Damon13: Nobody reads day-old posts. But I read your two-week old post!

You wrote:

"I'll only make a short point, since it seems nobody reads day old comments. But JERRYMANDER! Since you brought up the "straw man" argument, which being one of many logical fallacies and one of my pet peeves, you [piqued] my interest and now I want to ask you a question. I noticed you use the word "nonhuman" and "human" 17 times in your posts in this thread. Biologically, are humans different than nonhumans? Do we have different digestive systems than animals? I have more, let's see if you post."

Damon, you present a false dichotomy so I can't precisely answer your questions. You ask if humans have different digestive systems than animals. Humans are animals. So the precise answer is that humans have different digestive systems to some animals (nonhumans) and relatively identical digestive systems to other animals (humans).

Also relevant is that some nonhumans have different digestive systems to other nonhumans. A wolf and a sparrow have different digestive systems, as do humans and dolphins.

I await your next insight.

-I know many people who eat a nearly vegan diet (Fish maybe once a month, dairy and eggs when hungry and nothing else is /available, etc.)

That's actually a substantial amount of animal products. As Robert McCarrison found, one of the healthiest diets he could find depended on dairy and perhaps chicken once a month.

-All say they are much healthier, feel better, have more energy (as long as they remember to eat more often) than when they were eating meat three times a day.

Your extremes of comparison are yours, not mine. The need to appeal to extremes in the reflection of an imbalance.

-The methane from cow farts and belches are is a more harmful greenhouse gas than CO2.

The only thing this has to do with the question of a healthy diet, is that cows fed on corn and soy are permanently ill due to imbalances in their rumen. You should try eating a diet of corn and soy - see what happens. While one effect is constant gas production, another is that the makeup of fat in the cow's tissues, and probably also in their milk, becomes completely imbalanced. In particular, the fat contains no omega-3 oils. It's not healthy for the cow, it's not healthy for the environment, and it's not healthy for you either.

-If forests were allowed to replace pastures water would become available where it wasn't before, and cleaner water.

This is, again, an argument that has nothing to do with whether a vegan diet can sustain health. The fact is, animal products are necessary. If you take a look, you will also find that those animals products need to come from healthy animals, which necessitates mixed agriculture and the return of nutrients to the soil. Healthy soil = healthy plants = healthy animals; and you are one such animal.

-There is absolutely no saturated fat in any vegetable.

You will find that the basis for concluding that saturated fat is a health problem is false. What may be true is that artificially produced, hydrogenated, fats, that contain a great deal of trans-fats, are a health problem.

-US diseases are diseases of excess, not deficiency. Try a vegan diet; vegetable protein is superior to animal protein In every way.

Well, are you going to clue us in to your insight?

-Nobody on a vegan diet is therefore malnourished.

Our knowledge of diet has become so primitive that we have completely lost track of what is necessary for the production of healthy children. And our scientific knowledge is similarly primitive, knowing a great deal about various specific issue without knowing anything about the whole. Are you aware that essentially no "whole diet" experiements have been done, that they are all conducted by changing or eliminating one chemical constituent of a diet? If you want to know what will allow us to sustain ourselves as a population, you will have no choice but to approach the dietary issue anthropologically. See the link I mentioned in this comment and the one I mentioned above.

-Milk is for each species, cow milk is not for humans:
-Please read: www.notmilk.com and www.paleodiet.com

-Why are so many expert researchers on nutrition issues not taking up these important arguments?

Lots of things aren't for humans - until you learn how to use them. Seeds? - which include grains, beans and nuts. They are the babies of the plants. I mean, come on. We have spent millennia learning how to use what the earth provides so that we can be nourished and stay healthy.

As for the notmilk - they are right, but only in so far as processed milk - fractionated, pasturized, homogonized, produced with hormones and large doses of antibiotics from cows that eat cardboard and jellybeans - goes. As for the paleo diet, well it will be rather hard for us to become hunter-gatherers again, and in any case, we have learned a few things in the last 10-15,000 years. As I mentioned above, agriculture was a momentous achievement. We had to learn to use its products. Today, we are destroying that knowledge for very specific reasons that have to do with capitalist accumulation; but much of the knowledge is still there, and can be found if one takes the initiative to look.

