So, what's your point ?

Very entertaining presentation. Thanks

Time to end all agricultural subsidies. The myth of the 'family' farm or dairy is just that, and has been for decades. These are business, no different than a family-run pizza parlor or liquor store, and if they can't compete it is not our job as tax-payers to bail them out. Let market forces will decide what the cost of a gallon of fresh milk is, and stop paying farmers to grow corn for making gasoline.

This piece is a fine example of cute writing.  As far as truly illuminating the topic at hand, it's a flashlight without batteries.  ( It seemed like one set of cute metaphors deserved another ).

Children need saturated fat for proper brain development.  If we are going to end a subsidy, end the subsidies for corn, used to make the extremely harmful corn syrup.

I see nothing in this article about scientific or medical evidence for or against milk as a human food. I am sure a huge body of evidence exists. Saturated and poly-unsaturated fats are a necessary part of the human diet. Calcium is vital. More fact and less prejuidice and superstition and hysteria is desirable about this subject. I accept government regulation of the national milk market in the public interest, but outlandish subsidies to the "factory farms" is scandalous. I prefer fresh, local food, whenever possible. If from small family farms, so much the better. END

Duh! This article needs to be spoken rather than written. I read it twice and decided that it needed a political translator. There are certain foods that are nutritional, inexpensive and within reach of the POOR. Milk is certainly one of them. Looks like the writer has based this country's standards and needs around her professional, conservative, suburban upper middle-income class family. A family that doesn't have to worry about "what's for supper tonight"? Check out (Google) the documentary film "KING CORN" if you really want to read about farm subsidies related to the fattening of this country's obese population through the consumption of high fructose corn syrup.

Milk is for babies and kids. It can cause devastating skin outbreaks and digestive problems in adults. Many vegetables have more calcium than milk, kale for example.

I've been drinking milk for 74 years, and remain quite healthy!

A solipsism: I've drunk about half a gallon of milk a day since I was a teenager (nearly 60 years). If milk were bad for me, I'd be dead.

Totally apart from the whether or whether not of milk is the cruelty of "factory farming." If you're going to buy milk, buy it from a farm that lets its cows graze.

I'm kind of surprised a women would write such a shallow piece on dairy.  Where are women supposed to get their daily calcium intake?  Supplements have been proven to be a poor second choice.  And what about children's calcium needs?  Those are real questions.  And what pediatricians are warning parents about is that some dairy is not useful, since it's so highly processed.  This article raised more questions and left readers even more confused.  

Wow! this seemed more like a stream of consciousness rather than a article that dealt with facts around why milk was not good for you. No focus, with snippets of unrelated facts all over the place. This article was in sore need of an editor.

This may have been a more lucid article if the author didn't assume that her readers were familiar with the increasing number of studies that question the value of drinking milk when compared to fat content, the massive doses of anti-biotics given to cows, the often inhumane, filthy pens to which they are confined without movement and the fact that calcium can be gotten from fruits and vegetables.

Good for her, however, for raising the agricultural subsidy issue.....money that is given often to big businesses and may be impeding the family farm from being competitive.

Wow, first the writer seems to want to write a piece arguing that milk is unhealthy. Then she abandons that premise and writes about milk subsidies...which somehow will lead to the death of the local dairy farm. None of her points is actually supported by any objective studies. I guess it is just stream-of-conciousness. Still, I wonder how many people there are in her family that they go through so many gallons of milk per week!

Just switch everyone over to Red Bull. That compliments an Oreo just as good as milk....

Jennifer, Robert Lustig (a pediatric neuro-endocrinologist who teaches at UCSF) is generally recognized as the leading obesity expert in the country. He stated that he limits kids in his obesity clinic to drinking two things: water and milk. Lustig said that he gets good results. What sore of credentials does your child's pediatrician have to challenge Lustig on this? Perhaps you should use whole milk instead of skim milk. Would it not make more sense to question the government subsidies to produce corn sweeteners?

Another in a long line of ridiculous Globe articles. How the -$/: do they find these people. Total nonsensical article.

"Dr. Spock (the pediatrician, not the Vulcan) told us to stop drinking it 15 years ago."

If so, he said it from his death bed.  He died 3/15/98.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to respond to this column First i should disclose that i am the owner of one of the 150 or so dairies remaining in our state and as you might imagine, i have some thoughts on the column written by Ms Graham in todays Globe My first though was that the piece itself made no central point and i wasn't really that offended by it until i saw the horrible image beside it. The author played with some of the issues facing our industry and did her best to be funny, as in her use of the "call me a cereal killer" line , but came clean on what she really felt by saying that she feeds her family 6 gallons a week. On behalf of the rest of the dairy world i thank her for doing her part. However the Globe on the other hand i have lost a great deal of respect for. How can your staff justify using an instock photograph of a needle stuck in a gallon milk as a companion to this piece? What point was this trying to make? Was it the work of a juvinille staffer who didn't realize that a paper like the Globe has reponsibilities for Editorial fairness? Again thank you for the opportunity to respond. Our industry may be down to very small numbers here in Massachusetts but we are hopeful with the new interest and support for local and fresh dairy products we might keep from becoming the first state without a dairy farm

As almost everyone else has pointed out this is a silly, nearly inchoherent rant.  It starts off by saying milk is bad to drink, without the slightest evidence or scientific support.  Of, course it may be bad for a few people, like all other foods, but it it healthy and necessary for most children.  Then it begins an attack on agricultural subsidies, which is largely merited, but it wanders all over the lot with misleading and inaccurate claims, including attack on dairy farmers in general, based on the apparent misdeed of one.

I was heartened by the appearance of this long overdue article; and dismayed at the virulent negative comments on it.

I am a physician, and I know that there is nothing particularly wholesome about milk, at any rate not after toddler age. While I love ice cream and fine cheeses, I do my best to curb my appetite for these in order to control my weight.

As to the poor, we would do much better subsidizing carrots and cabbage, then subsidizing milk.

Unfortunately, milk has become an article of faith in America, and I have little hope that this article can stem the tide of milk, or the power of the milk lobby.