I never realised my milk drinking habits were strange! Are yours?

[MrsPeacockInTheLibrary]

Partly inspired from another thread where someone said that only people over forty drink cow's milk.

I am close to 40 at 37, but I only drink semi-skimmed cows milk and have done for years. I'll drink almond or soya if a friend or family provides it, obviously, but I also see it as knowingly looking at the more expensive price. Any one else?!

Disclaimer: I know I don't drink as much milk as other people anyway, so no judgement here just curiosity!

Are there any other items that people under or over a certain age are probably not having?

Early 20s, only drink milk substitutes, have done for years.

I am also breastfeeding and get so stressed and HATE pumping milk. Makes me feel sorry for the cows too constantly being pumped lol. Also isn't the thought of it a little weird?

@StarlingsAreAmazing

Knowing that the milk was destined for the calf, which will be slaughtered instead,is sad enough before realising a farmer has to stick their arm up the cows arse to impregnate her over and over is enough to put me off. (Can't imagine it's all too pleasant for the farmer either)

Environmental issues with other 'milks' aside, this is why I won't drink bovine breast milk. Gross and fecking downright weird IMO. I'm nearly 40.

For what It's worth, I buy Soy milk once every so often for baking but I'm not really a consumer of it regularly. Creamer (non dairy) for coffee. No need for any sort of milks in my life. Bleugh < not envy.

I stopped drinking cows milk about a decade ago, but didn’t substitute to anything else because I couldn’t bear almond/soy milk.

Now I’ll drink tea with oat milk because it tastes the best.

I live in the Caribbean where our milk is sourced from the US and I wouldn’t drink any of it due to the sub standard dairy farming practices.

Cows milk is for baby cows.

I’m not vegan (but don’t eat meat/dairy), but I find the “sustainability” argument weak.

Soy/almond milk also wrecks the environment. Probably true, but it also doesn’t require a sentient animal to be artificially inseminated, pregnant on a near constant basis and then have her baby removed from her within 2 days of its birth.

Mmm, bovine breast milk 😋 Humans in this part of the world have been consuming animal milk for the last 10,000 years, and I've got evolutionary adaptations to facilitate that, so if you tell me it's unnatural I'm just going to laugh and suggest you try trashing someone else's cultural and evolutionary heritage, see how far it gets you.

I don't drink milk, water, tea or coffee and I'm early 30s and yes it's not good I know

We drink lots of cows milk! All very much under 40.

It’s great to see people trotting out things they’ve read on the internet but not actually fact checked though.

I’m a huge proponent of British grass fed dairy. Sequestering carbon, grazing to improve soil structure and organic crop fertiliser are all things we should be striving for.

Deforestation and extreme drought caused by fashionable milks, not so much my thing.

I'm 29 and drink cow's milk. Occasionally coconut milk or chocolate hazelnut milk but I drink this in addition to cow's milk because I enjoy the taste, not as a substitute.

I’m 35 and I’ve always drunk cows milk. Blue milk. So do the kids. So do most of my village who have the same milkman as me. If you were to ask anyone I know they’d tell you the opposite. Soya and almond milk are for posh folk. I can’t imagine my wee brother (27) the welder saying anything other than “fucks this pish?” If handed soya. Given his reaction to green milk or red milk

I'm 26 and so is my partner. We drink oat and soya. Just prefer it, even though we do eat cheese.

I think what would be weird is the amount you drink rather than you actually drinking it.

I use maybe 2-3 pints a week for myself. I don’t eat much cheese or other dairy either no gallbladder rather than not liking it. I love cheese.

But I won’t touch most milk alternatives.
Soya milk and mince gives me stomach ache but I can eat the fresh (frozen) beans fine.

Almond milk is absolutely awful for the environment even in comparison to grass fed cows milk mostly because it’s grown in areas where there’s big droughts/dry generally and shipped from overseas.

Coconut milk is too fatty for me.

Oat milk isn’t too bad actually and when cutting calories I swap to unsweetened oat milk in cereals which I don’t have very often, and oat milk I can make at home. Handy back in 2020 when I couldn’t get out the house or get a food shop. Environmentally U.K. grown oats and made into oat milk at home so no tetra paks you cannot recycle and you can use the strained oats for other recipes - is the better milk alternative for us in the U.K. environmentally and financially.

@StarlingsAreAmazing

Knowing that the milk was destined for the calf, which will be slaughtered instead,is sad enough before realising a farmer has to stick their arm up the cows arse to impregnate her over and over is enough to put me off. (Can't imagine it's all too pleasant for the farmer either)

I don’t think it’s the arse @StarlingsAreAmazing. You should’ve paid more attention to biology at school!

