Is This the Stuff of Human Kindness?
Went to the grocery store yesterday to buy cow milk. I am not a frequent purchaser of cow milk. I could not find cow milk. It was there but was dwarfed by shelves loaded with soy milk, almond milk, oat milk, cashew milk, coconut milk, flax milk, and, I swear, pea milk.
My immediate thought — the very first thing that popped into my civics-beleaguered noodle — was, “this is a column about Trump.”
My reasoning:
All columns these days, by law, must be about Trump.
The Web assures me that the preponderance of alternative “milks” is due to a relatively recent surge in demand. This goo is selling.
I’m guessing MAGA nutcakes wouldn’t be caught dead drinking sissy snowflake un-American pseudomilk marketed for cucks and libtards and lactose-intolerant recidivist elevator farters
Ergo, the markets themselves — the infallible telemetry of capitalism — are suggesting an increasing ascendancy, in sheer numbers, of kindly Earth-cherishing progressives over the ravening hordes!
Progressives — you guys — are thirsty for hopeful news. Cheesy pundits like me are straining to provide it. I read one piece recently contending, I swear, that things are not as bad as they seem because we still can love our families and exercise robustly, free of government intervention. Online journalists are shameless in pursuit of eyeballs.
Maybe I can milk this for all it is worth.
In short, I bought all of these products on impulse, with no particular plan in mind. The total bill came to $66.44. Nondairy milk is non-inexpensive.
Now what do I do?
Let’s do the democratic thing and put it to a vote.
Your votes are rolling in. The verdict is clear, even in Swahili. You want me to try them and report back.
Please note: I have never before tasted even a single teaspoon of one of these products. In childhood I petulantly declared real milk to be “cow piss.” Once, for a story, I had to drink some of it warm and bubbly, straight from the udder. It tasted faintly like manure. One does not outgrow such a memory.
I have the bottles arrayed in front of me, right now. I will report that several of these environmentally congenial products are packaged in plastic; the others in “polyethylene-coated paperboard.” I can also draw certain conclusions from observation alone. For one thing, lawyers have evidently been involved. The term “milk,” once the province only of mooing behemoths who poop on themselves, is evidently now open to debate — but, clearly, dairy farmers have had their say as to what these products can call themselves. They don’t claim to be “milk,” per se. There is no “Almond Milk” out there, or “Cashew Milk.” There is Almondmilk and Cashewmilk. Apparently this lack of kerning matters. At least one company avoids the term “Milk” altogether. Here is a product of theirs, in front of me:
So. The tasting. Here I go.
Cashew Malk: It is as thin as a mortician’s smile. Its color is an insipid beige. Tragically, it does not taste much like cashews, the caviar of nuts. Cashew Malk tastes like the baby formula of malks.
—
Califia Farms Organic Almondmilk instantly gets points deducted because once you twist the cap off, which by all rights should be the culmination of any access-achievement process, you then have to negotiate with one of those thin “foil seals” with four half-millimeter-long tabs that you must gnaw off by gripping the edge between your dull, thinning, 74-year-old semi-translucent incisors. Almondmilk is the color of milk and sort of tastes like milk but only in the faint sense that Michelob Ultra sort of tastes like beer. There is a faint almond smell. I would call it AlmostAlmond, to stay on the right side of the law.
—
Ripple Pea-Protein Plant-based Milk. This one brags right on the bottle that it has eight times the protein of AlmondMilk; the brand warfare is evidently pretty fierce. My first question was “is Ripple Pea Milk the same company that made Ripple the go-to beverage for street winos in New York in the 1970s?” Thankfully, no. Ripple Wine went down with a shudder, like a death rattle. This pea stuff is pretty good, but oddly, you are advised to vigorously shake it before every serving. I wondered why, so I put it down for a while and then came back and swigged it without a shake. Well hydrated … pee. This stuff scares me.
Good Karma Positively Nourishing FlaxMilk, which is made from flax, tastes like flax. If sinew had a flavor, it would be this. There is a strong chemical undertone that I presume is a combination of sodium hydroxide, epoxy, acetone, olydopamine and glyphosate, which a widely used herbicide, because these are the chemicals that treat flax in linens and other textiles. I do not legally assert the truth of that last sentence.
Silk Soy. This goes down good, as they say! Tastes like milk! Then I discovered why. It has twice the calories per cup of all the other products. So that will probably bother you. It doesn’t bother me. I am a pasty-faced fat slob.
Planet Oat Oatmilk. I was assured by a limber young male supermarket customer — he was wearing a track suit, a bandanna and a Fitbit — that this is the best tasting nondairy option. But I did not try it because it is the color of semen.
Califia Farms Organic Coconut Milk. I had to gnaw this one open, too. This is absolutely the whitest of the products. Igloo white! Problem: This one does not attempt to taste like milk. It tastes like coconut. There’s nothing wrong with coconut. But it would be like ordering venetian blinds and getting, instead, a loaf of pumpernickel.
—
So, those are my reviews. My conclusion? Here it is:
All is not lost in the United States. We will emerge from this mess intact.
Why?
Because it is what you want and need to hear, not the babbling of an embittered lifelong contrarian. Have the best day you can.
—
Today’s REAL Gene Pool Gene Polls.
—
Do you like this kind of column? If you do, please consider subscribing, or upgrading your subscription to paid. If you don’t, please consider subscribing, or upgrading your subscription to paid. How else can you effectively lobby for change? Be part of the fight to make me be better!
Note: Just ONE new paying subscription almost reimburses me for the damn “milks.”
—
Questions and Observations: