oh jeez x_____x my calf is cramping up but has not cramped yet

So how did you come to your dietary decision?

well, that's a bit of a story actually!

a long time ago, various events caused me to re-evaluate my ethical standards. Eventually, I settled on a utilitarian-based ethic. I believe in the freedom of all individuals to do as they want, so long as they do not hurt any other individuals in the process.

eventually I realized that, following this ethical standard, I could not justify my continued consumption of meat. The slaughtering of animals is an unnecessary suffering and, if it were possible for me to survive without contributing to that suffering, then it was wrong of me to continue the way I was.

I spent some time trying to see if I could justify eating meat, but eventually decided that it was inconsistent with my morals and made the decision to become a vegetarian.

and that is that!

so tormenting animals is ok as long as they stay alive?

no, I didn't say that. :/

I am not all that complex in regards to what i eat.
For me it's simply "i eat tasty stuff"

I have never had a need to think deeper about it.

you consume milk and eggs. i am fairly sure you are not raising your own animals for your food(if you do i apologize). the practices for dairycows and chickens is pretty abhorrent in a fair few countries

...do you raise your own animals? You already said that you consume dairy and I'm fairly certain you probably consume meat as well, so I really feel like you're not in any position to be judging me.

I live in Sweden and it is cheapest to buy local milk and eggs, we have pretty strict regulations. Also i stopped with milk, it makes me produce too much mucus.
Cheese is awesome tho. Aged cheese, 6+ months *omnomnom*

mmm, I love cheese. That's the main reason I could never give up dairy; I love cheese too much. o__o

What kinds of cheese do you usually buy and eat?

oh, all sorts really! Cheddar, pepper jack, havarti, gouda, fontina, brie...

Have you tried a aged gouda at some point?

hmm...you know, I don't think I have. o__o

i do not define my morals and my diet by thre same measure XD you said you make your choices based on your morals, it would make sense that you would either not count unnecessary torture which explains how you can eat egg and milk products without guilt or else your reasons are flawed

-shrugs-

ah, i would not mind living someplace like sweden on the matter of food, i have heard a lot of good things about the production practices there and it is impressive, where i am living now it's not illegal to drink raw cow milk but it has to be bought like freaking drugs off the books and with cash x_____x it's really creepy

raw as in unpasteurized?

there's a reason it's difficult to get your hands on, you can get food poisoning from it.

Well it is unusual but the main producer for this part of Sweden made a batch.
It was quite good and almost tasted like smoked cheese.

as easily as raw eggs and yet you can easily buy raw eggs from virtually any grocery store. the reasons for it are pretty awkward and speaks more about the poor hygiene in production

mm, smoked cheese is good.

as long as it's actually smoked. Sometimes so-called "smoked" cheese here is just cheese with smoke flavoring added, and smoke flavoring is pretty gross.

well, you can obtain raw eggs so easily because usually people are expected to cook their eggs before using them. It's not so easy for people to pasteurize their own milk, and most people drink or use it directly from the carton rather than using it for cooking.

ugh, smoke flavor is icky

actually quite a few recipes require eggs to be raw when consumed

I can only think of a few. Egg nog comes to mind.

regardless, my point was that it's a lot easier for the average consumer to fully cook a raw egg than to pasteurize raw milk.

There is a french thing with raw minced meat and raw egg
And some people just like raw eggs for some reason.

coddled eggs, soft-boiled eggs, pasta carbonara, mousse, bearnaise sauce, tiramisu, meringue, mayonnaise to say a few

Home made mayonnaise can be so yummy!

yes, I know you can eat raw eggs. >.<

I'm really not sure why you'd take the risk, not to mention that it just sounds gross anyway.

but I'm just talking about availability; it's easy to cook an egg, but the difficulty of making milk safe to drink makes it much more difficult to get your hands on raw milk.

raw milk is about as safe as raw eggs. it's a media thing x______x personally i have nothing against either though i minimize my consumption of raw eggs, though, when i make cookies my motherinlaw and fiance both like to eat a bit of the batter

Take that risk? what risk?

the risk of food poisoning from raw eggs.

Why would you get that?

you know, if i talk to you about ancient greeks then i will have argued about everything i know anything about in any depth tonight XD

because raw eggs can carry diseases, such as salmonella. o.o

We check our chickens and eggs for that so not over here

because countries like the us and canada keep their animals in very unclean environments and do not use many safety practices in ensuring that the food is safe for humans to consume. because it is easier to just cook everything instead of putting money into safety many foods come pasteurized instead of raw

or in short, the food is very unclean so it is not always safe to eat and it is easy to get posioned

in america though a lot of plants have salmonella too

oh sure, you can get salmonella or other kinds of food poisoning from any infected food.

that's why I'd rather cook my eggs than take the risk they might make me ill!

which is crazy because a lot of infected foods are ones that should /never/ have salmonella x___x;;;;

food safety is important business. I've worked in food service before and let me tell you, some people do not take food safety seriously enough. I mean, Health Department rules might be annoying, but they're there for a reason!

anyway, I think we can all agree that the American livestock and food industries are...not great.