Now that our two oldest kids are off at college, we’re only going through half as many gallons a week as we use to. With prices going up all the time, a fair chunk of our budget had been going toward fueling our family of six. Once a week I would write a hefty check for the grand total, hoping we wouldn’t come up empty before the week was out.

About five gallons of milk will carry us from one shopping day to the next now. In a way, I sort of miss the cashiers commenting and the baggers cringing as I’d unload nine or 10 gallons of milk onto the conveyor belt.

“Do you run a day-care or something?” the checkout girl would ask.

The ones who knew me better or had seen me with my brood of four under 10 years old would suggest I get a cow.

“It would save you a lot of money,” they would say.

Milk is one thing we never skimp on. I always on the lookout for coupons.

When the store runs their “Buy 6, Get 1 Free” special, the coupon printer at the registrar spits out a ticker-tape of vouchers. Every other trip I can get two gallons free, if I work it right.

When I was growing up, milk was a staple food item in our household. It didn’t always come from the refrigerated dairy case. In fact, more often than not it was reconstituted from a box of instant, nonfat dry powder or a can of evaporated milk. Those two sources were cheaper and more “reliable” during the years we lived overseas. Juice (100 percent) and water were the other offerings, plus hot tea or hot cocoa made with powdered milk in winter.

According to the USDA, soft drink consumption has increased 500 percent over the past 50 years (my lifetime). In the soft drink category, they include soda, fruit-flavored and part-juice drinks and sports drinks. They don’t say where ice tea figures in. Maybe the study was done up north?

“The availability of soda in the U.S. now exceeds that of milk,” the USDA report said.

This certainly has “Old Bessie” bawling.

By the time they turn six, children in the U.S. are drinking more soda than milk. Teenagers drink twice as much soda as milk, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Milk provides calcium, phosphorous, riboflavin, Vitamin D, protein, Vitamin A, potassium and several B vitamins – all important building blocks for healthy physical and mental development. Soda provides zilch, nada, nothing.

The National Dairy Council has this suggestion: “To make sure that children in your family are drinking enough milk, it’s a good idea to always serve milk as the mealtime beverage. Also, since children imitate adults, it helps for all family members, not just the children, to drink milk with their meals.”

Whether you start babies off on breast milk or formula, the NDC says, you can introduce them to cow’s milk when they turn one year old. The U.S. government’s Food Guide Pyramid recommends two to three servings per day of foods made from milk (yogurt and cheese). After the teenage years, low-fat or no-fat dairy products are recommended.

June is National Dairy Month. Those milk mustache campaigns are cute, but it’s a shame that we have to be convinced to drink more milk, especially if we have kids in the house. As with any and all foods these days, milk has been promoted to help head off or curb a number of ills.

Anyway you look at it, making dairy products a part of your nutrition is a no-brainer.

T&D Correspondent Minnie Miller can be reached by writing to her at 138 Nature’s Trail, Bamberg, SC 29003. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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