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In the New Yorker...

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serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on November 18, 2013, 10:03:33 am ---Incidentally, I seem to recall reading somewhere that there is a school of thought that a fluid intended to nurture baby bovines is not something humans should be consuming.  8)
--- End quote ---

That's more than a school. It's the explanation for why some demographic populations have high rates of lactose intolerance. If your genetic heritage comes from a part of the world where cows weren't widely cultivated for milk, there's a good chance your body lacks the enzymes needed to digest it properly.

But the way you phrase your comment, it sounds like you're getting at something broader, an idea based on logic rather than enzymes. Like, if it's designed for baby cows to drink, it can't be good for humans. By that logic, though, we'd probably better avoid not just all dairy but also eggs, because yuck, and even honey, because it's produced for insects, not humans.

And by that logic, we'd be at least somewhat better off drinking human milk. We could end dairy farming and repace it with breast factories, offering employment opportunities for countless otherwise unskilled young women.

And indeed, I have heard of places that sell cheese and ice cream and things like that made of human breast milk (not sure how it was obtained). But tell you what, I don't think those products were flying off the shelves.

BTW, of course, baby humans can not drink plain baby cow's milk. It's amazing to think how tied down women were, how dependent babies were on their mothers, and the important role in some cultures of wet nurses, in the many many millennia of human history before the invention of infant formula.

Front-Ranger:
The position of wet nurse was a very popular one for women who needed to work back in the day. Another option was to get a couple of goats, as Robert Duvall did when he played a man whose wife died in childbirth (I forget the name of the movie). Sure, babies can't drink cow's milk but zillions managed to survive somehow when they didn't have a mother, as often happened in the days pre-obstetricians and maternity wards.

In this interesting discussion, I'm reminded of another New Yorker article about the bacteria that live in our bodies and allow us to live. One of the things I learned from that article is that babies are born without this colony of bacteria and have to build it up over time. Thus, they even have trouble digesting mother's milk, and that leads to the dreaded "spit-up" situation. Now you can thank me for tethering the discussion, if ever so slightly, back to the title of the thread!

Jeff Wrangler:

--- Quote from: serious crayons on November 19, 2013, 11:00:40 am ---But the way you phrase your comment, it sounds like you're getting at something broader, an idea based on logic rather than enzymes. Like, if it's designed for baby cows to drink, it can't be good for humans. By that logic, though, we'd probably better avoid not just all dairy but also eggs, because yuck, and even honey, because it's produced for insects, not humans.

--- End quote ---

I believe there are some vegetarians who do just that.

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Front-Ranger on November 19, 2013, 11:49:04 am ---The position of wet nurse was a very popular one for women who needed to work back in the day.
--- End quote ---

Years ago, I read a book on the history of motherhood by a renowned anthropologist. In the old days, rich people could hire wet nurses and poorer people could leave their babies at group homes to be nursed. But the latter were so disease-ridden they were virtually a death sentence and even the former was risky. Some families who couldn't feed or otherwise support another child -- this was before birth control was fine-tuned or widely used and abortion methods, herbal or otherwise, were crude and dangerous -- would do basically what Hansel and Gretel's parents did: abandon the kid in the forest. This was not uncommon.


--- Quote ---Another option was to get a couple of goats, as Robert Duvall did when he played a man whose wife died in childbirth (I forget the name of the movie).
--- End quote ---

I haven't seen that Robert Duvall movie, and hadn't heard anything about newborns being able to survive on untreated goat's milk.


--- Quote ---Sure, babies can't drink cow's milk but zillions managed to survive somehow when they didn't have a mother, as often happened in the days pre-obstetricians and maternity wards.
--- End quote ---

Zillions survived, and zillions more died. Almost all of the increase in life expectancy -- either between modern times and long ago, or between developed and underdeveloped countries now -- is due to improved infant and child mortality.


--- Quote ---In this interesting discussion, I'm reminded of another New Yorker article about the bacteria that live in our bodies and allow us to live. One of the things I learned from that article is that babies are born without this colony of bacteria and have to build it up over time. Thus, they even have trouble digesting mother's milk, and that leads to the dreaded "spit-up" situation. Now you can thank me for tethering the discussion, if ever so slightly, back to the title of the thread!
--- End quote ---

There's fascinating research going on now on the functions of our bodies' biotic systems. They're treating digestive-tract disorders with fecal transplants. They've connected obesity to the presence or absence of specific bacteria in the gut, suggesting the possibility of treating obesity by introducing "good" bacteria. They gave fat mice bacteria from the guts of thin mice, and the fat mice lost weight.

serious crayons:

--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on November 19, 2013, 12:29:15 pm ---I believe there are some vegetarians who do just that.
--- End quote ---

Sure, they're called vegans! But the implication of the school of thought you said you'd recalled reading about was that while there's nothing questionable about eating meat or other animal products, there is something uniquely inappropriate about humans consuming fluid intended to nurture baby bovines.

I say, humans are designed to be omnivorous. If your conscience (or body, or disgust reflex) tells you to avoid meat, by all means avoid meat. Same with dairy and other animal products. If not, that's fine, too. I eat meat because if I eat too much sugar and starch I get fat, and if you cut out sugar and starch it's hard to cut out animal products. But I don't think there's anything inherently "wrong" with eating animals.

What I do think is deeply wrong is how farm animals are treated in this country. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to be a non-vegan American and not at least to some extent support factory farming. It's possible -- buy animal products produced by small farms, whose practices you're familiar with, rather than ordinary brands from the grocery store -- but as a busy single mom of two omnivorous teenage boys with gigantic appetites who restocks groceries multiple times a week, I can't take the time to drive out to family farms. Or at least I choose not to.

Maybe when my sons move out I'll start doing more of that. Or frequenting co-ops that set non-factory standards for the meat and dairy and eggs they sell.

Hunting and fishing for meat (not trophies), though not everybody's cup of tea as outdoors activities, should get the approval of any carnivorous person, IMO. It seems far less "wrong" to kill and eat a duck or deer than it does to keep a chicken in a dark shoebox its entire life. Or to pump a cow full of toxic antibiotics that are not only bad for the cow but also endanger all of humanity by weakening the effectiveness of antibiotics.

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