Corporate ownership of governmental agencies is not limited to those who supply military hardware. Corporate agriculture and governmental agencies are the only entities with enough money to hire the scientists on a long term basis.

Don't think these scientists don't know what conclusions are expected of them.

Milk is for each species, cow milk is not for humans:
Please read:
www.notmilk.com and www.paleodiet.com

Why are so many expert researchers on nutrition issues not taking up these important arguments?

I know many people who eat a nearly vegan diet (Fish maybe once a month, dairy and eggs when hungry and nothing else is available, etc.)

All say they are much healthier, feel better, have more energy (as long as they remember to eat more often) than when they were eating meat three times a day.

The methane from cow farts and belches are is a more harmful greenhouse gas than CO2.

If forests were allowed to replace pastures water would become available where it wasn't before, and cleaner water.

There is absolutely no saturated fat in any vegetable.

US diseases are diseases of excess, not deficiency. Try a vegan diet; vegetable protein is superior to animal protein In every way.

Nobody on a vegan diet is therefore malnourished.

Nietzsche- No animal product is essential for human nutrition.

And how is it, exactly, that you know this?

antidote

Thank you for the link. I appreciate good information and will give it look. The Organic Consumers Union is a great resource and there is another site..I think it is called Don't Panic Eat Organic.

And I agree there is a lot more about food and diet than reading the labels at a market.

Even when the FDA really existed a chicken processing plant or a slaughter house for cows was no place for a weak stomach.

Now the torture is on a more massive scale, and in filthy concrete chambers that is more like something out of a horror movie than a food source facility.

Stop eating meat. We and our planet would have a chance to get well. No animal product is essential for human nutrition. We are killing ourselves and we know it but we can't stop.

I never have believed such a thing as free will existed.

Well, Treefrog - if the range of discussion is between vegans and RDs, then there is not much really to talk about.

As for the prescriptions that vegans follow - they are a range of fanatics. On the one end, moralizers about using animal products, including milk, sometimes honey, leather for shoes. On the other end it gets so crazy as to not even be willing to use cow dung to fertilize fields.

Look, there is no question that this industrial system is ugly; but to respond reflexively and moralistically fails to leave room for how this might be done differently and for the fact that others might have figured out how to do it differently, long ago. If the moralizers happen to end up eating more vegetables and fruits and eliminate overly processed foods, then all to the good, but that doesn't make for a long term sustainable diet. Diets are intricate. Children need different food from adults, and old people need different food from younger. Pregnant or lactating women need special foods and foods work together synergistically. There is thousands of years of knowledge in dietary systems, and biochemistry, which every couple of decades finds a whole new class of chemical constituents in food that were previously unrecognized, doesn't even _begin_ to understand how they work.

If you are interested in some sense of the destruction in food ways that colonialism has wrought, and how we are paying the price today, you might want to have a look at this book, which can also be found free on the web.

Antidote

As far as I know vegans are not prescriptive about what they eat, that is put vegan practices in place that preclude other choices. With RDs it is another matter, have you ever had a meal at a long term care facility? Most state and federal licensed programs require a science based diet. Oh, forget that Bologna even counts as a food. Sorry, I would not survive on most of these diets and unfortunately they are not fads.

I don't know all that much about Vegans but it is my impression that much of thier focus is the quality of food available and the methods used to produce said food. I think we could all benefit from a better understanding, especially the people that eat at places like McDonalds.

No stone unturned? Have they taken any concern for the exploration of the food ways of cultures who have sustained themselves for thousands of years? Have they made any effort to discuss their ideas with Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic or Unanni doctors? Have they shown any concern with a rather large literature on the history and anthropology of food? Do they know a damn thing about what it means to keep a peoples healthy enough to have have healthy children who themselves can have healthy children over 10s of generations? The answer is no. What they are is a fad, born about 1945 as a fanatical offshoot of the London Vegetarian society. A fad born of a peoples who think they can play with their food, that their simplistic morality can dictate what they eat. Sustainability is the farthest things from their minds. Their fantasied moral purity, as violent as it is running roughshod over the long-developed understandings of others, is all that concerns them. As Einstein said, "No problem is solved from the same consciousness that created it".

