Due to a disappointing lack of grand theft autos and U.F.O. sightings in Allendale, milk dominated the cover of last Thursday’s issue of the Lanthorn, and it wasn’t even in reference to the Sean Penn movie. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the article and, strangely, felt that students needed to know that their milk is being downsized.

The only components I disliked were the opinions shared in the article where some people objected to the shrinkage of milk portions without doing the same to soda (or pop) (or soda pop) (or cola) (it’s a regional thing, I guess).

As a student concerned with nutrition — even though I have an extremely muscular physique — it struck me that intolerance toward carbonated beverages is similar to shooting fish in a barrel of Dr. Pepper. Yet we never hear about intolerance toward milk. What about lactose intolerance? No one ever has issues over that.

In fact, I’m quite glad that Grand Valley State Univeristy decided to go all “Honey, I Shrunk the Milk” in the cafeterias. With smaller milk containers, that means less milk is needed to fill those containers, resulting in less cows bred in horrible dairy farming facilities. That’s good news for everybody because that means less grass is consumed by said cows. As a passionate fighter of the ethical treatment of vegetation, this is a big win for us.

Dandelions are people, too.

Also, what is the big huff about the amount of soda students consume? The last I checked, the number of pop-related deaths was relatively low (somewhere in the 20s). Pop is practically a basic food group to college students, and taking that out could collapse our food pyramid, spilling ramen and beer all over the place.

Most of my friends are very conscientious about their consumption of soda already – they mix it with alcohol, which, as we all know, kills bacteria and other destructive material (such as brain cells).

Also, let’s not forget that diet soda is still made available to students who wish to take the healthy path (translation: it’s really gross-tasting). We should also ignore the fact that some recent studies are theorizing that diet soda actually contributes to weight gain and focus on the important part: the bottle says “diet” on it, so it must be healthy.

You don’t see “diet milk” at Meijer, do you? I rest my case.

Comparing the nutritional value of milk and soda is similar to comparing apples to orange soda. I doubt there are many naive people left in the world who don’t know that milk is good for you and pop isn’t.

So based on the grounds that people are worried soda will overshadow milk as though this is some sort of Coca-Cola challenge, I may disown milk altogether.

Thus begins a life of smothering Lucky Charms in Mountain Dew.

So what should GVSU do about the problem? Absolutely nothing. In fact, I don’t even see an issue here. Milk portions got smaller and the prices got cheaper. Pop stayed the same. It’s not as if pop stole milk’s car and went on a joyride or anything.

However, that would be an awesome article.

[email protected]