I feel conflicted

Lazar · I feel conflicted

Let me preface this by saying that I've always been a consumer of dairy products. I've never actually been fond of milk as a beverage, but I often have food that includes cheese or some other dairy product as an ingredient. In primary school we were bombarded with milk - there always seemed to be huge boxes of it lying about in the cafeteria - and I dutifully drank the stuff every day. At home as well, until I was maybe 14 or so, my parents encouraged me to drink milk on a daily basis. I wasn't incredibly fond of it, but I was sure that it would help me build stronger bones, so I accepted it. Nowadays, I've basically abandoned both milk and soda, and I almost exclusively drink tea products.

Anyway, I have a friend who's lactose intolerant, and I became somewhat interested in this strange condition. To my surprise, I read that most Africans and Asians are, to some extent, lactose intolerant. How could this be? In fact, it was only in Europe and some other areas that it became the norm for people to retain lactase enzymes past infancy. And as I investigated this issue, I started to think that perhaps dairy consumption was a strange thing. I mean, no other mammal consumes milk after infancy. How could milk be so crucial to our health, as the government and food companies tell us, if most humans and all other mammals are lactose intolerant?

And then - yesterday - came an even bigger surprise. Not only is milk completely useless in fighting osteoporosis, but in fact it may contribute to osteoporosis. I came across several articles (like this one, this one and this one) which point out that the high-acid proteins in milk and other animal products actually remove more calcium from our bones than they add. For all the propaganda put out by the government and the dairy industry, they don't have a shred of evidence to support their contention. Several reputable studies have shown that rates of osteoporosis and bone fracture increase with dairy consumption. Humans can lead perfectly healthy lives getting most of their calcium from leafy green plants and other non-animal sources. As one website asked, where do you think cows get their calcium?

As strange as this seemed to me at first glance, it really seems to make sense. Why are the countries with the highest rates of osteoporosis (like the US, Britain, Sweden and Finland) are also the countries with the highest dairy consumption? Is it any coincidence that people of European descent - who, as we're constantly reminded by drug ads over here, are at the greatest risk of osteoporosis - also have the lowest rates of lactose intolerance?

My problem is that the pro-milk message has been relentlessly pushed by the government. I'm aware that some of the anti-milk sources on the Internet verge a bit toward the nutty side, but at the same time I couldn't find anything to back up the government's position. (Trust me, I wanted to!) Could we really have been lied to on such a massive scale, and in such total disregard of the evidence?

This all coincides with a crisis of conscience that I've been feeling about factory farming in general. Last year, in high school, one socially conscious religion class showed all of us The Meatrix, a silly but disconcerting cartoon about modern agribusiness. Even the most cursory research into factory farming will show you that animals are kept in deplorable conditions, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and exploited for every ounce of milk and meat that they can produce.

I've asked myself, how can we reconcile the concern and affection that we show for our pets (like my cat, who I love very much) with a complete lack of concern for the billions of animals that are tormented for the sake of food production? Like most Europeans and North Americans, I think that that the eating of cats and dogs is reprehensible, but is it any less reprehensible to eat a pig - itself capable of providing companionship as a pet, and noted for both its intelligence and its remarkable anatomical similarity to humans? So I'll admit it: in some of my more idealistic moments, I've flirted with the idea of veganism.

I've always thought of veganism as a dirty word, and I've tended to perceive PETA and their ilk as whiny extremists (although sometimes they do have their own sort of appeal). One big problem is that there's a lot of animal-derived food that I really enjoy. I love Indian food, and in my opinion, three of the greatest things in the universe are tandoori chicken, chicken tikka masala, and naan bread (which really ought to include yogurt). My favorite breakfast is a bagel sandwich that they make at a shop here in Worcester, which includes turkey and honey mustard. (Yes, even bees have their sad story! But then again, even some vegans think that this concern for bees is going too far.)

