How often do you, or your kids, drink milk and what part of the country were you raised in?

I got it right in my question JLeslie!

I don’t drink milk ever. I was allergic as a kid so I never really developed a taste for it. I live on the eastern coast.

I don’t drink milk but I get through a fair bit in my breakfast cereal every morning. When I was a kid I drank milk at home and at school we were issued with little third of a pint bottles every morning.

Rarely, but when I do I drink soymilk. I got some of my daily nutritional requirements from supplements so I never fear that I might lack certain benefits from not drinking milk. Soymilk will not tarnish your breath like regular milk. I live in a small port town with gentle ocean breeze and eternal tropical sunlight.

I want to live where you live, @Unofficial_Member.

@Dutchess_III I’ll just wait until you complain how you get sweaty and have too much sunlight in a day. All my Western relatives (who have lived in colder region) came back to us complain about the heat.

LOL! I can live with heat a lot better than I can live with cold!

Born in Los Angeles. Currently eat yogurt and cheese; we don’t have milk because my wife lactose intolerant. I drank milk by quart while growing up.

I stopped drinking milk regularly (other than in coffee) when I was 20. My son still drinks it, he is 21, but my 18 year old daughter doesn’t drink all that often.

We are all Californians.

@Dutchess_III Raised in north west. I am a seasoned citizen, still drink a glass of milk everyday.

I just drank a glass.

Californian here and the only time I use milk is for the occasional box of breakfast cereal and then, if there are cookies in the house.
I might have a glass with cookies or I do like the old graham crackers and milk thing which I haven’t had in years.
I do like cheese and yogurt but never liked milk with food, other than the above mentioned cereal or cookies and milk thing. A glass of milk whether by itself or with some sort of meal is not appealing to me at all.

Milk with say a sandwich, gag!
I buy a half gallon of 1% milk about every other month for cereal and then, often, go weeks without it. Milk is only good to me when accompanied by cereal of cookies.

Drank it like crazy when I was a kid and I fear that is the reason why I have Crohn’s disease now according to one theory, which is not widely accepted by mainstream medicine, at all.

I was raised in upstate New York.

I am so sorry.

@Dutchess_III I drink 1% milk, eat fat free yogurt and 2% cottage cheese. Good sources of calcium and protein.

What do you suppose people did before yogurt and cottage cheese were invented, and who had no source of milk?

Growing up we had it all the time. Now that I am vegetarian and trying to cut out dairy where I can, I don’t drink it very much.
I was raised in and still live in the Midwest

People have been drinking the milk of all sorts of animals for centuries.Cows, goats, sheep, mares, camels, Yaks, on & on. Curd type cheeses and various animal milks have been around forever.

Here’s how to make Kumis fermented mares milk.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kDfHVaJClg

Born in Los Angeles. We never drank milk but did use it in cereal and such. I only knew the Mexican side of my family and we were all lactose intolerant so milk was something we didn’t really have around much. We also rarely ate cheese; just on pizza, really. It always made me feel gross.

Some people have. Not all, @Coloma.

@Dutchess_III Well…in many countries like Nepal where the mares milk is a staple I’d say all for the most part. My statement that “people” have been drinking various forms of animal milk for centuries is a correct statement.

As far as I know, Native Americans didn’t domesticate any animals, except dogs. They didn’t have horses until the Spanish came in 1590, and they sure didn’t domesticate bison!

I don’t think Australian aborigines did either.

@Dutchess_III Okay, my mistake to not recognize a few cultures/peoples did not utilize animal milk but most have.
Here’s a good article of the history of cows milk. Goes back to ancient times.

www.milk.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000018

Besides, “centuries,” and “ancient times” (our idea of ancient) isn’t but a blink in our evolutionary history. The first homo sapiens showed up about 200,000 years ago. Your link only goes back 8000 years, at the most. Evidence of milking didn’t show up until 4000 BC (according to your link.) This means that for the first 192,000 years we didn’t utilize dairy.

This, however, goes more to the other question of how important is milk and dairy in our diet.

I was raised in Central New York state. My mother gave us milk at every meal. She was a nurse and understood good nutrition. Milk is good for teeth and bones because of the calcium, that is the conventional wisdom.

