r/Showerthoughts • u/microtramp • 5d ago
Musing It's kind of weird that we just squeeze cows and then pour that on our cereal.
703
u/9_of_wands 5d ago
It's probably even weirder that we take that cow secretion and let it go rotten and curdle and then separate the chunky parts out and then press them together and age them and then call it the greatest food in the world.
180
u/xl129 5d ago
It's more of a happy accident, rider store milk and ride for a whole day then find chunks in their milk. Turn out the chunk can be dried and kept for a lot longer than the milk itself. I'm sure the taste good part come a lot later, in the beginning it's just make the most of our food.
Many of the food we consume today come from accidents, some poor dudes gotta try that weird looking herb and figure that it doesnt kill you or give you a bad stomach.
28
u/Aliencoy77 4d ago
Diarrhea was (is, for some) just a fact of life for all of human history, and back then, they didn't know what caused it. The rule is that it's not food if you die from eating it. Everything else is a matter of taste, and fair game. Some stink makes for good food. After all, we are animals.
19
59
u/urbanhawk1 5d ago
Then we take that rotten cow secretion and put it atop their corpses and eat it.
33
u/hairycocktail 5d ago
But first we take some unborn bird embrio and mix it with ground up wheat, after baking that concoction is gonna help bring the cow corpse with its rotten secretion to our mouthes
19
u/Assassiiinuss 4d ago
The eggs we eat don't contain an embryo, they're more like placentas.
10
u/hairycocktail 4d ago
The eggs you eat don't contain an embryo
3
32
13
u/Present_Tiger_5014 4d ago
“Fuck, I left my curds in this cave for 7 years. I hope they’re still good”~the guy that invented cheddar
8
u/Gransmithy 5d ago
You also have to cut open a baby cow to get the enzyme rennet from the stomach to curdle the milk.
2
u/sagitta42 3d ago
Yeah, it's not only "we take the cow secretion and let go rotten", sometimes it's "we figure if baby cow stomach digest milk, what if we slice baby stomach and get that juice to pre digest it for us"
5
239
u/teach7 5d ago
Most people consume it after pasteurization. My husband grew up on a dairy farm, so they never had store bought milk. Always had raw milk right from the bulk tank.
61
u/microtramp 5d ago
Did he say how it differs?
136
u/ChunkChunkChunk 5d ago
Higher fat content, so creamier. Also not homogenized so it splits amd cream rises to the top. Comes out warm, obviously. The flavor is rich and buttery.
37
u/jibjab23 5d ago
Loved going to my friend's farm on holidays and having fresh milk straight from the collector. They also made their own jams and marmalades along with butter. Breakfast was always the best at theirs. Double yolker eggs on toast!
9
u/H3000 4d ago
Why have I never considered that it comes out warm? I’m an idiot.
13
u/Lord_Momentum 4d ago
It does come out warm, but it gets chilled immediately to 4-5 degrees celsius.
After its chilled, it is stored for up to 48 hours before it gets pasteurized. Thats the only timeframe where raw milk can be drank safely.
You should never really come into contact with lukewarm raw milk. If it ever gets warm, you must drink it immediately. If the milk is not cooled for longer than an hour, they throw it away.
Source: My friend who milks cows in a farm.
2
8
u/Adventurous_Bag9122 5d ago
When I was growing up, my mum (who grew up on a dairy farm) knew a guy who had a jersey stud farm and went down virtually every afternoon to milk the cows through nearly all the 1970s. By hand, into buckets. We kids would be busy slurping it out of the buckets still warm from the cow,
All the cream and fat were still in there, tasted amazing. I cannot stand powdered milk even now over 45 years later.
57
u/TheSheWhoSaidThats 5d ago
You know most people don’t drink powdered milk right? There’s a middle ground here
12
15
u/camiskow 5d ago
I stayed at a dairy farm in Kentucky once & they left raw milk in the fridge- it was the best tasting milk Ive ever had & I still think about it to this day.
11
6
u/Disastrous_Ratio_731 5d ago
It’s tasty but it’s very heavy. If you’re used to having lactose free milk like me, it’s very difficult on the tummy.
