Is Milk Vegetarian or Non Vegetarian?

Hello Guys, this is ViDEOPAEDIA Experimentors and in this blog we'll discuss whether Milk is Vegetarian or Non Vegetarian .

Milk is a nutrient rich white liquid food produced by mammals for their offspring. Milk is an essential part in offsprings's diet at initial stages of its life as it cannot consume any other food.
Milk mainly consists of 87 - 89 % of water, 4.9 % of Carbohydrates in the form of Lactose, 3.4 % fat and 3.3 % Proteins.

Image credit-Pixabay

In order to first discuss whether milk is Vegetarian or Non Vegetarian, we need to understand what actually is the definition of Vegetarianism and its main characteristics i.e what makes Vegetarianism differ from the so called 'Non Vegetarianism' and compare its characteristics with the characteristics of Milk and then decide whether Milk is Vegetarian or not. For this discussion, we'll be talking about Cow's milk.

⏩So first of all, what is Vegetarianism?

If we go according to the dictionary meaning....

Definition of Vegetarian

Vegetarianism means "abstaining from the consumption of meat, fish or other animal products especially for moral, religious and health reasons."
So, if we go by this definition, then it implies that Milk is Non Vegetarian as it is an animal product.
But wait... this doesn't sound convincing enough as this approach isn't scientific, systematic and it doesn't provide a solid conclusion !

Hence, let's take the scientific and systematic approach by comparing the common and main characteristics of Vegetarian products with milk and try to come to a solid conclusion.
The table below shows the common characteristics of the so called 'Vegetarian' products and milk..

Milk vs Vegetarian foods characteristics

Characteristics of Vegetarian Foods vs Characteristics of milk

So now, after we have listed out the main characteristics of milk and the Vegetarian food products, let us now check whether they match or not.

🔵Coming to the first point...

1st Point

If we compare them, we can observe that both of them match.

Hence the first characteristic matches.

🔵Going to the second point...

2nd Point

It says, the Vegetarian food items contains unsaturated fats whereas milk contains saturated fats.
For all of those who don't know what are saturated and unsaturated fats, in simple definition...

Unsaturated fats are the fats which have lower boiling point and hence are present in liquid state at room temperature. These fats have low shelf life and may undergo rancidification if left open in the air. These fats are generally regarded as 'healthier' than saturated fats. They are mainly obtained from plant products.
Examples - vegetable oils, olive oils etc.

Saturated fats are the fats which have higher melting point and hence are present in solid state at room temperature. These fats are generally associated with increase in blood cholestrol levels and cause obesity. Most animal fats are saturated fats.
Examples of foods containing saturated fats are butter, cheese etc.
We can imply that this characteristic do not match .

Hence the second characteristic doesn't match.

🔵Going to the third point...

3rd Point

If we compare them , we can observe that they match.

Hence the third characteristic matches.

🔵Going to the Fourth point...

4th point

It says that vegetarian food items do not contain flesh or blood of animals as well as for milk, it says that milk is filtered blood.

What does this all mean? Is Milk filtered blood?

Technically speaking, Yes! milk is filtered blood. Here's why...

1) During Lactation i.e synthesis of milk in cow, lactose which is the main sugar present in milk is synthesized from blood glucose and galactose.

2) The fat present in milk i.e milk fat is synthesized from the bodily fat deposits of the cow.

3) Milk contains White Blood Cells, which is a component of blood.

[Fact : Commercially the number of White Blood Cells present in milk is called Somatic cell count (SCC). The packaged milk sold commercially contains about 224,000 WBC's/mL. ]

Also,since milk contains WBC's i.e component of blood of cows there's no denying the fact that this characteristic is similar to the characteristic of non vegetarian foods i.e non vegetarian foods contain blood or flesh .

Hence the Fourth character doesn't match.

🔵Going to the fifth point...

5th Point

It says that the main aim of vegetarianism is not harming animals. So does milking the cows harm the cows.

Cows produce milk for their calves, not for us (humans). During lactation, a lot of energy from the cow is directed into producing milk for their calves. So,when the cow's milk is taken from her to be sold to humans, it means her calves cannot drink it, which results in the calves being malnourished. Hence milking the cows indirectly harms the cows and her calves.

Hence the aim of vegetarianism isn't fulfilled.

Therefore the fifth character doesn't match.

📃Conclusion

Image credit - Pixabay

From the above points, we can infer that most of the characteristics of the vegetarian foods do not match with the characteristics of milk. Also from the fourth point alone we can infer that milk contains WBC's i.e component of blood of cow. Hence there's no denying the fact that this characteristic is similar to the characteristic of non vegetarian foods i.e non vegetarian foods contain blood or flesh .

🔻

Hence we can safely conclude that - "Scientifically, Milk is Non Vegetarian".

🔺

Thanks For Reading

--------------------⭕--------------------

📩To Get Regular Updates about our new blog posts, click on the subscribe button to subscribe via E-mail.

📺We're also in YouTube where we publish videos on interesting topics such as DIY's, facts, life hacks and much more...
Click here to Visit Our channel - VIDEOPAEDIA Experimentors

🔶 Further Refrences
1. Milk is just Filtered blood
2. Go With the Flow - Biology and Genetics of the Lactation Cycle

About VIDEOPAEDIA Experimentors

Hello, Welcome to our blog! This is the official blog page of VIDEOPAEDIA Experimentors. Here we'll be publishing blogs related to DIY's, Life hacks facts and much more !!

VIDEOPAEDIA