A reader asks: "I'm preparing to weaning my 14-month old in the coming months.  My initial thoughts are being influenced by mainstream, conventional directives to move to cow's milk as the drink of choice.  But it just seems really odd to me now to think of giving my child the food that is created for baby cows.  What is a healthy staple drink for my child once he's weaned?"

You're absolutely right, pasteurized cow's milk is right up there with soda and lead paint in the top 10 harmful foods for kids (of all ages). So that's not really an option once you have the information. For more information about the dangers of milk, check out www.notmilk.com and Colin Campbell's The China Study.

The question of what beverage to replace it with is easy, as long as you feed your child a health-promoting diet full of vegetables and fruits, grains, and raw nuts and seeds. The only beverage human beings had access to for tens of thousands of years: water.

A lot of research shows that our metabolism doesn't register the calories we consume in liquid form, unless there's a lot of fiber (as in a thick fruit smoothie with the whole fruit in it or a thick vegetable soup). The calories we eat get counted, but the ones we drink slip past like turnstyle jumpers on the New York City subway. So we can easily gain weight if we drink a lot of calories, because we'll reliably overeat by precisely that number of calories.

My friend Asher Wolf, a researcher in Chapel Hill, figured out the evolutionary reason for this, as I've mentioned in a previous blog post: if your great-great-great-great-etc. grandcavemother had just taken a big swig of river just as her hubby returned to camp with a big hunk of meat, she wouldn't want to feel sated by the drink. If she did, she'd undereat the meat and would be in danger of not having enough caloric reserves if that was the last good hunt for a while.

Now that humanity has developed liquids that provide energy as well as hydration, our bodies haven't adapted. We still think of all liquids as calorically-barren.

Babies are Human Too!

Until recently, there were no "baby foods" and "kids' menus" and "teen fare" – there was just food for people with teeth and food for people without.

So limit the fruit juices to the occasional popsicle on a hot day, or to add to cooking vegetables to sweeten them up. Avoid sodas and "smart" waters – they're either garbage or unnecessary.

Soy and rice and almond milks are OK as a smoothie base, but you'll be suprised and disappointed when you check the label at how much sugar and other processed stuff is crammed into a quart of those drinks. Not something to get your child hooked on. And there's justifiable concern at all the processed soy our vegetarian and vegan kids are getting. Processed anything is never as good as real human food, locally grown and eaten fresh, with minimal processing.

Whole-foods fruit smoothies (search for recipes on the site) and vegetable soups are fine. But basically, stick to water. You're doing your child a favor by not giving them a rampant sweet tooth that will have them craving junk food all their life. You're providing them with a nutrient – water – that most Westerners don't get enough of. And you're saving a lot of money, packaging, and cleanup.

Water – it does a body good!