Milk rage!

Milk is making me angry. More specifically, people’s thoughts on milk are making me angry. My kid wasn’t interested in drinking cow’s milk for quite awhile and I carefully looked up why we encourage kids to drink milk to make sure that he wasn’t missing any nutrients. He eats a very healthy diet, plays outside and, at the end of the day, doesn’t need cow’s milk. I could mention that he’s still getting milk, human milk, but for some reason that’s repulsive while the thought of him getting milk that is specifically designed by nature for calves is not.

He now drinks milk happily although not all that often or all that much. He does, however, eat a lot of dairy. I’m not militant – I just have issues with this “culture” of milk that some very clever marketers have developed. At first, his doctor was concerned about his lack of milk. When I brought up all the (carefully researched) reasons that I was not concerned, she backed off. I enjoy milk and I have a serious cheese addiction. I won’t go into details but all the nasties that are in the milk we buy was almost enough to turn me off both. Yet people believe that milk is so essential that even chocolate milk is better than no milk at all. Just for fun, try comparing the nutritional information on chocolate milk to a serving of Coke. Would you suddenly start forcing your kid to drink more Coke if they threw in some extra nutrients that your kid could easily get from their regular food and playing outside? I don’t feel like going through all the research; I may attach a few references later.

Somehow “milk” in our culture is equated with cow’s milk (even by me!).
A conversation with my (almost 2-year old son) yesterday:
DS (dear son): Cow make milk (this is from his “fridge farm” which says this as a fact when he makes a match…ignoring that all of the animals except the duck actually make milk)
Me: Yes! Cow’s make milk. What else makes milk?
DS (thinking): Mama make milk!
Me: Yes! Mama makes milk. What else makes milk?
DS: Horsey make milk?

This went on for quite awhile as we explained that yes, horsies make milk for baby horsies just like Mama makes milk for her baby and goats make milk for baby goats, etc. When he guessed “duckies?” we explained that some baby animals are fed differently and birds don’t make milk. I know he’s still too young to understand but I think it helps him on his understanding that milk is made by animals to feed their babies. Don’t get me started on soy milk.