A Debate On Dairy

[analogZero]

Today was like many other days, I was making cookies. Stirring my butter up I started to think that dairy products in general are kinda gross. An entire food group dedicated to the consumption of liquids from the breasts of other animals. It seems a little wierd.
Now I'm a vegetarian, but not a vegan. Vegan's I know tend to take dairy to heart as one of the most disgusting food stuffs consumed by human beings, and have a good number of arguments to offer you should you ask (or in the case of dickheaded vegans, not ask at all).
There's even handfuls of people who'll argue that dairy products aren't in sync with the human digestive system. That we're not meant to be consuming them at all.
Then there's the dairy industry, and well, you can probably figure out where they stand on the issue.

My question is, what's your stance on dairy products? Do you just drink it because mom said it's good for you? Do you adhere to the recommended daily intake? Have you stopped to wonder there might be something odd about it? Do you avoid them at all costs? Do you avoid only certain ones (like chocolate milk...don't get me started on how gross that stuff is)? Do you have any discrepancies toward raw milk (unpasteurized)?

here's a couple links that argue dairy products, in case you want to hear what the learned/suspicious/nutjobs have to say about their effects. Do the potential benefits outweigh any potential side effects?

http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3737
http://www.celestialhealing.net/milkpage.htm
http://www.nationaldairycouncil.org/...d75-3Page1.htm

[Mugen]

I love milk, LOVE it. I probably have ice cold milk every morning. One glass on its own, LOVE IT! I don't know how you could find it remotely disgusting, it's good for you, tastes good and to hell with the cows.

[Waste]

Dairy products are quite amazing. I love milk, it makes my tea. xD Cheese is just... essential to life. (My life anyway)

My view on things like this is that if it tastes good and doesn't harm you then who gives a damn where it comes from? I think I'd eat anything if it tasted nice and wasn't going to hurt me.

[Koopaking]

Hmm well I like milk, I like yogurt, I like cheese, I like eggs... I've realized some time ago how these products were made and where they come from. I think the concept of eggs is the worst one, I mean we are taking a chicken's unfertilized egg and eating it which would the human equivalent of taking a woman's egg she bleeds out during her period and eating it for breakfast. Yum.

As for the health aspect of it, I really think I ought to start thinking about that. For my entire life I have eaten whatever I wanted to eat, I give absolutely no regard whatsoever to calorie, sugar, sodium intake. And luckily I've managed to stay very skinny. How long this will go on for, I've not a clue so I suppose I ought to try start considering it.

Fact is most of the foods we eat do have a morbid or odd nature to them (like those eggs up there). I would really like to know how the consumption of dairy products came to be... Was there a lonely cattle farmer who one day decided to breast feed from his cow and realized he was on to something?

But honestly I'll eat anything granted it tastes good to me.

[spirit]

Ooo. This topic is huuuge. A couple years ago I went to a dietitian (note a dietitian is not the same as a nutritionist). Anyway, I wanted to reconstruct my nutrition system. And if anyone thinks it is something easy to do then they are mistaken. It is easier to quit smoking rather than completely rewrite one's eating habits. It is a very complex, profound and time-taking process. Now, I am neither a vegetarian nor a vegan. I also doubt I would ever become either one. However, the process of reconstructing my inner "economy" was sort of nerve-racking and at times physically painful. I could compare it to a heroin addict who suffers from the drug's starvation. The thing was, I was told to stop consuming all of the food and products I used to eat every single day. I mean, I had to quit all of the habits and addictions I have developed throughout my entire life!!!
Reason being, my body did not need it. Unwittingly, most of people, including myself, treat their bodies like a garbage can.
However, the food I learned to eat was.... boring, tasteless (it tasted like cardboard -___-") it was dry, it was not any juicy... it was very monotonous. I was not even allowed to eat any fruits because fruits contain sugar. Vegetables are fine but in small portions. On the other hand my main dietary supplements were: flax-seeds, wheat-germs, bran, all kinds of beans, lentils, linseed or olive oil, pickled food (like sauerkraut or cucumbers), buttermilk, steamed fish and meat, and only water to drink. None of the healthy food or ingredients tastes good and if it does - then it must contain other substances like salt or sugar.
A body needs at least a month or two to change its metabolism. Likewise, it is the time one needs to start noticing some changes. Those changes are visible outside as well inside.
Milk. Despite the fact how much I like its sweet taste, I strongly believe that it is everything but healthy. Seriously, I have no clue, where people get the idea from that it is good for kids to drink a glass of milk every morning. Calcium? Milk is not the only source of calcium. Milk is not for people.

