Dairy Alarmism

neandermagnon

My thought on that was that it would be very cruel to keep a chimp for this purpose, because they are social animals and need to be around their own kind, and forcibly milking one would be extremely cruel (although the human who attempts this is likely to come off worse :laugh: )

Forcibly milking a social animal is cruel? Ya don't say.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn1GmYHpjiw

the ecological niche of domestic animals is being domesticated by humans, and they're a lot different from the wild animals they were originally bred from. yes they should be treated kindly, but actually keeping them and using them for food isn't something I'm against from a moral point of view. Keeping wild animals captive for no good reason and/or keeping them in conditions that are not similar to what they'd be in in the wild is wrong. Cats and dogs make good pets, it's not bad for them to be kept as pets and in the case of dogs as working animals, they've been bred in captivity for millenia. Farm animals have been bred in captivity for millenia. Chimps are not and never have been domestic animals. Keeping chimps as pets is as wrong as allowing human children to be raised by chimpanzees, for all the same reasons. It was the idea of humans owning a chimpanzee that I objected to more than the idea of it being milked and humans consuming its milk (though the latter's a bad idea anyway because of the SIV virus).

I eat Arab brands of dairy products so pics of conditions in dairy farms in the USA are not really relevant to me (and as has been pointed out that pic isn't actually a dairy farm). I live in an Arab country so I'm eating local too.

Rocbola

Dairy sources that are low in fat have been shown to help fat loss.

How about sustainable long term health?

*shrug* Go to some nursing homes or talk to people who are in their 80's and 90's and ask them what their diets were. Ask them how they have eaten pretty much all of their lives. Do it. Go. NOW. Because most of those folks will tell you they grew up eating meat -- and not just the pretties but the organs, too, like brains and liver. They will tell you they drank whole fat milk and real butter along with their veggies (and even their veggies were carrots, potatoes, green beans and maybe cabbage) and very little to no fruit. I have a large family -- something like 11 or 13 uncles and aunts on just ONE SIDE. They have ALL lived into their late 80's and most into their 90's. All grew up and continued to live and eat meat and drink dairy milk. Including my hearty Granny who lived until the age of 99. She was in a healthy weight range, active, and on NO medications. NONE. And for almost her entire life, she lived on what you would consider an unhealthy diet because it contained meat and dairy. Most of which was combined and included lots of fat and sugar! She loved to bake. Back to my point. She ate all of these things and they constructed most of my diet, too because we all literally lived right next to each other so eating together was a thing. When I gained weight, it wasn't because of meat or dairy or fat -- it was simply due to portion sizes. She never had an issue with that. We all ate the same things, but at some point, we quit paying attention to portion sizes and just flat out ate too much. Dairy isn't the problem and neither is meat. The problem is flat out the over-consumption of food in general. Even if it is 'healthy'. That and barring any medical conditions.

*Edit to add that I say nursing homes because that is the greatest concentration of older folks I can think of. Or senior living centers. Unless you're like me and live in an area where the population of retirees is high.

People didn't eat fruit back then......? :noway:

susannamarie

People didn't eat fruit back then......? :noway:

A fair amount of local fruit in the summer when it was ripe and smaller amounts during the other seasons, either dried or preserved as jam. Without long-distance shipping, year-round supplies of fruit are restricted to very small parts of the earth.

MrGonzo05

I haven't seen any health effects that would lead me to avoid dairy. I personally produce so much lactase that people can become lactose tolerant just by being in my domain.

Some people (e.g., vegans) avoid dairy for ethical reasons. Dairy cattle lead short lives, and are subjected to cruel treatment. It's because we have an idea that a gallon of milk should cost $2, not because cruelty makes the milk taste better.

Jewlz280

Dairy sources that are low in fat have been shown to help fat loss.

How about sustainable long term health?

*shrug* Go to some nursing homes or talk to people who are in their 80's and 90's and ask them what their diets were. Ask them how they have eaten pretty much all of their lives. Do it. Go. NOW. Because most of those folks will tell you they grew up eating meat -- and not just the pretties but the organs, too, like brains and liver. They will tell you they drank whole fat milk and real butter along with their veggies (and even their veggies were carrots, potatoes, green beans and maybe cabbage) and very little to no fruit. I have a large family -- something like 11 or 13 uncles and aunts on just ONE SIDE. They have ALL lived into their late 80's and most into their 90's. All grew up and continued to live and eat meat and drink dairy milk. Including my hearty Granny who lived until the age of 99. She was in a healthy weight range, active, and on NO medications. NONE. And for almost her entire life, she lived on what you would consider an unhealthy diet because it contained meat and dairy. Most of which was combined and included lots of fat and sugar! She loved to bake. Back to my point. She ate all of these things and they constructed most of my diet, too because we all literally lived right next to each other so eating together was a thing. When I gained weight, it wasn't because of meat or dairy or fat -- it was simply due to portion sizes. She never had an issue with that. We all ate the same things, but at some point, we quit paying attention to portion sizes and just flat out ate too much. Dairy isn't the problem and neither is meat. The problem is flat out the over-consumption of food in general. Even if it is 'healthy'. That and barring any medical conditions.

