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We're told not to smoke or drink while we're pregnant, run marathons (though some do), or decide to take up skydiving.  But did you know that milk is now another problem, too? Here's the deal.  Milk drinking is tied to height.  According to The New York Times, a new study suggests that the amount of milk a pregnant woman drinks may affect the adult height of her adult offspring. After adjusting for the mother's height, weight, BMI and other factors, researchers found that mothers who drank more than five ounces a milk a day had bigger babies, Nicholas Bakalar reports. By age 20, children whose mothers drank five ounces or more a day were a half-inch taller than those of mothers who did not. A team of scientists tracked babies born in the late ‘80s, and found that their height during adolescence was directly related to how much milk their mothers consumed when they were in the womb.  Another study found that drinking more milk raised babies' IQ (because of the ...

My husband always grimaces when he sees babies sleeping with bottles in their mouths, especially if it's sugary juice. "They're going to ruin their teeth!" he mourns.  (I should mention he's a dentist.) But a new study is showing that a glass of milk after sugary cereals may go a long way in preventing cavities, according to a story at newswise.com. "Washing down sugary breakfast cereal with milk after eating reduces plaque acid levels and may prevent damage to tooth enamel that leads to cavities, according to new research at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry," the Web site reports. That's because dry, ready-to-eat, sugar-added cereals combine refined sugar and starch, and "when those carbohydrates are consumed, bacteria in the dental plaque on tooth surfaces produce acids," newswise.com quotes Christine Wu, professor of pediatric dentistry and director of cariology, who served as principal investigator of the ...

Did you know that healthy cantaloupe is on this list?  Or a cheese called Casu Marzu (more on that later)?  Or Silver Stripe Blaasop? Admittedly, many of these delicacies are not found in the US, but zagat.com recently outlined the 11 foods that kill, and here they are, in order. Fugu blowfish.  This is the fish Japanese executives are seen eating, and then dropping dead.  According to the Web site, fugu "contains a potent poison, tetrodotoxin (emphasis on ‘toxin’), that can cause either of those two scenarios when the fish is improperly prepared." Only licensed chefs are allowed to make it. Tainted cantaloupe (which killed almost 20 people in the last few years). Casu Marzu, or The Zombie Cheese, so-called because it's swarming with live maggots, and making the list because it can destroy your digestive system. Mushrooms with death in their names, or the panther mushroom, green gills and pink gills, man-on-horseback, and the scaly chanterelle. Sannakji (o...