I was at a Tony Robbins seminar once and he spent a portion of time talking about the dangers of Whey. Here is an excerpt from an article written in the L.A. Times about it: (forgive the typos, I'm in a rush)
Whey is the stinking yellow green by-product of cheese production. It is vile looking and the taste is atrocious. Because of the increase of cheese consumption in this country, there is an enormous amount of surplus whey to deal with. Since only about 10% of the milk to make cheese actually ends up as a cheese, the rest separating out as whey, the unlovely liquid is gushing as never before. The surplus of the putrid stuff is causing a huge problem and there is a frantic search for new ways to dispose of it. In the past it was simply trucked to hog farms and fed to the pigs, but this has become too expensive. Not only is there more whey, but it is harder to dispose of. Stricter federal and state regulations prohibit dumping raw whey down sewers. Whey is 100 to 200 times stronger a pollutant than residential sewage, and most municipal sewerage plants cannot treat it adequately. Disposal in streams is out because whey depletes waterways of oxygen, rending them incapable of supporting marine life. Even disposal on unused land or gravel pits is often unsuitable because of seepage into water supplies. The solution hit upon by both industry and government is to apply high technology and sophisiticated marketing technieques and feed the stuff to humans.
There may be strict regulations prohibiting it from being dumped into the sewers, but there is nothing prohibiting them from dumping it into your food. The federal government has encouraged whey utilization by relaxing restrictions on whey's use in many foods. The government also has spent millions of dollars in recent years to imporve whey technology and develop new products. Whey is increasly showing up as a cheap substitute in a wide range of procesed foods, such as ice cream, bakery goods, soup mixes, beverages, cocoa mixes, Hostess products, Gerber Teething Biscuits, luncheon meats, chocolate, pancake batter, salad dressing, and more.