Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
Cow juice is still cheaper—and your taxes keep it that way.
Need to keep the ag subsidies flowing so that rural areas keep voting conservative
It's not as if Democrats don't also throw plenty of bones to farmers.
Even if the farmers themselves are likely to be relatively conservative, they're such a politically sympathetic group that no one wants to be seen as "going after hard-working real American farmers!". Things like the Iowa caucuses playing a huge role in national politics don't help either (although the Dems have thankfully killed that).
It's more of a matter of if food gets more expensive you're more likely to be voted out of office
One thing nobody has commented on - how that article slips in a seemingly positive mention of Nestlé (they own the cafe that uses plant milks). That raised my eyebrows.
I'm beginning to notice a handful of company ties to "make perfect the enemy of good" takes like this.
It's enough to drive one to schizophrenia. Everything is a hidden message
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Always follow the money. Nobody does journalism for free.
The dairy lobby in the US is huge money. If you ever want to know why we're making a seemingly stupid decision follow the money, look at the entrenched interests and read some history. We subsidize dairy farmers because we used to subsidize dairy farmers and they spent a bunch of their earnings lobbying for more subsidies.
While that was true... this all happened when there wasn't many other options frankly. The landscape is changing.
Except almonds. Almonds are terrible water wasters, and mostly grown in California where they can least afford the water.
Still more efficient on resource utilization than animal agriculture. If you hate almond milk for that reason, you should want the dairy industry completely abolished.
I don’t want it gone but I don’t want it subsidized. I’m not planning on being vegan but I’m cutting out a ton of animal protein from my life. I make it a special thing.
So you're saying almond milk drinkers could end up going to hell someday?
/s -The Good Place reference
Still better than dairy.
My personal theory is that we subsidize dairy not for the milk, but for the cheese. As far as I'm aware you can't make cheese out of plant milks, and we've gotten pretty reliant on cheese as a source of protein and other nutrients in our American diets - especially among children and lower income diets.
Look up: cheese caves. 👍
In short: There is so much excess cheese out there that the US government is literally storing billions of pounds of it in underground caves.
What the fuck
You can make plant-based cheeses. And some of them are pretty good. But they lack all of the same properties. Like, you can get a cheese that that when hot will stretch a little bit like the cheese on a pizza, but as it cools off it loses all of that elasticity and is not great for lukewarm pizza. You can get cheese that is pretty decent for lukewarm and hot pizza, but it doesn't have that stretch. It more just rips apart. And you definitely don't have the span of "flavors" of cheese or whatever you'd call it. Some of the big ones, sure, but again, they don't have all the same physical properties.
I don't mind the loss of those properties, but many people do.
Cheese isn't a great source for protein compared to beans in regards to price though.
Honestly, I think we subsidize the dairy industry simply because they've been lobbying so long. Meat is subsidized too. It's the one market that the conservatives are fine with ignoring the mantra of "free market" and support regulating the hell out of it in whatever way supports the "farmers" (big farm is nothing like the labeling suggests and is all headed by big guys in suits who likely never have been on a farm in their life).
Beans can taste amazing when prepared by a competent chef, but often taste like shit when prepared wrong.
Cheese, on the other hand, is much more forgiving of poor preparation. Eat it straight out of the package, sliced and on bread or crackers, melt it into sauces, or grill it, or any number of other uses.
Simply put, cheese is fast and easy, and can elevate almost any other food.
Also, try to get kids to eat beans. It can happen. But not easily, and often you have to do it in the form of chili, with loads of cheese.
Both meat and dairy are subsidized because they consume huge amounts of corn, and the corn industry is an even bigger lobby.
I seem to recall people are working on bacteria-produced casein, and so that may, if it could be done at scale, solve the ethical and environmental problems, but I wonder if casein in that form will be just as bad as dairy is in its "natural" form.
Soy cheese is called tofu.
Government cheese has been a thing since at least the great depression.
Cheese was one of our main obstacles toward cutting out dairy. I came across a vegan cheese sauce recipe that utilizes blended steamed potatoes & carrots for the texture and nutritional yeast and other spices for the flavor. Been using it for a few years now and haven't looked back yet.
Protein can be found in much better food sources than dairy. It's a shame the protein myth prevails in this country even into the 2020s...
Probably because everyone tried only the shittiest alt-malks, assume they are all bad, and somehow don't get heartburn and diarrhea and gunky mouth and throat feel from cow milk. I save all my lactose intolerance suffering for cheese and ice cream.
Seriously though it's the same as people that say only bad things about tofu but have only eaten white American 'recipes' that genuinely suck. Meanwhile Asians happily inhaling literal tons of it prepared in actually good meals. Try making bread from scratch without salt (or salty ingredients) and that's what tofu foods for the white market remind me of.
Tofu is fine, but tempeh is almost as widely available in supermarkets, has a higher protein density, is fermented, and works in soooo many things. It's also way easier to get the hang of marinating and cooking.
I mention this only because I love it so much, and I'd love for people that shit on vegan food to give that a go (lightly pan fried, and then tossed in a gooey before sriracha-soy-peanut-butter-lime-brown-sugar sauce) and get back to me. I could eat it every night and never get tired of it.
I was about to say, when making bread salt is like the only flavouring so they recommend not being too stingy. I do love tofu though. The texture is neutral and can be "improved" depending on the goal. The taste is pretty bland and it will taste like whatever you want it to be.
everyone tried only the shittiest alt-malks
well i dont have 5 euro to dish out on a carton of altmilk every time i want to make an omelette
yall have an excess of money and it shows
More like gurgling stomach pain. That said in most cooking I generally just use cow milk and hope it goes better than drinking it straight. Most of them, even if they claim to be a 1:1 replacement can't serve the same purpose in a lot of recipes. One time I was doing a midnight pantry raid and made Mac and white cheese with iirc almond milk. It became almost identical to white chocolate melted over noodles.
