Dairy in My Life

The recent China-tainted-milk scandal has affected many people. From infant formula, the ban has now expanded to cover M&Ms, Dutch Lady, Danone and more.

For a country with hard a black-and-white freisen cow, it is quite amazing how much dairy we consumer everyday. I didn’t realize this until I embarked on my Blood A-Type diet last year and decided to cut dairy. Initially, I thought cutting milk, butter, ice-cream and cheese was easy. I don’t fancy them anyway.

But I realize later that dairy is in almost all our our daily essentials, it's used in our breads, cakes, cookies and even crackers. There’s dairy in dressings and sauces. There's dairy in my tuna mayo sandwich. There's dairy in omlettes and scrambled eggs. There’s dairy in my every morning essential – my Milo! They even use milk in my favorite fish-head bee-hoon. How to resist?

OK, I chose to be healthy. But I didn't choose to live a miserable life starving off good food. I am ,after all, a Malaysian living in Malaysia - people from the land who loves food, and living on land with plenty of good food.

A year on, I think I have done a pretty good job. I have cut out almost all dairy products from my diet. There are only a few areas where I fail. I still need my Milo every morning, but I drink it “kosong” these days. And I still need a dash of milk in my coffee. I have tried substituting milk with soy milk. It was yucky. Some things just can't be substituted.