Milk Adventures!

So, just so you all know, I've been reading a LOT about the "real food" movement, specifically Nina Planck's book Real Food: What To Eat and Why. In short, we are taking small steps toward eating a diet that more closely resembles the one described above: avoid processing (apart from natural processing, like creating yogurt at home) at all costs, avoid vegetable oils (excluding olive oil & coconut oil), grass-fed/pastured/organic meats, eat whole milk (raw is preferable) foods, eat eggs and their tasty yolks, lots of fresh vegetables, sea salt, fermented foods, and such. Our first adventure: trying whole milk!

I have never in my life drank whole milk, and there is a gallon sitting in my fridge right now, staring me down. Mr. Cheap is at work, otherwise I'd try a glass right now, but I want to try it together (oddest couple activity ever?). We'd ultimately like to connect with a farmer so we can drink full-fat, unhomogenized, unpasteurized, raw milk straight from grass-fed cows, but baby steps, people! Baby steps! According to the real food diet (similar to the Paleo diet, if you're familiar -- the two are often equated, it seems), whole milk is better than skim because it doesn't skim off the nutrition. Those fats are good for you, and you should eat them. So, before raw milk comes the small transition from 1% to whole. Additionally, the majority of skim, 1% and 2% sold in stores is actually flash-dried milk powder re-mixed with water. Gross -- by then all the living enzymes are DEAD and you're drinking milk void of most of its inherent nutrition. Anyway, here we go...

THE VERDICT

Mr. Cheap: "Pfft, it tastes exactly the fucking same. (heavy on the sarcasm) Verdict, awesome!"

I, personally, can tell that it tastes fattier, but it's not impossible to drink. I was worried that it would taste like straight cream, and gross me out. But, it is quite delicious and almost...filling? More like a tiny meal than just a beverage, like skim and 1% seem. A bit anticlimactic, but give it a shot, everyone! If the real food movement appeals to you like it does to me -- "Well, heart disease literally began as food become industrialized...I trust whole foods we've been eating for hundreds of years more than Soy Tofu Cream Cheese Replacement with Added Vitamins! Robot Food, I say!"  -- then switching to whole milk (preferably unpasteurized and unhomogenized and raw, but my current gallon is neither of the three, and I'm still going for it!) is a great way to start.