The Vegan Thread

I have absolutely no idea of any milk-to-cheese ratios, I'm afraid. I wouldn't have cared about that even before I became vegan, as my approach was always entirely ethical and not in any way carbon footprint-based (or dairy footprint-based).

(I think that consequentialism (the idea that the comparative amount of goodness in the consequences of your actions determines their rightness or wrongness) is sometimes helpful in teasing out issues, but not a sensible ethical position to take. While I'm not a pure voluntarist (the idea that right action depends on a good will, pace Kant), I certainly think that all animals have wills and that this is crucial in determining what one ought to do in respect of them, as I think it's wrong to try to break or dominate another's will.)

I don't drink milk any more but still have yoghurt / cheese.

Was milk the more major item for you or yoghurt and cheese? I ask because I used to drink an enormous amount of milk, litres every day, as I drank almost no water or juice. (I think in looking back that I didn't like water because it was considered the default where I grew up to drink carbonated spring water from bottles--back then, it would never have occurred to me to drink tap water, which I now do all the time--, and I've never liked the taste of carbonated water, so it was probably because of this that I turned to milk.) When I first wanted to go vegan, about two years before I actually did it, I at first tried to cut out dairy products other than milk, as I didn't consume very much of those, and I thought it would be easier to take that smaller step first. That didn't work--it was only when I stopped drinking milk from one day to the next that later cutting out cheese and yoghurt was extremely easy. For me, it took taking what seemed then the more radical, more fundamental step first.