5 ms·

I've seen a bunch of sides of it in the US. In the midwest where I grew up parts of my family required children to drink a glass of milk because the milk-indust

I've seen a bunch of sides of it in the US. In the midwest where I grew up parts of my family required children to drink a glass of milk because the milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true. But we didn't have the internet yet, so how do you fact check it? The TV said so. I do see fewer people interested in milk as you go younger here, I think that once it was more broadly understood that milk is marginal the pressure to drink it was gone but there was still some cultural kind of urban legend nonsense that is really hard to get rid of in a society that doesn't trust experts. Which I can't blame anyone for if we're talking about nutritional experts because anyone alive for more than twenty years has seen them flip their opinion on at least a quarter of food types. It is notable that in that part of my family, half the kids ended up lactose intolerant and still are frustrated about their parents for making them sick all the time as kids by requiring them to drink something they didn't want to drink anyway. I liked chocolate milk because who doesn't, but after someone for the first time pointed out that it's kinda weird for humans to drink milk intended for calves (maybe I was 13 or 14?) I pretty much just stopped drinking it because it just wasn't that good anyway and now I had an excuse. My brother and mother are both lactose intolerant, it turns out. I think a lot of people have felt low grade sick their entire lives in the US because they've never gone for long enough without dairy to notice.

klipt 6y ago
Lactose intolerance is actually the original state for (adult) humans, while lactase persistence is an evolved adaption in cultures that drink a lot of unfermented dairy. Which kind of proves that dairy is a significant enough part of many cultures' diet that it caused an evolutionary change! But these days you can buy lactase very cheaply in pill form, so really anyone can "have" the adaptation. And many cultures with genetic lactose intolerance still consume a lot of fermented dairy.
yomly 6y ago
>I liked chocolate milk because who doesn't, but after someone for the first time pointed out that it's kinda weird for humans to drink milk intended for calves (maybe I was 13 or 14?) I pretty much just stopped drinking it because it just wasn't that good anyway and now I had an excuse. My brother and mother are both lactose intolerant, it turns out. Is it weird? Weird is completely abstract. Is eating the female component of a chickens reproductive output (aka an egg) weird? Is it weird to harvest oats and then harvest/extract enzymes, digest oats and mix them with processed rapeseed oil so we can avoid drinking cows milk? At least if you drink -freshly- pasteurised cows milk you know there are fewer moving parts in the process of getting ingredient into your system. Food wise everything is weird when you look at it under the right setting. Tofu is like the cheese of a soybean. Burgers are random bits of animal ground up flattened and fried. Mushrooms and fungi are weird almost alien growths. Fish are weird and slimy. Prawns are almost like giant insects from the sea. When I think about attitudes towards food, I find it weirder that when we eat pork but are happy to throw away all the offal, cheeks, neck, knuckle, ears, ribs(!!!) and just keep the chops and some back for bacon because it is "weird" to eat all those other bits. Or with a chicken we eat just the breast and dump the rest. And look at Chinese people as weird for eating chickens feet. At least they don't waste the animals they eat!
- neltnerb 6y ago
  It's like I said, it was an excuse to avoid drinking something I didn't like that much anyway. Yes, weird will always be subjective, thanks for clearing that up.
  - yomly 6y ago
    Fair enough. It wasn't meant as an attack - I get frustrated how arbitrary and social people's attitudes are with food. The same people that consider mouldy Roquefort to be delicious might consider durian a sin against humanity with little appreciation of the hypocrisy at play.
- pxtail 6y ago
  > When I think about attitudes towards food, I find it weirder that when we eat pork but are happy to throw away all the offal, cheeks, neck, knuckle, ears, ribs Recently on a different discussion board some guy mentioned that he wanted to thaw the fish and left it on a counter instead of in the fridge - after some time he noticed that apparently a fly left eggs on small part of it, after he saw that he threw it into trash. There were various reposnses from "ewwww, you did it right!" to "it was perfectly fine to cook" One of the responses which I remembered was: "you just wasted life and death of this fish" These are very simple words and seemingly obvious but it caught me by surprise a bit and I noticed that not always I'm thinking about my food like this. In a world where food can be highly processed, where a fish, chicken, pig can no longer resemble living creature but just some meaty pieces it's easy (and comfortable!) to skip, ignore the part that it was living being. I played a bit with this thought in my mind and went into procrastination area - is it "fair" to use life and death of multiple animals and plants to sustain, propel myself and then do nothing productive with this energy?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tom_mellior 6y ago
> milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true. You seem to be saying that the human body cannot make productive use of the calcium from cow's milk. Do you have a source for this?
jve 6y ago
> because the milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true. Care to provide some proofs? I live in a post-soviet country and from stories I heard regarding USSR, even adults in factories received milk (for free) daily.

