Spoon fed generation
I had a lengthy debate with a group of friends at the weekend, about milk. I dropped into the conversation that I don’t drink milk because it’s bad for you. Which, in my opinion is true and also the opinion of a lot of dieticians and members of the medical/scientific world – there’s info everywhere if you care to read it.
As the debate went on one guy kept asking if milk had been scientifically proven to be bad for you, because in his opinion, unless it had been it must be OK. He didn’t mean had there been case studies done, papers produced, scientific opinion forwarded etc, he meant, definitive proof that milk is bad for you published by scientists for the government.
I said I had no idea how far research had gone, but there was loads of info on the internet from doctors, scientists and dieticians all saying the same thing - but that wasn’t good enough, he wouldn’t accept it as being valid, unless it had been ‘proven’.
What I can’t understand is that he was unwilling to accept that it could be true purely because he’d been told all his life that milk is good for you and it was the general opinion.
I tried telling him cigarettes were still marketed as an aid to health and good for clearing your lungs after a small amount of people started to question their health benefits, that thalidomide was still given out even after doctors became suspicious of its effect on the unborn child and that he shouldn’t take everything at face value. Who did he think was going to tell him milk was bad for you – the milk marketing board? The local milk farmer?
Whether or not you or he agree with me and my views on drinking cow’s milk is irrelevant, what I want to know is when did we stop questioning? When did we become so spoon-fed we doubt information that doesn’t come from the government?
Out of 6 people, four were unwilling to accept that it could be true because they’d been told all their lives milk was good for them.
I was really disappointed and quite frightened, that it was the youngest person in the group who was the most adamant and unwilling to at least check it out for himself.
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23 Comments
Look at the controversy over the MMR jab a few years ago. Thousands of parents did not let their children have the combined injection but later the data was discredited. However the number of children having MMR dropped below 95% - the crucial number to ensure herd immunity. So everyone was put at risk.
You do ask when we stopped questioning. But it does seem you have stopped questioning as well because you hold your belief about milk. Do you have ANY doubts about your sources of information? There is no ultimate truth - only a blance of probabilities.
I haven't touched the stuff in 18 years for ethical reasons, simply because milk is only produced by cows who have calved, and in order for humans to take the milk, the calves are separated from their mothers. I also find it too weird that as a fully-weaned, adult human, I should be expected to include the mammary secretions of another species in my diet. I'd rather stick to plant-based foods, and that is getting easier all the time.
Interestingly, I don't get spots and I've been told that this is because I'm not consuming all that pus from infected udders (around 1-2% milk is mastitis pus) but I'm not sure how true that is. There's a lot of health rhetoric around.
As for believing the government, IMHO, the government commissions studies to lend weight to whatever agenda's they are currently promoting, so when scientists come back with proof that Global Warming is a swizz or that cannabis is not, in fact, as bad as we thought but alcohol is much, much worse, they get fired because they didn't come back with what the government wanted to hear at the time. Politics is all about twisting truth and I wouldn't believe anything the government says without extensive backing from scientists with no political agendas or sponsorship.
Ultimately though, we get out allotted span. We can, perhaps, increase that span if we don't eat this or that, abstain from meat and dairy, drink only water and all go and live in Switzerland where they have the cleanest air. But where's the fun in that? I'd rather live life thoroughly and die at 70 than eek it out through all sorts of abstinence and never really live at all. Then you may live to 90 but the fun wasn't there - no fast bikes/cars/women - they can kill you, etc. only to find that you end up with altzheimer's for the last twenty years anyhow. Oh - and Switzerland was a bad analogy, there's a scientist out there that is convinced that oxygen kills brain cells...
I'm afraid I've not followed her example - I like both meat and dairy too much, though eat a lot less meat nowadays - but I'm also becoming uncomfortable with a lot I hear about the food industry. I think people need information so they can make up their own minds, perhaps with a pinch of healthy disrespect for 'authority' thrown in.
However I think there's also a problem that if sometihing becomes controversial people might jump on a bandwagon of refusing to have it because that's the 'thing' to and so makes them look better, instead of weighing up the pros and cons and working out the risks. I can't help feeling there was an element of that with the MMR jab.
Incidentally I heard once that apparently the safe amount of blood-alcohol for driving is actually TWICE the legal limit. Apparently when scientists were asked to research it in the 1950s they came up with a figure which amounted to about 4 pints of beer. The government thought, 'shit, 4 pints sounds a lot. Let's just halve the scientists' figure.' This is not a suggestion that you all go out and get rat-arsed and then drive home and then say 'but this person of this website said......'
The pharmaceutical industry is one of the worst offenders of all. There is plenty of documented evidence about what they get up to, yet patients still believe that a pill that has been scientifically tested must be safe to take, even though that test may have only included a handful of people and the results massaged to produce the right statistics. More people end up in hospital with stomach haemorrhages caused by taking aspirin than for any other reason. Has anyone suggested banning aspirin? Apparently one of the reasons why GPs in the UK were up in arms about the controversy over the MMR vaccine was that if a child didn't receive all its jabs, that GP would not receive a hefty bonus payment from the government. So parents who were understandably worried about the safety of giving their tiny children three doses of potentially lethal illnesses at the same time may have been reassured by doctors who were more concerned about the impact on their wallets.
And of course there are vast vested interests behind the dairy industry, as well. And the meat business. They don't want any clear light shone on how they produce our food, because that might put us off eating it, which is why they use euphemisms such as 'mechanically recovered meat' as an ingredient in meat pies, hamburgers, etc. It sounds OK, doesn't it, meat that has been mechanically recovered. It makes me think of a robot's arm picking up bits of meat on a conveyor belt and putting it into a pie. What it really means, as I understand it, is all the bits of an animal that people don't want to think about, such as brain, ears, nose, guts (and what might still be in those guts), etc, all being mashed about in a big machine, mixed with bits that are more palatable and turned into something that sells for 3 quid in your local supermarket. Yum yum.
Anyone in doubt about how our much of our meat and dairy industries operate would benefit from taking a look at the website of Compassion in World Farming. And some of what they describe there happens in the UK as well as abroad. It is enough to make you lose your appetite.
Yes, it includes bits of animal not suitable for sale to the public.
No, it can NOT include "the guts of the animal" or indeed, in most cases, the brain.
Or spine or bones (in the case of beef).
There are some bits that are absolutely banned from human consumption.
If you think about it, drinking milk is completely wrong (yes, I am a bit of a hypocrite in saying this, but I'm not going to pretend it isn't true!). No other animal drinks another animal's milk by choice - especially in to adulthood. And the saddest thing is giving my daughter cow's milk is seen as normal, whereas my breastfeeding her is seen as freakish (I am intending to feed her until she is 2, or until she wants to stop). So... a human baby drinking another mammal's milk is normal, but drinking the milk made by her human mother is weird? Hmmm...
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