Just another 2-cents on this. From what I know about vegans, I would trust thier advice over most Registured dieticians that I know fairly well. Really, vegans leave no stone unturned when it comes to the food they eat and it has proven to more healthy than compareable diets. The benefit to the environment and other species should not be overlooked.

Chunga

You seem to be one for talking about cultural arrogance.

You seem to be saying that because a certain culture has been doing this or that for generations, perhaps even millennia, that makes it fine and dandy.

First of all, that is not what I am saying, as you would have seen if you had actually read my post. But let's begin with the fact that your second comment, following the first, is a non-sequitur. "... fine and dandy" makes it clear that you are displaying some sort of moral superiority. Reaching for an inflammatory subject like:

Genital mutilation anyone?

when we are talking about cultural food ways, manifests the inflammatory moralistic rhetoric that seems to trip off the tongue of you and your ilk, displaying no respect at all for cultural histories. And so now you turn this around and make it me who is the one displaying cultural arrogance?

Who is it exactly that you think you are? Get off your high horse, the solutions to the problems of the world will not be found looking down your nose at others.

Horseshit.

Now, what am I saying? I am saying that food is identity, that learning how to use food is science, and that even a cursory look at modern "culture", if such a term even applies to this commercial system that has already destroyed your history and is destroying everyone else's, makes it clear that its knowledge in this direction is absolutely primitive. That you, who are unable to keep obesity in your children below 50%, are looking at exploding rates of diabetes, neuro-developmental and psychiatric disorders in your children, should think that you know something about food and its uses, displays the height of arrogant ignorance. It is time to stop your moralistic preaching and humbly go ask what it is that others may know that you don't.

I'll only make a short point, since it seems nobody reads day old comments. But JERRYMANDER! Since you brought up the "straw man" argument, which being one of many logical fallacies and one of my pet peeves, you perked my interest and now I want to ask you a question. I noticed you use the word "nonhuman" and "human" 17 times in your posts in this thread. Biologically, are humans different than nonhumans? Do we have different digestive systems than animals? I have more , let's see if you post.

I agree with jerrymander's "win-win-win" scenario. "No more enslaved animals. No more wasteful feedlots. No more slaughter subsidies."

I would like to add another "win." We would have a healthier human population. There would be less incidence of arthritis, obesity, heart disease, diabetes and several types of cancer.

BigNoseKate, "create" or "manipulate" is semantic here. Consider that there were no domestic breeds of cows, dogs and other animals, and plenty of plants, before humans got here. But they're here now because of human manipulation. Therefore, humans created them. If I supported your view, then I'd claim that cars were not created by humans either, for they are simply manipulated natural resources.

I did not advocate reducing nonhuman populations to increase human populations. If you directed that comment to me, re-read my post. We are in agreement here.

Bobita, that would be an awful lot of nonhumans who need to be cared for. Those who could not feasibly be released. I suggest that the present slaughter industries' lands be converted to sanctuaries for the next 40 years or so. Then, when the "domesticated" nonhumans have peacefully died after a blissful life, we can dismantle these remnants of slavery and return them to a better, ecological use.

The cost to feed and house them could come directly from the subsidies that our government already pays the slaughter industries. Then, after 40 years, those subsidies can be directed to more ecological purposes as well.

That's a win-win-win situation. No more enslaved animals. No more wasteful feedlots. No more slaughter subsidies.

It is true diet is evolutionary, that is part of the issue with obesity and designer foods. They can change the nature of food, no fat, low fat, no carbs, but your body is dealing with hundreds of years of evolution. It is also cultural. Like the butterfly with a diet and reproduction requirement of milk weed. Milk weed is actually a poison to butterflies but because they evolved together they aid each others reproduction.

Hey Kem P, enjoyed the story of Hope Springs A Turtle.
The ending of the book The Grapes of Wrath, which is left out of the movie, has always really made me think of the compassion between poverty starving people. A very young woman who lost her baby offers her breast to a starving old man.

Antidote - You seem to be one for talking about cultural arrogance. You seem to be saying that because a certain culture has been doing this or that for generations, perhaps even millennia, that makes it fine and dandy. Genital mutilation anyone?

Who is it exactly that you think you are? Get off your high horse, the solutions to the problems of the world will not be found looking down your nose at others.

