Kendra’s Health Musings
I don’t like milk. I’ve never liked milk. It’s thick and hard to swallow. I can’t stand the taste, and the film it leaves in your mouth after you’ve swallowed it … ugh. I get the willies just thinking about it. I didn’t like it as a small child, when I was the one lucky kid at my daycare who was served juice instead of the little blue carton of that white stuff all the other kids drank at lunchtime.
Then, one day they were out of juice. I had to choke down milk. Like that Geico gekko, I still have nightmares. From then on, I was forced to drink 16 ounces of the stuff every night with my dinner. Some nights I managed to pour it out without my mother catching me. I couldn’t wait to turn 13. You see, becoming a teenager in my household had its privileges: That was the age my mother finally allowed me to have lemonade or Kool-aid or hot tea instead.
And I’ve been lemonade-ing, Kool-aid-ing and tea-ing (and, yes, I’ll admit it, soda-ing) ever since, with the very occasional cup of 2-percent milk on my cereal. Leave the poor moo cows (as an ex-boyfriend called them) alone.
Today I opened a synopsis of a study out of the University of North Carolina that says calcium does more than build strong, healthy bones. Too little of it early in life can lead to obesity later on. Maybe that’s where this pot belly and these love handles came from; perhaps I spent too many years avoiding milk–and its calcium benefits. I can’t get those years back, but you, my Heart & Soul sisters, might be able to gain wisdom from my ignorance. Drink up; I’ll have to live vicariously.
Kendra Lee is Heart & Soul‘s executive editor.
Sister Klee, I drank that stuff by the quart. Straight – no chaser. Turned the carton up to my mouth and didn’t come up for air until the last gulp. That was when I was young and tender, pre-teen and teenaged.
Then one day, somewhere in my late and roaring twenties, I drank a cup of the white liquid stuff and got a belly ache and gas that compromised my lady like poise. My body wasn’t having it. I was in shock, but found comfort in nonfat milk, and eventually soy milk.
Whole milk is an excellent source of calcium but thank goodness I could “skim” the big “c” from other milk like sources.
Now, if you wanna talk about foods that are good for you (liquid or solids) but made the tongue recoil and the stomach turn…let’s talk about beets — ack.