I wanted to comment on this crime the dairy industry has been perpetuating on the American people. They say eating 3 servings of dairy per day will help you lose weight. I think I commented on this before ... how this is just a transparent ploy to get people to buy more dairy products. Unfortunately, many people buy into these kinds of things.

Well, researchers are now questioning those claims. A few weeks ago, a news story broke all over the mainstream media (Boston Globe article) that questions the statements made by the dairy industry regarding dairy and weight loss.

Of course, they tip-toe around the subject, saying dairy may aid in weight loss because they don't want to offend their friends in the dairy industry who spend so many advertising dollars.

The bottom line is this: you don't need to eat dairy products in order to lose weight. You just need to eat reasonable portions, stay away from fast food, and exercise. It's pretty simple. We don't need to spend more money on processed dairy products.

Apparently, thanks to pressure from the PMRC, Kraft Foods has agreed to stop using the "dairy aids in weight loss" message in their advertising.

It's progress.

Is it too much to ask to be able to buy food that isn't sprayed with fifty carcinogens? I just want to eat a fresh, wholesome strawberry, but it's really hard to do that without also getting a dose of malathion.

I want to go out for dinner without coming home with a neurological disorder. I want to find a restaurant I can go to with family and friends on a regular basis, where we can eat, drink and be merry without getting toxic overload and maybe even have some organic wine. Am I asking too much? Are we doomed to live in a toxic world just because organic produce isn't "cost effective" for most restaurants? Maybe if consumers begin requesting organic produce restaurant owners will get the hint and start offering one or two organic menu items.
In the meantime, can anyone recommend any organic restaurants in California?

One problem I have is the fact that most commercial pet food contains animal byproducts. If the label says "chicken byproducts" it means your cat or dog is probably consuming chicken beaks, cartilage, feet, undeveloped eggs, and intestines. All of it is ground up and rendered into something that looks benign and passes for "food". It isn't very nutritious or digestible, but saves the food manufacturer money because it adds bulk and helps them to use every last part of the chicken.

If the first ingredient of the food you're buying is a byproduct, you know it's low-quality. If you can't afford natural pet food, choose one that lists byproducts as the second or third ingredient, not the first.

Some people prepare fresh meals for their animal companions to ensure giving them all-natural food, but for vegetarians this is problematic because we don't usually like to handle meat products or have the smell of it in our kitchens.

Perhaps one day I'll be able to afford a personal chef for my cat, but for now I just buy natural pet food without any byproducts. There are several on the market. Do some research online and check out the ingredients on the different brands on your next trip to the pet store. Sure, it will cost you a few dollars more but it'll definitely be worth it in the long run of your cat or dog's health.

The Dairy Council must be rolling over in its butter dish, right? Well, after I saw the story published on the Health Diaries news I decided to go search the wires to read more articles about it. Would you believe that hardly any American newspapers picked up this story? Gosh, it couldn't be because the Dairy Council pays their salaries through non-stop milk advertising, could it? Hmm... looks like the story was published in the UK Telegraph, The Daily Mail (UK), Newsindpress (India), The Scotsman (Scotland), Health India, Channel 4 (UK), and ... The New York Post.

Yes, folks, The New York Post is the only U.S. newspaper I can find online who has mentioned this story. How is that possible? A story about one of America's favorite drinks, a story about a substance that millions of teens drink every day, and only one newspaper picks it up? Maybe I'm missing something here. Does the Dairy Council control the entire media?

They're playing with our health for profit. This makes me angrier than anything has in recent years. If you feel strongly about this, write to your local newspapers and tv stations and ask them why they didn't publish this news story. If you saw this story reported on any U.S. news broadcasts or saw it in your local paper please let me know. We can't let them get away with this.

Milk: it does a body in, but they don't want us to know.

"Uh, hmm, no, I made that with milk. Sorry!" She made me a fresh one with soy.

Yeah, so six months off milk and taking a few sips gives me a stomach ache. Says a lot, doesn't it? It makes me realize just how often I've had a bad stomach my whole life and didn't realize it was because of the milk.

So next time you order coffee with soy in Starbucks, make sure it's really soy. For those with a real dairy allergy, that could be devastating.

It's a real testament to the glory of these cookies that it is 6:45am and they are the first thing I think of upon waking. All hail Uncle Eddies!

What really gets me is that today I saw a TV ad from the Dairy Council and their new "3 a day" campaign. In the ad they say something like, "Most people don't get enough dairy." Are you kidding me? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, "The average American consumes 23 gallons of milk and 30 pounds of cheese a year."

