FRIDAY - JULY 12, 1998

There is a resort town on the eastern tip of Long Island, New York,
which has been the locale for my very special one week family vacation
each summer.  MONTAUK is a part of the fabled "Hamptons," yet, there is
a unique combination of New England and Camelot making this small
community so very special.  This year we camped in the dunes at Hither
Hills, a few hundred feet from the Atlantic Ocean.

Part of the camping experience is sharing communal shower and bath
facilities with two hundred other families.  One sacrifices a bit of
privacy by sleeping within earshot of pounding surf and screeching terns
and seagulls. One thing became quite apparent to me was how long fellow
campers sat within toilet stalls while I waited for my turn.  After a
few days my curiosity got the better of me, and not being overly shy, I
decided to explore a theory.

"Is your digestion a bit worse on this vacation," I asked.  "Is it
tougher to go to the bathroom?"  (Hey, nobody said being a scientist was
easy, particularly when one designs a completely biased non-double blind
study!)

Every person agreed that things were not working as well as they did in
the privacy of their own home.  Perhaps the lack of privacy was directly
proportional to the time spent struggling to have a normal bowel
movement. "Is your diet any different than your normal diet?" I asked
this question to dozens of male and female campers and most reported
that their eating habits had not significantly changed.

We were blessed with a week of sunshine, temperatures soared into the
mid-eighties.  The mornings were filled with sandcastles and body
surfing.  Each afternoon we would go into town and walk the streets
doing touristy things.  Each afternoon we returned to the beach, then
back to town and then back to the campsite again.  And then it hit me
all at once.  After all, I am the "NOTMILKMAN."  If I don't notice such
things, who will?

Besides gallons of 15+ sunblock and sunglasses and beach sandals,
everybody seemed to have an ice cream cone with three scoops permanently
attached to their hand.  Well, perhaps I am exaggerating, but, a close
census of the four dozen stores on Montauk's main street revealed
fourteen establishments selling ice cream.  The last day of my stay I
polled those people whose dietary habits had not changed.  "How many ice
cream treats do you average each day?"  It was rare to find a person who
had less than two daily ice cream treats.  Most averaged three cones or
milk shakes to help ward off the July sunshine and justify a mid-summer
vacation.

A scientific study?  Perhaps not.  My digestion did not change.  Nor did
the bathroom habits of the other members of my family.  Perhaps a
controlled study would be appropriate.  You still have August to perform
your own simple one-person test.  Eat those three ice-creams in one day
and I defy you to tell me that things are the same inside of your body.
Concentrated undigestible milk proteins... casein, a powerful glue. It
takes takes 5.5 kg (twelve pounds) of milk to make 500 g (one pound) of
ice cream.  One liter (quart) of ice cream takes 11 kg (twenty-four
pounds) of milk to make.  Four percent of milk is casein, one of the
most tenacious glues known to mankind (see last week's column).  The
math is simple, if not extremely disturbing.  Eat one liter (two pints)
of ice cream per day and you are eating 37 mL (1.29 ounces) (shot
glasses) of the same glue used to hold a label on a glass bottle of
beer.  Is it any wonder that the digestive processes of a human are
messed up?

QUOTATIONS

Many people have complimented me on my use of the quotations opening
each of the fourteen chapters of my book "MILK - The Deadly Poison." 
Here are some of my favorite quotes:

"Everyone that useths milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness,
for he is a babe.  But solid food belongeth to them that are of full
age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to
discern both good and evil."

King James Version of The Holy Bible,  HEBREWS:   5:13-14

"All truth goes through three stages.  First it is ridiculed.  Then it
is violently opposed.  Finally it is accepted as self evident."

Schoepenhouer

"The greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of
a multitude of strands.  Take the rope apart, separate it into the small
strands that compose it, and you can break them one by one.  You think,
'That is all there was!'  But twist them all together and you have
something tremendous."

Victor Hugo

"There's many a mistake made on purpose."

Thomas C. Haliburton

"If science produces no better faults than tyranny, murder, rapine and
destruction of national morality, I would rather wish our country to be
ignorant, honest and estimable as our neighboring savages are."

Thomas Jefferson

"The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on
truth."

Edith Sitwell

"I would call milk perhaps the most unhealthful vehicle for calcium that
one could possibly imagine, which is the only thing people really drink
it for, but whenever you challenge existing dogma...people are
resistant."

Neal Barnard, M.D.

"Cow's milk in the past has always been oversold as the perfect food,
but we are now seeing that it isn't the perfect food at all and the
government really shouldn't be behind any efforts to promote it as
such."

Benjamin Spock, M.D.

"Cow's milk is not suited for human consumption.  Milk causes
constipation, biliousness, coated tongue, headache, and these are the
symptoms of intestinal auto-intoxication.  Soybean milk, and nut milks
are excellent substitutes, and have practically the same analyses, and
the danger of disease is removed."

Jethro Kloss, "Back to Eden," 1939

Robert Cohen
Executive Director
Dairy Education Board
http://www.notmilk.com