But then of course, there's the environmental argument, which appeals to me on utilitarian grounds. The fact is that meat, as a food source, is highly inefficient. Instead of feeding our crops to livestock in order to produce meat, eggs, and milk, we could feed many more people by eating the crops directly and foregoing the animals! (Note that in the wild, predators must be vastly outnumbered by their prey if they are to survive.) In reality, you could do much more to help the environment by switching to a vegan diet than by switching to a hybrid car. Many people have criticized Al Gore for completely ignoring this fact.

But still I'm not sure. Should I view this business as a question of kind (veganism versus non-veganism) or as a question of degree (moderation versus excess)? Could we fight osteoporosis by reducing our dairy consumption to the levels found in traditional Italian and Indian cooking? Could we fight animal cruelty by decreasing - not eliminating - our consumption of animal products and by supporting small ethical farms, as suggested by The Meatrix? Surely, the environmental problem would be much less than it is today if we humans had exercised a little reproductive restraint, instead of adding 700 million people per decade as we did.

Then there's my cat. Cats are naturally carnivorous - much more so than dogs - so could I really provide him with a healthy vegan diet? PETA says I can, but I'm skeptical. I certainly wouldn't want to jeopardize his health by making him a guinea pig for my sociopolitical views. And the fact of the matter is, animals treat each other with amoral brutality in nature. My cute little kitty, if he lived in the wild, would be tearing the throats out of cute little birdies and mousies, and his larger cousins would look with voracity upon those tasty pigs that I was waxing poetic about.

Basically, I suppose that the keeping of farm animals for food wouldn't be so bad if they were kept in comfortable conditions, if they were fed a healthy diet free of antibiotics and hormones, if they were killed humanely, and if they were less numerous (in other words, less cramped, and less damaging to the environment).

Humans certainly didn't evolve as exclusive vegetarians: it was the consumption of meat that enabled us to reduce the size of our jaw and our gut and devote more energy to brain development. If we had been exlusively vegetarian, we might have ended up looking more like gorillas. (Unless I'm mistaken and that's all pro-carnivore propaganda.) At the same time, I think that the modern American and British diets have gone too far with the consumption of animal products - I think they should be a supplement to a basically plant-based diet, rather than comprising the bulk of our food.

So anyway, this post is ridiculously long, and now I don't even know what the point of it is. I still feel morally and practically conflicted. I suppose, if there is a point, it's that too many people buy into the nonsense that they're fed by government and industry, too many people are complacent with the deplorable and unsustainable way the world works, and that...um...we're all screwed. But I'm 18 years old - I'm supposed to feel this way! Anyway, feel free to post your thoughts on anything even vaguely related to what I just wrote.

Deborah

I have so much to say on this subject, but I'm at work and don't have time to respond much now. Yeah, factory farming (including milk production) is horrible. Cats may be able to thrive on a well-planned vegan diet, but actually getting them to eat it is another matter.

More later tonight, I hope.

Porthos

I'm in the same predicament as you! I often wonder if I should drink milk to try to increase my growth and bone density potential, or if I should not drink it, being that I'm of 50% Southern European descent, and could very well be lactose intolerant. Studies in women show that dairy consumption is linked to an increase in acne, and through my own trial and error, I have seen (although it could be a coincedence), that my own acne is increased. I have a very mild acne vulgaris which most teenagers have, where under normal conditions, I get about one pimple every two weeks. But sometimes I'll get 3-5 pimples a week when I drink a lot of milk.

Not only are Europeans one of the only people who can digest lactose, but specificially northern Europeans, with over 90% of southern Europeans lacking the gene required to produce the lactase enyzme past the age of 5.* So unless your ancestors were predominantly from northern Europe, you have approximately a 9/10 chance of being lactose intolerant.

*It's interesting to note that the body seems to intend for us to absorb mother's milk until around the age of 5. This was also the time that the Hebrews in Bibical times weened their children.

Then I asked myself, if this were the case, then why don't nearly all the black, Asian, and indigenous American people I know have lactose intolerance? The answer is that in most cases, there are no visible signs of lactose intolerance. Most people who are lactose intolerant aren't even aware of it! Only some people experience noticeable symptoms like gas or bloating. Only they cannot absorb the nutrients derived from dairy, and their digestive system is actually strained because it lacks the capacity to digest what is being put in it.

