Sheer Genius

Allow me to propose a thesis on our fundamental common humanity-I am human, therefor I like chocolate milk. Chocolate milk, like Scooby Doo is that rare, blessed thing that cuts across all social, political, cultural, linguistic and culinary obstacles. I would have thought Peanut Butter fit into that category too, but sadly enough peanut better is mostly an American thing. Who would have thought? But chocolate milk, that's different. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar, a cheat, and a scoundrel. I say this unequivocally. The only thing that might match it is VitaMilk, which Noga so kindly brought me from Cairo. To say I crave VitaMilk like a junky craves his fix might not be that far off, truth be told, but that's not the point of this blog post. The point of this blog post is chocolate milk.
Chocolate milk has been my constant companion, through thick and thin, and in recent years my recovery drink after cycling, running or swimming. It was a bit of a struggle when I learned that skim chocolate milk is not sold in Indiana, which is of course problematic in the context of muscle growth. The beauty of chocolate milk is its nearly perfect 4:1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein. It's also very high glycemic carbohydrates, so your body of course digests it much more quickly. The issue with non-skim chocolate milk is that the fat, however delicious lowers the glycemic level of the chocolate milk, making it slower digesting, and thus not as valuable as a recovery drink. Once that Indiana related crisis was averted by Hershey's syrup, my love for chocolate milk reached epic proportions. We're talking some of the great romances of the world here. Rama and Sita, Mulder and Scully, Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn pale in comparison. To borrow rather crudely from Salman Rushdie.
My great love for chocolate milk has been rekindled by the sheer genius of the Israeli dairy industry. Put in short, chocolate milk in a bag.

It's genius on so many levels. It's cheaper, it's delicious, magically always cold, highly portable, but honestly, what I am most impressed by is the minimal amount of packaging used by chocolate milk in a bag, as opposed to a normal thick plastic bottle. Environmentally friendly gets my vote any day of the week. Oddly enough when I was in Crete I met an woman a bit older than me who worked at the chocolate milk kibbutz, Yotvata about 30 km north of Eilat in the far south of Israel. She was less enamored of chocolate milk than I was, for some obvious reasons, but when it comes to chocolate milk, it's one of those bonding things that everyone shares.