Monday, October 02, 2006

Milk Chug on Train

Okay people, so I was on the train going up for my usual acupuncture and torture--I mean tuina--massage and the lady sitting across from me (who didn't look healthy to begin with) pulls out this awful thing called a "milk chug," which she proceeded to...chug. The whole thing. It made me queasy just thinking about it, and I was thinking how the Euro-American types have the super-duper milk digesting gene or something. I don't think I've had straight milk in...decades?

Ten minutes later, though, she was discreetly clutching her tum, even sticking her hand under her shirt, and looking mighty dyspeptic. Looking around me today as I strolled in Boston, I was amazed to see how much milk people were drinking...in coffee, the chug, one woman even had a Nalgene bottle full of milk. Oh, I should mention the coffee milk is the state drink of Rhode Island or something--something to do with some coffee company deciding this was the way to use up old coffee grounds. Yep, yep, yep, you can always count on a company to have our best interests at heart.

Anyone here really like milk?

If you want to watch people throw up milk in real time, don't miss this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfdnTXt5lzc

Tomorrow: another dispatch from acupuncture session. Bet you'll be sitting on pins and needles in the meantime....

7 comments:

Miranda said...

Well, speaking as a Euro American, I love the moo and have no trouble with it (that I KNOW of....). I do stick to the 2% or less and don't drink it straight, "only" in my beloved coffee, and skim milk on cereal, plus I imbibe reduced fat cheese. I always tended to accept the conventional wisdom of coffee bad/milk good. I can't speak for fertility because I've never been pregnant nor tried to be. perhaps whether coffee or dairy affects one's fertility has a lot to do with the individual.

Anonymous said...

Ughh I can sooo relate. I have always had a thing against drinking milk - especially straight. I used to think it was cow pee when I was little and I guess that just kind of stuck with me.
It is interesting to note the incredible consumption of dairy, especially non-organic in this country, and the staggering rise of diabetes and grossly obese people. Is it possible that consuming another creature's hormones, tissue, dna, what-have-you, could affect our growth? Hmmmm...
At least if you are going to drink the white stuff, go ORGANIC!
A coworker of mine was telling me how soy is evil and was never meant to be digested by humans. (Yeah, what do centuries of humans who have been eating soy know anyway right?!) He said he used to drink soy milk but has gone back to cow because of how awful soy milk is and what a conspiracy has been perpetrated on all of us to consume this foul, mutated product. While I agreed that GMO soy ain't the way to go, I doubted his 2% super homogenized, non-organic cow milk drink was doing much better for him than that from the bean.
I think there are people who truly are intolerant to both soy milk or cow milk, depending on their constitutions, but I feel organic is the only way to go in either realm, for sure.
No "chug" for moi.

GreenFertility said...

Thanks, Miranda...nice to get the non-Asian perspective :).

GreenFertility said...

Hey Kim,

Actually I agree, soy is basically evil. In other cultures, no one eats it unless it's fermented--that breaks down the poisonous proteins in the plant. When I hung around with the enzyme guy, he said the same thing...

p.s. tofu is not fermented. I still eat it, and edamame (which is a special species that supposedly has less toxic proteins in it) but keep it to once a week. In fact, for dinner tonight we had doenjang (extra stinky Korean miso) soup with tofu and soybean sprouts. Hmmmmm....Korean food does contain a lot of soy!

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear your input - I am always curious regarding different people's perspectives since there is so much debate on soy. Wow - so fermented only eh?
I have heard conflicting opinions... for me, I tend to get a gurgley tummy from too much tofu or soy. I prefer rice milk as far as 'milk drink' goes...

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I've heard soy milk is basically junk food and not so good for you, and unformented soy is especially bad for the reproductive system. Funny, most of the infertility blogs that I used to frequent are vegetarians. I wonder if there is too much unformented soy consumption going on and if this could be affecting fertility.

I think milk in the form of cheese and icecream is delicious but I have a hard time digesting it. My doctor told me to make sure to eat unpasturized and grass-fed dairy, but it still seems to make me congested and sickly. I've been taking milk products out of my system for the past 4 months, and introducing products one by one to see how they make me feel. Butter seems o.k. for me, but perhaps because butter consumption is pretty minimal?

Oh, and I understand those "milk chug on trains" moments! I feel like the United States is in a health crisis - we've seemed to have lost any sort of reasonable tradition when it comes to food. I think about my own grandmother who lived to a hundred and lived on endive, spring water, small quantities of pork and minimal sugars. I don't know if she would have made it to a 100 with a milk chug diet.

Ali

GreenFertility said...

Ali--

Ask your Chinese med. person about if you are a "phlegm" case (interesting, one of the Ayurveda types--pitta? kaptha?--also translates to "phlegm").

If you are, I'd suggest cutting out milk esp.if it makes you congested because it's also going to make your cervical mucous congested as well. If you're NOT phlegmy, you might want to try those enzymes to take a load off the digestive system. Butter is actually the least irritating to the system, and the Indian clarified butter, ghee, has no irritating milk proteins at ALL.

I DEFINITELY think if you're veg and overdoing the dairy, carbs, and prpocessed soy that's a ticket to Inflammation City.

cheers,
marie