Who's there?
Interrupting cow.
Interrupting cow..
Moooo!!!!!
Except this joke's not a knock-knock joke, and it's not nearly as funny.
The joke's butt is us - human consumers, who have been the victims of a long con. We've been bought by the milk industry, we've sold our animal instinct, and become absolutely convinced that it is not only normal, but crucial to our very existence, as bone-based creatures, to drink three tall glasses a day of another species' breast milk. Well, drinking milk doesn't help with back-bone development; it may even be a symptom of a lack thereof.
"The dairy folks, ever since the 1920s, have been enormously successful in cultivating an environment within virtually all segments of our society—from research and education to public relations and politics—to have us believing that cow's milk and its products are manna from heaven. ... Make no mistake about it; the dairy industry has been virtually in total control of any and all public health information that ever rises to the level of public scrutiny."
Dr. T. Colin Campbell
Nevermind the fact that that milk is not nature's perfect food to anyone but the milk-producing cow's own offspring.
Nevermind the fact that there are no convincing studies that link osteoporosis to milk as an effective source of calcium.
Nevermind the fact that milk products - and the hormones, pesticides, and antibiotics that are contained in them - have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, allergies, obesity, cancer, and a host of other diseases that plague us dairy-dining North Americans the most.
Nevermind that it's all based on a lie.
Nevermind all those things, for a moment, and if you haven't considered quitting milk yet, then consider it now, if only for a moment, because of the simple fact that to glass and guzzle a cow's bodily fluid is just plain weird.
What if, in our scramble to be authentic and to minimize our food's travel time, it became popular to get our milk organic, free-range, and straight from the source? Udderly delicious! Would you do it? Would you regress to your infant years, and suckle for milk? We love to bob for apples, pick our own berries, grow our own herbs, draw our own water, collect our own eggs, fish our own fish, but can you really imagine yourself suckling your own cow?
It sucks for the environment, for your health, and definitely, for the cow. If you can't find a reason in there to holler hoax, then be my guest, bottoms up. But remember to ask yourself, the next time you reach for a delicious glass of creamy colostrum: What's that subtle flavour, an undertone, I can't quite put my finger on it, but it could be... it couldn't be.. can it be? Can I taste the nipple?
Sometimes, I like to pretend that aliens have swooped in from outer space and decided to harvest humans' white gold. I've been genetically modified. I've been hooked up to a machine by my nipples and am surrounded by thousands of my closest acquaintances, in a warehouse, all in the same situation. Whatever milk I would produce for my child, I will now be producing ten times that amount - dozens of pounds of milk. My nipples are down to my knees but as long as there's milk coming, these aliens are in business. Oh, and what of my child, you ask? Well, his worth would not be unharnessed by these most parsimonious of aliens and, as a bi-product of their milk-sucking endeavour, my child would not go to waste. An entire sub-industry would be carefully crafted around the deliciousness of his tender ... and then I decide to stop pretending, because this is all pretty sick and a little too familiar.
And then there's the environmental impact of mass milk production. Like most things we do, it is vastly inefficient. A single dairy cow converts tons of grain and an enormous amount of water to a small amount of milk. In the process, it produces as much waste as two dozen people do, every day. Since the cows aren't provided with the luxuries of proper waste management, such as toilet paper, sewers and treatment plants, their waste is cycled back into the system.
With a looming water crisis and global warming being a firmly established fact, do we really need this added pressure on our resources?
Why, when we can eat the same leafy greens that cows eat for calcium, eliminate the blood and pus from our diets, and combat the obesity epidemic, all in one fell swoop?
Dump Dairy because medical studies have proven that it won't help you maintain good bone health. Despite what ours and our parents' generations have been told, excessive calcium in fact causes osteoporosis. It looks like you may have to start acting younger than your age on this one, and debunk the old-school myth that milk is a miracle food. It's not. They'll start teaching this in kindergarden soon. Cow's breast milk is for cows, and humans' breast milk is for humans; it's not speciesist, it's common sense. You wouldn't want someone to mess with the breast-born baby bond between you and your child, so why inflict that pain of longing upon somebody else?
Once you expose the dairy fallacy for yourself, you can start making positive lifestyle changes. Don't dwell on the negatives; take action. At the very least, focus in on healthy alternatives, like molasses, dark leafy greens, cabbage, broccoli, green beans, cucumber, peas, soybeans, squash, most types of beans (including cocoa!), kiwi, real maple syrup, brown sugar, and tomatoes. Now that calcium-fortified soy products are allowed in Canada (wonder why it took so long?) it is easier than ever.
Eating well isn't just about our own health, it's about the health of our planet - and that of Daisy the dairy cow who would thrive just fine outside the confines of a dairy factory.
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