You're going to tell me and 999,999,999 other Indians not to use milk? The Masai? The Lapps? This cultural arrogance boggles the mind - and it's monstrously ignorant. No cultural group has ever sustained itself over generations on only plant foods. Food is culture, and learning how to use it was a momentous cultural achievement. Finding systems of food ways that sustain health and the capacity for the production of healthy children has taken millennia and has been destroyed in decades.

The cultural arrogance displayed here is no different from what you and your brothers are doing in Iraq. Who is it, exactly, that you people think you are?

I love all you folks. Seldom have I found a forum with such diverse, and entertaining personalities. It's a shame we can't train the congress to at least SHOW UP and engage in discourse like this...

Siouxrose: A very shocking book, The Biotech Century, by Jeremy Rafkin a no-gene splice watchdog, came out in 2000, confirming the fact that the former chemical giants like Monsanto and Du Pont, had sold off most of their chemical business in favor of developing Frankin- foods with zero government supervision. More food than we know have been spliced with non-plant and strange animal and fungus/bacteria genes because it worked out in the petri dish and kept the product shelf life up. Many small children allergic to peanuts suffered when anti-mold peanut genes were spliced into tomatoes to lengthen to harvest period and then experimented on US. The problem is, as I'm sure you all know: we don't know what will happen after ten years of eating blemish free tomatoes and bananas, because our physiology was never tested with these things present in the great laboratory of 6 million years of evolution. Could be lethal, nobody knows. A most frightening read.

I've moved to the third world and eat only indigenous fruits and veggies that the local peasants eat. Because nobody in the western world has ever even heard of these strange tropical items, and these people here don't have any money, they are of no interest to evil industries like the big biotech splicers.

Becoming a Vegger..... now that's hard.... but gout makes you pick a healthy diet or else! I was a bovine carnivore but I must admit, I feel 100% better reducing my protein intake to occasional fish and chicken.

pacplyer - out

I am gratefull for some good news. Monsanto, if you don't already know is responsible for some pretty nasty farming practices that go well beyond dairy cows.

My family had a small dairy and all the cows were pasture fed. What an organic dairy would be today. The animals were treated humanely and the raw milk had a lot more nutrition. You can use less of something that is not processed the way milk that is sold today. I know organic farmers don't have to add coloring to thier butter because it contains nutrients that make it a creamy yellow. I think it is the beta-carotine from pasture fed cows.

jerrymander September 10th, 2007 8:21 pm

Continuing an artificial (human made) species is no defense for slavery.

You know, jerrym, I was always taught it is very important to know the difference between reality and make believe. Despite anything you might have heard to the contrary, mankind has never actually created or "made" anything. The best we can do is manipulate what is already here.

Ruminants existed prior to the so-called agricultural revolution. Are you suggesting we, in our infallible wisdom, should deliberately induce the extinction of several domesticated (as in previously wild) species in order to make room for more humans? If so, I would say the accusation of vegan-nazi is entirely too tame.

The number one threat to this planet's viability is the over-population of homo sapiens sapiens. By the way, for tens of thousands of years, man existed as nomadic herders without disrupting the ecology; it was the development of stationary, tolitarian agricultural societies that continually exploit a single area until even the dirt is dead and incapable of sustaining life that has brought us to our current plight and allowed our population to increase to catastrophic levels.

Eliminating farm animals in order to make room for even more humans is a GLOBICIDAL policy. I would say globocide is definitely more heinous than genocide, VEGAN NAZI!

bbouslaugh September 10th, 2007 2:58 pm

As of 2001, 68% of soybeans produced in the USA are GMO (http://www.pewagbiotech.org/resources/factsheets/display.php3?FactsheetID=2)
products used by industry to make...well, soy milk for one. I don't see that as a solution. Of course, there is currently a growing demand for non-GMO soy as well. Unfortunately, our government, unlike most 1st world governments, doesn't seem to think WE THE PEOPLE have the right to decline to be involuntary lab rats.

On another note, can someone please tell me how to insert a proper hyperlink on this forum?
BNK

Kristina40, I may have told this story before here on another string, but I'll write it once more, just for you. No one else read this secret story please. (It ain't got sh## to do with DU neither.)

