That was a rather an extraordinary column by Paul Mulshine, Newhouse News Service, published on March 17. Was it some sort of St. Patrick’s Day spoof?

Does anybody really consider it conclusive proof of milk’s “deadly” nature that some people in China don’t drink it? I don’t eat deep-fat-fried crickets, either. So what?

As a matter of fact, milk in some form or other – fresh, cultured, made into cheese – is eaten just about everywhere, from all kinds of animals: sheep, cows, donkeys, camels, you name it. Genghis Khan and his warriors pretty much lived on cultured mare’s milk and did pretty well on it, or so I’ve heard.

After reading that column, I took the trouble to find the article referenced from the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It lists the various beverages strictly by calorie content with very little in the way of reference to nutrients. It gives its best score to pure water, having no calories, and then lists coffee and tea and so on up to highly caloric drinks like soda. Both skim milk and whole milk are listed before beer.

How Mulshine came up with his curious conclusion is a bit of a mystery. One might think he must have made it up to serve his own hobby-horse.

And I think the Sun Journal should be ashamed for printing such garbage.

Sally McGuire, Carthage