Interestingly, I needed a diagnostic test in my 20’s that involved bone marrow aspiration. That means a doctor inserts a device into the pelvic bone (since that is the closest bone to the surface) to extract a sample of your bone marrow. It is a diagnostic test used for cancer to see if there is any evidence of cancer in your bones. Well, my doctor had a hell of a time getting the sample! He had to bear down with all his weight to force the extraction device into the bone. (I’m not sure what that device is called) into my pelvis. He finally was able to get his sample,lol. But he said to me, and I do not lie here, ” what the hell did they feed you there in upstate New York??!!!”

So that is how I found out that I have strong bones, and maybe, that all that milk my mother fed us kids did some good.

BTW, still going strong though I don’t drink milk with eery meal anymore. I love my yogurt and cottage cheese. The only milk I get is with my coffee and with cookies.

@Dutchess_III I didn’t realize you were talking about primal history here. Besides how do we know? Maybe primitive man was drinking mastodon milk or human milk. haha
Who knows.

My link just shows the known history of cattle and milk and I shared it as bit of fun information, that’s all.
It also specifies that a 10 year study showed no increase in bone heath from consuming milk. Milk does have calcium and protein but there is just as much calcium in many vegetables, fruits and nuts.The general consensus these days is that dairy products are not all that healthy.

I do like my cheese and yogurt though and ice cream or frozen yogurt.

I know @Coloma. As I said, our back and forth was more pertainate to my other question about whether dairy is important.

We didn’t drink milk with meals as a kid. Just with a cookies good for dunking and in cereal. At school the cafeteria served chocolate or white milk. That was really not fun for me. I was able to deal with the chocolate.

I used think in terms of regions of the US regarding people who drank milk with dinner, I used to generalize the middle of the country regularly drank milk with meals. Now, I think it might be more to do with national background, and certain countries settled in certain areas of the country. Also if there was a lot of dairy cows in the area. Or, maybe it’s just very random.

I do think part of the reason my family didn’t drink milk with dinner was a leftover from the kosher traditions of previous generations. I’m also guessing the parts of the country with lots of British and German ancestry drink more milk on a regular basis than Asians and Hispanics.

I’m not counting milk in coffee or in cereal as “drinking milk.” When I use the term I’m thinking milk on its own in a glass.

Also, America had a huge push about milk being important for bones and growing and also the four food group thing back in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. So, newer immigrants here might not have been conditioned with the whole milk thing.

I agree that it was an important source of calcium for many years. But nowadays we get food imported from all over the world so it’s not as important.

I’m California born and raised and drink low-fat milk, most often chocolate two or three times a week. I’ll go plain in restaurants where I’m having breakfast and used to drink plain reduced fat at my friend’s house in high school but could barely stand it. It’s gotta be low-fat.
In addition, I quite enjoy cheese, ice cream, and yogurt.

As a child, I’d drink milk with cookies on occasion. I do remeber drinking a glass of milk but I am not sure how often. I don’t think it was every meal. I know I also would drink water or juice.

Now, as an adult, I drink at least a cup per day, probably two cups, in coffee. I drink two 16 oz cups of coffee at home and the contents of one 20 oz pot of coffee at work, so I get enough milk in all that coffee.

Rarely, now do I drink a glass of milk. Very rarely if I’m thirsty but I’m more likely to drink water from the tap.

I was raised in an affluent suburb near NYC, to answer the details asked in the question.

I use whole cream in my morning and afternoon cafe con leche. I have a tall, ice-cold glass of milk with lunch of dinner a few times per week.

We grew up in the Midwest. There were 4 of us kids, and we had a milkman that left us 2 half gallon glass bottles of milk every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in a big wooden box with a hinged lid. The box was provided by the dairy and sat on the front porch in the shade. The milkman usually arrived early, so we could clean out the box before we went to school, or the grownups left for work. You could leave the empty bottles or a note in the box to order butter, ice cream, etc. We also left the money (cash) in the box when we paid the the monthly bill. Our milkman was named Vern & my stupid sisters thought him “dreamy”. They’d listen for the squeaks and groans from the brakes and door hinges on the truck, and rush out to fetch the milk and grin at Vern like idiots. Vern was cool, and when he was running late, would leave our stuff next door with Mrs. Parker, so the milk wouldn’t be outside all day in the 90 degree Summer heat or freeze and have the bottles burst in the brutal Winters. There was usually hell to pay in the neighborhood when Vern took a vacation, or had a substitute. The dairy would make good and replace the spoiled milk or busted bottles at no charge. Those were the days.