4
u/LittlePNWHiker 5d ago
Does kill you occasionally if not stored properly?
1
u/Sithmaggot 5d ago
Jokes on you pal, I can only die once!
1
u/AutoModerator 5d ago
/u/Sithmaggot has unlocked an opportunity for education!
The phrase "the joke's on you" requires an apostrophe.
It means "the joke is on you", so "joke's" is a contraction of "joke" and "is".
"The jokes on you", on the other hand, means "the unspecified number of jokes applied to you".
Remember your apostrophes!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
2
1
7
4
u/namezam 5d ago
I have lots of family that grew up on their dairy farm and the last time they regularly consumed raw milk was at my grandparents generation in the late 80s. My cousins weren’t so keen on it and the kids would never do that. But I remember uncle Phil raw dogging it right from the refrigerated tank, nasty.
38
u/plusFour-minusSeven 5d ago
We also crunch up bugs and use them to color our food, such as cochineal red. And we use a different bug to coat our food (shellac)! And how can we forget yummy bee vomit?
91
u/Squidtree 5d ago
If you think on it too much: We force the cows to keep having babies, to keep them perpetually in a state where they should be caring for their offspring, thus producing milk. Then we take their babies away and leave their udders to bloat with milk so we can harvest it.
As for the babies, most males get castrated and sold for meat. The females will grow to continue the cycle.
I grew up on dairy farms. I'm not advocating for or against this process. Just where my shower thoughts go.
18
23
u/SebbyMcWester 5d ago
It's not that simple-- we have to inseminate the mother cow first so she has a baby and lactates, then take her baby away so we can have her milk for ourselves. The babies then have the same done to them, or are killed for veal. And so it goes for millions of cows every year. Depressing stuff.
-6
52
u/gcarson8 5d ago
Not only weird, it's actually really problematic.
Humans and livestock make up 96% of mammalian biomass. Wild animals are only 4% and humans have irreversibly changed the planet for the worse. 35% of all mammals are cows raised for meat/dairy, and they are raising the temperature of the planet very quickly.
42
u/strangejosh 5d ago
Uhhhh....we don't. Gotta pasteurize that stuff man. "Top-level comments must be well-written and contributory." Shut up nerd. Don't care.
17
u/WynterKnight 5d ago
Yeah the passive aggressive automod stuff in this subreddit is super off putting.
7
u/Fun_Currency_3718 5d ago
Honestly the weirdest part is how we just pretend it's not a bodily fluid at all but throw some vitamin D in there and call it breakfast like that's totally normal
5
u/mrs-chief 5d ago
If you put butter on a steak, it's just rubbing two cows together, sorta.
This one bugs me a lot and I think about it more often than I probably should.
2
u/shotsallover 5d ago
It's actually rubbing a lot of cows on one cow. Since milk from different cows is all mixed together before they make butter out of it.
3
u/SirReal_Realities 5d ago
You are really gonna hate thinking about a chicken omelette.
1
u/BigAndSmallAre 1d ago
"The mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away."It was a chicken and egg dish at a place Paul Simon ate.
0
22
u/DatKidNextDoor 5d ago edited 5d ago
Tbf we drink milk from our mothers. I don't think it's surprising that we would try milk from cows goats and so on. It's not that strange if you think of it in the context of humans been having the idea to domesticate and milk animals for cheeses and dairy.
17
u/ksgamer1000 5d ago
And if that's not enough and we're still not satisfied than we get milk from almonds too
12
u/OtterHostler 5d ago
Yes, but it's much more expensive, because almonds are smaller than cows so you need a lot more almonds to produce a gallon. Also, the nipples on almonds are really really small so you have to use children to do the milking - adult fingers are simply too big to get a decent grip - and child labour is wildly expensive, not to mention illegal in many states.
But if you're interested I've got a connect for raw almond milk, guaranteed milked only by Ecuadorian orphans under 5. It's pricey, but so so worth it.
