Thursday, May 18, 2006

Milk Products

As some of you may know, I have a love/hate relationship with milk products.  I've toyed with the thought of trying to give them up all together.  But it's just not that easy.
 
I love my morning bowl of cereal with cold milk.  There's also nothing that goes better with a well-made cookie, than a tall glass of milk.  Calcium is very important for maintaining bone health and dairy products have been linked to weight loss success as well.  However, I have long suspected that dairy products have some link to my occasional migraines and I know that dairy tends to inflame my psoriasis. 
 
The other hitch is that I am married to a dairy fanatic!  He loves cheese and milk and I know it would be very difficult to give up dairy if he had it around the house.  I couldn't ask him to give it up with me since I know how much he loves it.
 
So, I'm quite happy to have made the discovery of a non-dairy milk that I actually like!  I've tried soy milk a couple times, but it just doesn't taste right to me.  Then I heard about rice milk.  I was told that it tasted quite good, but I was skeptical.  Still, the idea had been planted in my head so every time I saw it in the store I paused to consider the possibility of trying it.  
 
Well, about a week ago, I'd considered it enough to be willing to give it a try.  It's fairly pricey compared to regular milk, but until you open it, it doesn't need to be stored in the fridge.  So, this morning I gave it a try on my cereal.  I was quite pleasantly surprised at the nice taste of the vanilla rice milk and my fibre cereal.  Next will be trying a standalone glass - the ultimate taste test.  If it's something I can handle, I may just switch out all my regular milk for rice milk.
 
Now I just need to find alternatives to cheddar cheese, cottage cheese, cream cheese, and yoghurt, and I'll be set for my psoriasis health.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Rice milk? I'm still skeptical . . . and I'm with your hubby on loving dairy products!

It's interesting that you should mention the benefits of dairy products though. I just read an article that pointed out that the particular health benefits you pointed out were a myth. Apparently you can get more calcium from leafy greens than from milk . . . without all the fat of milk! Also, although some recent studies suggest that dairy products help people lose weight, it turns out that the people included in the study were also put on a reduced calorie diet so their weight loss was probably due to just plain eating less! Of course, with all studies and articles and articles about articles there is a certain margin of error!