Tuesday, October 16, 2007

The Truth About Chocolate Milk


At dinner tonight I learned that chocolate milk is made with blood-contaminated milk that can't be sold as regular milk because it's pink.

Um, ewwwww.....good thing I drank only regular milk growing up....

However, after I decided to post this disgusting fact about chocolate milk, a recent Google search and read on Snopes.com reveals that it's not true. Seems like the good ol' FDA is doing its job.

BUT, a further search brought me to the NOTMILK website, where there are tons of articles and links about cow's milk. Below is a quote from an article by
Robert M. Kradjian, MD, Breast Surgery Chief Division of General Surgery, of Seton Medical Centre #302 in Daly City, CA.

Any lactating mammal excretes toxins through her milk. This includes antibiotics, pesticides, chemicals and hormones. Also, all cows' milk contains blood! The inspectors are simply asked to keep it under certain limits. You may be horrified to learn that the USDA allows milk to contain from one to one and a half million white blood cells per millilitre. (That’s only 1/30 of an ounce). If you don’t already know this, I’m sorry to tell you that another way to describe white cells where they don’t belong would be to call them pus cells. To get to the point, is milk pure or is it a chemical, biological, and bacterial cocktail? Finally, will the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) protect you? The United States General Accounting Office (GAO) tells us that the FDA and the individual States are failing to protect the public from drug residues in milk. Authorities test for only 4 of the 82 drugs in dairy cows.

Interesting....so even if it's regular milk it still has blood in it (though we don't see it). That's gross. Well, I suppose I suggest switching over to soy milk for now (you don't want to be drinking any pus!) while I try to navigate the FDA archives to get to the bottom of this.


** Update: Please see later post "Milk Update (Finally)" for what I found out...

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Enough about sandwiches already!

I know we've pounded the sandwich issue to a pulp already, but The New York Times Dining & Wine section has an article about everybody's favorite sandwich, the grilled cheese!

A couple of excerpts:

For the past four years, this city (Los Angeles) has also been home to the Grilled Cheese Invitational. Roughly 600 people show up at an unpublicized address, armed with frying pans and camping stoves, and are given 20 minutes to demonstrate their grilled cheese prowess. (One year, a contestant constructed an eight-foot grilled sandwich rendition of “The Gates” by Christo and Jeanne-Claude.)


“Grilled cheese is basically fat on fat on fat,” Mr. Greenspan said cheerfully.