghurt and especially cheese contain far less.

"Another big thing I like to tell my clients is that the less lactose you have, the more intolerant you'll become, and the more frequently you have it, the more your body naturally produces lactase enzymes and you can tolerate [lactose] better," she says.

"If someone has got a lactose intolerance, rather than cutting out dairy altogether, I would actually be encouraging them to just slowly but regularly build up their lactose tolerance."

RELATED: Taking a temporary break from dairy could make you permanently lactose intolerant

It is, of course, possible to have a healthy and balanced diet with zero dairy in it: the Australian Dietary Guidelines prescribe daily "milk, yoghurt, cheese and/or alternatives" (emphasis mine), affirming that you can cut dairy from your diet so long as you replace it with something that provides equal nutrition in its place.

The trouble is that some dairy cutters aren't swapping them with those alternatives, putting them at risk of nutrient deficiencies. According to McGrice, one of the major ones nutrients they're likely to miss out on is protein.

"We also get protein from other animal-based products like meat and fish and chicken, and from plant-based protein sources like nuts and legumes and tofu," she says. "But I often see clients, if they cut out dairy and they're dieting, sometimes they actually won't be getting enough protein to meet their requirements. That can cause a loss in muscle mass."

Another obvious nutrient is calcium, which is pretty easy to get via dairy and a bit more challenging to obtain elsewhere. Foods with edible bones are a rich source, though few of us have the stomach for sardines on toast. Some green, leafy vegetables also contain calcium — though far less than is in dairy.

"We're talking about eating 17 heads of broccoli a day to meet your calcium requirements, which is a lot of broccoli," McGrice says.

And how many glasses of milk would you have to drink the hit the calcium target?

"Two and a half."

Beware of trading cow's milk for the likes of soy milk, almond milk or coconut milk — while McGrice isn't opposed to these increasingly popular products, she warns that they should more accurately be called "juices" to reflect their lesser nutrient profiles.

"Say, almond milk, it's really almond juice," she points out. "It doesn't contain very much calcium naturally, so you have to fortify these products to get anywhere near the amount of calcium that you get naturally from cow's milk.

"People do think that they're one and the same, whereas that's really not the case."

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