Say Cheese!

When I was in high school, our English teacher had us write a speech about a controversial subject and deliver it to our class. Mine was titled, "Don't drink your milk". My classmates stared at me during the speech like I was speaking French, and no one said a word afterward during the Q&A session.

I knew what I was getting into when I chose that subject. Here in America, drinking milk is as much an unquestioned part of daily life as the sunshine and the trees. People are becoming gradually more aware and responsible for their own health, but 15 years ago when I made that speech, it was the equivalent of me saying that a tree was really a man-made flagpole and the leaves were fabric flags. It sounded ludicrous!

At our house, we are largely dairy free. Among the five of us, we have various degrees of problems with dairy ranging from full-on allergy to just a little intestinal discomfort. That alone is good cause for our avoidance of dairy, but there are a plethora of other reasons why dairy foods, as they are commercially available, should never be consumed.

Before I begin displaying a fraction of the "anti-dairy" research to be found, let me temper my statements with this: We love ice cream, and cheese on our pizza. We eat ice cream all summer long and have home made pizza several times per month. But that's ALL. We don't drink milk as a beverage, we don't cover our nightly dinners with shredded cheddar, and we skip the cheese when dining out.

Everyone has (or should have) something in life that they're passionate about. When you choose nutrition as your passion, you must also adopt the "everything in moderation" slogan. You must realize that food is inherently associated with culture and woven into the fabric that is the human life. No one has died or become less moral from consuming the occasional nutritionally void or even harmful food stuff.

The choice our family makes to be nutritionally conscious and selective about what we put in our bodies does not, by any means, make us superior to anyone on a cultural level, but it does give us an edge in preventative health care. By imprinting our children's bodies as they're developing with whole, unprocessed, easily digestible foods, we are laying the groundwork for healthy adults with healthy habits.

It is simply a choice we make for our family. Nothing more.

Over the next week or so, I'll be posting various segments of research on why dairy foods, as they are commercially available, should never be consumed as a key part of our diets. While I welcome comments on this, I do not wish to debate or argue the subject. I will provide links to all my sources so that if anyone has questions, they can find the answers.

~If you want to get a jump start on the reading, check out Brittany's post on the same subject~