milks

Milk in small bottles which had curdled in the sun is a strong memory from my early school years. It put me off drinking plain milk for good, from about age six. Two of my siblings would pour themselves glasses of milk after school, but I stuck to water. 

Olle, on the other hand, has been a big milk drinker, starting with breastmilk for some long time and concurrently as a toddler drinking cow's milk, rice milk and soy milk. I wanted to minimise his cow-milk-consumption as he had anaemia as a baby.

I stopped the soy milk when I realised that most of it had malt in it - not good for teeth. Then he began to baulk at rice milk, so I reserved that for his breakfast muesli and the occasional homemade Horlicks or hot chocolate.

Recently he has begun to be very suspicious of cow's milk. He sniffs it first and often proclaims it to be "off". I suspect that before long he'll stop drinking plain milk completely, which is a shame as it's a good nutritious drink.

Maybe he had a bad experience and this has affected his taste for milk. Or maybe there's some inevitable developmental change which makes milk not pleasing to more grown-up tastebuds.

Meanwhile, why is it that rice milk goes off so quickly, even if kept in the fridge and only opened once a day? I can barely make it last a week, even though we're only halfway through the carton by then. Maybe we should be drinking more of it...

Because I'm sick of buying cartons that have to be thrown out, I've started buying the type of soy milk which is kept in the supermarket refrigerator - it seems to keep for longer (though that's counter-intuitive - you'd think something which sat on an unrefrigerated shelf would keep for longer.) But it has malt in it, which isn't good for anyone's teeth - or calorie intake.

Comments

[phil]

Oh, memories. My mother had to write a fresh note each term to get me excused from drinking warm rancid milk.

I still can't drink plain milk, has to be flavoured.

[Claire - Matching Pegs]

I wanted to chime in as an adult that doesn't mind the occasional glass of cold cows milk. I am however very fussy about my milk and will only drink it from a proper carton.
The milk in the plastic bottles often tastes slightly wrong, altered either by light exposure or the plastic itself. I was very sad when everyone stopped selling cartons of 2L or 1.5L milk, as now I can only get 1L cartons. I will be extremely distressed if they ever stop selling milk in cartons at all. Perhaps Olle can taste the same taste that I do when I drink milk from a plastic bottle.

[susoz]

Claire, I try and buy cartons instead of plastic and try and buy organic milk when I can - but that only adds up to about half our consumption being in cartons and a quarter or less organic. I've found that the organic milk goes off faster than the non-organic - what does that say about the non-organic?! The trouble is that the adults barely drink milk in our household - we have a little bit in tea, maybe four cups a day between us.
I also freeze milk regularly so that there's always some on hand when we run out. I don't know if this thawing process has contributed to the milk tasting 'bad' for O. I suspect that he had just one bad experience but that's tainted his taste for milk.