A new documentary from Viva!
What Do You Really Know About Dairy?
Milk is natural?
Milk is essential?
Milk is needed for strong bones?
Or is it?
Viva!’s new documentary challenges some of our most deeply held beliefs about dairy – and asks how they became so deeply ingrained in the first place.
Now available to watch at home
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Not good for her. Not great for you.
Good for you
Pure &
Natural
Happy Cows
Farm Fresh
How much do you really know about dairy?
For generations, we’ve been told milk is one of the most natural, nutritious foods there is.
It gives us calcium. It builds strong bones. Children need it to grow. Cows simply produce milk.
These ideas are so familiar that most of us rarely stop to question them.
And that’s hardly surprising.
For decades, the dairy industry has had enormous resources behind it. Its messages have appeared everywhere – in advertising, schools, packaging and public campaigns – alongside those familiar images of cows grazing happily in idyllic green fields.
When we hear the same claims again and again, they become part of what simply feels normal.
But what happens when we look beyond the marketing?
What Do You Really Know About Dairy? investigates the science, the industry and the animals behind one of Britain’s most familiar foods.
Think you know dairy?
Watch the trailer
You may be surprised by how much of what we believe has been shaped by decades of industry messaging.
Host your own screening
Bring people together. Start a conversation.
Want to show What Do You Really Know About Dairy? at your university, community group, workplace or local venue?
Viva! can help.
Our Community Screening Pack gives you everything you need to organise and promote your own event, including guidance, promotional materials and answers to common questions.
The film
A 30-minute investigation into what we think we know about dairy.
In this powerful 30-minute documentary, Viva! founder and director Juliet Gellatley investigates what the public really knows about dairy; and where our beliefs about milk came from.
We hear from members of the public, explore some of the biggest health claims surrounding dairy and look at the reality of modern milk production.
Featuring expert insight from registered dietitian Rosie Martin, haematologist Dr Shireen Kassam and gastroenterologist Dr Alan Desmond, the film examines the health claims surrounding dairy and asks whether it really deserves the nutritional reputation it has enjoyed for generations.
And behind the familiar image of cows in green fields lies another story entirely.
One involving pregnancy, separation, intensive farming and an industry dependent on animals producing milk for human consumption.
Question the claims. Challenge the norm. Discover what you really know about dairy.
59%
Why this film?
59 per cent believed cows produce milk simply because they eat grass.
Before making the documentary, Viva! asked the British public what they believed about dairy.
The answers revealed just how deeply some ideas have become embedded in our culture.
If we misunderstand something as fundamental as why a cow produces milk, what else don’t we know?
What Do You Really Know About Dairy? was made to find out.
Watch at home
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What you’ll discover
Six questions at the heart of the dairy story.
Calcium & strong bones
Where familiar health claims come from.
The marketing machine
How the dairy industry markets milk and dairy products.
Why cows produce milk
And what happens to their calves.
Dairy & health
What the scientific evidence actually tells us.
The reality of farming
How modern dairy differs from the idyllic image most of us recognise.
Life without dairy
Why plant-based diets can provide the nutrients we need without dairy.
Why have so many of us never been encouraged to ask these questions before?
“But I’ve always been told dairy is good for me…”
Exactly.
This film isn’t about blaming people for believing what we’ve been told.
Milk has been promoted as wholesome, natural and necessary for generations.
The dairy industry has enormous resources – and those messages have been repeated through advertising, education, packaging, government-backed campaigns and popular culture.
It is completely understandable that they became part of our everyday understanding of food.
The point isn’t to ask why we believed it.
It’s to ask what happens when we finally examine it.
Watch.
Question.
Share.
Watching the film is only the beginning.
If What Do You Really Know About Dairy? makes you think, help us get other people thinking too.
Share the trailer. Send the film to someone you know. Talk about what surprised you.
And if you want to take it further, organise a screening in your own community.
About Viva!
More than 30 years challenging powerful industries.
Viva! is the UK’s leading vegan campaigning charity.
For more than 30 years, we’ve investigated factory farming, exposed animal suffering, challenged powerful industries and helped people move towards veganism.
What Do You Really Know About Dairy? continues that work by examining an industry most of us have grown up trusting – and asking whether its carefully cultivated image stands up to scrutiny.
Ready to find out?
What do you really know about dairy?
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