Benjamin [inactive]

My parents are vegetarians, and I was brought up as a vegetarian until I was about 7, when I decided to start eating meet. I think I really should become a vegetarian again though, because I find the idea of eating meat horrible when I actually think about it.

Meat is expensive anyway, and since I'm going to be very poor from September onwards, I'll probably just end up essentially being a vegetarian.

I think the idea of drinking milk is horrible as well, but I don't really think about what it actually is most of the time — that is, something which has been squeezed out of a cow's udder. I don't deliberately drink milk either, except on breakfast cereal (although I've been eating Scottish-style porridge recently, which is made with water and salt), and when people accidently put it in my tea.

Joanne

Damn, that was a long post! Sorry, I don't have time to address all the points you brought up, but I thought I'd add a bit.

The thing about calcium is that the human body doesn't absorb calcium well at all. It doesn't matter if you consume 4000 mg of calcium every day, the absolute most the adult human body will absorb is 1200 mg, and the normal range of absorption is 700 to 1200mg. The only time the body uses more than that range is during childhood, and especially during adolescence, when skeleton growth is extremely quick. The problem of course, is that ten year old kids want to drink soda, and eat day-glo cereal for breakfast and neon-colored sugar for lunch, while feeding their Brussels sprouts to the dog.... hardly conducive to calcium absorption. And that's about it.You only get nineteen-ish years to *really* build bone density, and the bones you have at the end of that prolonged growth spurt are the ones you're stuck with the rest of your life. Those medicine ads for stuff like CalTrate and other calcium supplements for adults, are misleading, unfortunately. They don't do much in the way of preventing osteoporosis.

Joanne

Pauline

I don't like to drink milk at all, but it's nice in hot chocolate and I like yoghourts and custard. The taste of milk is yucky, but I havn't an allergy or lactose intolerance.

I've learned in yoga that the best thing for get good bones and fighting osteoporosis is resistance. For example when you are on your hands with your feet in the air/ balanced on the wall. This is good for your arm's bone density/stregnth.

People love their cats, dogs, horses etc but they don't care about those chickens, pigs, cows etc who live horror then are killed. I think it's because it's not visible, so they don't think about it. It's truly terrible, sad and horrible.

My family isn't vegetarian, but my mother buys eggs of chickens who have lived okay, and butter from the dairy what get the milk in this region where the cows live in the fields. In Belgium, there's not much opportunity to find meat of animals who lived in acceptable circonstances, unfortunatly. I think here, that most of people don't care sufficiently about those poor animals. Also there are some stpid animals prisons (zoos) but I don't visit them.

I don't eat often meat, about one or two times in a week. I eat much more fish. I would like to avoid to eat meat but I think that it's healthy to eat some. it would be wonderful if the humans wouold respect the animals and not be so cruel, but economic profit is more important for them.

It's interesting about the lactose intolerance gene. How about the blood groups? I've heard that some people believe that the blood groups have developped parallel with the changes in the diet. The oldest one is O, then A, B and very recently is AB duirng the last 1.000 of years. My blood's AB.

Joanne

Uriel

I absolutely LOVE milk, in all its many forms. Plain, as cheese, as yogurt, as ice cream, in desserts, out of a glass, you name it. I can drink half and half straight -- you can sometimes find me tearing open the coffee creamers and gulping down the contents! And don't let me near whipping cream....

Most animals are lactose intolerant once they're weaned -- they simply lose the enzyme for digesting it, since they won't be needing it anymore. People are no different -- except for the groups who took up herding, and adapted themselves biologically to this renewable food source. Sheep, goats, cattle, reindeer, and horses have all been milked across Europe, Asia, and Africa for thousands of years, and so lots of peoples have managed to retain that enzyme into adulthood. It is sort of an anomaly, but if you can digest it, it's certainly just a good a source of nutrition as any other food. It's actually a triumph of evolution to be able to take advantage of a resource like that -- sort of like Eskimos being able to tolerate vitamin A levels that would kill most other people, simply because they have had to use carnivore livers as a common food (carnivores concentrate vitamin A there). So there's nothing "wrong" with milk.