[analogZero]

I can agree with you spirit that it is very difficult to alter your food habits. I made a rather significant turn around when I started eating a meat absent diet, and the results were blatantly apparent. I still endulge, as I've yet to conquer my sweet tooth and love of popcorn (though I do make my own sweets and air pop my popcorn in my air pop popcorn popper (say it fast, I dare you)).
Dairy was one of the few things that I couldn't manage to cut out completely. Mostly for the same reason that most vegetarians can't make the jump to being vegan. cheese. It could be the opiates, it could be the deliciousness, but I'm quite hooked. It's the soft gooey devil I've yet to overcome. I managed to cut out eggs and dairy products for extended periods of time, but I tend to come back to them. The interesting thing is that there are minute differences that occur when I cut myself off from them. The most notable is that your skin clears up pretty good. I've actually noticed this more with vegans, as I've hardly known any that had bad skin.

[quietchat]

I personally like milk and dairy (Cheddar cheese especially). Not to mention that you need dairy for the best sweets, and I think you also use it with flour to make dough (not certain).

In any case, there's nothing wrong with drinking or consuming dairy, mainly because animals don't need to be killed to get it. And the machinery for milking cows isn't that harmful either, so long as it goes by standards that insure saftey

[analogZero]

Originally Posted by quietchat

I personally like milk and dairy (Cheddar cheese especially). Not to mention that you need dairy for the best sweets, and I think you also use it with flour to make dough (not certain).

In any case, there's nothing wrong with drinking or consuming dairy, mainly because animals don't need to be killed to get it. And the machinery for milking cows isn't that harmful either, so long as it goes by standards that insure saftey

Well that's the difficult thing to determine. When I buy milk it's from a market that sells me milk direct from an organic farm that abides by certain standards to make sure the milk is produced to a particular status quo.
There used to be the problem with Bovine Hormones to stimulate milk productions, that the cows were producing so much milk that their utters couldn't handle the strain of the milk they were producing. As a result of this and over milking to accomodate the higher than normal milk production the cows often gave milk with blood and puss in it.
As of today these hormones are being banned in a lot of countries (I'm not sure about the states though) so this hasn't been as much of a problem. But most high end milking farms do still have the pressure of meeting a production quota and can't give their cows the time to recoup from milking. Thus there's the chance that there could be a little cow puss in your milk. But then again, if you're drinking a foreign biological liquid, then there's little cause for alarm that another biological liquid's made it's way into the mix.

[leerock89]

Dairy is a natural normal food source because female human women have milk in their breasts to feed to infants. End of argument.

[spirit]

Originally Posted by analogZero

I can agree with you spirit that it is very difficult to alter your food habits. I made a rather significant turn around when I started eating a meat absent diet, and the results were blatantly apparent. I still endulge, as I've yet to conquer my sweet tooth and love of popcorn (though I do make my own sweets and air pop my popcorn in my air pop popcorn popper (say it fast, I dare you)).
Dairy was one of the few things that I couldn't manage to cut out completely. Mostly for the same reason that most vegetarians can't make the jump to being vegan. cheese. It could be the opiates, it could be the deliciousness, but I'm quite hooked. It's the soft gooey devil I've yet to overcome. I managed to cut out eggs and dairy products for extended periods of time, but I tend to come back to them. The interesting thing is that there are minute differences that occur when I cut myself off from them. The most notable is that your skin clears up pretty good. I've actually noticed this more with vegans, as I've hardly known any that had bad skin.

Ah! That's exactly what I was going to say in my previous post but I deleted that part (I thought my post was way too long anyway). I mentioned the "changes" after changing the diet. Just like Zero said, SKIN is the first thing one might notice the difference right away. Especially, after putting away milk, any milk-like products (awww, my chocolate!!) and..... sugar. My skin became very smooth and silky. Any problematic condition like pimples or acne was totally gone. Every time I go back to my old eating habits - the skin gets worse, dry, oily, meh.