My girlfriend Hope had a pet turtle and when she and I went hiking across the meadows, or fished at the old mill pond, or when we'd climb up into the haymaw to relax on a warm, sunny, lazy day. We'd lay there close together and make up pictures in the clouds. Sadly, her big box, turtle, could never keep up with us.

Hope was a real tomboy, but had a MM body and lots of brains. __ A blond too. __ That was long before blond jokes. Anyhow, that's another story. One day she took four valve springs from an old tractor engine and fastened them to her turtles feet. It worked just great. After that, her turtle could keep up with us, bounding along. Sproinggg, Sproinggg, Sproinggg. The importnat thing about the story is, Hope coined a well known and rather important phrase.
.
.
.
"Hope springs a-turtle". ____ And she did.

Actually DU is interesting, Kem you havent expalianed it enough

There is about as much chance of stopping the livestock industry in this country as stopping the Iraq occupation. As for the cruelty , there are only a small fraction of stock owners who mistreat their animals and some get better treatment than some family members do. The idea of turning them loose to roam would be wonderful until we all had to scoop them off the roads every day. Better leave them with the folks who know how to take care of them. Some may not be aware that when an animal is sold for consumption the owner has to certify that the antibiotics used, if any, were not used within a prescribed withdrawel period. It is certainly ones own right to use or not use animal products in their diet, but maybe it is good to live and let live on such matters.

LOL Kem, I've had a pet just about anything that breathes at one point in time or another. My poor father at one point told me I couldn't bring anything else home that breathed, not even a worm or a friend....

jerrymander, do you know how many animals that would be? One would be brought to their knees by the cost to feed and house them! How many will fit in your yard?

SIOUXROSE, thank you for the information. Gives me another item to bitch on, DU is getting old and no one wants to hear they and their offspring are all gonna die of cancer in the next twenty years or so.

Well so far I like the breast feeding ideas and the let the animals have their freedom to roam. We have open range here and the cattle seem to be quite content. ___ So are the mountain lions.

KRISTINA40, you sound a bit like my first girlfriend Hope, we both lived on a dairy farm and Hope was a sweetheart, she had a pet turtle. __ But, that's another story, too long to relate here, even though it is of some importance.

"All nonhuman animals who are bred to be human property should be released if there is a suitable environment for them, or they should be well cared for until their natural death."
Lessee, that would include, horses, dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, cows, oxen, asses, mules, and I'm sure more that I am missing. We just go ahead and wipe out all these species?
The problem is human over population and has been for a long time. Yet, the pro lifers will continue to try and stop birth control and abortion because we all know "every human life is precious" PUKE...There is no way we can sustain the current level of human population NO MATTER WHAT WE EAT, there ain't that much damn lettuce on the planet or tofu or beans. The current situation with beef and dairy, chicken farms etc. is a result for the need of mass produced food for TOO MANY DAMN PEOPLE.

We get our milk from our cow. There are 3 + regular milkers and she supplies milk for about 20 people more or less. We make some yogurt, butter and cheese, the rest of our dairy we buy organic or hormone free only.

I remember in Arkansas a couple of years ago a local dairy in neighboring Oklahoma had a local chain of convenience stores / ice cream & hamburger joint. All their dairy products were hormone free, they did not advertise or charge extra for this, they just did it because it was an old family dairy and Grandpa never used that crap!

BTW I prefer Vanilla Rice Dream on my cold cereal, as long as the cereal does not contain to much sugar, some fresh fruit is always a nice touch too.

Kristina: "Milk Nazis"? Keep in mind that the Nazis captured, controlled, enslaved, tortured and murdered millions of humans. If you consider that the dairy industries breed, control, enslave, torture and murder millions of cows, don't you think that dairy advocates are more like Milk Nazis and vegans are the freedom fighters? I'm not being facetious either.

All nonhuman animals who are bred to be human property should be released if there is a suitable environment for them, or they should be well cared for until their natural death. Those who remain in human captivity should not be allowed to reproduce. Continuing an artificial (human made) species is no defense for slavery. Keeping "domesticated" cows alive for the sake of the species is an argument endorsing slavery. If you are a bleeding heart animal lover, then give them the ultimate act of love: liberty.