It WAS weird living in a generally dairy-free country like Japan -- milk was treated sort of like a treat or a novelty. They had milk candy, and canned tea with milk, but other than that you didn't see it much. But the Nepalese milk their yak, and kumiss (fermented mares' milk) was widespread at one time among nomadic horse-herding tribes in Asia.

Hate to break this to you, but cats are not only carnivores, they are what's called obligate carnivores -- they really require high protein levels to survive. Dogs are omnivores like us. I would look askance at any claims that cats can go vegan and stay healthy. I would also question the point of trying to impose somebody else's moral issues on an animal built to kill and eat meat. I think your cat would have something to say about that, too!

Lazar

Don't worry, I've always been skeptical of those vegan cat claims.

On the dairy issue, I think the most balanced analysis that I've seen so far is from The Guardian (here and here), which comes to the conclusion that neither side is completely right. Milk has some benefits and some drawbacks, and we should probably consume less of it. I think I'm inclined to agree with Dr. Lobstein's vision of agriculture in the second article.

Liz

I also like milk very much but it isn't healthy at all. As milk is suitable for babies (human beings and animals -- but only mother's milk, not cow's milk for babies and breast milk for calves), it isn't for us, adult human beings. Although it contains considerable amount of calcium, it won't infiltrate into your bones but it deposits on your bones and in your tissues instead. I wouldn't go so far to claim that drinking milk directly contributes to osteoporosis. However, it is an indisputable fact that it is no surefire way of preventing osteoporosis. No matter how much milk you drink, you might as well end up suffering from osteoporosis. Besides, it's extremely difficult for us to digest milk (kefir and yoghurt are easy to digest and quite healthy, though). Europeans can cope with it somehow, but there are certain peoples who can easily be killed by making them drink milk (Arabs, for instance). Of course, it doesn't mean that drinking milk is inherently harmful to your health -- you just shouldn't overindulge in it.

As for cats going vegan, it's the most egregious nonsense I've ever heard in my entire life. Sadly enough, it's quite a prevalent misconception among some vegans. There is an actress, for example, who is vegetarian and makes her cats and dogs vegetarian, too. Lots of people do this -- she isn't the only one. The only snag is that our organism is "subtly" different from that of cats and dogs. They are carnivores, therefore they need meat to survive whereas we are omnivores, which means that our organism and teeth are "designed" the way that we can eat practically everything, including fish, seafood or -- heaven forbid -- insects (But who has the guts in Europe to eat insects? -- it's a culturally specific thing again), but our gastric acid isn't so strong to digest e.g. pork, calf and suchlike. Of course you can eat those things happily until the day you kick the bucket without getting some kind of a serious illness if you don't eat too much of them. So, acting like carnivores is tantamount to cats going vegan, with a slight exaggeration.

PS: Like Benjamin, I was born and raised as a vegetarian. My family is vegetarian, but not to the extreme. We eat everything except for meat. Our vegetarianism has got nothing to do with health or issues like that, it's just a question of "we prefer animals alive to dead ones". However, me and my dad eat fish or seafood sometimes. To be perfectly honest, even though I feel the same way, too, I'm not as conscious a vegetarian as my mother. I eat some meet when I feel like or when there's nothing better around, but I strongly prefer not to eat meat, and that's fine by me. Besides, I find the idea of going vegetarian in the hope of becoming healthier or losing weight slightly odd. I know lots of meat-eaters who pursue a much healthier life than some vegetarian acquintances of mine.That said, our cats and dogs eat meat because they need it. Humans are free to decide to eat or not to eat meat, but it is much more difficult to be healthy without eating meat because you have to make up for the "lost" vitamines by eating other things that contain the vitamines which are in the meat. And it's a bit cumbersome to design the menu that way.

By the way, Uriel, I hate to break it to you but I wouldn't say that dogs are omnivores exactly the same way humans are. We can't digest bones and it's way harder for us to digest meat -- our gastric acid isn't that strong.

