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book review

"Do it! It's the best thing. I lost 70 pounds in five months." I was holding this book as I exited the subway in downtown Toronto. This woman had eyed it in my hand, and blurted out her testimony before rushing off the train. Another woman caught up to me: "Can I see the cover? I drink 2-per-cent …" she said, questioning the coffee in her hand. I suspect these are the sort of readers Alissa Hamilton is after with her latest book, a takedown of not only the dairy industry but of governmental organizations that design guidelines of what we should be eating and how often. What I'm not sure of is how she thinks she'll keep them hooked as she presents readers with a dense, tiresome and loosely structured collection of studies and daily-value requirements for vitamins and nutrients that show milk isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The evils of the industrial food complex and its mega-marketing machine is not new news. Fast Food Nation was published in 2001, The Omnivore's Dilemma in 2006, Salt Sugar Fat in 2013 – just three of many in the genre, these books hit shelves just often enough to remind those who want to learn more about what they're putting in their bodies how unpalatable things are before they forget again.

With Got Milked?, Hamilton opens her book with an anecdote about a friend who's worried because she hasn't given her two-year-old milk. Is she stunting the growth of his bones? His brain?

She informs readers that, despite all the health benefits that dairy consortiums, government agencies and marketers claim milk provides, the beverage can actually weaken our bones, contribute to weight gain and cause a host of other health issues from acne to indigestion. We are taken with milk mustaches, think it does a body good and have placed milk on a cushy pedestal, but it is shocking just how bad the drink can be for our bodies.

Unlike those books before her, however, Hamilton's narrative is hard to follow, and emotionally charged in a way that's off-putting – a shame because there are more than enough facts backing up her argument. Instead of conversations from scientists, she recites data from spreadsheets. Anecdotal evidence is most often from her friends and family members. And more than once she editorializes, inserting opinionated phrases and verbiage that serve only to clutter the point she's trying to make.

In her research, she also sniffs at trails that oddly go unexplored. Just one example: When examining the nutritional claims and content of milk, she finds that the U.S. National Dairy Council statement that a glass of milk contains 10 per cent of the daily value for niacin is wrong. It is actually, according to her calculations, only 1 per cent. "Settled. … The NDC misplaced the decimal." And that's it, end of story. There is no indication that she spoke to the NDC about what seems like a significant error or that she even tried. The gist: They're wrong. Milk sucks. Let's move on.

Almost a fifth of the pages in this book are dedicated to recipes – proof, Hamilton writes, that we can consume more than enough dairy to meet nutritional needs without having any milk-related product pass our lips. The dishes and meal suggestions are plentiful and varied, ranging from miso ginger tofu stir-fry to chocolate pudding. She is in her element here, providing helpful advice about how to shop for ingredients and store leftovers – even a hack for making popcorn in a toaster oven. So, why wasn't this a cookbook?

It is an adage of writing to show rather than tell, and what better way to demonstrate the myriad and delicious ways we can ingest calcium, vitamin D, riboflavin and so on, than with glamour shots of a spinach/wild-mushroom frittata or apple crisp, prefaced with a thoughtful, informative essay about milk misconceptions and why one doesn't need the drink at all? Sexy food shots are infinitely more appealing than paragraphs overstuffed with statistics – easier to digest, too.

Maryam Siddiqi is a Toronto-based food and travel writer.

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