@EveningOverRooftops almond milk is worse for the environment than other non dairy alternatives but still better than dairy - and actually requires less water than dairy www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46654042

@Mmmmmmbop90

Cows milk is for baby cows - utterly weird to drink the milk made for a baby of another species

It’s just fat and water, hormones and sugar all congealed together with a little bit of pus from the poor cows mastitis

Having breastfed I could never steal the milk off another mother just because I liked the taste. Anyway, cows milk smells disgusting and has an awful coating feeling in the mouth.

Love a bit of cow pus in my cuppa on a morning!

I'm under 40 and I only drink whole milk, as does my teenage DS. In porridge and by the glass.

@MolkosTeenageAngst

Do you mean drinking glasses of milk in place of water/ juice or other drinks? I don’t really know anyone who’s not a child who would pour a glass of milk to drink. Milk is generally used for things like tea, coffee, making a cheese sauce etc. I would agree a lot of adults probably don’t drink cows milk as a beverage.

However most adults I know drink cows milk in tea/ coffee and on cereal etc though including all those under 40, the only exceptions being my vegan friends.

I often drink a glass of milk followed by a black coffee in the morning. Just don't like the milk in the coffee!

Lalliella it's kind of worse really if you see my earlier diagram. An arm is shoved up both to guide to insemination rod. Pretty fucking brutal.

There's only 3 people in my household; myself, Ds & Dp and we go through a 2ltr of full fat cows milk daily.

My ds is 20 and drinks usually around a litre of milk a day, he drinks full fat or if that's not available he'll have semi skimmed.

Deforestation is caused by cow farming - surely we all know that one by now. 90% of the worlds soy production goes to feed cows. Soy milk isn’t the problem here - it’s cow farming

And as to the ‘I know how well the cows are looked after’ argument - please come and enlighten us. Do your cows not have their babies removed so you can take their milk and sell it to adult humans? What happens to your cows when they no longer produce milk? Do you keep them all as pets?! What happens to male calves born to your cows?

@Mmmmmmbop90 there isn’t any deforestation in British grass fed dairy, which is what I was supporting.

Very few male dairy calves are born in the UK as cows are inseminated with sexed semen. As of 2021, the few male calves born aren’t allowed to be killer at birth. Most were being raised for beef already.

I don’t farm but I know farmers that remove at a few days and they go into a nursery herd with retired cows, some that remove at a few weeks and the calves go in pens for a period before going into the herd and then one who removes at eight moths.

My teens drink cows milk, especially if its fresh from the farm - if I bring 4 liters of farm milk home its gone in 24 hours.

Milk substitutes are mostly water and flavouring and various additives and often only a few percent the ingredient they're named after, and soy and almond milk have as many ethical issues as cows milk and far more food miles.

Its a very specific sub group of young adults who drink milk substitutes for any reason other than allergies or being vegan.

I’m 44 and try to avoid all dairy for two reasons.

1. Humans aren’t designed to drink cows milk
2. The dairy industry sucks.

Cows aren’t always artificially inseminated. Sometimes they are actually turned out with bulls. Regardless of the method, however, they are put in calf over and over and basically treated like milk-producing machines. On some farms the calves (if male) are shot as soon as they are born as they are financially worthless. A lot of farms keep the cows in big sheds 365 days a year and they never get to experience being outside and eating grass in it’s natural state. Some don’t even have mats or bedding and have to stand or lie directly on concrete floors. Dairy cows are treated really badly and when their yield starts to drop they are sent off to the abattoir to be turned into dog food.

I’ll stick to alternatives thanks.

It's not an age thing, it's a dietary preference. I think a lot of older people have only changed in more recent years because of the increase in non-dairy options, more changing to vegan diets, and also a better awareness of allergies and intolerances. I was suffering was horrendous heartburn and IBS and it was only due to a friend's baby having silent reflux and being put on dairy free formula that I decided to try cutting out dairy myself and it made a huge difference. I've never enjoyed cows milk so it's no great loss!

I don't know why some people still insist that soya milk is bad for the environment. It isn't! Soya milk is made from European soya. Soya produced in what used to be rainforest is used to feed our cows.

I drink both cows milk and soya. I buy cow for DD and soya for myself. Prior to switching to soya, I had a huge milk habit - guzzle it straight from the carton, blue as well!