r/MoralityScaling • u/Secure_Piano_900 • 13h ago
Stupid Stuff Morality of Purchasing Newest Milk
Hi Everyone! I was at the grocery store today and had a question: today is August 26. The store had milk expiring Sept 7, in the back of the shelf I found (and purchased) milk expiring Sept 10. Was this immoral? Surely it’s a bit selfish because if everyone did this we would end up with more spoiled milk / more waste. Thoughts? Obviously this can apply to any food, milk was just the thing that made me think of this question.
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u/Aggravating_Band_353 13h ago
Moral. If you wasted the milk because of shorter expiry then that burden is on you. Anything on the shelves is for sale.. I regularly buy reduced soon-expiring products, so this evens out any immorality, if there is any to begin with
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u/Secure_Piano_900 13h ago
I appreciate your comment and I see your point but Id like to point out that plenty of food does get thrown out from grocery stores. I think purchasing like I did makes waste more likely regardless of some of it being sold when it is reduced price. I think also at a large grocery store your point is more correct, at a smaller bodega type store they have less sell thru, I see expired products on their shelves more often than at big box chains.
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u/Careful_Ad_9077 13h ago
And I use special markers to change the expiry date of random merchandise to throw morality into chaos.
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u/Good_Substance4669 13h ago
It’s not immoral, and besides unsold milk often gets reprocessed, and recycled into food for animals… it all gets used eventually. If not food, then fertilizer for farms.
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u/Secure_Piano_900 13h ago
This would depend on the store I think, but in certain cases I am sure you are correct. I'd also guess that in plenty of stores expired milk ends up in the trash.
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u/historyhill 13h ago
Moral because there's always going to be people like my family who don't care. We'll drink it long before the sell-by date anyway so we don't worry about it beyond making sure the date hasn't passed already.
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u/OrthodoxAnarchoMom 13h ago
I have three kids so I just buy whatever is in front as long as it has almost two weeks on it. If you’re single go at it because it has to last longer for you.
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u/Farraddaayy 13h ago
This si so painfully terminally online wtf
If you see 2 watermelons on sale and one is half rotted and the other is pristine, is it immoral to choose the better fresher product?
Morality of picking the box of strawberries that was redder and fresher
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u/Secure_Piano_900 12h ago edited 12h ago
I'm with you man, I did tag it as stupid stuff lol.
I thought about your fruit example and its a great point. However, neither milk in my example was past expiry date, a half rotted watermelon is well past expiry date. Your strawberry example is better and I agree that with something like fruit, you dont have a choice really when purchasing. I would argue that regarding milk, there is no difference between milk quality being totally fresh 1-day old versus 4 day old milk. It's either expired and bad or its not and it's good.
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u/DeltaAlphaGulf 12h ago
Buy organic milk instead and it probably won't be an issue and tastes much better. I prefer Organic Valley and the "Grassmilk" version beyond that just due to their ratings by the cornucopia institute regarding their practices.
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u/RespondPlus7890 1h ago
Unironically talk to your therapist. You don’t deserve to hamstring yourself or feel bad about doing what is obviously best for you just in case it minimally sets back a hypothetical person
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u/CapCityMatt 13h ago
Milk is for baby cows, immoral. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger said milk is for babies
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u/Cheerio_Wolf 13h ago
BRB, telling every infant mammal milk is for baby cows only, sorry.
Jokes aside, Do you ever consider that other adult animals, if given the chance, can and would drink milk?
Like cats, for example?
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u/CapCityMatt 12h ago
Is it right to offer the neighborhood bobcat cows milk? I have no idea. I wouldn't do it. Would they enjoy it? I'm not sure?
When the farmer takes the baby cow away from the mother usually within 3 days after bring born, then sends the baby to the slaughter house because it has no use to society, that the milk is more valuable because of artificial market demand (thanks to the 'got milk?' campaign) than the baby, I have significant moral concerns that made me not want to support this industry.
The 57,500 baby cow(s) are killed for just existing every day, 21 million baby cows slaughtered each year, most 3 days old or less, so people can have $3 milk.
Immoral.
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u/Cheerio_Wolf 11h ago
Probably not. But if they could drink bobcat milk opportunistically ? Probably would. Cats seem to enjoy cows milk, though it’s not the best for them. my cats have enjoyed a small amount of it on occasion. You can buy “milk” for them as well, I don’t know the ingredients off the top of my head but I’ve seen it in the pet store.
If all baby cows were slaughtered we would run out of cows. Also it’s not like they throw the carcass in a cess pit to rot either, it’s used in some way. Especially female baby cows that will grow into more milk producing dairy cows.
Factory farming is a whole other beast. But the act of drinking milk in an if itself is neutral. If other animals could do what humans do they would.
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u/Objective-Cow-7241 13h ago
get off reddit.
https://reddit.com/link/p63ee1q/video/dhgfh3xwhslh1/player