Milk can be a very sensitive topic. It stirs our emotions. It plays our heart strings. After all, it was our first food. We link milk to our mothers and our very first memories. We associate it with white and pure and goodness. Milk comforts us, nurtures us. We drink it with our meals. We drink it with cake and cookies and graham crackers and put it on our cereals every morning.

We are often times more emotionally attached to milk than any other foods.

We were taught that we must drink milk for strong bones and teeth and that most all of the people in the world must drink it. As a matter of fact, most Americans believe that only 1% of the world doesnt drink milk. The truth is that about 65% of all adults in the world do not drink milk.

How could we Americans not believe that milk is anything but wholesome and necessary for human health and fitness, and strength of bones and teeth, when we all have those milk slogans bouncing around in our brains?

Do these slogans sound familiar?

Milk does a body good.

Everyone needs milk.

Milk is a natural.

Milk had something for everyone.

Milk is not just for kids.

Milk - natures perfect food.

And what about the National Dairy Councils most successful advertising campaign of all that began in 1996 and is still going strong? What man, woman, and child is not familiar with the Got Milk? advertisements? They are plastered in front of our faces everywhere we look.

According to celebrities, including athletes, movie stars, and talk show icons, who paste those white mustaches onto their upper lips, milk is necessary for strong bones, teeth, muscles, and nerves.

Milk, so they claim and get paid handsomely for it, offers high-quality protein, feeding into the myth that animal protein is superior to plant protein, which is a myth or a lie that we were brought up to believe as truth.

They also claim that milk helps you lose weight, be your best, and gives you extra energy (our best energy foods are carbohydrates from unrefined plant foods like fresh fruit and vegetables.)

Got Milk? I ask, Got how much money to put on those white mustaches?

Yes, milk does do body good if you are a calf and want to grow up to 800 or 1000 pounds in a year. Cows dont even drink milk once they are weaned. Why? Because cows milk is made for baby cows, not adult cows, and not human beings.

Interestingly enough, human beings are the only mammals on earth that continue to drink milk after they are weaned, and the milk is provided by another mammal at that!

Using your common sense, not what you have been conditioned to think, does it make sense to you that people continue to drink milk after they are weaned, way up to adulthood, and that the milk comes from another mammal?

What do our large plant-eating mammals, like cows, elephants, horses, giraffes, and apes, eat for strong bones and teeth, and big ones at that? Plant foods.

When in doubt about which foods provide the best nutrition for human health, just look to nature for simple, common sense food and health answers.

There is one and only one reason to drink milk and eat cheese: Because you like them and you choose to eat them. Period. It not because dairy products are needed for strong bones and teeth, or for overall health and fitness.