It’s National Milk Day Today

I’m not making this up.  Today really is National Milk Day.  Who knew there was such a holiday? Apparently, it’s a celebration of the day when milk was first delivered in glass bottles in 1878. On the very same website where I learned about this holiday, if you will, was a very succinct description of this bovine bodily fluid which I felt summed it up perfectly: “Milk is a white liquid produced by mammary glands of mammals which is the primary source of nutrition for  young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food.” Right. So take a step back for a moment and forget about what your views on the rest of the Paleo scope is; think about how odd it is that our society is convinced that drinking this white liquid from another mammal at an age where we are clearly able to digest other food is a normal, healthy thing to do? Another step back; consider that the USDA which tells us what our perfect MyPlate should consists of, is sponsored by the Dairy C0uncil. Ah!  Now it all makes sense. Marion Nestle’s blog, foodpolitics.com, is a great resource for how the government promotes dairy foods, no matter what kind or where they appear. So, in honor of National Milk Day, go ahead and drink up; just opt for something not dairy! Below are a couple of ideas of how to partake without succumbing to ingesting acid-forming cow’s milk (for more on this, don’t forget to check out Dr. Cordain’s The Paleo Answer, in which there’s an entire chapter on all the reasons we should avoid dairy…even grass-fed).

• If you’re somewhere tropical- enjoy the purest coconut milk you’ll ever get, fresh out of the coconut itself!  Whack open a young coconut, pour out the water, scoop out the flesh and whiz together in a blender to make an amazingly decadent beverage.
• If not, have a try at making your own nut milk (so long as you’re not following the Paleo autoimmune protocol, where you’d be avoiding nuts), rather than relying on many of the commercially prepared versions which tend to have stabilizers, additives, sugars and other grain-based ‘milks’.

Or…just have a cuppa tea!