Milk, as it turns out, is evil, a mucous-coated pacifier we were meant to discard decades ago. I figured one day (it only took me six years after I went back on coffee) that maybe it’s the MILK I need to quit, not the five cups a day of delicious, acrid, steamy java –  maybe what's causing me all that gastric discomfort is lactose intolerance.

How did I discover the problem? What made me think that milk – innocuous staple of everyone's daily diet, the very symbol of health – was the culprit? The girl I was seeing this summer kept human breast milk in her freezer. Not hers, and not for her consumption, but for a friend's adopted baby. You may know this already, but apparently a woman won't lactate if she didn't actually birth the baby, so they get a lactating woman to donate breast milk, and then they need to keep it in a freezer. There's too much for just one freezer, so my now ex-girlfriend donated her entire freezer to it (which meant I couldn't have ice cubes when I came to visit).

Is this too much information for you? No, they wouldn’t let me taste it. I was pissed about that too, and felt weird for the baby -- here this kid is with a woman, not his real mother, nursing him with yet another woman's breast milk (which she feeds the child via a small tube placed next to her nipple) which is kept in yet another woman's freezer. It really does take a huge amount of sleight of hand to be "organic."

Anyway, I gleaned some interesting tidbit from this experience: mammalian breast automatically changes its nutritional content as the accompanying baby ages. Wow! So that’s all well and good for the child lucky enough to be breast fed (I got the formula, like every other poor sod in my wasted generation) but what does that infer about us humans drinking cow’s milk? We wouldn't dream of drinking human breast milk as an adult, it's just so totem and taboo, but some nameless cow is okay? That is what's really decadent, my friends, this oral bestiality we call "normal."

How old was the calf who should have been suckling where our collective mouth has sit since the dawn of time? In that attractive metal pitcher at Starbucks where I used to de-bitter my filtered venti is milk belonging to some ancient calf, withered from lack of nutrition, as old and withered as Methusalah.

According to Dr. Joseph Mercola, “Milk and refined sugar make two of the largest contributions to food induced ill health in our country.” He blames it on the pasteurization process which kills the enzymes that would help us digest milk (such as lactase, which helps us digest the lactose). According to Mercola, this then puts a strain on the pancreas, in much the way refined sugar does, but unlike refined sugar also causes gas and halitosis. Yeee-ikes!

So I switched to soy milk, cut out all diary products (I probably get some here and there from milk chocolate and so forth, but life is hard enough without reading labels). When there is no soy milk, I just put in some sugar and drink it black.

After two weeks, all my digestive imperfections were gone! Now it’s been a few months, and life is so good with a cast iron stomach, and the soy milk gives one tons of fortified calcium. So now I live the cheeseless life, and I think it builds character, if not healthy teeth. Best of all it tastes pretty good (get the vanilla flavor) and doesn't leave phlegm in the back of your mouth.

Organic Farms is a really good soy milk to try, since it's all organic (no soy growth hormones).

Life is so good now, I’ve got a great wife (we’re divorced) and am living the high life (alone in a tiny garret in NYC) and I keep my fridge ever stocked with soy milk (usually the Silk kind, because though I like Organic Farms, it's not at the local store).

 

 

 

Another recommended product for you chocolate lovers is ah!laska organic chocolate syrup (www.ahlaska.com) with no milk in it. If you’re a chocolate lover and want to skip the milk side effects, this is the way to go.

 

 

 

If you’re like me you’ll be thrilled at the amount of decadent vices you can keep going now that milk’s been singled out and targeted as the real enemy and permanently removed from your diet.

 

 

 

And if you’re one of those poor people who can’t let go of your tasty, succulent, frothy cheeses, then have them, my dear friend, have them. Me, I’m riding off into the sunset with a soul buoyant with the all purpose and forgiving absolvement of the mighty soy bean.

 

 

 

But man, if you're going to keep drinking milk, please clear your karma and at least wave to ole Bessie when you pass her in your automobile, as she grazes in yon far off field! You don’t even send her a mother’s day card… and yet you continue to pour her hormonal secretions into your coffee. Can't you see her crying, soft silent bovine tears as she watches you drive off into the sunset, like Bette Davis in THE OLD MAID?

 

 

 

When you use soy milk instead, it’s just abean—the coffee bean, and another bean—the soy bean, coming together as one. The amount of antioxidants going on in that combination could raise the recent dead, and beans have no feelings... because they're dead by the time they get ground up to please your palette.

 

 

 

I’m not working for some shadowy anti-milk consortium here, I’m just sharing my experience, strength, and hope. If you are free of lactose problems, cheers to you! But if you suffer from gas, halitosis, or anything else unpleasant from the mouth on down to the other end of the long and winding road, then do what I did, make an experiment and quit diary products for two weeks, and see what happens. If all your problems aren’t gone by then, well then God help you, perhaps you're just a natural born stinker.

 

 

 

 FOOTNOTE: There was an office party upstairs with free pizza... and yes it had cheese and yes, I had some. Life aint perfect... and cheese is damned good, and I'm weak... and I have zantac. Amen.

 FOOTNOTE: There was an office party upstairs with free pizza... and yes it had cheese and yes, I had some. Life aint perfect... and cheese is damned good, and I'm weak... and I have zantac. Amen.

 FOOTNOTE: There was an office party upstairs with free pizza... and yes it had cheese and yes, I had some. Life aint perfect... and cheese is damned good, and I'm weak... and I have zantac. Amen.