To ration milk or not to ration milk

[babycatcher411]

That is the question!

Seeking advice here, as much as whether IABU.

Today at the dinner table it came to head that DP thinks DS drinks way too much milk. He thinks it’s unreasonable and isn’t a cost we should accommodate. He thinks I need to make DS drink something else.

This has mainly come up in discussion because the last 2 food shop periods (we do a big shop every 2 weeks) I’ve had to do a couple of topups of milk mid way.

Usually we buy 3 4pinters, for 2 adults and 1 child (11). Mostly this lasts almost the 2 weeks, sometimes I will buy an extra 4pinter towards the end.

I did point out that I have recently been drinking more milk, because of heartburn (36/40 pregnant) and have started having cereal at breakfast so we are going through it more quickly than we used to.
DP is adamant it’s down to DS consumption, that I should be stricter, that he was told off (and rightly so!!) as a child for drinking too much milk. I said I’m not rationing milk.

I can’t actually seem to find on google how much milk an 11 year old should drink.
I would say normally DS has milk with cereals (maybe 300mls), and a glass of milk in the evening (probably another 300mls). Sometimes he’ll have an extra glass but this is not every day, just as he feels like it.
Is this too much milk?

What does your DH drink? Because unless it's water (or maybe squash), it's likely to be more expensive than DS's milk...

2 adults, 2 pre-teen kids averages out at about 14-16 pints a week. One of the adults doesn't drink milk even in tea/coffee or use it on cereal.

ivykaty I agree that dairy farming has an environmental impact, which I am concerned about. However, the substitutes all have a detrimental environmental impact too. It can be difficult to work out which is worse, as you have to weigh different factors against each other.

E.g., I worry about the methane produced by dairy cattle. But then clearing great swathes of the Amazon to grow soy causes same/worse problems. Almond growing is causing massive problems in California. If we want to drink soy or almond milk, it has to be processed in a factory, and then flown or shipped here, taking a lot of energy, some of which, at least, will be coming from fossil fuel.

Dairy farming is relatively local, so food miles are much lower. It is relatively unprocessed, cutting down on energy requirements, and it is also important to me to eat a largely unprocessed diet, so that is another point in its favour. It is nutritionally far denser than the substitutes, so you get more bang for your buck. It provides jobs and income in the U.K. I don't personally have problems digesting it, being largely of Northern European descent. Also, it tastes much better than the alternatives, in my view.

These things are never completely cut and dried, but I personally feel happy to continue eating dairy.

It’s funny, on threads like this. When someone asks “is he the biological dad?” you always can predict what the answer will be

I was always getting into trouble for drinking all the milk as a child, my dad moved out and it turns out he was the one drinking it all.
Milk isn't that good for you, I thought that was common knowledge.

Gosh, he’s not even adolescent yet, your dp is going to struggle with the next few years. Fwiw, my dh gets annoyed with the variability of how much milk our dc use (sometimes they drink loads, other times none), but he doesn’t ration (except asking them to leave enough for the next mornings tea and coffee) and tbf he does the milk delivery order so it probably is annoying.

I wonder if it is just a difficult dynamic in the house, your dp not being a parent directly, but being an adult in the house, and it comes out in these relatively minor (benign?) ways.

Your DP sounds like a bit of a controlling twit tbh. There are far worse things your DS could be drinking

Tolls I think the environmental impact of dairy farming is causing global warming & equal to the devistation caused by other farmed foods.

What I find curious is that your not happy about non dairy milk being fortified with calcium vitamins (as are milk & bread) and yet you don’t concern yourself with the hormones found in cows milk.

It’s not easy to find studies not funded by the dairy industry in some form but this one I believe is neutral, and not of the scare mongering sort

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4524299/

Nobody needs almond or soy milk. But a lot of milk avoiders like to consume them. They have their own env. impacts that may be higher than other sources of calories would cause.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jun/21/ethical-living-soya

ivy it's not that I'm unhappy per se with the vitamins added to the plant milks. I would rather they were there, than not, if great swathes of the population are suddenly going to take up drinking them. It just seems unnecessary to go for a more processed, unnatural product when there is a natural one with all that and more (protein, for e.g.) that is produced with minimal processing down the road.

I don't see how it is healthier. And that is how it is being promoted. I'm a bit worried in general, tbh, with the current cultural anxiety about food, the promotion of 'clean eating', etc, which is so often orthorexia or other forms of disordered eating, dressed up as a virtue. It's not psychologically healthy when it gets to that point, but it seems that culturally that is the way we are headed, and it worries me, especially for younger people like my DD.

Which hormones in cows milk?

Can't believe this has got bogged down in a blind alley about the pros and cons of milk!
The issue here is your dhs resentful and if not abusive then deeply unkind attitude to your d's. Trying to ration a child's milk consumption is ridiculous, especially on the grounds of cost.

Sounds like he resents your poor ds being there at all! He needs to realise that he is the one who has come on to ds's turf not the other way around.

I agree with a pp that this all needs nipping in the bud right now.

Tolls - drinking cows milk isn’t natural, yes is common practice, it’s hardly natural though to be drinking hormones produced through a cows pregnancy and that’s why there is the concern. Cows are being milked whilst pregnant rather than afterwards. Even milk produced after pregnancy is meant for a calf not a human so to call it a natural product is a bit rich, yes it’s natural for a calf, yes humans commonly drink it but it is unnatural

Natural and unnatural are basically value judgements in this case, and tell us nothing other than what the person making the claim thinks. Some of us have evolved an evolutionary adaptation allowing us to digest cow's milk, the rest is opinion. Unprocessed/less processed might be a better way of describing cows milk as a foodstuff that hasn't been fucked about with as much as the almonds in almond milk, or similar.

Also which hormones specifically ivykaty and why do these concern you?

Why do you think it's not natural? How would you define that?

We've been doing it for thousands and thousands of years. We do plenty of other things that other species don't do, like cook our food. On the whole, the dietary adaptations we have made as a species have enabled us to evolve to become the most successful species on earth (for good or ill). The hormone point is interesting, but there is currently not enough evidence to support it.

Trying to think what we get through. I drink skimmed and DS and DH drink semi. I think we get 12-14 pints a week. DS often has a pint or two of banana milk too.

It's natural enough that a large proportion of the world's population as evolved to produce lactase!

Cows are being milked whilst pregnant rather than afterwards

Yes, they are milked up until 2 months before calving, but of course they are milked after their pregnancy! That's when they produce the most milk.

And if you're concerned about the hormones produced by the cow during pregnancy, presumably you're against tandem breastfeeding as well?