Vitamin D is used by the human body in a lot of ways, but the most important is that it facilitates the absorption of calcium into the bloodstream.  Without it, you end up with thin, brittle bones.  The best source of vitamin D, of course, is direct sunlight; our skin produces the vitamin naturally.  As our society became more industrialized and kids wound up in classrooms rather than in cornfields, vitamin D was added to milk and other dairy products.  It turns out, however, that that may not have been enough.
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I’ve always felt a little ashamed that I am not a milk drinker, since I’m setting a bad example for my kids and ensuring we’ll all  suffer fractured hips and rotten teeth in the coming years. I’m not sure why I don’t drink milk. The taste is fine, I’m not allergic. But I still only manage to knock back three or four glasses a year — usually as an accompaniment to cake or cookies. I don’t even take milk in my coffee.

But is milk really all it’s cracked up to be? Are there other milks out there that I’d be better off drinking? Are there other milks I should be encouraging my kids to drink (or stay away from)?

The LA Times has a rundown of five kids of milk — cow, goat, almond, rice, soy and hemp — and looks at the benefits and over-promises of each.

Which milk wins over all for nutrition? You’re not going to like the answer. Continue reading »

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Like everyone else with a greenish and foodie-ish bent, I read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food recently. Loved them both, but it was Omnivore’s Dilemma that was pretty much a life-changer for me. We’ve decided to try, whenever possible, to make sure our meat and eggs come from farms that raise and kill their animals humanely, which means having meatless days a few times a week so we can afford it.

However, I find it really hard to sort out all the claims on food labels. It’s not always feasible for me to buy meat at the farmer’s market (and it’s not always available there, either) where I can ask the farmers themselves questions, and many of them have pictures of the farm itself at their stalls. When I am forced into the grocery store to buy meat, I’d love to know where I can buy humanely-raised products and which of the dizzyingly huge variety of labels out there actually means something.

The World Society for the Protection of Animals has a new site, Continue reading »

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They say that if your budget can’t handle All Organic All the Time, the one most important thing to buy organic for your kids is milk.  And yet, at $6 per gallon, it’s a tough one, even if the rest of the cart is full of bargains.  I know I’m grateful for the not-organic-but-not-quite-conventional option of No Hormones/No Antibiotics milk myself, and that–at roughly half the price of organic–is what my family drinks.

And yet, I can’t help but feel for the family dairies that are suddenly seeing red after making the difficult and expensive switch to organic milk production.

For example, Continue reading »

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