16. Cheese Wars: Lactose Strikes Back

Toilet of Venus ~Diego Velazquez


It was 11 pm and Dan lay on the couch in the fetal position, clutching his guts. Only eleven o'clock!? It had only been an hour? It felt like days since the stomach cramps and the urgent sprints into the bathroom had begun.

Over the course of the previous few months, Dan had phased dairy almost entirely out of his diet. The decision to do so was precipitated in part by the fact that his girlfriend was a vegan, but he also found that the less dairy he ate, the better he felt. His throat felt clearer, he had to blow his nose less often, and he found that his mild asthma had gone from mild to almost non-existent.

All-in-all he was happy with the decision, but sometimes he would inadvertently forget that he had made this decision. After a lifetime of eating cheese, it was difficult to remember that it was no longer on his day-to-day menu. Sometimes he would come home from a party with an entire large pizza that the hosts had graciously insisted he take with him, for example. Sometimes he would foolishly eat said pizza in one sitting, and then quickly find himself in a world of hurt as his body reminded him that they weren't really doing dairy anymore.

It was amazing to Dan how quickly the body begins to reject dairy once it becomes largely absent from the diet. He had spent the better part of the thirty years of his life consuming dairy products on a daily basis. Apparently, even after all that, if you stop eating it for just a few weeks, suddenly your system doesn't know what to do with it. That's not accurate, it does know what to do with it, but it has abruptly changed the standard procedure from acceptance to painful and aggressive rejection. It's like being married for thirty years, and coming home from work one day to find your wife not only no longer recognizes you, but she starts beating the hell out of you, and bodily throws you out the door, making quite certain that you fall down a flight of stairs as you go.

Dan groaned as another wave of nausea rolled through his mid-section. He shouted "never again" as he ran back into the bathroom and his boiling insides gave their violent greeting to the inside of the toilet. A moment later he had to laugh. This would be the third time he had done this to himself, and the third time he said "never again." He shrugged. Thirty years of habit would be hard to break.