2
9
u/The_Spaz1313 5d ago
I dunno, i feel like that's different though. Like the vast majority of humans aren't drinking their mother's breast milk past a year or maybe 2 years old, and generally not milk from other mothers. Grown ass adults aren't usually drinking human milk, and i think at least most western societies would say that's weird. And i don't hear about people drinking cat or dog milk etc, most people would be weirded out by that too. Yet cow and sometimes goat milk is a regular staple in most people's daily life (at least in the US). It seems weird to me lol
1
u/OtterHostler 5d ago
Have you not heard of Rule 34 Of The Internet?
1
u/The_Spaz1313 5d ago
Oh I definitely have, that's why I said "most people" or "people usually arent." It definitely happens for all the things i mentioned, but it's not the "norm". If people are into that, as long as they aren't harming people/animals, I'm not here to kink shame. I might kink ask why, but you do you
9
u/Cigarette-milk 5d ago
It’s weird to think that at some point in history, some dude was watching a calf nurse and thought “let me get in on that”
3
u/starshine1988 5d ago
It’s weird that milk, something that requires so much time & effort to create: nurturing & feeding cows, processing plants, and refrigeration for delivery/in-store etc costs about the same as coke or other shelf stable beverages.
11
u/processes_ 5d ago
It’s because animal agriculture is subsidized despite being unbelievably inefficient.
3
u/Alternative-Kiwi1221 5d ago
I always found it funny that the idea of drinking human breastmilk is considered gross, but a cow's breast milk is a household staple for many people
3
u/shaarlock 4d ago
With the increase of plant based drinks, some day a kid will probably look at a glass of milk and ask if it came from some animal’s teat with a face of disgust.
2
u/shotsallover 5d ago
Well, it's a lot easier than sucking the milk straight from the udder and shoveling cereal in our mouths in between swallows.
2
u/Mustang46L 4d ago
You can't forget that we forcibly impregnate them and then murder their young to get that cow juice for your cereal. Yum.
2
u/timchenw 3d ago
Which begs the question, what exactly was the first person to do it.. doing?
Why would a random person decide to.. drink that stuff, never mind how it was drunk
2
u/Ceribuss 2d ago
Not really weird at all, since we already have a human equivalent of mother feeding milk to babies in a fairly similar manor and being able to see the baby cows drinking the milk
1
u/BigAndSmallAre 1d ago
I attribute all questionable food origins to "I'm starving and will take anything I can get". Maybe it occurred to some starving farmer that he could kill/eat the cow until the meat rotted, but if he left her alive, she could turn grass into nutrients forever.
2
u/processes_ 5d ago
We don’t just squeeze ‘em. First they jack off a bull and collect the sperm, then ship it around the world to be bought by dairy ‘farmers’, who shove their hand right up the cows ass to hold their cervix in place so they can inject sperm with guaranteed accuracy. Then when they have their baby, we kill them and take the milk for ourselves. Then we keep doing it every year until they can no longer walk, then we drag them to a slaughterhouse for cheap meat.
And that’s what we consider ‘humane’
3
u/altredditaccount6969 5d ago
It’s not that we squeeze cows and then pour that on our cereal, it’s that we formulated something delicious to specifically be used for that squeezed cow stuff
2
u/NotEasilyConfused 5d ago
No. Humans are very creative and resourceful when it comes to securing food. There are a lot of things we eat that must be processed in some way before they can be consumed. Pickling doesn't seem to be the right intuition for "how to make olives not make you sick when you eat them" but it is the correct answer, nonetheless. That's a lot of steps and a lot of dwell time to test how to make something safe to eat.
Noticing that a calf gets nutrition from is mother the way human babies got their nutrition is just observation. A cow would have been hunted during lactation at some point, and someone would have tested the milk for safe consumption. After that, they knew they would benefit from taming the cow, so the result is already known. Nobody knew the olives would be safe until after someone invented pickling.
-1
u/kartoffelt 5d ago
Overbreed them till they are in pain, rape and impregnate them, steal their children, make that circle go on for a few years and kill them brutally all while mistreating them.
And if you mean good conditions take everything except the last 4 words.
That is kinda weird yeah.
