Milk-aholic

According to the latest dietary studies, your Fio has a sixty percent less chance of getting diabetes than the average bear, and it's all because she drinks a lot of milk--whole udders of it, in fact.

Fiorella usually turns a jaundiced eye toward dietary reports because their they tend to be faddish, but this one makes sense to her. Her mother, who didn't like milk, developed diabetes when she was younger than Fio is now, and Fio has read that Hispanics--who have higher rates of lactose intolerance than the general population--also run higher rates of diabetes.

Fio's paternal cousins are all milk drinkers too. Her great-grandfather is said to have observed that when Poles get money, they buy a showy horse, but when Galitzians get money, they buy a cow so the children can have milk. One guess where Fio's father's line hailed from. And Dad stayed true to his heritage. Fio remembers when she, age twenty-five, was eating out with her parents and ordered a Coke with her lunch. Her father looked at her with sad eyes and, in a gentle voice, asked, "Shouldn't that be milk?"

Looks like Dad had it right: milk is nature's most nearly perfect food.