This milk is bananas

So I've been browsing YouTube videos, and I keep running into this commercial. It's SO CATCHY!!!! And I've been watching/listening to it for a while now. It's in my head, and I'm even listening to it as I'm writing this post. It got an upbeat to it that give a little fun in my day XD
Speaking of milk. I am beginning to swear off milk and any dairy product.

Why? Because it's scary, disgusting, and unhealthy. I know, right, it's completely opposite to what the milk industry told us. Who would have thought doctors have been telling you the wrong thing?
Growing up in Viet Nam, drinking milk every day isn't a thing. I don't exactly go without milk, as I eat yogurt and have condensed milk now and then, but milk in a gallon or dairy products aren't a daily staple, and I have never eaten cheese prior to moving to the States. Again, it's not that it's because we don't have them, we do, but dairy products are a luxury, not a necessity.

Normally, an average family will consume more vegetable, fish, and fruit more than meat. And don't forget rice. Why? Because in Viet Nam, vegetables and fruits (some of them) are generally so much cheaper than meat. How much cheaper? Think $1 for 1 kilogram of vegetable vs $10 for 1 kilogram of meat. Fishes are usually $2/3 a kilogram, and fruits are anywhere from $1-$5 a kilogram; and Viet Nam is a poor country, so yeah, you can see why meat is a luxury. It also make sense why we're so much more healthier than meat eaters :) We have so much variety of fruits and vegetable that it's easy to live on cheap vegetable and fruits and still gets all the necessary nutrition, and even sometimes more.

As for milk, like I said, Viet Nam is a poor country, we don't really have fridges to store food for another day or week, so we can't just have a gallon of milk laying around. When I was growing up, my Mom would occasionally splurge and bought my sister and I to a big, fancy market (big and fancy for poor Vietnamese, but those markets are generally just the normal Meijer and Walmart to Westerner), and bought us a pint of fresh milk. It usually cost her about $4 for that pint, so we only get to have it about one every week or so. What is more the norm is condensed milk, and the can of condensed milk cost about $2/3 for one, and we uses it to make Vietnamese Coffee, a most wonderful concoction :) And occasionally, when my sister and I got sick, Mom would make hot condense milk drink for us (2 tbsp condensed milk with 8 ounces of boiling water). And another rare treat would be yogurt. But it's not the rich, creamy yogurt you westerners are used to, Vietnamese yogurt (or Da Ua) is very thin in texture, and it's mostly sweet with the crunchiness of ice (as it's mostly water, think watered down ice cream), and our ice cream is similar to our yogurt, sugar and water with food coloring and then freeze, so yeah, the rich and creamy texture of western yogurt and ice cream is not something an average Vietnamese person would ever get exposed to.

Asians rarely consumed dairy products is because we have no need of it. As babies, we would drink our mother's milk and gets weaned around 1 or 2 years old, then from that point on we don't really need milk, as Vetnamese diet are rich in fresh fruits, vegetables, fishes and lots of herbs and spices (again, because they're extremely cheap and much more available than meat). With its tropical climate, fruits and vegetables are so easy to grow, hence it's much more affordable to a normal Vietnamese family, though it had changed in recent years, as I went back for a visit sometimes around 2008, and the price of a kilogram of vegetable is around $22 in Vietnamese currency, due to the tourists that had now become the source of income for Vietnamese people).

Food in Vietnamese culture have been influenced over hundreds of years, but it enriched our food cultivation instead of drowning out our history, and we're very creative when it comes to cooking food and making do with what we have. There's so many ways of making a meal, and I remember having so much variety of food types when I was growing up (my Mom is such an accomplished cook), though like I said, our diet are mostly vegetable and fruits and many type of fishes. Soups are somewhat a stable in my family's meals (it's so easy to cook: prepare the veggies, boil water, throw them in with seasoning and you're done, plus it helps picky eater like me washes down dry dishes), and in fact, I preferred soups with my meals, because it enhanced the flavor of rice, and helps me eat faster (soupy rice goes down the throat easier without much chewing XD I know it's bad for your tummy, but I was a kid, ok? Not to mention, my stomach is strong because of it).

I remember growing up, having 1 meat dish a day is already a lot, and with how expensive it was back then, my Mom had to work a lot to make enough money to feed my sister and I; and the both of us have bottomless stomach. I would ate the normal 3 meals, then have snacks constantly between the meals, and was still hungry. Despite how much my sister and I ate, we were scrawny little things, with bones and skin. You'd think our mother doesn't feed us, but we ate almost all hours of the day. Mom used to joke the only time our mouths wasn't busy chewing is when we sleep.

So yeah, with how expensive dairy product is, it's rare for us to have it. But we don't need it, because as you know, Asian people live a long life, with strong constitution, and being sick is rare for us (beside the common cold), with beautiful skin and hair, and we look younger than our age. All that without milk. So maybe you should be rethinking about chugging down that glass of milk, eh, eh ;) ;)
Dairy in Asian isn't a normal occurrence, not to mention sometimes it's view as a weakness (there's an insult to grown people about their breath still smelling of mother's milk = weakling, wet behind the ears. Yeah, we Asian are long winded with our hinted insults xD We tend to not tell you straight out that you sucks :P)

Historical timeline of milk doesn't say much about dairy in Asian culture (except India), because to us Asian, cows are farming animals, and if it give birth to baby cows, it means the income/labor force is increased once the baby cow grow up = we don't mess with the baby cow's milk source. And we generally don't drink cow's milk is, well, because exactly that, it's cow's milk xD.

Most Vietnamese people drink water, or rice drinks (this is also how mothers who doesn't produce enough milk feed their babies in my country, by cooking rice with extra water, and feed the baby with this mixture, it's very nutritious and will be covered in another post), and thanks to tea culture introduced to us by China, we either have iced or hot tea in addition to water :)

I remember when I was growing up, I was a very healthy child, albeit very scrawny. I rarely got sick, and I ate a very healthy diet. I misses the meals from back then, the variety of fruit and vegetables, and the thousands of different dishes that came from that. I misses the food the most living in America, because despite the oriental markets that is all around, there isn't as many ingredients as I used to have (well, duh!), and they're quite expensive ($3 for a measly 2 ounces of Vietnamese herbs). Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my life here, it's the food that I misses the most XD Well, I do have a bottomless stomach after all :P

But yeah, Asian cultures have been doing fine without milk, until the introduction of westerners, and even so we don't actually have much to do with milk, and we're still fine. What I want to do most is to be informed about the products that I put in and on my body, and I'm glad that with today's technology and widespread of information, I can do that easier than the previous generation. I hope you'll be able to do the same, because knowledge is power, and you have the ability to get that kind of power easily :) Eat healthy, my friends, because you deserved to be taken care of, by you!