Liz

Another issue: I've noticed that you used the word "vegan" a couple of times in your posts. (So did I.) Please enlighten an ignorant non-native English speaker (i.e me) on the exact meaning of this word. What's the difference between vegans and vegetarians, if there's any? I deliberately defined my family and myself in terms of being a "vegetarian" rather than a "vegan" as I vaguely feel some kind of negative connotation in connection with "vegan", that is, implying the meaning of "raw diet vegetarian in extremis", who don't eat anything loosely connected with animals, like dairy products. Am I right in thinking so or it's just my bad non-native speaker's intuition again?

I'm playing around with the expression "non-native speaker" all the time for the simple reason that we don't make a distinction between the two in my mother tongue. To be more precise, we have only one word to denote human herbivores, i.e. vegetarian (vegetáriánus) and we group them as semi-vegetarians (who eat fish), ovo-lacto vegetarians (who eat eggs and diary products), lacto vegetarians (who eat diary products) and raw-diet vegetarians (who don't eat eggs, diary products and eat almost everything raw).

Pauline

Loic

Lazar, that was a very refreshing piece of news. I actually drink a lot of milk when I was young, but nowadays I only drink milk when I am consuming tea.

One question: if animals develop lactose intolerance after being weaned, why do we put down saucers of milk for our cats to lap at?

I sometimes make condensed milk that is tooth-rottingly sweet for my cousin's dog to drink. I hope that dog would not have a toothache.

Benjamin [inactive]

Liz

Lazar

I've read that some cats can enjoy and tolerate small amounts of milk despite being lactose intolerant. They also have some lactose-free milk products for cats.

Liz

Deborah

The way "vegan" is used in the US, it has nothing to do with whether or not you cook your food; it just means that you don't eat animal products. I was a vegan for several years after reading a book about factory farming. I'd never known about such things before.

Deborah

Liz

Lazar

Uriel

Flamepoint or lynxpoint, Lazar? I really like flamepoints.

A dog's nutritional needs are actually very similar to a human's, Liz. That's why if you were homeless, you would do well to eat dog food -- it would be pretty nutritionally balanced for you. They are excellent hunters, but they also like plants -- corn, watermelon, grass, bread, etc. In the wild, they hunt and scavenge, and eat a wide variety of foods.

And as far as I know, dogs cannot digest bone. They can chew it up, but it passes through their gut. Perhaps some of it gets digested on the way, since it's in such small pieces, but that's no different than people eating bonemeal supplements or taking shark cartilage. My pit bull eats plastic, electrical cord, and anything else that she can get her mouth around -- and I find out later, when I'm scooping her poop up!

Likewise, when my snake eats mice, he may eat them whole, but he shits out whatever he couldn't digest. Owls, too, usually eliminate the bones and fur of their prey.

Loic, feeding cats and dogs milk is not a great idea, and when I was a vet tech we were always advising people that that is only going to add to your pet's gastric disturbances. It may taste good to them, but it does them wrong later! I had a boyfriend who was lactose intolerant, but loved fettucine alfredo. After dinner, he would spend a long, long time repenting in the bathroom....

Lazar

Liz

Uriel

What a pretty cat that must be, Lazar! I like pointed cats.

I (or rather, my roommate) actually have two snakes, Liz -- an albino California king snake:

and another one that I think is a ball python.

We used to also have a bull snake that managed to get into the house and scared my poor roommate in the shower, but after a few months he let it go back into the wild.

Liz

Benjamin [inactive]

I thought I'd bring this thread back up again...

I've actually been thinking again recently about the issue of vegetarianism and veganism. This is partly because quite a number of the people I've got to know since moving to Scotland are vegans, and because one of the university societies I'm part of puts on fair-trade organic vegan lunches every Friday. I feel as though I should become a vegan, primarily because of factory-farming and the damage it does to the environment. But on the other hand, I'm worried that it could be rather awkward, and that I'd miss certain foods.