Somehow I knew the milk nazi's would hit this thread LOL...I grew up on a farm and all our animals were well cared for. We had free range chickens and never bought eggs unless it was Easter, as our chicken laid brown eggs, kinda hard to color. We had fresh milk, cream, butter etc. and didn't EAT any of our cows. Things were done the old fashioned way, milked by hand etc. I'm a bleeding heart animal lover myself BUT, like I said in another thread, we are OMNIVORES by nature. A question popped into my head also about this. What if everyone just stopped eating meat, drinking milk, using diary products? What would happen to the cows? Where would they go? Do we "return" them to the wild? People would obviously not want them as "pets", I've been around alot of cows and trust me they are not even close to bright animals, house training is out.
I'm not being facetious either, I'm really wondering what would happen to them? Or chickens for that matter? Pigs?

Damon13: Read up on veganism so you don't make yourself look foolish when you respond to vegans. Vegans advocate that humans should leave nonhumans alone. That's all you seem to be missing. If you understand what that means, you'll see that your concern of "myopic vegans" lies somewhere between goofy and wacky.

If you want to make strawman arguments, I'm ready for you. But debate that relies on strawmen isn't interesting and it doesn't get us anywhere. So drop the mischaracterizations and tell us what you really think.

Otherwise, sharonvegan's point is on the mark. Humans are made to consume human milk when we are babies. Humans consuming nonhuman milk is laughable. What humans do to get nonhuman milk is criminal.

KEM: I learned the insidious things Monsanto was up to by reading Mother Jones Magazine. They might have back articles on this subject available on-line. What bothered me most is that Monsanto is one of the leading edge bio-engineering companies. They end up claiming copyright on seeds, and these seeds are sterile, mind you. Farmers get sucked into buying seeds each year once they make contracts with Monsanto. Worse than this (Monsanto has spies that actually check to make sure other farmers are not using their seeds! You know how every agency of Mother Nature is designed to capitalize on resources like wind and rain and bees to keep pollination happening and biodiversity underway. What happens is the UNWANTED seed from Monsanto blow onto other farmers' lots and these spies try to fine them for these plants, unauthorized! I swear, I am not making this up) is that Monsanto is one of the companies that designs chemical agents of war, like Agent Orange, or the chemical polymer being used on the "war on drugs" in Columbia. As you know from Vietnam, these lethal chemicals poison crops that indigenous populations rely upon. So it's a slightly more benign version of DU being filtered around under the guise of yet another war (on drugs). The way I see it, I don't want a company that profits from war and its byproducts to be deciding what's IN or ON my cereal. These are people without souls... they call it "industrial food." Another oxymoron for our times!

Let's keep this in perspective.

While I respect the idea that humans are not intended to drink the milk of cows, this habit is completely engrained in our culture. Asking the mainstream to give up all dairy is simply unrealistic.

The goal is to stop the overuse of antibiotics and to achieve more humane and less industrial treatment of animals in general. The most feasible way to eliminate the problem of overuse of antibioritcs is to ban the overuse of the antibiotics (and, until we get there, to require labelling), not through asking an entire country to drastically change its eating habits and culture.

KEM PATRICK, good to see you are in good spirits again.

sharonvegan, when you say, "Humans should not be drinking the milk of nonhumans", what are you implying? We should be eating our cereal with human breast milk?

Aside from that sounding yucky, do you realize the myopic corner you have gotten yourself in with this vegan thing? If you really are disgusted with the idea of eating meat. And the cruelty of slaughter, then you should buy a rifle and shoot every carnivore on the planet. Start with the lions, they are really cruel, saw it on the discovery channel. Next tigers, and polar bears. Oh I forgot, killer whales and sharks. They eat those cuddly seals. Do not forget alligators and crocodiles. Next, eagles and hawks, they eat mice, and I use to have a pet mouse. So that's a starting list, good luck , let me know how that's going.

Once I was on a school field trip with some fifth graders at a major university's dairy farm. It was 1990. I wandered off for a minute to observe some cows in a pasture. Each cow had four three inch diameter plastic or fiberglass tubes sticking out of their backs. I assumed they were tubes used to extract food and determine what was occuring in each of the cows stomaches. One of the men who worked there saw me and hustled me away from there, he told me I wasn't supposed to see that. ____ Anyone know what's up?

If you could see a Billy goat being milked, you would never eat cheese again either.

