Dairy-Ditch Discovery

When I was a kid, I’d gulp down two to three glasses of milk at dinner every night. It was as much a part of the meal as what was on my plate. When I was a young adult, and my parents would have me over for dinner, I’d pull open the fridge door, reach for the carton, and ask, “How new is this milk?” I didn’t like the taste of several-days-old milk.

Later, I adopted a largely dairy-free, meat-free diet, because it’s healthier for me. I would occasionally miss a nice bowl of cereal but hadn’t yet actually started drinking substitute milk, except in coffee or recipes. Then, when I found a really great granola recipe from Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet, I wanted to try it, but was afraid to try soy, almond, or rice milk, etc.

My husband had been putting soy milk on his granola, so I recently decided to try it. I was amazed that soy milk in cereal tastes just like that first-opened carton of regular milk, without the hormones or antibiotics.

So, go ahead and pick up a carton of soy milk. Do a taste test. Just be sure to buy organic soy milk. Regular soy is genetically modified, and if it’s not organic, you might get additives that you don’t need.

And if that’s not enough to convince you, here’s a great reason to quit dairy. You could lose weight. Well, that’s if you eat healthy otherwise and don’t have a problem with portion control, like I do!

Ann Silverthorn (Twitter: @annsilverthorn) writes about a wide variety of topics in numerous genres, including non-fiction, fiction, poetry, travel, and grant writing.