So the Dairy folks would have us believe that we need MORE than 30 pounds of cheese per year?? Is that what I'm reading here? Oh, right, that's in addition to 23 gallons of milk per year? No wonder Asians think Americans stink of cheese. We're full of stinky, cancer-causing cheese and milk and our government now wants us to eat more.

Exactly whose best interest are they looking after? Ours or the Dairy Council? They can try to push all the studies that link dairy to breast cancer and prostate cancer under the rug because they think we're stupid. Well, perhaps instead of stupid they think we're addicted, and we are. Having given up dairy I can now see with the eyes of an ex-addict. I now see how deluded my thinking was and how brainwashed I was to believe that, "Everything tastes better with cheese."

Guess what? I've discovered that everything tastes better without cheese. I am no longer masking the flavor of my food. I know it's hard to believe, but taking away the cheese really doesn't change much about the flavor. I now enjoy more spices and diverse flavors that dousing everything in cheese was hiding.

"3 a day for stronger bones" - this is such a load of you-know what. What about the studies that show those countries who consume the most dairy have the highest rates of osteoporosis?

Don't believe the hype, folks. The Dairy Council has a stranglehold on this country.

Stop and think - why does the Dairy Council want you to eat 3 servings of dairy per day? It isn't because they think it will make us healthier (they know it won't). It's because they make more money when you eat more cheese and milk. Period, end of story. If they had their way, they'd have us eating 20 pounds of cheese per month, and you know what? I bet a lot of people are.

I think I'm going to start sharing some of the dairy-free recipes I've come up with over the past couple months. Many of them are also gluten-free since I've drastically cut down on my wheat intake.

Now I'm going to cook dinner. It will be delicious in spite of the fact that it won't be dripping with cheese. Nay, it will be delicious precisely because it is dairy-free.

This has also been a good time to do a general cleanse of my system. I've temporarily cut out wheat and I'm eating only wholesome, organic foods. I've eaten broccoli every night this week and now look forward to it each night. Admittedly, I've never been a big vegetable eater, sad to say being a vegetarian and all. However, I'm totally getting into all the organic veggies now.

Even though I'm consuming less than usual, I have more energy. I've been eating too many dead foods (dairy, wheat) for too long.

I'm still drinking the green tea. I just finished my 39th cup in ten days.

So here is an excerpt from an article in the Orlando Sentinel July 13 2003:

Of all the potentially addicting foods, cheese may be the most complex. In research studies using vegan and vegetarian diets to control cholesterol or reduce body weight, most participants soon forget the lure of ice cream, sour cream, and even burgers and chicken. But for many people, the taste for cheese lingers on and on. Yes, 70 percent of its calories may come from waist-augmenting fat, and, ounce for ounce, it may harbor more cholesterol than a steak. But that cheese habit is tough to break.

Why is cheese so addicting? Certainly not because of its aroma, which is perilously close to old socks. The first hint of a biochemical explanation came in 1981, when scientists at Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park, N.C., found a substance in dairy products that looked remarkably like morphine. After a complex series of tests, they determined that, surprisingly enough, it actually was morphine. By a fluke of nature, the enzymes that produce opiates are not confined to poppies -- they also hide inside cows' livers. So traces of morphine can pass into the animal's bloodstream and end up in milk and milk products. The amounts are far too small to explain cheese's appeal. But nonetheless, the discovery led scientists on their search for opiate compounds in dairy products.

And they found them. Opiates hide inside casein, the main dairy protein. As casein molecules are digested, they break apart to release tiny opiate molecules, called casomorphins. One of these compounds has about one-tenth the opiate strength of morphine. The especially addicting power of cheese may be due to the fact that the process of cheese-making removes water,lactose and whey proteins so that casein is concentrated. Scientists are now trying to tease out whether these opiate molecules work strictly within the digestive tract or whether they pass into the bloodstream and reach the brain directly.

(some paragraphs about chocolate addiction snipped)

The cheese industry is miles ahead of them, having gone to great lengths to identify people who are most vulnerable to addiction. It dubs them "cheese cravers," and tracks their age, educational level and other demographics so as to target them with marketing strategies that are tough to ignore. With a $200 million annual research and marketing budget, the dairy industry is not content to have you just sprinkling a little mozzarella on your salad. It is looking for those Americans who will eat it straight out of the package, whatever the cost to their waistlines or cholesterol levels.

