FOOD REFLECTIONS

What a joy it is to watch a happy-looking cow with her calf next to it. She licks the calf's head and continues the rushing, ie. chewing the food with half shut eyes. When the cow is happy, her milk is also happy. Energy is transferred, this is self-evident.

Science already admits that abundant eating of meat exposes to cancer. My own interest is whether there are any problems with mental health problems connected to the use of products of animal origin. Although the basic physical needs of Western people are in order, depression and anxiety are increasing.

Think of an animal that travels hundreds of miles, scared on the way to a slaughterhouse. There again is a new, weird place to meet. The animal's stress level is very high already much earlier than at meeting their own death. In addition to the suffering of the animal, we do harm to ourselves by capturing the energy of this suffering.

Slaughter can hardly be a happy event, but milking can. When a calf sucks her mother or the cow licks her calf while beig milked, the cow extracts oxytocin hormone, a good hormone, and then the milk becomes "very happy". There are many other good qualities in milk that are produced naturally. For example, vitamin B12 is gained from animal products and the health effects of ghee or clarified butter are well known. In addition to physical health effects, ghee balances the mind and promotes brain function.

Milk is not absolutely necessary for humans. It can be replaced by other nutrition for instance with oatmeal. Often people give the reasons for eating meat and milk due to protein intake. There is enough protein from the plants as well. Soy is a controversial protein crop. For example, Brazil has destroyed large areas of rainforests due to soybean cultivations. Climate effects are enormous for this reason.

Finland imports 150-200 million kilos of soy each year, of which 85% goes to animal feed. In the production of meat and eggs, several kilos of soy is consumed for just one kilogram of produced meat. Only 6% of the world's soy production goes to people's food. Shocking!

You can even go vegan completely without the use of soy. As proteins then there are different beans and peas, seeds such as hemp, sunflower and sesame. Nuts, Seitan and Wholegrain, of which I particularly want to mention Pulled Oats, the domestic pride of the country. And even using the controversial soybean for human consumption is more climate-friendly than eating soybean steaks.

Our cows enjoy the summer grazing along. Little Lakshmi got mandatory ear tags in her ears. Radhe, now 10 months old, moved with Narayan to her own pasture, from where the fence was still connected to mother Shaila Putri. Shaila grazes with Skandia and Lakshmi. The cow's gentleness is demonstrated in the fact that even Shaila lets Laksmi suck her milk.

So the little one has now two mothers taking care of it.