I have no proven calcium deficiency. I’ve never broken a bone, and when I think of drinking a tall glass of ice cold milk, I feel the strong urge to vomit in my backpack. When I grew up in Shanghai, my mom made me drink milk every day. Not regular milk, which is bad enough. But bagged milk. Let’s just pause for a moment and think about that. Milk. In bags. One fateful day my mom handed me a bag of milk and like the dutiful daughter I used to be, I stuck a straw in the top and took a tentative sip. And then a thick, alien membrane coated my entire throat. I threw up. A lot. I still have nightmares about it, honestly. And since that day, I have been resolute in my decision: milk is for babies. And dumb-ass adults.

Don’t get me wrong—I love dairy. I consume a wide and beautiful variety of dairy products at each meal. My diet depends on cheese to the extent where I lay awake at night and worry about becoming lactose intolerant. I’ve heard that 90% of Asians eventually develop some sort of lactose intolerance, and I’m terrified that I’ll be one of them. Cheese is my life. I can’t be funny about cheese. Humor is used to resolve conflict, and I have no conflict with cheese. But my feelings do not extend to the liquid side of the dairy family. It is a gross perversion of nature for grown adults to drink the breast milk of cows. Not to mention that enslaving dairy cows’ mammary glands to quench our thirst for a liquid that could at best be described as “not spoiled” is barbarism at its very best. You can take back your milkshakes, almond, soy, 2%, and skim. Take back your carcinogens, your lattés, your suspensions of fat particles in water. I want no part of this collective colloidal insanity. Got milk? Get the fuck out.