*Edit to add that I say nursing homes because that is the greatest concentration of older folks I can think of. Or senior living centers. Unless you're like me and live in an area where the population of retirees is high.

People didn't eat fruit back then......? :noway:

Nope. Not really! Unless you want to count maybe tomatoes. They were in a VERY rural area back in the early 1900's and even today, no 'big' towns exist in that area and you have to drive half an hour to get to a real grocery store. So no, no they did not. Not unless they grew it. And truth be told, having the money to afford to even get the seeds was touch and go. So, they mostly ate animals that they could raise (cows, chickens), and small 1 or 2 acre gardens to eat. Mostly things that could be stored easily over winter in a dry cellar or canned. Then their other large acres of items to sell such as tobacco or wheat. So no, not much time to go out and raise or find fruit. They did have some berries (as I mentioned) and some fruit like apples, but only about once a year were those items 'fresh'. The rest were canned (as mentioned) or even dried (like apples) so even if they had access to fruit, it had to be able to be shelf stable long term in some way. But the VAST majority of the year, they didn't eat them. They just weren't available. And even when my Granny worked up north in a big city, buying fruit was astronomical. That's why when you see movies from the early part of the 1900's, kids got oranges for Christmas. It was a big deal.

nainai0585

My thought on that was that it would be very cruel to keep a chimp for this purpose, because they are social animals and need to be around their own kind, and forcibly milking one would be extremely cruel (although the human who attempts this is likely to come off worse :laugh: )

Forcibly milking a social animal is cruel? Ya don't say.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn1GmYHpjiw

Propaganda. Most dairy farms are not like that.

How does the farmer get the milk when the calf is sucking it all up? ALL dairy farms take milk from the mother that she made for her kids. And i posted the video as a response the comment above it. My intent is to show that cows are social creatures, and mothers of any species don't like their baby's stolen from them. There are plenty of other videos out there that show the exact same thing, different day.

And if you actually had enough critical thinking skills to spot propaganda, you would be on my side with this one. The dairy industry has been putting pus-staches on celebrity's faces since i was a kid.

All mammals who lactate will increase milk supply within a 24 hr period if there is a demand for more. Think about twins, triplets, etc of a species, the mother will increase her milk supply (based on the amount of food she has access to) because there is an increase need for her milk. Humans do this as well.

RhineDHP

Dairy is fine if your body produces the enzyme lactase. The very recent evolution of the ability to digest dairy products in adulthood is fascinating... this trait has evolved in populations with a long history of dairy farming/herding, e.g. Europeans, Masai (in Africa)... what's most interesting is that this trait evolved at least twice, i.e. separately in both those populations, and it may be the case that it's evolved separately in other dairy/herding populations (the alternative is that gene flow between populations resulted in the trait spreading from one population to another,but it's been demonstrated in scientific studies that the European mutation and Masai mutation for digesting dairy as adults are different and arose separately).

Anyway, whether you find that kind of thing interesting or not, the ability to digest lactose is quite closely tied to ethnic origin (although it's not 100% because of gene flow and archaic genes sticking around) so if your ancestors over the last few thousand years were dairy farmers or herders, chances are you can digest dairy just fine, and there's no reason to avoid it. If your ancestors from this time period didn't have anything to do with dairy, then there's a high probability that you can't digest dairy and in that case you should avoid it. But usually people who are lactose intolerant know about it without being told this information due to getting sick when they eat dairy.

Dairy allergy is separate to lactose intolerance and while I'd love to know the evolutionary history of allergy (which is probably a defence against parasitic infection) I don't know much about it or examples of any particular populations it evolved in. But if you're allergic to milk that's another reason not to drink it.

Unfortunately there's a lot of pseudoscience against milk because both the vegan crowd and the paleo crowd hate on it. There are few things that these two groups agree on, but hatred of dairy products is one. And both groups will tell you "milk is for baby cows not for humans" they also both tend to ignore or be unaware of the fact that humans are highly adaptable in terms of diet, and the ability to digest dairy products has evolved in populations with a long enough history of dairy farming/herding.

I, personally, am from the British Isles and the Britain a history of dairy farming going back at least 5000 years; I can digest dairy just fine and will continue to consume dairy products

:drinker: @ dairy products and the lactase persistence gene






tl;dr: if dairy makes you sick don't eat/drink it, if it doesn't and you like it then eat/drink it

You. I like you. :drinker: :drinker: :drinker:

LiftAllThePizzas

My only question about dairy (and I am a huge ice cream lover) is that, at its foremost, it is food intended for a baby cow. Humans, as should come as no surprise, have nutrition requirements that are MILES away from a cow. Take a look at the constituents of bovine milk vs. human milk. It is pretty interesting. Is it the best thing to use dairy products formulated for a species so vastly different from our own? That is what makes me wonder. Of course, not when I eat my appropriate serving of Ben & Jerry's ice cream!