klipt 6y ago

Lactose intolerance is actually the original state for (adult) humans, while lactase persistence is an evolved adaption in cultures that drink a lot of unfermented dairy. Which kind of proves that dairy is a significant enough part of many cultures' diet that it caused an evolutionary change! But these days you can buy lactase very cheaply in pill form, so really anyone can "have" the adaptation. And many cultures with genetic lactose intolerance still consume a lot of fermented dairy.

yomly 6y ago

>I liked chocolate milk because who doesn't, but after someone for the first time pointed out that it's kinda weird for humans to drink milk intended for calves (maybe I was 13 or 14?) I pretty much just stopped drinking it because it just wasn't that good anyway and now I had an excuse. My brother and mother are both lactose intolerant, it turns out. Is it weird? Weird is completely abstract. Is eating the female component of a chickens reproductive output (aka an egg) weird? Is it weird to harvest oats and then harvest/extract enzymes, digest oats and mix them with processed rapeseed oil so we can avoid drinking cows milk? At least if you drink -freshly- pasteurised cows milk you know there are fewer moving parts in the process of getting ingredient into your system. Food wise everything is weird when you look at it under the right setting. Tofu is like the cheese of a soybean. Burgers are random bits of animal ground up flattened and fried. Mushrooms and fungi are weird almost alien growths. Fish are weird and slimy. Prawns are almost like giant insects from the sea. When I think about attitudes towards food, I find it weirder that when we eat pork but are happy to throw away all the offal, cheeks, neck, knuckle, ears, ribs(!!!) and just keep the chops and some back for bacon because it is "weird" to eat all those other bits. Or with a chicken we eat just the breast and dump the rest. And look at Chinese people as weird for eating chickens feet. At least they don't waste the animals they eat!

neltnerb 6y ago
It's like I said, it was an excuse to avoid drinking something I didn't like that much anyway. Yes, weird will always be subjective, thanks for clearing that up.
- yomly 6y ago
  Fair enough. It wasn't meant as an attack - I get frustrated how arbitrary and social people's attitudes are with food. The same people that consider mouldy Roquefort to be delicious might consider durian a sin against humanity with little appreciation of the hypocrisy at play.
pxtail 6y ago
> When I think about attitudes towards food, I find it weirder that when we eat pork but are happy to throw away all the offal, cheeks, neck, knuckle, ears, ribs Recently on a different discussion board some guy mentioned that he wanted to thaw the fish and left it on a counter instead of in the fridge - after some time he noticed that apparently a fly left eggs on small part of it, after he saw that he threw it into trash. There were various reposnses from "ewwww, you did it right!" to "it was perfectly fine to cook" One of the responses which I remembered was: "you just wasted life and death of this fish" These are very simple words and seemingly obvious but it caught me by surprise a bit and I noticed that not always I'm thinking about my food like this. In a world where food can be highly processed, where a fish, chicken, pig can no longer resemble living creature but just some meaty pieces it's easy (and comfortable!) to skip, ignore the part that it was living being. I played a bit with this thought in my mind and went into procrastination area - is it "fair" to use life and death of multiple animals and plants to sustain, propel myself and then do nothing productive with this energy?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tom_mellior 6y ago

> milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true. You seem to be saying that the human body cannot make productive use of the calcium from cow's milk. Do you have a source for this?

jve 6y ago

> because the milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true. Care to provide some proofs? I live in a post-soviet country and from stories I heard regarding USSR, even adults in factories received milk (for free) daily.