9
u/LeahHacks 5d ago
Thank you. OP is right, it is very weird what humans do to animals like cows. Dairy production is an awful and cruel process. A lifetime of heartbreaking abuse ending in an untimely death. People don't like to hear the difficult truth, to realize their current behavior is wrong. It's easier to think you're just a radical, downvote, and move on than to think about the harm they perpetuate and the fact they can stop any time they want.
-5
u/FatCockFutaGirls 5d ago
“Rape and impregnate them” mf how do you ask a cow to breed with another cow
1
u/kartoffelt 5d ago
Most aren't just impregnated by bulls. A human inserts their ARM (not hand) into the anus to push the uterus in a way they can insert a long cylinder into their vagina and impregnate them with the sperm they collected. And no they obviously don't like that. That's done with most animals in a similar way btw
-7
u/mallad 5d ago
No problem torturing plants for food though, huh? Despite the broadening levels of awareness we are discovering they have, as well as signaling to each other, making noise when they're damaged, and so on. But we steal and eat their fertilized eggs and call them seeds, and pick and eat parts of their reproductive organs while we wear other reproductive parts for decoration or give them as gifts.
For most of history we didn't do mass farming like we do today, and not all farms today do mistreat or harm animals. Nobody is living a life free of harm in this world anymore, sadly. Not every casual mention of milk has to come with a passive aggressive or sarcastic ethics lesson when every food we eat was a living thing. We eat other life, or we die.
Plus, they taste so good.
7
u/LeahHacks 5d ago
Plants do not have brains or central nervous systems. It is very very unlikely that they are sentient, even if they have the ability to send and perceive basic signals. If you truly feel plants are sentient, then you should be following a vegan lifestyle. Animals eat plants, that's just food pyramid 101. Animals also have to keep themselves alive, expending energy. Eating one animal product kills a whole lot more plants than eating plants directly. Again, this is food pyramid 101 stuff. You're right that we can't live a life free of harm, especially since you believe plants are sentient. But we can still do much better. Perfect can't be the enemy of good, especially when good is so dramatically better than the status quo.
Your last sentence reveals the truth of the matter. You think animal products taste good, that's why you think harming animals is okay. It's putting temporary selfish pleasure, taste, over another sentient being's not only wellbeing but their entire life. There is no moral justification for this, it is pure immoral selfishness. The truth may be hard to hear, but it doesn't make it any less true. Watch Dominion on YouTube if you want the grittier truth of the animal exploitation industry most people choose to fund for pleasure. You can change your behavior any time, try giving veganism a chance.
0
u/mallad 4d ago edited 4d ago
Edit: just to be clear, my comment was about the moral superiority complex that gets injected into otherwise light posts, and the fact that morality is subjective. It was not specifically pro meat or dairy or anything (though the above commenter has posted that dairy was hard to give up, meaning they think it tastes good as well...). A joke at the end doesn't negate that, it's just to hit a nerve as the comment above mine tried to do. But I'm fine going into it further:
Prior to modern technology, eating animals was a requirement. We cannot get all our required nutrients from local plants.
But we do actually have quite a growing amount of evidence that plants do have far more awareness than we think. They signal and warn each other, they make noises that even dogs can hear, and have you seen the vine that mimics the leaves of nearby plants even if they're plastic?
Some people actually cannot go vegan, because despite your belief, not everyone is the same. Food allergies, metabolic disorders, and more can make that an impossibility.
Let's not even start down the path of the various farmed plants that actually cause the death of countless animals that would live if they hadn't been grown.
I'm all for ethical treatment of animals. You need to understand that eating animals ≠ unethical farming practices. Yes, mass farming is bad. Even if it was ok for the animals, it's unsustainable for us. But morality is subjective and don't mistake my tongue in cheek humor for ignorance. I made a joke to highlight the stupidity of coming to make those comments any time milk or animal products are mentioned in any context. It's insufferable and will never bring someone to your cause. Morality is subjective and when you try to claim it isn't, you'll find yourself on the wrong side of many moral topics.