Humans should not be drinking the milk of nonhumans. Calves weigh 90 pounds at birth and grow to 2,000 pounds in two years. There is an obvious difference between the nutritional needs of a cow and that of a human.

Besides the link between cows milk and a wide array of health problems including heart disease, breast, prostate and ovarian cancer, there is a connection to the unparalled rise in obesity in the U.S.

Dairy is bad for you and it does not come from happy cows. It comes from enslaved cows who are artificially impregnated, deprived of any natural activity (including bonding with their young), milked to exhaustion, then executed and turned into hamburgers.

Monsanto (who is the devil) just adds to the mix.

If you could see a cow with mastitis you would never drink milk again.

I'd never heard of Monsanto until today. Thanks for the info and the links. I'm get smarter every day since I found this website. My wife says I'd better just stay up here in the loft and hope the computer doesn't ever crash. She sold the goat BTW, ____ jealous old lady.

DLELSON7, I don't understand your argument, is that really a problem, ___ mother or not?

webwalk: Thanks for giving me a break! I'm not going to give up milk! Period. But I have boycotted Monsanto and it's rGbh for YEARS! Support your local dairies. Or buy organic.

Ruth K: Have gone to this site for years. It's how I became politically active. To all you others out there, join the Millions Against Monsanto at:

Organic Consumers at: http://organicconsumers.org

Monsanto is killing small farmers and people all over the world. The are at the top of my list of EVIL corporations.

KEM: Pretty funny about the goat. If you get a nanny goat, the milk is supposed to be really good for you. And you can make cheese too! AND, they eat blackberry vines! What a deal....

Hi,

Use the least energy you can to get good nutrition. Eating animal products is the most energy-intensive diet you can eat. It promotes global warming, if knowing that is what it takes to 'wean' you off the cow teat.

Certainly importing food from Europe is not any kind of sustainable answer. Think holistically, don't just buy your food with one thing in mind, think of all the impacts of your choices.

Organic Valley produces excellent, regionally sourced, organic (non-GMO) soy milk. Plus they are a great company for lots of other reasons. They also produce regionally sourced organic cow milk, if you truly won't give up the habit. At least their cows are not factory-farmed sufferers, and by being pasture-fed they contribute less to global warming too.

After thought. In fact if milk was meant to be consumed by adults we would be nursing at other mothers' breasts long into adult hood.

Soy gives me gas and most soy is genetically engineered, so soy milk is too unless its organic. In that case, why not just buy organic milk?

I use yoghurt on my cereal, then fruit then the cereal and it is crunchy. Of course I live in Europe so I trust the dairy products... However, milk was never meant to be consumed by adult humans...

Thanks for the info, maybe I'll use Dairy Queen ice cream, that's soy milk. It was originally. Now?

How about goat's milk, that Ok? We bought a goat last week and I milked it. The damn thing followed me around like a puppy dog for two days. Discvered it was a Billy goat. My eyesight is horrible.

No milk? Or cheese? Or ice cream?
That's a lot to give up for lent.
I'll buy my dairy products from the EU where they know better than to poison people for profit.

I agree.. stop drinking milk. I've been a cereal eater for decades and never once used water. (indeed, YUKK). Use SOY MILK instead. (I've settled on Vitasoy brand but there are others just as good) Soy milk on cereal tastes much better than "cow juice"... and it's actually healthy for a body (not that milk guzzlers care much about that). Soy milk is a bit more expensive, but the lack of breakfast after-effects caused by cow milk is worth the slight extra cost to your wallet.

You don't need to eat Maypo with water, KEM PATRICK. Just substitute one of the following for milk:
1)non-gmo soy milk (but not the stuff with all the sugar in it),
2)rice milk,
3)organic apple juice (don't buy the stuff from China,)or
4)pear juice

Organic Consumers at:

http://organicconsumers.org

has a lot of information on rbGH as well as on Monsanto's determination to force genetically modified foods on everyone.

But I want my MAYPO! I want it now!

Have you ever eaten your cereal with water?__YUKK

The answer is to stop drinking milk period. The dairy itself is a deadly influence.

Milk is for calves--not humans. The veal industry exists because of the dairy industry.

Besides the unnecessary cruelty, it is also a waste of resources.

A few well-placed bribes to our governing body and it's a slam dunk.