"Cheese is not meant for human consumption"

manwithgills

KameHameHaaaa wrote: »

Someone just said this to me. I love hard cheese. But I also love a lot of things this person doesn't, as they avoid entire food groups including dairy. I also love research/studies. So... discuss.

Why is cheese meant or not meant for human consumption?
What studies are available that I can review on this topic?

Thanks.

I guess we have to discuss what is a meant for human consumption. Lets define this as a plant or an animal that can be eaten and will not make a human sick. Many studies have been done that show humans lack the enzymes to breakdown lactose. We drink mothers milk as babies and can digest it because we have more of this enzyme as infants. However over time most humans lose the ability to digest milk appropriately.

That said we need to talk about cheese. It is not a naturally occurring food. It has to be made, and was discovered by accident. You have to go back to nomadic times when humans transported milk in the stomach of an animal. The rennet in the stomach is what curdles milk into cheese. Had humans used a gourd we may have never discovered cheese. So is it meant for human consumption? Probably not, however we have adapted and have found we can eat it. Plus the fermentation process does help breakdown lactose so it should digest much easier than plain milk. In conclusion I think cheese is a great way to get the benefits of milk without the digestive issues.

kaseyr1505

Cheese is actually too delicious for some people. That causes them to be angry and resentful, so they try and take it away from others.

EasyBakeOven

herrspoons wrote: »

MarziPanda95 wrote: »

Docbanana2002 wrote: »

Whether humans are capable of enjoying the taste... or capable of digesting it...or powerful enough over cows to steal it... is a different question from whether milk and milk products are MEANT for us. They are meant for the babies of the animals that produce them.

You could then argue that no food is MEANT for us. Those strawberries? They're there for birds and small mammals to eat, because they then poop out the seeds to make more strawberry plants. The wheat in that bread? Same thing, it's actually meant for small mammals. The yeast in bread? Not meant for us either, just something that wants to multiply. Seeds, like sunflower seeds? Their purpose is to fall to the ground to make more sunflowers. Even if you argue that eating fruit could be for us because we defecate too (though no longer onto the ground) seeds can't survive if we chew them, which we do for sunflower seeds and things like pomegranate.
I think that any food that we can eat that doesn't kill us can be meant for us.

See, that's the funny thing. Cheese is made from mammalian milk but requires the introduction of coagulating agents like rennet followed by a process of fermentation and separation. Some also have bacteria deliberately introduced to them. As such, it is made specifically for human consumption - it does not occur naturally and has no other purpose as such.

Now one could argue that, say, cow milk isn't meant for us, but - as you point out - neither is any other naturally occurring animal or plant that we use as a food source. Vegetables exist for pretty much the same reason that any other organism does - to propagate their genes. It's a shame vegetarians don't consider this when they slaughter them by their millions in mass agricultural farming.

Which is why the moral argument is dumb and why using cheese as an example of a food that isn't meant to us, which, given we have to intervene for it to exist at all, it clearly is, is really dumb.

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