Raw milk vs a starch-based vegan diet, health benefits?

If you want are willing to study I recommend you to read this debate, which includes people who once in their lifetime thought raw milk was good for the human body: http://www.drmcdougall.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=27604
Milk is very nutrient dense for baby calves. Just because that it contains nutrients doesn't mean that the human body is able to absorb all these nutrients, and that it isn't detrimental for human health.

 A vegan starch-based diet prevents stiffness in the joints, see e.g.: http://www.drmcdougall.com/stars/star06_jean-brown.html
and doesn't harm any animals, as is done in the dairy industry, and which the milk consumer pays for.

http://drmcdougall.com/med_hot_arthritis_diet.html

Learn more here:
http://abolitionistvegansociety.org/tavs-initiatives/tavs-articles/why-veganism/

Athletes on a vegan starchbased diet

"All knowledgeable scientists agree that for winning performance during prolonged exercise the best fuel for the body is carbohydrate.4-6  In practical terms, this means eating starches (rice, corn, potatoes, beans, pasta, bread, etc.), vegetables, and fruits – all of these plant foods contain from 70% to 95+% of their calories as carbohydrate.  Unbeatable athletes shun foods devoid of meaningful amounts of carbohydrate – these are meat, poultry, fish, eggs, cheeses, and vegetable oils.  No endurance athlete would ever consider competing while following a low-carb diet."
Footnotes:
4) Coyle EF. Substrate utilization during exercise in active people. Am J Clin Nutr. 1995 Apr;61(4 Suppl):968S-979S.
5)  Rauch LH. The effects of carbohydrate loading on muscle glycogen content and cycling performance. Int J Sport Nutr. 1995 Mar;5(1):25-36.
6) Fogelholm M.  Dairy products, meat and sports performance. Sports Med. 2003;33(8):615-31.

Quote: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2004nl/apr/040400pucarb.htm
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Carl Lewis won his Olympic gold medal as a follower of the McDougall program.
Scott Jurek, one of the top ultrarunners in the world, is vegan.

Historical diet: Mayan, Aztecs and other populations ate a starchbased diet, not a 'paleo diet'

DR. JOHN MCDOUGALL: Yes. The diet that I recommend is the diet that most people that have ever walked this earth have consumed. It's the diet of all successful populations throughout all of recordable history. There are no exceptions. And unfortunately science or historians or the general population has a hard time recalling history. If they did for a moment they'd figure out what the human diet really is. In recordable history - I'm talking about times where we really have adequate information about how people ate, and that dates back to 13,000 years ago, maybe 24,000 years ago. We really have good records from camp sites and writings and all kinds of things as to what people ate. And if you just stop for a minute you realize that people are starch eaters. All successful populations of people have lived on starch. For example, the Mayans and the Aztecs. They were known as ‘People of the Corn'. So was the American Indian, native American. They lived on corn and squash and beans. That was their diet. As a matter of fact there's a new dollar out called the "Three Sisters" which represents those crops. If you think about Asians for at least 5,000 years their primary calorie intake has been rice. But it's been other things. It's been sojourn and buckwheat and sweet potatoes, but rice is classically the diet of most Asian populations. In the Middle East, five, eight, 10,000 years ago it was millet and wheat. If you look at South America and you look at the people of the Andes. They live on potatoes, still do today, potato based diets. And there are populations that lived on sweet potatoes like those in New Guinea and those in the Caribbean. So wherever you look the primary source of calories for human beings has been starch and when they've consumed those calories, they've had no type 1 or type 2 diabetes. They've had no multiple sclerosis, heart disease as far as we know. Well we have examples of these people living on starch based diets up until recently, and in fact there are a few isolated populations that haven't been touched by the American diet and we can still see that they don't have type 2 diabetes. They don't have coronary artery disease. They don't have multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, etc.

Gladiators were vegan? They ate a starch based-diet

This YouTube-video shows that gladiators ate a vegan diet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOWSc8VvOl4

I don't agree with violence (I recommend this article: http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/a-comment-on-violence/ ). This video shows that for physical strength and endurance, a starch-based diet without animal producs is essential.

However, far more important, animals have a moral value being sentient, and veganism is the only way to recognize this and to not exploit other beings.
"The motivation behind vegan living is the universal spiritual principle of compassion that has been articulated both secularly and through the world’s religious traditions; the difference lies in veganism’s insistence that this compassion be actually practiced. The words of Donald Watson, who created the term “vegan” in 1944, reveal this practical orientation and bear repeating: Veganism denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose; and by extension promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals, and the environment."
Read more here: http://circleofcompassion.org/articles/articles-will/article-lovethatword.html