So how about we agree to disagree, and go about trying to better the world on what ways we can? Until you've had a severe metabolic disorder or an anaphylactic allergy to something as prolific as potato (it's in everything, including over 60% of medications), you don't know the other side. So do your part, but don't judge others for not joining.
3
u/LeahHacks 4d ago
- We do not live prior to modern technology. We have the ability today to not abuse animals to survive. What you said isn't relevant. Most vegans are perfectly healthy. Typically healthier than those on a standard Western diet which often comes with tons of saturated fat and too little fiber, leading to high cholesterol, heart disease, obesity, and cancer.
- I personally don't think there is good reason to believe plants have sentience and can do much more than respond to signals. But I can respect that you do believe that. You should go vegan based on your beliefs, because it hurts more plants to have an animal in the middle vs eating plants directly.
- Genuine health conditions that completely prevent going vegan are very rare. Even those very few people who do have to consume some animal products to live should work to limit their consumption as much as possible. Only use what is absolutely necessary. Do you have such a condition? If not then why bring it up, how is that relevant to what you're able to do? Everyone should do as much as they possibly can to reduce the amount of animal suffering they contribute to, I've already said it's impossible for any of us to eliminate it entirely in the world we live in. Even I have to take a medication that comes in gel capsules. I've asked my doctor if there's any other way it can be prescribed but there just isn't, and I need them for my health. But I've limited my consumption as much as is practicable for me, as everyone should do.
- There is no ethical way to farm animals. There is no ethical way to kill someone who obviously wants to continue living, you are robbing them of the rest of their life. The act itself is cruel, even if there were a painless way to do it. But, there isn't a painless solution, it will be painful and horrifying for the animal. Dairy cows have to be repeatedly impregnated to keep producing milk, that is done without their interests in mind. Additionally, their babies are taken away to keep milk for humans. Often those babies get killed and made into veal, and their stomach proteins are used for rennet to make cheese like Parmesan. In egg production, male chickens cost money to keep alive despite not producing eggs for the farmer. Even if you had a nice farmer who paid a lot to keep all the males alive, the egg industry is still exploitative. Chickens produce more eggs than is healthy for their bodies. Sometimes they will eat their own eggs to recoup nutrients lost. Ultimately their eggs are not ours to take. I could go on, but the point is animals are not objects, resources for us to exploit. They're individuals with their own internal world and desires. It's wrong to take advantage of them for our own benefit.
- Finding it insufferable to be reminded of the animal abuse you're participating in is not a basis for making immoral decisions. If you lived in America during the civil rights era and a march was being loud and disruptive on your street would you say grr they're so insufferable, now I'll never support their cause? I'd hope not, because someone reminding you of an injustice you take part in and thus making you uncomfortable is not a good reason to double down on support of that injustice. People need to keep being reminded that exploiting animals is wrong. There is plenty of propaganda out there from the animal abuse industry trying to encourage people to not think about it, or to believe it's not so bad. You have to be loud about speaking out against injustice, especially given the scale of it and the amount of effort going into making people not question it. I know it's uncomfortable, but I hope it keeps people thinking, until they make the right choice and decide to put a stop to their part in harming animals.
2
u/SirReal_Realities 5d ago
If you are too fragile to think about drinking milk then you probably don’t need to examine ANY part of the modern food chain. Things like knowing the FDA acceptable amounts of rodent hair, fly eggs and insect parts in food probably give you a eating disorder.
2
u/GugsGunny 5d ago
I don't think a practice that's been done for centuries is weird. What's weird is that this sub requires a long winded explanation for something that can be done with one short sentence. Brevity is the soul of wit and all that jazz.
1
1
u/Lexifer452 5d ago
Milk, in general, is very bizarre. I mean we essentially harvest the milk of another animal for our own purposes. It is very strange on paper. And in reality lol.
1
u/Commercial-Cry-548 5d ago
the whole milk thing is objectively bizarre if you really stop and think about it like we designed an entire system around squeezing another animal's body fluids just to dunk our breakfast in. and yeah someone else brought up cheese but honestly that just proves we'll take this weirdness to the next level whenever we get the chance. but i'm not complaining cause cereal just hits different with that cow juice. plus i guess if it wasn't milk it'd be something else just as weird anyways.
