Truth or Dairy
Nov. 13th, 2006 06:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
penfieldI drink a lot of milk. I always have. I am not exaggerating when I say that when I was growing up, my family went through five gallons of milk per week. This was at the height of our collective breakfast cereal consumption, my father's obsession with homemade milkshakes and my own early romance with Ovaltine drink mix, and despite my mother's abiding lactose intolerance. It probably would have been cheaper for us to buy a cow and maintain our own pasteurization equipment.
And perhaps not coincidentally, I have always been blessed with healthy teeth and bones. I've never had a cavity and I did not have my first bone fracture until I was 25 when, during a spirited touch football game, I momentarily believed that I could fly.
I grew up in the days when the grocery store sold four kinds of milk:
- Whole Milk, which was always notated as "Fortified with Vitamin A and D," as if the other milks were made with freeze-dried crystals;
- 2% Milk;
- Skim Milk, which always came in a powder-blue container, as if to announce to the world, "I'm gay!" and
- Chocolate, which was never very popular because it was more fun to manually mix in your Hershey's syrup or Nestle's Quik.
Mine was a 2% milk family. It was thick enough that its legs lingered on the side of the glass, but thin enough that your Captain Crunch would actually sink to the bottom of the bowl. It had a clean, white consistency, not frothy like whole milk or eerily blue like skim milk.
I took an extended break from milk while I was in college. Even on those rare occasions that I went out to buy milk, it became difficult to keep it adequately refrigerated without leaving it outside during the winter months. And in those years I wasn't exactly getting up for a well-balanced breakfast.
After college graduation, though, I eagerly rediscovered the world of milk. And a brave new world it was, with so many new options. In addition to 1% milk, there was organic milk, soy milk, rice milk and fat-free milk right next to skim milk. Half-motivated by curiosity and half-motivated by a fleeting health kick, I made the switch to 1%. After a brief transition period, I was unable to tell the difference.
Several years later, I moved into a new apartment and began shopping at a new grocery store called "Harris Teeter." Suddenly even more milk options were laid out before me, seemingly distinguished by the name and location of the particular cow. There before me was a revelation: half-percent milk.
I am an expert in neither math nor animal husbandry, so I haven't the foggiest idea what the real difference is between 2%, 1%, half-percent or skim milk. For all I know it could be exponential or infinitesimal. But I decided to continue my descent into greater healthfulness and found it to be quite satisfying.
And satisfied I was, until a dark day two weeks ago when I went to make my usual milk purchase and the half-percent milk was nowhere to be found. "Discontinued," said my dutifully sympathetic Harris Teeter customer service representative. Apparently not enough people like me had discovered the comfortably low-fat milk middle ground of half-percent.
So I was left with a choice: should I revert back to 1%, after so casually deserting it for a slimmer, sexier jug? Or should I progress to skim milk, continuing to work my way down the ladder under the theory that they will someday develop a negative-percent milk product that actually sucks the fat out of your body?
Much as I wanted to do my body good, I simply couldn't bear the thought of pouring myself a frosty glass of milk and seeing that strange blue hue around the meniscus, thinking that it looked and felt like disgustingly dirty water. It was simply a bridge too far.
So now I am back to being a 1% guy, though I still feel sort of guilty about it. I can only hope that Harris Teeter -- or some other forward-thinking grocer -- will see the error of their ways and resume production of half-percent milk. I have already submitted a complaint/plea to Harris Teeter's customer service management, and for my sake, I ask you to consider doing the same.
Please go to this page, fill out the form with your personal information (my store location is Virginia/Arlington/Pentagon Row), and write a comment to the effect of:
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir or Madam,
I write to you today in support of Harris Teeter customer [my name], VIC No. 4-098765185-1, who, as part of his "Bring Back the Half" campaign, is urging you to resume production of half-percent Harris Teeter milk.
This customer has been a loyal consumer of your delicious and nutritious milk for more than three years, and reportedly estimates his own personal intake of said milk of almost 50 gallons per year. Clearly, this is a man who not only knows what milk is all about, but is passionate about his love for it.
Since you have discontinued half-percent milk in his store, however, he has changed. Once vibrant and cheerful, he is now a broken shell of a man, forced to choose between the torturous guilt of drinking high-fat 1% milk and the persistent disappointment wrought by consuming flimsy and tasteless skim milk. With the removal of half-percent milk from your shelves, you have stripped the blush from his cheek and the spring from his step.
Surely there is room in your dairy case for at least one man's happiness. Please, I urge you to restore half-percent milk to your Pentagon City location and restore life to [my name], much as fresh, wholesome milk has given life and strength to billions of children in our nation and world-wide. I think you will feel empowered by this decision, knowing that you have "done a body good."
Milk is not just an enduring symbol of purity and life, it is also a poetic invocation of human kindness. Today, sir or madam, I ask for yours.
Respectfully yours,
[your name]
----------------------------------------------------------
Thank you.