^^Ha. I remember that. Yes, those were the days. We had our Vern and Mrs. Parker, too.

I’m a Californian/Floridian hybrid and still drink milk often. I’ve had a couple of Jewish girlfriends over the years and was surprised at their reaction to my milk drinking. Up until that time, I’d never noticed that some people didn’t drink milk and it surprised me. They thought it was gross and wouldn’t touch the stuff. LOL.

I thought it was just a random fear-of-weight-gain that a lot of women have and didn’t really connect it to Jewish culture, but later I read that Jews suffer the highest lactose-intolerance of any ethnic group as around 75% can’t digest milk sugar. It’s perfectly understable that milk plays a small part in their traditional diet and I figure that is probably what’s behind their Kashrut restrictions on milk..

^^I think the Jews by accident did a lot of healthy things, but the things could backfire. Like, eating a dairy meal to be able to have the yummiest cake or ice cream afterwards. Then the entire meal might be overladen with dairy. You could eat neutral (pareve) instead, but I think a lot of people go for cheese. You can make non-dairy desserts of course, but now their is a trend towards butter again in cooking.

Anyway, you kind of confirmed for me that it’s probably a leftover Jewish thing in my family.

We’re big fans of milk in this house. I’m from NYC, hubby is from the Midwest. All of Anglo-Irish descent.

I remember that too @stanleybmanly. My biggest memory is the time my little 2 year old sister was trying to “help,” and she dropped the glass jar of milk, which shattered, and stepped in it. Blood everywhere.
Yeah. Same sister who cut the tip of her pinky off in the hinge side of the door around that same time.

Can someone explain to me how Jews could have a gene that made them lactose intolerant, when being Jewish is a religion, not a race? Or is it a race? Please don’t take offense. None is intended.

@Dutchess_III The Jews have certain genetic diseases and genetic markers that show up a lot, because they tended to marry only Jews for hundreds of years and it is a relatively small group, so recessive traits stay in the line so to speak. It would be like the state of Illinois having a large part of the IL population from the same area of the world, and then only let them procreate with people from Illinois for a thousand years.

Possibly, lactose intolerance is seen more in Ashkenazi Jews than Sephardic or vice versa, I don’t know, but that’s possible too, because the subgroups tended to stick within those groups going back in history. Part of the reason is the part of the world.

An outward recessive traits that pop out a lot in Ashkenazi Jews is red hair. They don’t carry the red hair gene near as much as the Irish, but much more than some other groups. Other genetic things that pop up in Askenazi Jews are Tay Sachs (a horrible genetic illness) Gaucher disease, and there are others. I think maybe color blindness too, but I don’t know the statistics, all I know is I personally know a lot of Jewish men, and one woman who are color blind.

I see. Thank you.

Just had my first glass of milk in about 15 years – with a piece of chocolate cake. It’s the only way to drink milk I think!

@janbb Agreed cookies or cake with a cold glass of milk. Cinnamon graham crackers are pretty yummy too.

Cinnamon graham crackers with milk? You lost me there. That sounds better paired with hot tea. I guess the only dessert I see paired with milk is chocolate cake or cookies that have some sort of chocolate about them.

@JLeslie Haven’t you ever dunked graham crackers in milk? A really common milk combo. I just like the cinnamon version. :-)

Never.

The only cookies I have dunked were Chips Ahoy cc bit cookies, I used to like that very much, and I tried an Oreo once, but didn’t like it.

@JLeslie Ohh the graham crackers! I love low fat sugar honey grahams with chunky peanut butter… dunked in ice cold milk! I keep an empty glass in the freezer for the ice cold milk!

Oh, when we have pancakes I pour a glass of milk and put it in the freezer. By the time the cakes are ready the milk is SOOOOO cold! So perfect. Warm syrup and pancakes and ice cold milk.

@si3tech the words “low fat” and “peanut butter” in the same sentence is an oxymoron. But I’m SO with you on the glass in the freezer!