The Milk Situation

Whole milk. I tried the heavier dairy products but they slowed things to a crawl.

The feeding tube is actually very narrow. I tried blending spinach and other assorted vegetables and it clogged it.

You have to do a intro with a person before they install it. They showed me a example of what the tube would be. He showed me what was essentially a half inch vinyl tube with one of those locking clamps you have to squeeze down to close.

It was huge and I was terrified. I just didn't understand how I would be able to sleep with it in. I thought I could blitz a steak and put it in the tube.

But the tube is tiny. After a few weeks you barely notice it. The entire concept of it is terrifying. I couldn't look at mine for a week. That isn't a joke. The concept just flipped me out.

But I thought it was weird that every doctor through my path mentioned that they could take it out in seconds if I didn't like it. Not a big deal, we just pop it out and put on a band-aid. No big deal. ENT person, Nutritionist, Radiologist, Oncologist, Oral Surgeon. It was almost scripted. Everyone said the same thing.

Now I understand. I would have died without it. The Radiologist said as much the first time I met him. "25% of the people with what you have don't get the tube, most of those people are dead now"... I thought that was hyperbole. It wasn't.

I think I had the worst schedule ever. My first treatment of radiation was at 8am. Surgery to put in the feeding tube at 9:30. First chemo at 1PM. It is hard to top that Monday. But I went in for the feeding tube and was completely knocked out. When I woke up they said they couldn't do it. So plan B was needed. From what I gather my stomach rides high so they ended up needing to push my stomach down and then stitching my stomach lower to hold it in place. This was incredibly painful. I did learn that OXY is actually a fairly weak narcotic compared to what they can give you. This dude got high.

Well fuck, I typed a lot but answered your query in the first sentence. I think I am just trying to get my story out before I turn to dust.

I had/have mouth neck cancer. The mouth part was at the very base of my tongue where it enters the throat. The hole they dug via robotic surgery on my tongue is 1x1x.5 I was told half of all people who undergo this end up with a permanent feeding tube so I should try my best to keep eating. Started radiation 2 weeks after surgery while I still couldn't swallow my spit. I ended up mostly surviving on the softest and most calorie dense concoction I could think of - yogurt with both caramel ice cream sauce and maple syrup mixed in. After 6 months I had learned both what pain really was and what morphine withdrawal meant in real terms. I've had 3 clean PET scans since but I sometimes lie awake wondering if I can force myself to go through it again if the test comes back positive. The 24/7 pain of that 6 month stretch will change the way you look at things in your life.

Hey John. I know how you feel a bit. Dont worry about people thinking its depressing. It's your struggle and your story and you can tell it how ever you want. I remember tiny things like being able to tell my story helped me when I was diagnosed with a brain tumor.

People may not understand what milk has to really do with your situation but it is those tiny things that make the most profound impacts I'd say. I still look at the tiny needle scars and that reminds me more than the actual scar on my head.

So feel free man. I found being able to talk about it openly helped me deal with it A LOT MORE than anything else.

Watch this video as an alternative perspective:

A day on my family dairy farm https://youtu.be/Lm95bVL0iwU

I like some almond milks quite a lot. But how can you possibly think it's the same as dairy milk — they're almost incomparable. Dairy milk is rich, delicious, less "candy" tasting. It's full of wonderful fat, whereas most alternative milks are thin and sweet (or bitter and chalky).

It's strange when people forget how important taste is.

It doesn't provide young children / babies with enough nutrition. Cow's milk is stupidly simple https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/vegetarian-...

Almond milk turns out to be not good for the environment as well. The problem is that Almond trees are water intensive but we grow in the desert.

Commercial almond milk has very little actual almond in it. It's basically water thickened with gum.

For example, I have in front of me a box of Kirkland brand almond milk. It provides just 1g protein and 2.5g fat per 8oz serving. Compare that to whole dairy milk, with 8g protein and 8g fat.

IMO it would more accurate to call it almond flavored water.

It costs like $3k to save a human life and we still go on vacations to exotic locations and drive $50k cars. It's not that dairy milk is so very good, it's that we care about suffering so very little. You're the minority with a disproportionately sized well of empathy is what's going on. Any attempt to understand it beyond realising that when you go out and about every day you're largely surrounded by monsters is just going to lead to confusion.

What is this special nutritional niche that yogurt occupies? The majority of humans don't eat it and seem to be doing ok.

I'm actually working toward a sort of "orthodox"-Jainism in which you only eat substances that plants are actively trying to give to other animals to help them propagate themselves (so eating fruits/bellpeppers, etc. are all ok, but killing a plant to consume it is not).

Anyway I understand that talking about animals and plants in this fashion is not a popular position on HN, and folks have and are likely to downvote me.

The majority of humans are lactose intolerant and can't drink cow's milk. So clearly it's not essential for humans of any age.

Okay, show your proof.

What? Of course they feel pain. Do you have a cat or dog? They feel pain. So why wouldn't cows? Or pigs, which are arguably smarter than any of the above?

To eat meat, one must acknowledge that it means causing pain and suffering. If you're fine with that, go right ahead. But you cannot pretend there are no consequences. i say this, by the way, as an occasional meat eater. But at least I'm honest with myself and others...

By the argument you make below ("The brains are different.") you could use this argument to deny the humanity, or capability of feeling pain of anyone that isn't yourself. This argument quickly slides into solipsism, which is not a useful philosophical position to take in a world inhabited by agents that pass our individual Turing tests.

There's a certain irony in accusing someone of constructing a strawman by constructing your own strawman.

Watch this and decide for yourself:

https://vimeo.com/209647801

This is the reality of farm life for most animals, despite what you often see in commercials etc.

This isn’t likely to lead anywhere productive.

Sheep generally cannot live without human care because they need to be shorn because their wool doesn’t stop growing, and have their tails docked else they get fly blown.

Also, the brutality of nature in the wild is irrelevant in the context of human’s farming animals for food.

Edit: fixed some grammar

Philosophically you don't have a leg to stand on making an argument for or against what is in the best interest of an incommunicable intelligent species.

For instance, you might be able to infer what a dairy cow desires, but that dairy cow's intelligence was molded by a dairy system. It is impossible to project that onto another instance even of the same species.

Is one wild deer thriving and happy with a meaningful attachment to family, and another suffering for nourishment daily? Likely.

Even concerted conservation efforts end up with unanticipated ramifications for the target and other species. The preservation of endangered species, particularly megafauna, is largely for the sake of human desires and human scientific purposes. And ironically, some of these preserved species are so captive (imprinted by our human environment for them) that they decide not to breed, not to continue their entire species. And it is the humans that are sad about it, not them.

For human morality's sake, then, I would posit that we are left only with the choice to take no action. We will either let wild be wild, or will be playing a human-centric game for eternity. There is no way to construct a world that is somehow better for other species and for us.

We either wild our own species, divide ourselves from the wild geographically, or live with the moral baggage of subjugating other species... Trying to minimize suffering based on our folly human ideas of where righteousness begins and ends.

PS I also play that righteousness game and eat a plant-based diet, take part in conservation efforts, etc. But I do so knowing it is a delusion :)

It's a great and tough question, and to be totally honest I don't have a fully formed view on this. It does seem like a life lived on a farm with humans could have significantly less suffering than a live in the wild. If the animal is (i) not being used for some byproduct, e.g., being repeatedly inseminated for milk (ii) has enough volition, or freedom to roam, and reproduce in some (possibly controlled) manner, it seems like such a life could be quite good for an animal. There are probably many small family farms that keep animals for pleasure and not to raise for meat that practice this sort of ethical farming.

One argument against this sort of intervention comes from my experience living with our family dog (we've had him for five years). He is a calm and intelligent dog who I feel has had a good life, but I feel sometimes that it is a very restrictive one. He can't do whatever he wants, and is separated from other creatures like himself. My feeling is that his life was worth living, but there is an element of guilt when I think about how free he is, and once he passes away I don't think I will keep a pet in a future family I start.

It's very hard to say what these creatures who cannot speak up for themselves really want, and whether we should interfere with their lives to prevent suffering that's inherent in nature.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Please let me know if you have any books/resources to recommend. I'm planning to read Singer's Animal Liberation soon, which will probably discuss this question.

Why are these two the alternatives? In the wild, these animals wouldn't exist. They were born into a life of forced slavery, rape, and murder but that life otherwise wouldn't exist.

The amount and frequency and price at which we consume meat necessitates very high intensity production. Most people, myself included, prefer not to think about it.

It isn't "clear" to oil executives and the coal industry that they're killing the planet. It's easy to revile oilsands, but how else are people going to live? "Why can't we just be more civil and talk about it", they're thinking.

As a layman, the scientific consensus appears to be pretty one sides. The UN makes it clear that it thinks our current farming isn't sustainable (1) and that it's primary reason for the current mass extinction (2).

More recent NPR take on it (3)

(1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/12/third-of...

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Assessment_Report_on_Bi...

(3) https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/08/08/748416223/to...

> So if we posit that those animals are sentient and feel suffering, and far out number the number of bovine slaughtered, would we not cause more suffering haversting a field.

What do you feed the cows with? The same things that humans instead could eat. So, not only are you hurting the cow, but you are also hurting the critters in the process of feeding the cow.

> Also: mono cultures of plants a can destroy landscapes

Okay, rotate the plants and have off-periods to not over harvest.

Downvotes because of posing serious questions? I would enjoy a discussion about it rather than drive by downvotes.

We as a society have already solved this in our judicial system via a difference in punishment for murder, manslaughter. Let's strive to do less murder first, and then we can work on the harder problems like accidental animal death via externalities of production. Or we can work on both at the same time!

Can we agree that intentional death is more of a low hanging fruit than accidental death, though?

Attrition. Animals don’t live that long.

I don't think anyone is conflicted by this? Like you say: kill them and don't replace them. They're going to be slaughtered anyways. This year we slaughter 39 million, next year 25 million, the year after that 10 million, ... I don't think anyone [serious] (of those two groups) is going to complain too hard.

Why do you feel like humans need to be responsible for upkeeping cattle populations, who's sole existence is for human consumption? As others have said...consume them and then don't replace them seems like a good plan.

What were your health problems that were solved by adding meat to your diet?

I believe it's from [1] by Paul Graham.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

I think most dairy cows are Holstein-Friesian, so black and white (with some regressive red and white, although Guernsey are also usually red and white). Brown dairy cows (Swiss, Jersey) are the minority of the milking population.