I think I've sort of decided that I'm going to be a flexitarian (a new word which has become vaguely popular in the United States recently), at least for the time being. In practice, this means that I would eat a vegan diet most of the time, but would consume animal products (including meat) very occasionally, and preferably only if it has come from locally reared animals in pleasant environments. Basically, the object of this would be to dramatically reduce my consumption of animal products for environmental reasons and in opposition to factory-farming — I don't really think it's absolutely necessary to take an 'all or nothing' approach to this issue.

Deborah

I think flexitarianism is an excellent step to take, Benjamin. Factory farming is a horror that needs to be abolished. And, as you said, the environment would be better off for it, as well.

Benjamin [inactive]

The other environmental dilemma I've just thought of though is that is that things like soya beans, lentils and chickpeas cannot be produced locally, meaning that their transport produces a lot of carbon emissions. On the other hand, when I buy cows milk here, it's been produces at dairy farms in Fife and Tayside, meaning that it's only had to travel a few kilometres. It's the same as the question I was thinking about the other day — is it more environmentally friendly (for someone in Scotland) to buy organic wine from Australia or non-organic wine from France?

I'm probably thinking about the issue to much. But I do find it interesting how in Tesco here, the regular honey is produced literally just down the road, whilst the special 'fair-trade' honey is produced in Angola. I know many people who'd probably think that they were being more ethical by buying the fair-trade honey, but in this case they probably wouldn't, in my view.

Deborah

Sigh...there are just so many factors to weigh against each other. I'm also a firm believer in buying locally. I guess we just have to sniff out the local, fair trade, organic farms.

Porthos

Benjamin [inactive]

Deborah

Here's a video called Meet Your Meat, made from undercover footage showing common practices in factory farms. Warning: it's shocking and horribly sad. When I saw the sections about the slaughtering of the animals, it made me think that the ballot initiative I'm gathering signatures for (banning the use of veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages in my state) is just a drop in the bucket. And I've met a number of people who signed the petition who were almost reluctant to, because so much more needs to be done. Still, living in overcrowded conditions where you can actually walk around must be better than being kept almost immobilized for most of your life.

(BTW, these crates and cages have been banned in the EU, though farms have until, I belive, 2013 to comply.)

Geoff

Would consuming A2 milk make a difference rather than consuming the traditional A1 milk?

Geoff

Check the internet to find out what A2 milk is.

Deborah

Uriel

My half-sister has just become a vegetarian, as of the beginning of the year. And she's still at it, even though she initially did it just for a school newspaper article. She's heavy into environmentalism. My mother will never give up meat, thank god (or I won't be coming for Christmas anymore!), but she has tried to accomodate my half-sister somewhat in support, and so she is now a flexiterian (meaning she eats meat whenever she gets to eat on her own.) But the upshot is that my half-sister is finally learning to cook, because there are some lengths my mom just won't go to to avoid meat!

My half-sister DID reveal that she still occasionally indulges in seafood (because fish are plants, right?

), and I had to chastise her. If you're going to do it, and be smug about it to boot, you might as well go whole hog and do it right (no pun intended).

Factory farming is a horror that should never be inflicted on any animal, and even hardcore carnivores like myself should be dead set against it, as not only is a life of misery for the animals, but the quality of the meat is adversely affected as well. I much prefer the sustainable farming practices of many small indepoendent farmers who pasture-raise their livestock, rotate their fields, integrate both their livestock and crops (using the manure as fertizer for the fields, rotating both crops and animals to give the land the benefit of both, feeding their animals real, natural food in a normal environment rather than loading them up with strange supplements and hormones and antibiotics to offset the poor quality of a crowded factory environment. As one farmer said, "My goal is to give them a good life, with only one bad day."

While I was in Idaho this week, I saw footage on TV of a local scandal wherein a slaughterhouse had used forklifts to push live but downer cows into the chutes -- disgraceful and cruel, as well as being against FDA regulations (downer animals -- ones too stick to stand on their own feet -- may not be slaughtered for consumption, due to the risk of diseased meat). Thousands of pounds of meat originating from that slaughterhouse had to be pulled from area school cafeterias. I hope both the FDA and the ASPCA go after those owners.

Deborah