And perhaps not coincidentally, I have always been blessed with healthy teeth and bones. I've never had a cavity and I did not have my first bone fracture until I was 25 when, during a spirited touch football game, I momentarily believed that I could fly.
I grew up in the days when the grocery store sold four kinds of milk:
- Whole Milk, which was always notated as "Fortified with Vitamin A and D," as if the other milks were made with freeze-dried crystals;
- 2% Milk;
- Skim Milk, which always came in a powder-blue container, as if to announce to the world, "I'm gay!" and
- Chocolate, which was never very popular because it was more fun to manually mix in your Hershey's syrup or Nestle's Quik.
Mine was a 2% milk family. It was thick enough that its legs lingered on the side of the glass, but thin enough that your Captain Crunch would actually sink to the bottom of the bowl. It had a clean, white consistency, not frothy like whole milk or eerily blue like skim milk.
I took an extended break from milk while I was in college. Even on those rare occasions that I went out to buy milk, it became difficult to keep it adequately refrigerated without leaving it outside during the winter months. And in those years I wasn't exactly getting up for a well-balanced breakfast.
After college graduation, though, I eagerly rediscovered the world of milk. And a brave new world it was, with so many new options. In addition to 1% milk, there was organic milk, soy milk, rice milk and fat-free milk right next to skim milk. Half-motivated by curiosity and half-motivated by a fleeting health kick, I made the switch to 1%. After a brief transition period, I was unable to tell the difference.
Several years later, I moved into a new apartment and began shopping at a new grocery store called "Harris Teeter." Suddenly even more milk options were laid out before me, seemingly distinguished by the name and location of the particular cow. There before me was a revelation: half-percent milk.
I am an expert in neither math nor animal husbandry, so I haven't the foggiest idea what the real difference is between 2%, 1%, half-percent or skim milk. For all I know it could be exponential or infinitesimal. But I decided to continue my descent into greater healthfulness and found it to be quite satisfying.
And satisfied I was, until a dark day two weeks ago when I went to make my usual milk purchase and the half-percent milk was nowhere to be found. "Discontinued," said my dutifully sympathetic Harris Teeter customer service representative. Apparently not enough people like me had discovered the comfortably low-fat milk middle ground of half-percent.
So I was left with a choice: should I revert back to 1%, after so casually deserting it for a slimmer, sexier jug? Or should I progress to skim milk, continuing to work my way down the ladder under the theory that they will someday develop a negative-percent milk product that actually sucks the fat out of your body?
Much as I wanted to do my body good, I simply couldn't bear the thought of pouring myself a frosty glass of milk and seeing that strange blue hue around the meniscus, thinking that it looked and felt like disgustingly dirty water. It was simply a bridge too far.
So now I am back to being a 1% guy, though I still feel sort of guilty about it. I can only hope that Harris Teeter -- or some other forward-thinking grocer -- will see the error of their ways and resume production of half-percent milk. I have already submitted a complaint/plea to Harris Teeter's customer service management, and for my sake, I ask you to consider doing the same.
Please go to this page, fill out the form with your personal information (my store location is Virginia/Arlington/Pentagon Row), and write a comment to the effect of:
----------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir or Madam,
I write to you today in support of Harris Teeter customer [my name], VIC No. 4-098765185-1, who, as part of his "Bring Back the Half" campaign, is urging you to resume production of half-percent Harris Teeter milk.
This customer has been a loyal consumer of your delicious and nutritious milk for more than three years, and reportedly estimates his own personal intake of said milk of almost 50 gallons per year. Clearly, this is a man who not only knows what milk is all about, but is passionate about his love for it.
Since you have discontinued half-percent milk in his store, however, he has changed. Once vibrant and cheerful, he is now a broken shell of a man, forced to choose between the torturous guilt of drinking high-fat 1% milk and the persistent disappointment wrought by consuming flimsy and tasteless skim milk. With the removal of half-percent milk from your shelves, you have stripped the blush from his cheek and the spring from his step.
Surely there is room in your dairy case for at least one man's happiness. Please, I urge you to restore half-percent milk to your Pentagon City location and restore life to [my name], much as fresh, wholesome milk has given life and strength to billions of children in our nation and world-wide. I think you will feel empowered by this decision, knowing that you have "done a body good."
Milk is not just an enduring symbol of purity and life, it is also a poetic invocation of human kindness. Today, sir or madam, I ask for yours.
Respectfully yours,
[your name]
----------------------------------------------------------
Thank you.
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Success!
Date: 2006-11-22 04:26 pm (UTC)I crafted the letter to Harris Teeter on your behalf. Today I heard back from Christen McCoy, the manager of customer relations at the store's headquarters in Matthews, N.C.
She told me (verbatim, I swear): "Harris Teeter wants to see the blush back in your friend's cheek."
To that end, McCoy has contacted Travis Hubbard, the director of Harris Teeter Dairy/Frozen. Hubbard reported that any Harris Teeter can stock half-percent milk if a customer talks to the store manager. You may have to agree to purchase a half-gallon per week.
What else can I do for you today?