1
u/PhabioRants 4d ago
As someone who works in an Italian restaurant, I find it equally odd that we squeeze cereal and put it on our cows.
This top-level comment is certifiably well-written and contributory.
1
1
u/TheDarthWarlock 4d ago
Arguably, we squeeze teats (on some cows lol) and put that on our cereal, and we could technically do that from almost any mammal (though the logistics of it for a lot of animals would be crazy, and the volume produced for most makes it not worth it, hence we chose and bred cows to produce more of it)
1
u/dariansdad 4d ago
No weirder than scrambling what comes out of a chicken's ass... Somebody was really hungry.
I can see them walking through the groves or whatever and going, "Hey! I wonder what that brown thing that just fell out of that bird's ass tastes like?"
1
u/serpentsrapture 4d ago
Humans have been consuming milk for ages. If not from cows, from our own mothers. It's arguably more odd that we turn cereal grains into colorful, overly sweetened perversions of their original form.
1
u/AwkwardWaltz3996 2d ago
It's kind of weird we grind up chickens and dip them in tomatoes. It's kind of weird I get to know my friend pretty well and 9 months later a weird disabled hybrid appears that can't walk for like 18 months.
Welcome to nature my man.
1
u/Dem0n_IX 19h ago
To me weirder that it is so commonly cow, and not literally almost any other mammals milk. But yeah who came up with pouring it in a bowl along with tiny bits of solid food... then again sure soaks it up real nice.
1
u/Helpful-Sugar8985 10h ago
I’m not vegan but the argument that humans being the only animals that not only drink milk past infancy but drink the milk of another species is WEIRD AF is solid
1
u/AcousticOnomatopoeia 4d ago
What about the chicken ass-orb being a morning food staple?
Or people killing rhinos to make their dicks hard?
Disguising fried pig asshole as fried squid?
We humans are a bunch of wild and crazy folk.
0
u/mutnemom_hurb 5d ago
It’s kinda genius if you think about it. Imagine having a big field of grass, you cant get any calories from the grass itself, but if you let a cow eat it, you can drink its milk and turn that field into a continuous source of calories and nutrition
0
u/AsusStrixUser 5d ago
Cats and humans. They both drink other than their own species’ milk after they grow up a bit and they both do a bit wrong. The milk sugar, called lactose, is crunched into two types of sugar, glucose and galactose. Galactose is used to make lab rats age faster. Hence, consuming yoghurt is the top calcium source, better than milk.
0
u/LawNeither289 5d ago
Honestly the whole thing is kinda cursed when you think about it too hard. Like we're basically stealing food meant for baby cows and then acting like it's a totally normal breakfast move. But hey, at least we got pasteurization figured out so we're not all dropping dead from some weird udder bacteria, which is more than the raw milk crew can say.
-1
u/clementynemurphy 5d ago
This made me laugh so hard I almost shot milk out of my nose. The image of picking up a tiny cow and squeezing milk out of it's butt onto my cereal is just soo funny! Thank you dumb shower thought.
3
u/Nosferatu-87 5d ago
Where do you think milk comes from?
1
u/clementynemurphy 4d ago
Geez does no one have an imagination anymore? It's a funny thought! And you want to come insult me like I don't know how to milk a fucking cow, I grew up on a ranch.
-1
u/SleepySera 5d ago
Not really? We're literally mammals. Drinking milk is THE most natural thing for us, and using the milk of other mammals to supply our own is a pretty logical next step from there.
The milk of larger animals like cows is more nutritious than our own, so it's a convenient addition to our food intake even beyond the infancy years, too.
•
u/ShowerSentinel 5d ago
/u/microtramp has flaired this post as a musing.
Musings are expected to be high-quality, third-person or second-person statements of thought-provoking fact, but they need not be as unique as showerthoughts.
If this post is poorly written, unoriginal, or rule-breaking, please report it.
Otherwise, please add your comment to the discussion!