Milk: It sure does *something* to the body...

I'm a big advocate of avoiding normal milk. You know, the stuff from cows. I don't care weather it's organic, free-range, extra enhanced or whatever. I think it's pretty gross. If you really consider what the milk people drink daily is made to do—take a tiny calf to a full-grown hormone-laden heffer or bull within a year—that can't possibly be good to have in our human body. Perhaps as a kid it can be a boon to our health and growth (when countered by modern pollution and a bevvy of other factors), but that's what human milk is for. (Humans are the only mammmal that drink milk past the stage our bodies require it. And don't tell me your cat drinks milk; it may lap up that saucer of cream, but it's really yelling at you in its head "Whyyeeee? I'm lactose intolerant! Ooooh I'm gonna be sick!" then it goes and shats all over your duvet.)

When I was in 6th grade I became lactose intolerant, which was really lame for me because I was constantly drinking milk, eating cereal, icecream, and oatmeal, and having a regular ol' cow hormone-fest. I was shocked when over the course of my first year not drinking milk, I dropped a lot of weight (probably around 25 lbs.). Even if I could drink lactose-filled milk, I'm not sure I would. The stuff smells sour to me and tastes equally so. Blegh. As QC's Hannelore said, "Hey, I prefer my beverages free of excretions from the nipple of a large, stinky mammal."

So as I'm waiting for my soy milk to boil for making oatmeal, I'm reading the side of the milk carton. I picked up a new brand at the store last night, as I realized it was two dollars cheaper than the other I've been getting. I knew this was a risk: when it comes to soy products, the more expensive stuff is often less invoking of the soy flavour, and hence better. But it doesn't hurt to try, and this brand also does Makal's "normal" milk. I see on the side that you can go to their website and enter the expiration date of your carton to learn the farm(s) the soy beans used to create your batch came from. That's kind of neat! So I head on over.

I present to you, the farms that grew the soy beans that were processed into delicious non-lactose milkiness. Woo! That's pretty cool. They all look so happy, don't they? Smiling and hugging little soy plants as if they were their own long-lost child who dissapeared in the Great Soy Farm incident of '89. May they rest in soy.

I do have to counter something written on Organic Valley's soy milk carton, though. On the back, it says "No beany aftertaste. No chalkiness. Just pure organic vanilla yum." I took a swig to see. Hmm, yes, very vanilla-y, I thought. But after I'd swallowed, I realized that it was, in fact, much chalkier than the brand I'd been buying before (Silk). It's not a horrible chalkiness, as if I had taken ground-up Necco wafers and mixed them with water. That'd be nasty. But at the same time, it's not *horribly* chalky. Just moreso than Silk. But considering that I never really drink soy milk and just use it for oatmeal and mixing in coffee, I don't think I'm going to care about a little chalkiness.