I am a Pescatarian

[EVILNess]

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

*Milk Hate*

Well, humans have cookies so your point is rendered moot.

[Funka Genocide]

Well then... I suppose that's that.

[Azisien]

Well, that's better.

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

1.) I think any sort of morally motivated diet is unlikely to have any basis in logic or utilitarian fact. It's just a belief system, which doesn't need to be substantiated by anything more than the heartfelt desires of its practitioners.

Logic or utility might not be what's lacking, in fact, those are the two that might support morally motivated diets the most. But I think I understand what you're getting at, based on your earlier post: some kind of scientifically assessed optimal diet or range of diets out of a lab? Nothing wrong with that either, really.

But for the sake of avoiding 10 page discussion about cookies and dicks, why wouldn't logic apply? Logic is more of a tool. If you accept the premises as true, anything can be proven. So yes, things like moral vegetarianism/veganism/whateverism are just a belief system, but they're as valid as yours, or mine.

Utility is an even better one because I think veganism is argued by Peter Singer in 1st year philosophy courses using utilitarianism mostly. It depends what kind of utility you're going for. Happiness? Lack of suffering? Money? Population of polar bears? And who is considered part of the pool of your utility measurement? Activists would argue not just humans, but most sentient organisms. Concessions are often made with simply higher animals, mammals, primates, etc. But if you accept the premise of including these groups as well as humans, a utilitarian approach towards happiness or reducing suffering almost begs stuff like veganism.

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

2.) The American food pyramid is not based on a scientifically defined healthy diet, but on the desired consumption of marketable foodstuffs. Such obvious fallacies as putting processed carbohydrates as the base (white flour is almost completely devoid of nutritional value, as are most pastas.) as well as giving dairy products their own niche (it is unnatural for a human being to consume dairy products after being weened from breast feeding, there is no way that they make up a substantial portion of a scientifically proper diet.) lead me to believe that it's only a means to supporting American agricultural and food production industries.

*covers mouth in horror* The American government is lying to the populace? I don't buy it.

Originally Posted by Funka Genocide

Also, I never said that dairy products weren't delicious or an integral part of human culture, just that making the argument that they are a natural part of a human diet is silly. If we take the human animal, minus the traipsings of culture and civilization, it is very unlikely that he'd have regular access to dairy products. Only with the advent of domestic animals does this occur. So while froma cultural perspective of course it's normal to consume dairy products, from a bare bones biological perspective it doesn't make much sense. (which is why it doesn't deserve its slot of the pyramid, you don't "need" dairy to be healthy, just like you don't need to eat processed grain products.)

Though I have to say, coming from an Italian family, I was grown rather heavily on both pastas and milk. Oodles and oodles of milk. I still drink like a gallon and a half of milk a week to date, and I'm perfectly healthy, though I am prone to mooing fits.

The concept of us not being "biologically fit" to consume dairy is a little odd though. We have the genes to do it and the natural symbiosis with bacteria where we can't. There are various intolerances around, but that's diversity for you. Perhaps 20,000 years ago humans would have been a little at odds trying to drink cow/goat/whatever milk, but now it's a part of us. As part of us as fingernails (also a relatively new invention!).

I suppose I should have prefaced this by saying Canada doesn't seem to have the ridiculous and scary hormones circulating in the milk that the US does. I'm sure Monsanto will find a way to fuck us eventually, but for now, chocolate milk anyone?

[Funka Genocide]

I meant utilitarian philsophy from a purely survival of the species/self perspective, I should have been more concise.

Also, to clarify further, I never said we lacked the necessary biological processes to metabolize dairy products, I just said that their inclusion in our diets is a bit of an aberration and that they don't constitute an absolutely necessary portion of the human diet. (Although, many people do suffer from lactose intolerance.)

And yes, the horrible shit they put in American milk is enough to put me off it, I suspect other countries enjoy much more wholesome cow juice.

(To be perfectly clear, I love delicious cheeses and enjoy ice cream, I'm not against dairy products as a whole, I am against the fallacious concept that they are an integral part of the human diet that needs to be consumed on a daily basis at mimimum levels. It would be much easier to argue for or against this premise if, say for example, the american food guide pyramid wasn't a bunch of random fucking rainbow bright color by numbers cock-suckery and instead actually constituted a logical, scientific primer on the way our digestive and cellular systems worked in conjunction with the basic chemical building blocks of the food we eat.)

Your sarcasm is duly noted, however just because its a common occurrence for our governing bodies to lie to us doesn't mean I can't be upset about it to some degree.

[BitVyper]

just that making the argument that they are a natural part of a human diet is silly.

How long do we have to drink milk before it qualifies? Several millenia not enough? Long enough to have become lactose tolerant in a large chunk of humanity not enough?

If we take the human animal, minus the traipsings of culture and civilization

Culture has been one of humanity's defining traits since almost the dawn of our species. Evidence of things like music, a tendency to bury the dead and care for our elders are among the differences that separate us from the earlier homo species. As I recall, we've even got evidence of culture among the neanderthals - one of their similarities with homo sapiens - so this goes a long way back. Stripping culture away from humans is like taking the trunk and floppy ears away from elephants. It's a bit easier to picture us without civilisation since there's still a few places where that happens, but then our diets have more to do with what's available than what we digest the easiest.

Also we were domesticating animals and practicing some form of agriculture long before any evidence of civilisation existed. And we've found evidence that milk was probably being drank in some quanitity as far back as 6500 BC - which predates Sumeria by quite a lot. So yes, humans without civilisation have had access to milk. Of course I doubt they drank too much of it, since they wouldn't have been lactose tolerant, but over the next seven thousand plus years, they drank enough that we are.

Now if you're trying to talk about what a human without social groups or access to anything that has resulted from our social structures at all would do, the answer is "probably die."

I still drink like a gallon and a half of milk a week to date

*High fives*

I drink about the same.

[Funka Genocide]

6500BC was indeed a long time ago, however I believe the earliest modern human fossils date back to somewhere around 195,000 years ago.

[BitVyper]

6500BC was indeed a long time ago, however I believe the earliest modern human fossils date back to somewhere around 195,000 years ago.

Er, well yeah. That wasn't really the point. The point is that 6500 BC is well before anything that has been called the dawn of civilisation.

[DFM]

Only by about a thousand years or so, unless I'm misremembering the history classes I half paid attention to.

[bluestarultor]

I think everyone is missing the point that milk has a motherload of vitamins and nutrients. To the point that FUCKING SNAKES ACTIVELY GO AFTER THE STUFF. If there is ANY animal that has no business drinking milk, it is a range of species that do not lactate. Milk is insanely healthy and is an easy way to get several essential nutrients, along with healthy fats and sugars. You can remove it from the human diet, but why the fuck would you want to? That's like saying you can abstain from fruits and vegetables and take a ton of vitamins, but the idea of it it just plain stupid. I use that example because it highlights why vegetarianism is dumb. You can cut meats out of the diet, but we're physiologically built to eat the stuff and need the nutrients.

Every food item has a place in the human diet, or we wouldn't be able to eat it.


EDIT: @DFM: 1000 years is a good chunk of time, though. That's, assuming a 50-year life span to be generous for the time, over 20 generations.

[DFM]

If we're not supposed to eat cows how come they're made out of food?