Edited to add: be wary when using the UDSA to evaluate meat and milk. The USDA's mission (at least one of them) is to promote our over-consumption of meat and dairy. That is why our food pyramids, for so long, has pushed meat, dairy, and cheese as particularly healthy. They are all loaded with saturated fats! There is a really good study out there about dairy, but I don't have my notes in front of me. I think it was the Nurses Heart research study or something like that. Try googling it. It is a real an eye opener about dairy.

And honey is food intended for bees. Should we avoid it then?

^^^^ this

And fruit is an elaborate ruse by plants to make animals disperse their seeds for them.



Plants and animals don't live for the purpose of being eaten. They just want to survive and breed just like all other life on this planet. Animals become adapted to different diets through eating what's available to them and then natural selection causing the ones who thrive best on the available diet to leave their genes in future generations while the others don't thrive and so don't leave their genes in the next generation.. As a result of this, pecies evolve to suit the diet available to them. Regarding dairy, humans have only very recently evolved to be able to thrive on dairy products, and this new trait has only arisen in populations who are traditionally dairy farmers (because evolution takes time, although not as much time as some people think). So, if you're from one of those populations and have inherited that genetic trait, then dairy products are just as suitable for you as any other food humans eat. Because evolution didn't stop when we got vertical foreheads and pointy chins.

BTW if anyone objects to the idea of eating organisms that don't want to be eaten, please stop at veganism (i.e. a well balanced vegan diet) and don't become a fruitarian (because it's impossible for a human to get all their required nutrition on a fruitarian diet). But like it or not, this is how it is for the entire animal kingdom... eat other organisms or parts of other organisms or die. Sorry about that.

You're forgetting the breatharians! Because eating ANYTHING is cruel. If you try hard enough you'll spontaneously generate chloroplasts and be able to produce your own food! Of course, you'll be converting light energy in to chemical energy thus leading to the furthering of entropy in the universe, which is of course selfish. Because, science.

That's just horrible!

Carbon dioxide molecules are people, too!

QuietBloom

The apple tree's intent is to plant it's seeds, i agree with that, but without interaction from frugivores, the fruit tree's seed would rarely ever make it farther than the base of the tree.

In what sense does the apple tree (or the apple) actually have an intent? More to the point, in what sense are apples "designed" to be human food and non-human milk not? At best, that's a theological argument.

They give us delicious food, and we spread their seed far and wide.

Cows give us delicious milk, and so we've domesticated and raised them all sorts of places. And one can get milk from local family farms with well-treated cows. For various reasons that matter to me (and that I don't subject others to) I do. You may think that it's inherently unethical to milk them and that it would be better for even those family farm cows not to exist, but I disagree. More significantly, that's an ethical issue, so has no place in the "is milk bad for me" discussion.

Indeed cows milk is very good for the Masai, along with cow blood. Those two rich nutrient sources is likely the reason why they are the tallest tribe in Africa.

Mangopickle

My only question about dairy (and I am a huge ice cream lover) is that, at its foremost, it is food intended for a baby cow. Humans, as should come as no surprise, have nutrition requirements that are MILES away from a cow. Take a look at the constituents of bovine milk vs. human milk. It is pretty interesting. Is it the best thing to use dairy products formulated for a species so vastly different from our own? That is what makes me wonder. Of course, not when I eat my appropriate serving of Ben & Jerry's ice cream!

Edited to add: be wary when using the UDSA to evaluate meat and milk. The USDA's mission (at least one of them) is to promote our over-consumption of meat and dairy. That is why our food pyramids, for so long, has pushed meat, dairy, and cheese as particularly healthy. They are all loaded with saturated fats! There is a really good study out there about dairy, but I don't have my notes in front of me. I think it was the Nurses Heart research study or something like that. Try googling it. It is a real an eye opener about dairy.

And honey is food intended for bees. Should we avoid it then?

Love it!! The some of the first tools man invented were used to smash the long bones of carrion so we could eat the marrow. Old school paleo. And Hominids have been scavenging for eggs forever.

Showcase_Brodown

I have good news. I have never noticed any personal drawback from consuming dairy. No intolerance or alergy that I know of. I don't think I would bother with giving it up.

Thanks for the discussion so far.

Carnivor0us

My only question about dairy (and I am a huge ice cream lover) is that, at its foremost, it is food intended for a baby cow. Humans, as should come as no surprise, have nutrition requirements that are MILES away from a cow. Take a look at the constituents of bovine milk vs. human milk. It is pretty interesting. Is it the best thing to use dairy products formulated for a species so vastly different from our own? That is what makes me wonder. Of course, not when I eat my appropriate serving of Ben & Jerry's ice cream!

