Ah yes, the eternal questions in life: Why are we here? Who made us and for what purpose? What is the optimal milk consumption for a 20-year-old?

I aimed to answer one of these questions, and let me tell you I’m not about to touch religion in this column.

Food is a race against the clock. The longer you wait, the more desperate you have to be to eat it. As someone who will pour a bowl of cereal before even checking if he has milk, let me tell you, milk is the greatest offender in this case. It’s not until you have a fresh bowl of “Cinnamon Toast Crunch” in front of you that you start to wonder, “How sour is too sour?”

Well, I can now confirm there is no reason to let your milk get that bad.

It was a simple question at first: How much milk could you down in a week?

I figured one gallon a day is a reasonable rate. People didn’t share my confidence, so I put my money where my mouth is. Starting about 8:30 a.m. with a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee that was 3/4 milk, I drank a gallon of 1 percent by 10:30 a.m.

Honestly, totally doable. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for 1760 calories and 40 grams of fat in your diet.

So now we return to the original question. As I am now the regional expert on dairy intake in my apartment, I feel confident saying I could do 10 gallons in a week. Granted, calcium poisoning is apparently a thing, but that’s only in the long term I’m pretty sure. If there are any nursing majors or dietetics majors or human beings with common sense willing to chime in, please do so before my lack of creativity catches up to me and I need another article.

If there’s anyone out there who’d like to try it themselves, I have a couple tips: don’t eat anything too heavy, you have all day so pace yourself and talk with someone close to you until you have some goddamn self-respect.