Sunday, November 16, 2008

Milk

So, many people today are realising that cow’s milk is not nutritionally essential, and even that it is unhealthy. Because there are thousands of different products made with it, almost all people still continue to buy milk or foods that contain it.
There’s a tendency for we humans to insist on getting what we want … perhaps it’s a Dominant Species thing - we want it and prefer to get it without struggle. Milk is legal and it’s cheap, it’s subsidised and plentiful. It is therefore the favourite ingredient by many food manufacturers. It is a truly struggle-free product. Fresh supplies are available everywhere. We often need go no further than a few meters down the road, to the nearest corner shop, to get our milk … at which shop they sell many other products, also made with milk (as a chief ingredient). As consumers we almost fall over ourselves to get milk, because we can only contemplate our tea and coffee with it (and therefore unable to imagine life without it!). Everyone has a carton in their fridge (except vegans and lactose intolerants). There is no more prevalent consumer item on the market, and therefore milk is a guaranteed money spinner for the industry. They’ve turned it into something as natural as fresh air. They say it’s essential to human life. So, buying milk is an entrenched consumer habit.
We forget that whenever we buy it, milk, we help to finance cow prisons.

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