Veggies & Chocolate Milk
Last night, basking in the light of our beautiful fridge, I drank my second dessert straight from the carton… (The first having been a nice glass of ruby port from a serene Northern Italian restaurant where we ended up with Ian’s mom and stepdad.) I had gone a mini chocolate “milk” binge over the last week and a half after attending an endurance sports supplement lecture by a physiologist and doctor of sports nutrition up at OHSU – but more on that in a second.
So there I was slurping down my chocolate rice milk staring into the fridge and thinking: well at least being gluten free, I can still have this. The stuff is incredible. The amazing thing is that I don’t even consider myself a chocolate fan. When pondering flavor choices, be it energy bars or dessert menus, I will always choose the other option.
Anyways, standing in front of the open fridge I just happened to be reading the ingredients on the carton of chocolate soy milk that I bought Ian (he’s not a big fan of rice milk, and I didn’t want him drinking mine). And BEHOLD- Organic Barley Extract. What? Why? I love when companies just seem to indiscriminately throw gluten into the mix for no apparent reason. Why limit your customers? Who would miss the barley extract? uggh.
OK- how about some background…
The sports supplement lecture was given as part of an endurance athlete educational series at a well respected physical therapy office in town. The speaker was very qualified: a physiologist, an MD, a PhD in sports nutrition, blah blah. He basically had my attention. That is, until he mentioned that he thought the ideal recovery drink was CHOCOLATE MILK- which of course should be consumed 15 minutes after finishing your workout for maximum refueling. I mentally let it slide when he referred to the two types of protein as casein and whey, I just figured he meant two of the types of animal protein…. but when he said it a second and third time, I was done.
I can buy the reasoning behind his argument for chocolate milk, being that it has protein and carbohydrates for recovery. He just lost credibility by telling me to have dairy right after a hard effort…. It just seemed so establishment and so ignorant. And so likely to cause people to puke. So many people are sensitive to dairy, not to mention the fact that there is such an enormous and growing body of knowledge out there about the health risks.
I wanted to throw a copy of The China Study at him.
In the end, though, I guess he did get me thinking about chocolate “milk.”
