Comment on Humans have used animal milk for butter way longer than processed plant butters. by dickie

Parent Post: Humans have used animal milk for butter way longer than processed plant butters.

dickie · 10/4/2026, 9:48:54 AM · permalink

“Humans have used animal milk for butter way longer than processed plant butters.”

Yes.

And humans walked for a lot longer than they drove cars.

We used candles longer than electric lights.

We kept records by hand longer than we used computers.

Congratulations. You have established that **old things are older than new things.**

That is a historical fact, not an argument for superiority.

And “processing plants is new” is especially funny because humans have been crushing, grinding, fermenting and pressing plants for thousands of years. We have archaeological evidence of olive oil production going back roughly 8,000 years.

So the real argument cannot simply be:

**Cow butter is old. Plant butter is new. Therefore cow butter is better.**

That does not follow.

Then there is the claim that cow butter is somehow the more “natural” choice.

A cow has to become pregnant and give birth before lactation begins. Dairy production then takes that milk, collects it mechanically, cools it, transports it, processes it, separates the cream, pasteurizes it, churns it, salts it, packages it, refrigerates it and ships it through a modern industrial distribution system.

But blend some plant fats together and suddenly civilization has gone too far.

I’m not saying cow butter is poison.

I’m saying it is hilarious to point at plant butter and yell **“PROCESSED!”** while holding a refrigerated brick of commercially processed cow lactation.

And yes, I think the underlying dairy process is gross.

That is an ethical and personal judgment, not a nutritional claim. Milk is a mammalian secretion produced after an animal gives birth. We have culturally normalized taking another species’ milk and turning it into cheese, yogurt, ice cream and butter so completely that calling it “cow boob juice” sounds ridiculous.

The biology did not become less weird because we gave the products nicer names.

Then there is the idea that dairy represents some rugged natural free market while plant butter is an artificial modern invention.

The U.S. dairy industry operates with substantial federal support.

USDA’s Dairy Margin Coverage program provides financial protection when the national milk-price-to-feed-cost margin falls below a producer’s selected level. Dairy also operates under Federal Milk Marketing Orders, a federal regulatory system governing the marketing relationship between milk producers and processors. The federal government also purchases dairy commodities through USDA programs.

So we have cows, breeding, milking systems, processing plants, refrigeration, trucking, federal regulation, federal financial protection and government commodity purchases...

...but somebody mashed plants into a spread and **that** is where food became unnaturally complicated.

And if we are going to appeal to ancient tradition, there is another awkward detail.

The Torah repeatedly says not to cook a young goat in its mother’s milk. Traditional Jewish law derives from those passages a much broader prohibition against combining meat and dairy.

You know one extremely easy way to make sure your hamburger never touches dairy?

Don’t eat the cow or her milk.

Problem solved.

That does not mean vegan food automatically satisfies every rule of kashrut. It does not. But as far as separating meat and dairy goes, eliminating both certainly makes that particular rule remarkably difficult to violate.

And apparently humans were so committed to dairy that cows were historically kept high on Mount Washington to help supply the summit.

So naturally I have one remaining question:

When humans establish a permanent base on the Moon or Mars, are we bringing cows?

Because cars are new.

Computers are new.

Spaceflight is new.

Plant butter is apparently suspiciously new.

But I fully expect somebody to strap Bessie into a rocket because **SPACE BUTTER** is more “natural.”

Imagine crossing 140 million miles of interplanetary space, building a pressurized habitat, recycling your oxygen, growing food under artificial light...

...then bringing along a lactating cow because processing a plant would be taking things too far.

**“Cow butter is older” proves exactly one thing: cow butter is older.**

Everything after that still requires an argument.

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