Random Thoughts XI: Listen to the Whispers

[Samson]

I just thought (independent of any meerkats): We eat on a large scale mammals, fish and birds. Why don't we (with some exceptions) not breed reptiles and amphibia to food?

I thought it had to be to do with a poor food conversion efficiency (FCE), but it looks like frogs have a better FCE than many mammals, around 1.4 compared to 4.5–7.5 for beef or 1.6 for chickens. Perhaps we should all be eating frogs legs.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I never had such a class in any country or school. I wonder what possessed the designers of school curricula in North America to decree the slaughter of batrachians.

I have no idea. We also had to dissect an earthworm, and I've felt guilty over that, as well. It just seemed so pointless. I actually did refuse to make an insect collection in my Grade 7 science class, because I couldn't see the point of cruelly murdering several dozen insects and pinning them to a board. I failed that quarter, of course, but made up the grade in later units.

I couldn't afford to fail anything in high school, though, since biology was one of the classes I needed to get into college. At least in Grade 11 we didn't do any dissections and in Grade 12 we were given a choice of dissecting or writing a term paper. I chose the paper, and that's where my love of penguins began - penguins were the topic I picked.

There was one day in the biology lab that year that I had my first full-blown anxiety attack, having noticed a dead cat on one of the benches, waiting for the student who intended to dissect it. I hope that cat haunts the student forever for that.

Dissecting frogs is a thing from the early 80's and earlier.........i think.......

It was in the fall of 1977 that I had to do these dissections. Actually, the frog dissection was done over a two-day period, split up by Thanksgiving weekend. There's nothing quite like the stench of a biology lab where a couple of dozen dead and cut open frogs have been left out over a long weekend. That, plus the chemistry experiment we'd been doing that included bromine, meant the air in that wing was nearly unbreathable by Tuesday.

 

[Narz]

I think humans are simply not evolved for the level of inequality they currently experience and can't handle it.

Not to say our origins were fully egalitarian but everyone ate the same stuff, lived in the same place, got the same medical care and the same treatment at the end of their lives.

 

[amadeus]

What if all the right and left-wing podcasters are just colluding to generate controversy in order to get viewers?

Wait a minute.

If I could do both, I could capture 200% of the market.

 

[GenMarshall]

If I could do both, I could capture 200% of the market.

 

[Kyriakos]

I bought a drink that apparently consists of milk and almond. Not surprisingly, it's milk, but leaves a taste of almond in the mouth.
It's pretty expensive - roughly 3 euros.
Not sure if I will buy again, but eating almonds hurts my teeth, so I'd rather blend them somehow.

 

[The_J]

You sure you didn't buy "almond milk" ?
(not containing milk though)

 

[Kyriakos]

You sure you didn't buy "almond milk" ?
(not containing milk though)

Hm, you are right. I now read their product is "100% plant-based".
Somehow this makes me trust it less, likely because it tastes like milk but isn't.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I think humans are simply not evolved for the level of inequality they currently experience and can't handle it.

Not to say our origins were fully egalitarian but everyone ate the same stuff, lived in the same place, got the same medical care and the same treatment at the end of their lives.

And died at 35. Romanticizing the past is no solution to today's problems.

 

[Samson]

Hm, you are right. I now read their product is "100% plant-based".
Somehow this makes me trust it less, likely because it tastes like milk but isn't.

View attachment 612685

I do not understand how mashed up plant products (almonds in this case) can be more expensive than cow lactate. One of the many things we need to fix for us to have a future on this planet.

 

[Kyriakos]

I do not understand how mashed up plant products (almonds in this case) can be more expensive than cow lactate. One of the many things we need to fix for us to have a future on this planet.

Actual milk costs something like half that, for the same volume (not even half; usually 1 to 1.3 euros). Almonds are expensive themselves, though (2 euros for a small pack; not sure if even the equivalent of that was used to make this, however).

 

[Samson]

Actual milk costs something like half that, for the same volume (not even half; usually 1 to 1.3 euros). Almonds are expensive themselves, though (2 euros for a small pack; not sure if even the equivalent of that was used to make this, however).

Yeah, but others such as oat milk are similarly expensive and are made from cheap ingredients. I do not get it.

Here is a calculation on how much you are paying for almonds in milk, and there is a massive markup (though it may be a pro-dairy propaganda site):

[table=head]
Brand|Price per 64 oz. package|Price per serving (8 oz.)|Price you’re paying for straight almonds|Price per almond you’re paying in Almond Milk
Califia (48 oz.)|$ 3.99|$ 0.67|$ 0.01|$ 0.16
Silk|$ 2.98|$ 0.37|$ 0.01|$ 0.09
Almond Breeze|$ 2.98|$ 0.37|$ 0.01|$ 0.09
Store Brand|$ 1.90|$ 0.24|$ 0.01|$ 0.09
Cow’s Milk|$ 1.09|$0.23||
[/table]

 

[The_J]

Pretty sure that's a matter of scale.
If you'd replace all milk with oatmilk, the price would rapidly drop.

 

[Farm Boy]

Processed foods do require markups for the processors. And shipping bulk to and from. People overlook transport costs of bulk goods, sometimes. Especially refrigerated.

 

[Samson]

Processed foods do require markups for the processors. And shipping bulk to and from. People overlook transport costs of bulk goods, sometimes. Especially refrigerated.

Yeah, but milk needs refrigeration and these mashed up vegetable suspensions do not.

 

[Farm Boy]

True, but I imagine that's already built into the cost of "straight milk" being as the farm needs to start providing a level of safe storage that "straight almonds" sitting in bulk from an orchard do not.

The markup on corn flakes is silly too, compared to the base ingredient. Processing, transportation, and wages between the bushel basket and the grocer's shelves, I think. I don't have the whole thing sorted out precisely or anything. Just a feel. All the processed foods seem to work like that, whether they advertise as "raw" or not. That's just a tricksy marketing term, sometimes.

 

[Kyriakos]

Some political figure (leader of the cleptocrat pos pseudo-socialist party) died, so for the next weeks it will be dumb obituaries as if she ever did anything and wasn't just there due to being the daughter of a minister in the 80s cleptocratic government of the same party.
No wonder almost no one watches tv or reads the papers here. No tie to the public.

 

[Farm Boy]

Somehow this makes me trust it less, likely because it tastes like milk but isn't.

It should taste mostly like milk, or at least milk-ish. Almond milk is time tested at least back to the middle ages, apparently*. You cook almonds and water down, if I understand correctly, to make the base product. I always thought it tastes pretty good. Hard to argue with almonds so long as one isn't allergic or anything. Expensive tho, here, too.

*That was a semi-amusing wiki walk.

 

[Snerk]

Thinking about planting some strawberry plants when spring comes. I figure I got an ok patch for it in my front yard so who not. I hope I'm motivated for it come spring. I fear I'll not be. Anybody wanna give me a hand with it?

 

[Lohrenswald]

Hidden in my loft under a drapery is a portrait of me that becomes more intelligent over time