Edited to add: be wary when using the UDSA to evaluate meat and milk. The USDA's mission (at least one of them) is to promote our over-consumption of meat and dairy. That is why our food pyramids, for so long, has pushed meat, dairy, and cheese as particularly healthy. They are all loaded with saturated fats! There is a really good study out there about dairy, but I don't have my notes in front of me. I think it was the Nurses Heart research study or something like that. Try googling it. It is a real an eye opener about dairy.

That's just downright logical. How dare you bring logic into a MFP forum. Be prepared, the dairy industry plants are about to try and discredit you......

You really ought to get your B-12 injections more often...

QueenBishOTUniverse

MMMMMMM, that big glass of milk after my run was awesome! Seriously, perfect balance of carbs fats and proteins for recharging my system. Lucky for me I'm not allergic and my body produces it's own lactase, so there's absolutely no good reason to avoid it.

QueenBishOTUniverse

MMMMMMM, that big glass of milk after my run was awesome! Seriously, perfect balance of carbs fats and proteins for recharging my system. Lucky for me I'm not allergic and my body produces it's own lactase, so there's absolutely no good reason to avoid it.

but dairy is a death sentence!

Funny, so far I haven't seen any ill effects. Must be slow acting, you know, more than 33 years slow acting, but I'm sure it'll kill me eventually.

Natmarie73

Well I'm of Dutch heritage, so evolutionwise if I don't have dairy I'll probably die.

Like others have said, if it doesn't make you sick, and you like it and don't have any ethical issues then by all means have dairy. Full cream milk is only 4% fat. If you are allergic to milk, or lactose intolerant you can still drink goats milk as it doesn't have the same enzymes in it, but tastes much less sweet of course. Yoghurt is supposed to be good for people with intolerances due to the bacteria breaking down the lactose.

I have found the information in this thread to be absolutely fascinating though and didn't realise how much our diets have changed even in the past 100 years.

craftywitch_63

My only question about dairy (and I am a huge ice cream lover) is that, at its foremost, it is food intended for a baby cow. Humans, as should come as no surprise, have nutrition requirements that are MILES away from a cow. Take a look at the constituents of bovine milk vs. human milk. It is pretty interesting. Is it the best thing to use dairy products formulated for a species so vastly different from our own? That is what makes me wonder. Of course, not when I eat my appropriate serving of Ben & Jerry's ice cream!

Edited to add: be wary when using the UDSA to evaluate meat and milk. The USDA's mission (at least one of them) is to promote our over-consumption of meat and dairy. That is why our food pyramids, for so long, has pushed meat, dairy, and cheese as particularly healthy. They are all loaded with saturated fats! There is a really good study out there about dairy, but I don't have my notes in front of me. I think it was the Nurses Heart research study or something like that. Try googling it. It is a real an eye opener about dairy.

And honey is food intended for bees. Should we avoid it then?

^^^^ this

And fruit is an elaborate ruse by plants to make animals disperse their seeds for them.



Plants and animals don't live for the purpose of being eaten. They just want to survive and breed just like all other life on this planet. Animals become adapted to different diets through eating what's available to them and then natural selection causing the ones who thrive best on the available diet to leave their genes in future generations while the others don't thrive and so don't leave their genes in the next generation.. As a result of this, pecies evolve to suit the diet available to them. Regarding dairy, humans have only very recently evolved to be able to thrive on dairy products, and this new trait has only arisen in populations who are traditionally dairy farmers (because evolution takes time, although not as much time as some people think). So, if you're from one of those populations and have inherited that genetic trait, then dairy products are just as suitable for you as any other food humans eat. Because evolution didn't stop when we got vertical foreheads and pointy chins.

BTW if anyone objects to the idea of eating organisms that don't want to be eaten, please stop at veganism (i.e. a well balanced vegan diet) and don't become a fruitarian (because it's impossible for a human to get all their required nutrition on a fruitarian diet). But like it or not, this is how it is for the entire animal kingdom... eat other organisms or parts of other organisms or die. Sorry about that.

You're forgetting the breatharians! Because eating ANYTHING is cruel. If you try hard enough you'll spontaneously generate chloroplasts and be able to produce your own food! Of course, you'll be converting light energy in to chemical energy thus leading to the furthering of entropy in the universe, which is of course selfish. Because, science.

That's just horrible!

Carbon dioxide molecules are people, too!

Please don't tell the Breatharians this because I don't want to mop up after their heads explode, but everytime a person breathes in, bacteria, mold, all kinds of living crap is sucked in. If the immune system is working the way it should, our white blood cells then kills the unwitting little invaders. :huh: