HOW IS IT NOT WEIRDER TO DRINK MILK OUT OF A COW!

I mean, c'mon, human breast milk is designed for... humans,

Inter species milk drinking, how is that not weirder than drinking your own species breast milk?

How is it weirder to eat human than eat cow? I mean people die every day. Think of all that succulent meat going to waste.

jesus

How is it not weird to have a toilet in a restraunt, you are literallyshiting where you eat.

How is it not weird to eat eggs, you are effectively eating chicken foetuses.

No, it's weird.

But for $200, I'd sure as hell drink some.

Why is this the argument? meat is different, milk is produced to feed the young, are you saying that you'd rather suck the tit of a cow than suck the tit of a woman to get that milk?

(yeah, let that image burn in your head for a minute)

and,,

i'd eat a human steak, if it were sourced from free range corn fed human...

How is not weirder to wear animal skins instead of human skins? We enjoy human contact it's like dating a sexy jacket!

I wouldn't drink milk straight form a cow. Cows on a modern farm are very filthy animals where who knows what falls off the animal and into the bucket that isn't milk.

Human doesn't taste very good, it's very stringy and bitter.

i mean, wut.

@red12b: Because by your definition if human milk is better for us because it comes from humans then likewise human meat should be much better for us as well.

Whats up with these socially accepted norms and standards we live by, kinda weird huh?

It's actually suppose to be pretty good, like pork. This why supposedly some fire fighters can't stand to eat BBQ because it smells exactly like people they smelled roasting within a house. Yum.

I would drink human breast milk, only if i had a picture of the woman whos breast it came from.

Because cow tits are hot.

I don't understand the whole cannibalism=drinking breast milk argument. Breast milk is specifically made to be fed to baby humans. It's full of all sorts of healthy goodness to boost the immune system, and full of fat to plump up the baby to keep it warm. Human flesh on the other hand is not specifically made to be eaten by humans. It's not specifically made to be eaten period.

@joseffthered: Just like human milk is not specifically made to be drank by adults, hence we drink cow milk.

exactly, though I think other animals might disagree with you there,

what?

your logic is fucked.

by your logic, not only are we drinking another species milk but milk specifically made for it's young, how is that specifically made for us?...

Human milk is designed to be drank by humans. That's it's job. Babies are supposed to drink milk from their mothers breasts. Cow milk, on the other hand, is designed to be drank by calves. That's is's job. Calves are supposed to drink milk from their mothers udders.

Meat, on the other hand, is a totally different issue. We're omnivores, meaning we eat both meat and vegetables. We eat whatever meat we can get our hands on, besides human meat, because of preservation of the species. If we all went around eating eachother, the species would die out. Hence, we don't. Very few animals are cannibals for that obvious evolutionary reason. Those that are cannibals usually do so in very specific situations - e.g. the female Black Widow spider eats the male immediately after sex. It has already done it's bit to preserve the species. And eating the father provides sustenance to the mother which allows her to survive until she lays her eggs, further preserving the species. She would never eat the male before conception, because if she did, the species would die out.

The reasons for it being perceived as weird for adults to drink breast milk thing may also be evolutionary. The breast milk is for babies. Babies need it to survive. Adults drinking it goes against that. You're using up a valuable resource. It's the same reason you don't see adult cows drinking milk from other cows. Of course, cows operate purely on instinct. Whereas we have conscious thought and try to rationalize our actions, even if the actual reasons are that we're acting on our evolutionary instincts.

As for why we decided it was a good idea to drink cows milk? I don't know. There must be some anthropological reason, though.

@extomar said:

haha what the hell

thanks for being the articulate one here matty,

i'm too fucking tired to string that shit together, although it should be forefront since I studied it, eh

trace amounts of puss blood and shit in every carton

@red12b: Why don't you go out tomorrow and now wear any pants or underwear. How come we cover up our genitals but we show our arms and faces? That's fucked too right? These are social norms we all abide by. We don't eat human meat, not because it's not edible but because society deems it wrong. We don't go around exposing ourselves, also not because those places need any more covering up than others, but because socially that is not accepted attire. We also don't drink breast milk as adults, because it's not something we as a civilized people do, not because there is a biological reason against it. If you think these social norms are completely fucked and ridiculous then you can move out to an island somewhere, drink human milk and procreate with your own daughters all you like - the rest of us normal adjusted human beings will stay here and continue drinking our gross ass cow milk.

Question is would you drink manboob milk?

We could artificially cultivate milk from big manboobs. It'd create jobs.

Think about it.

But why are these things social norms? That's the question that's being asked. No one is questioning that it is socially acceptable to drink cow milk. The question is why? How did it first occur? Why did it become a socially accepted norm? And conversely, why is it socially unacceptable for adults to drink human milk (although I've already posed one theory for why that may be the case)?

No one is saying they want to flip the world in it's head and reverse all the social norms, or go live on an island where all the social norms are flipped. We're asking why? How did these come about? Anthropology is an interesting subject, and one I don't know enough of. Simply saying "because it's a social norm" doesn't answer the question. We know it's a social norm. How and why did it become a social norm?

I'm not annoyed by these social conventions, i was asking why are people grossed out by human milk more than cow milk. I think that's a different disconnect,

and wait, I do live on an island and we're nude all the time, where the fuck do you live that that's not acceptable?!

@mattyftm: While I applaud you for putting so much thought into that argument which holds up really well, but you're not seriously going to tell me the reason adults aren't drinking breast milk in current day is because we think it's wasteful.

No, I'm saying adults don't drink breast milk because we're hard-wired by evolution to not want to drink breast milk because that milk is required by babies, and to drink it may deprive babies of milk. We're not consciously thinking that, it's just instinct.

Well, it's not homogenised for one...

The only argument against is the increased possibility of passing on diseases which directly affects other humans. Otherwise, I continue to be baffled by the idea that drinking another species byproduct is less taboo than drinking our own.

@mattyftm: Actually the original question was why is it not weirder for humans to drink cow milk. My answer was that it's due to social norms. Now if we delve deeper into the rabbit hole of how these norms came to be in the first place then I can't answer that as I'm no anthropologist - but I suspect the answer lies somewhere along the same lines as why women wear skirts and men wear pants and so forth. I'm sure some scholar on the GiantBomb forums who has studied human evolution and human instinct can elaborate further. I would be curious to know if there are any scientific records of man during "caveman" days drinking human milk.

Just to clear a few things up: if you throw the whole 'taboo' thing out the window (and yes, 'taboo' is a gross understatement), one of the main reasons cannibalism isn't a more viable option is disease. Eating another person means the possibility of transferring any communicable affliction to yourself, hence why the whole BSE (mad cow) scare a few years back was such a valid problem (cows don't carry many diseases that can be transferred to humans, but in this case they did).

Second, drinking human breast milk is probably considered so taboo for a couple of reasons. The overt sexual nature of the breasts for one, the fact that it's primarily for the health of infants (human breast milk transfers the mother's immunity to disease to the infant for the first six months or so), and most adults can provide for themselves, it's a whole infantile regression thing. Also, there's the fact that most breast milk is consumed from the mother, and there's something just downright creepy about the imagery of an adult doing that.

There's nothing physically wrong with drinking human breast milk, but with the ease and availability of so many non-sentient creatures to provide you with milk, the tendency to want to drink human milk just falls into the category of fetishism.

EDIT: Also, it doesn't come in chocolate...

Humans are one of the few mammals who dont become lactose intolerant as they mature.

Short answer: Taboos and the likes set aside, there's nothing weird about drinking human breast milk.

I don't have a long answer.

I never tried because the opportunity never presented itself but cow milk is delicious and if breast milk happened to taste even better i would switch if it became a widely available product that doesn't cost more.

Mothers that breastfeed their children beyond infancy are weird. Mothers that continue breastfeeding their children into their adulthood are fucking insane.

Even calves stop drinking from the teat once they're old enough to no longer require it.

All boundaries are conventions, waiting to be transcended!

I'd totally drink female human breast milk for 200 moolahs.

Well he's got a point, will the cows all hormone'd up to hell, drinking straight from the source you could end up with pus in your milk.

Anyway I wouldn't drink human breast milk because I think most women have better things to do than be milked for adults to drink. Cows can dedicate their whole life to providing us for milk, our people are more important than to use used as literal cattle.

We're trained to give it up as an infant basically. Taboo, cultural norms, and whatnot. It's just one of those unspoken things. From a completely logical standpoint there shouldn't be anything weird about it compared to drinking cow milk, but its obviously off putting to a good number of people.

Gonna just put this theory out there.

The disgust of drinking human milk has nothing to do with the source of the milk, and everything to do with social norms prescribed to your age. Adults that behave as children or take interests in childish things are commonly seen as creeps. The drinking of breast milk, an act attached to infants and toddlers, has a similar affect when attached to adults.

It's not a matter of ethics, it's simply a matter of practicality. Cows can put out more milk on a daily basis and are specifically raised for this purpose. Milking humans is just silly when they could be put to far greater and more productive use as wage laborers (Industry, Agriculture, Construction, etc).

You know... I'm not sure but I just want the second half of that panel. Jesus Christ that was amazing.

It's weird to drink milk, period. I have no idea why it became socially accepted.

Milk's already nasty on it's own. If you're going to drink that stuff it might as well be pasteurized.

i guess thats why they call it longpig

@red12b said:

@dagbiker said:

I would drink human breast milk, only if i had a picture of the woman whos breast it came from.

Would.

And yeah, it was kinda weird seeing drama over that amount of milk really.

It was certified, hello?

Drinking milk started way back in the olden times. A cow giving milk was a great replacement for water especially on farms where water would be more valuable for crops and farm animals.

Cows produces way more milk than any human or infact any other farm animals, wich is why you don't see much pig milk for example. It's all about quantity

In other news I'm developing late onset lactose intolerance, and it sucks because I actually really like milk and cooking with it.

I don't really understand what the big deal is. The source of the milk being basically unknown is kind of a spooky thing but people still touch each other, they kiss and they have sex. Doing these things isn't strange and in the process we swap sweat, saliva and semen just to name few.

Pretty crazy to be so freaked out by something that you would feed your own child. Maybe I'm just weird.

Because most people don't have personal relationships with cows. They do, however, have personal relationships with people. So drinking milk from a person is grosser then drinking milk from a cow.

Done and done.

@mcghee said:

It's extremely unhealthy, that's why! Disease is bad.

@mattyftm:I really like the mental image of adult bovines suckling on another's teets.

And I expect a lot of the things we drink are "unnatural." Most animals just stick to water, and milk in their infancy. Part of that has to do with us trying to avoid the disease that came with a lot of water before we had purification and water processing technology.