How to Kill a Craving Using Google

I was sideswiped by a cheese craving this morning, when passing between platforms at Geneva train station. I’ve never been a big cheese buff, but a sudden and unexpected longing came over me when I caught sight of a beautifully assembled tomato and bocconcini sandwich in the window of the sandwich kiosk. Alternating wedges of fresh white cheese slices and brilliant red tomatoes were peeping out from the edge of a rustic ciabatta bun. I approached the window and stopped just short of pressing my hands and face to the glass with wide-eyed wistfulness.

The spell was broken an instant later when I was distracted by the cover of Gala magazine in the neighbouring kiosk, which featured Obama and his daughters in a three-way embrace and carried the intriguing title ‘Le SuperDaddy à la Maison-Blanche’ (strong words of praise indeed from the French). Sometimes a short attention span is truly a blessing, but the experience gave me cause to return home and conduct some research into the downside of dairy; I figured it would be helpful to have some mental ammo should this sort of situation arise in the future.

I seem to have inoculated myself against meat cravings using a similar methodology: having reviewed a critical mass of disturbing facts about modern meat consumption - on both our bodies and the environment - I haven’t had a single meat craving. In fact, I am even contemplating whether I will reintroduce meat at the end of this experimental year (and I am not suggesting that we are designed as herbivores, although there are some good arguments in support of this hypothesis. I remain agnostic on this point until there is a critical mass of research into the basis for either side of the argument. I am simply saying that I find the evidence against consuming the meat we find on our supermarket shelves today compelling enough to give thought to calling it quits, permanently).

So, I came home and took to my keyboard with the intention of quashing my outstanding cravings for dairy products, with a little help from Google. I figured some word combos such as ‘lactose and bad effects’, ‘dairy and health concerns’, ‘milk products and athletic performance’ and (remembering something my GP told me when I was a anxious adolescent searching for answers) ‘chocolate and acne’, should do it.

I got more than I bargained for.

The plethora of information on this subject is overwhelming. I am going to have to set aside some time to wade through the junk science, data-less assumptions and emotionally-driven hyperbole about how cows are literally ‘milked to death’ to provide us with a drink that was never intended for us, but was intended for the young of their own species, giving us a whole host of health complications and providing few of the nutrients that we have been raised to believe it does (the latter is of particular interest to me as an athlete). It would be too easy to read some claims about the link between dairy and just about every major disease of our time, then look at some pictures of cows with udders that are swollen to four times their natural size from artificial hormone treatment, distended to a point where they cannot stand up, and conclude that milk is bad, bad bad. I’m more interested in finding out what studies have been done in this area, who sponsored that research, have the results been reviewed by peers in the scientific community, and can we therefore draw some meaningful conclusions.

So, once I have sifted out the credible data and turned it into a digestible (no pun intended) piece of writing, I will pick up where I leave off here. For now, suffice it to say that my reading so far has killed my cheese craving, possibly for good.