At a "Cheese Forum" held Dec. 5, 2000, Dick Cooper, the vice president of Cheese Marketing for Dairy Management Inc., laid out the industry's scheme for identifying potential addicts and keeping them hooked. In his slide presentation, which was released to our organization under the Freedom of Information Act, he asked the question, "What do we want our marketing program to do?" and then gave the answer: "Trigger the cheese craving." He described how, in a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the dairy industry launched Wendy's Cheddar Lover's Bacon Cheeseburger, which single-handedly pushed 2.25 million pounds of cheese during the promotion period. That works out to 380 tons of fat and 1.2 tons of pure cholesterol in the cheese alone. A similar promotion with Pizza Hut launched the "Ultimate Cheese Pizza," which added an entire pound of cheese to a single pizza and sold five million pounds of it during a six-week promotion in 2000. The presentation concluded with a cartoon of a playground slide with a large spider web woven to trap children as they reached the bottom. The caption had one spider saying to another, "If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings."

Me: "This isn't a soy latte!"

Friend: "Yes it is, it's non fat!"

Me: "What?? It's milk!"

Friend: "No, it isn't milk, it's non-fat!"

Me: "Non-fat milk is still milk!"

Friend: "But it's non-fat!"

Me: "Why do you keep saying that? I'm not ingesting dairy of any kind this week. I don't care if it's non-fat or not!"

Friend: "Well, I don't really think there's very much milk in there."

Me: "A latte is like 90% milk and 10% espresso or something. It's all milk."

Friend: "Oh, well, so why no dairy?"

Me: "Because it's bad for me and I'm trying to cut it out for a week or two."

Friend: "Oh."

So I was too upset that he didn't know non-fat milk was dairy and I didn't go inside to get a soy latte. I just sat there and watched the NFL weep in the sun while thinking WTF WTF.

It seems that from a societal point-of-view, giving up dairy confuses people much more than giving up meat. The Dairy Council has done its job.

I think I am starting to go through some kind of dairy detox. My skin broke out last night but instead of remaining on my face for a week, the acne is already disappearing. I've read that detoxing can bring things "to the surface" and cause acne, rashes, eczema, etc. And since I'm drinking a ton of decaf green tea, this is probably contributing to the detox. I had already cut out sugar from my diet about a month ago, so really I am eating just about as well as I can. I'm not saying that I'm never going to eat dairy again or that I'm becoming a vegan, but I'm going to try to go as long as I can before eating dairy again.

Today I went completely dairy-free. I had a yummy frozen tofu lasagna (Amy's brand -I cannot live without Amy's Organic frozen foods, period. Sadly, one of my favorite Amy's products is the pesto pizza, which has cheese on it). For dinner I had homemade pasta primavera with lots of organic veggies sauteed in olive oil and garlic. It was delicious - carrots, red onions, scallions, artichoke hearts, and tomatoes, tossed together with orecchiete (pasta shells). Of course, I ate too much of the pasta, but it was too good not to.

After dinner I drank two mugs of green tea. Et voila, there was my first vegan day. I didn't miss dairy at all.

Speaking of green tea, I'm downing gallons of the stuff. I think I'm addicted. I've been doing this for about a week. I've known for a while about the health benefits of green tea, but I never made it a regular habit. Now, bolstered by having read about its anti-aging and anti-cancer properties, I've bought myself a proper tea kettle and am drinking at least 4 cups per day, two in the afternoon and two in the evening. I get the decaffeinated kind from Lassen's so it won't keep me up at night.

I hear the newest trend is green tea lattes. Well, I am wondering what a green tea soy latte would taste like. All summer I've been drinking iced soy lattes and I was thinking an iced green tea soy latte might be interesting.

Doesn't that sound like such a typical L.A. thing? It sounds so freaking pretentious, an iced green tea soy latte. But it would be healthy, that's for sure!

Paris had no shortage of vegetables. I could go to the farmer's market and get all kinds of fresh veggies. My roommate and I would make elaborate vegetarian meals to accompany the cheap bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau. Besides, we couldn't afford to eat out much in Paris.

In Rome, everything was much easier. Eating out was affordable and there is always something for vegetarians on an Italian menu. Antipasti, pasta, risotto, pizza . . . need I say more? Once, however, I found myself in Calabria in a pizzeria and they didn't have any pizza without meat on the menu, even though cheese pizza (called Margherita pizza) is a staple in Italy. So I asked for pizza without meat on it and the waiter said, "No problem, but ham is okay, right?"