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Next to admitting you like Tevas or Watch High Test Girls Onlineonce owned a hard copy of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, there's nothing more embarrassing than revealing you're an adult who drinks milk. By choice.

In 2018, anti-milk stigma is alive and well in America and most of the Western World. You can't log onto Twitter without someone sharing the latest piece of anti-milk yellow journalism from www.aggrodude.wordpress.net. Asking for a glass of milk at a local bar? You'll be laughed out of the room by a bunch of psychopaths who drink bee pollen for pleasure.

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Don't think anti-milk prejudice is real? Just take a look at a few of the hundreds of anti-milk articles I browsed today while drinking a cool glass of milk like a fine summer cocktail.

"Christina Aguilera Offensively Promotes Milk" (Jezebel, May 2, 2018)

"The Scary New Science That Shows Milk Is Bad For You" (Mother Jones, December 2015)

"Got Milk? Might Not Be Doing You Much Good" (The New York Times, November 2014)

Adults Really Shouldn't Drink Human Breast Milk" (Newsweek, June 20, 2015, and uh, OK, this one is valid.)

As a child, I suffered at children's birthday parties because I refused to drink whatever bio-luminescent sports drink or battery-acid-laden soda they were pushing. If I asked for milk that was not chocolate in the school cafeteria, I was mocked. Denigrated.

Their loss. At 34, I have never broken a bone and am now an incredibly tall (for a woman) person, despite having no genetic material that would predict this. I attribute my height to the delightful bovine growth hormones that undoubtedly surged through my body as an adolescent.

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Still, I often struggle to be open about my relationship with milk as an adult. In the past, if I wanted to have a soothing glass of milk to help me sleep, my ashamed partner would offer me some bullshit organic wine instead. Every time I order milk at a restaurant, some waiter who drinks fernetin their spare time feels compelled to crack a joke about it. When they do finally serve me, my drink typically comes with a complimentary lecture ("You know, most Americans can't digest milk") and an homage to East Asia, where apparently "no one drinks milk" and everyone lives to 300.

I can't make it through a single day without some Ralph Nader-type pushing their "You know, the dairy lobby pushed for that research" down my throat.

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Note that all of this anti-milk discrimination is coming from folks who are thrilled to have milk in their coffees, cereals, and ice creams. That kind of milk is okay, they tell me, but the way I drink it — plain, cool, and with a hilarious straw — is vile.

"There's something just so gross about drinking another animal's milk," they say, as they tear into a ruptured pig muscle they lovingly call "bacon."

No one wants to accept the truth: Milk is great. There's plenty of evidence to support my claim, which milk's detractors refuse to acknowledge. Milk is loaded with calcium. It's full of other quality nutrients as well, including potassium, magnesium, and phosphorus. You know, the stuff you don't get when you're downing a disgusting $15 faux-nutritious juice from the mall.

Milk is fantastic for heart health. It can hydrate you in ways other drinks just can't.

One study showed that drinking milk reduces your chance of developing certain types of cancer. (Another study demonstrated it might increase other types.) All studies make me panicked so it's best to leave them all alone.

What it consistent throughout the literature is that milk, like most delicious things, is just fine in moderation. You can have a glass every once in a while and you'll be just fine. Perhaps even happy.

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Imagine a world where the anti-milk lobby didn't exist, where people could drink the beverage of their choice without fear of retaliation. How I'd love to walk down the street with milk in a to-go cup, much like my peers do with their precious coffee. What joy it would be to partake of a precious bagel and milk special at my local breakfast spot. I dream of a world in which milk doesn't have to depend on chocolate chip cookies for survival.

Big dreams, I know. But it's the least we owe milk, the drink that raised us and continues to give so many of us joy. So to the haters who want to chastise me for bringing cold milk in a thermos to parties: Lay off. We're all just tryin' to do our body good.