I'm Not-Milk Intolerant

Let me clear from the start. I love milk and I have no beef with lactose. In fact if I could have a cow in my yard plumbed directly into a single purpose tap in my kitchen like rain water I would. I would, but weird animal cruelty laws prevent such practice.

What I have no tolerance for are all of the no-milk products falsely claiming to be milk that fill up our supermarket shelves and refrigerators. Just being a white liquid does not a milk make.

Milk comes from the teats of female mammals for the purpose of feeding their newborn, and for people to make thick shakes and cheese. All mammals produce it whether it is a Cuban Solenodon an armoured pangolin. It is to be said that some mammals are easier to milk than others, fitting a milking machine on a field mouse is very tricky indeed and farming blue whales is near impossible – imagine the size of the paddocks that would be required.

My complaint is with the new-age, fancy pantsy la-di-da products that are self-titled “milk”

Soy milk, is the juice or possibly the sap of a bean that tastes like rotting wood. Mmmm yes please can I have double froth on my bean sap cappuccino!

Almond milk, is not milk. More accurately it should be called nut juice. I can understand from a marketing perspective that calling a product “nut juice” my limit its selling power to a very niche market, but it is a long way from being milk. My intolerance of almond milk is somewhat tempered by its high sugar content. All of the health conscious, self –righteous food snobs who are substituting real milk for this legume by product on claims that it is some sort of super food without realise that nearly all commercially available “almond milk” are so high in sugar that they may as well be drinking a full cream  Big M strawberry milk. Mmmmm milk, and it has strawberries so it is also a serve of fruit.

On reflection organic nut juice with no added sugar, would be a hard sell. Maybe this is a new challenge for teams on the Gruen segment “The Pitch”

Coconut milk. Right of the top this is not a nut, it is a drupe which is a category of fruit, so we are back into the juice category. If stirred it does have a colour and consistency that resembles milk however it has the flavour of drinking a glass of milk in summer during the 1970s and 80s just after oiling oneself up with le Tan to get that all over bronze look. (Before we realised that treating our skin like that of a roast chicken not only aged the skin quickly but could literally kill you.

In the same way that white wine is not grape milk and liquid paper is not ink milk, and wood glue s not sticky milk we need to stop naming liquids “milk” just because they are white. Is that racist? It sounds racist.