Hahaha, white people can't cook, amirite?
I had this fantastic plant-based milk product on my store shelves called "Not Milk". I really enjoyed it. Had this mild coconut flavor which might turn off some (not me) but anyway, it's gone now because it was too expensive for the market I'm in.
Meanwhile gallons of milk flow for the same purpose, only subsidized for under half the cost per ounce.
As we do, we stifle innovation ourselves based on our past.
check out your local Aldi. They've got a range of almond, soy, coconut and oat milk at very reasonable prices. I was loving coconut milk until my friend told me how high in saturated fat it is (like really high.) Since then I do about half coconut and half light almond for my oatmeal and I can't say enough how good it tastes. I'm eating oatmeal as a dessert now sometimes because I like it so much.
Edit: had originally said cholesterol but totally had meant saturated fat. Thanks to @DarthFrodo for bringing the error to my attention.
Extra thick oatmilk is the way to go.
Check to see if your store has "Nextmilk" made by Silk. It is cheaper than "Not Milk" and tastes better!
Butter and heavy cream don't really have a good replacement, but regular milk has so many alternatives it's crazy. Almond milk and oat milk I prefer to regular old milk.
Vegan butter or coconut oil sub well for butter, depending on the use. And canned coconut milk works pretty well for heavy cream in baked goods.
Because lots of people in your country drink it, like it, and even more eat things made from it. Like cheese.
"Two thirds of people can't tolerate lactose" is utterly fucking meaningless in this context. Most of those are in Asia. Last I checked, it was countries giving out subsidies, not some nebulous world council.
And nearly all farming gets subsidised, because that reduces reliance on external countries. You've seen what capitalism did to housing. You don't want that to happen to food.
Americans are at 36% lactose intolerant. Which is surprisingly, to me anyways, high.
And should corn and cattle get the bulk of the subsidies? If it's about food alone, maybe not.
My takeaway from this is that Nestle probably doesn't own any dairy companies, but probably does own a plant that makes oat milk. They keep all the profit in their own ecosystem by buying their supplies from themself and then get to tell us how green and thoughtful they are.
My takeaway from this is that Nestle probably doesn’t own any dairy companies,
They probably do, but oat milk is probably not great for making milk chocolate or several other of their food products. Decent coffee also hides less appetizing milks somewhat.
I prefer plant-based milk over dairy, it tastes better and it lasts longer. I tried plant based milk years ago and never went back. I've tried cashew, macadamia, rice, soy, almond, coconut, oat, and sunflower. Some of my favorites are vanilla almond, dark chocolate almond and cashew, vanilla macadamia, and vanilla coconut. My family still buys dairy milk, but we always bought plant-based butter. I buy cream cheese to use as bread spread.
Strongly disagree on it tasting better, the only thing I like anywhere near as much is chocolate almond.
I understand. It is a matter of personal preference. Chocolate almond is pretty good and I liked dark chocolate almond even more.
There is zero reason to drink milk past infancy. Plant based milks suck for cooking.
Edit:
That came across wrong. If you like drinking milk, so be it. There used to be a big push that you need to drink milk. Some of it by the dairy lobby, but also the food pyramid thing. Milk is dense nutritionally, yes, but we don't have a need to drink it, was the point I was trying to say. I know that isn't pushed as much today, but I was definitely a generation raised being told that you must drink milk, it's a necessity.
grrr someone likes something I don't like grrr
Most people prefer the taste and it's often more calorically dense? And yeah, plant based sucks for cooking. I mostly use milk products (half and half, cream) in cooking, and plant based is not it for cooking.
I'm a pretty devout meat eater, I will 10000% give up eating meat before giving up dairy. Also, fwiw, we do need to eat less meat and use fewer animal products, but lets not gaslight ourselves about it.
Are there actual studies showing that plant-based alternatives are better for health (for individuals that digest lactose just fine like me) ?
I switched to alt-milks for ecological reason but media keep talking about the negative health effects of «ultra-transformed food», which alt-milk very much sounds like...
Well oatmilk is literally grinded oats with water. How is that ultra-transformed?
What is an ultra-transformed food and what makes it bad for you? Generally the things added to foods (sugar, salt, preservatives) are what make them less healthy than fresh counterparts. At least here, the soy milk has added salt putting it at the same salt content as milk, and no added sugar, putting it at 8x less sugar than milk. What it does have is added calcium, vitamin B2, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and a higher protein content than milk. Simply being processed doesn't make something unhealthy, the things that are changed in processing it can make something unhealthy. That doesn't apply here.
You can't find unsweetened soymilk around me because nobody will buy it. Ditto to a lesser extent in other unsweetened milks. Usually, the unsweetened ones are also the unfortified ones around me, too... which means nutritionally inferior.
One of the advantages to cow milk is that it is probably the lowest carb content for that "sweet enough" milk balance. Unsweetened plant milks are just lacking that, and the plant milks sweetened to compete are too high-carb. But yeah, I wouldn't call any plant milk ultra-transformed. The term "processed food" is way too large an umbrella for reasoned conversation.
What it does have is added calcium, vitamin B2, vitamin B12, vitamin D, and a higher protein content than milk
Per the Mayo Clinic, it's tough to beat dairy milk for balanced nutrition. These heavily fortified alt-milks aren't terrible, but the body doesn't digest those nutrients as well. Doesn't mean it'll kill ya. I know people who eat a giant pastry for breakfast every morning, but it's points against. If the only thing you care about is nutrients and not being dairy, the answer is definitely unsweetened Soy Milk if it's available where you are.
I'm lactose intolerant, and for years I thought lactaid wouldn't for for me. The sweetened soymilk I drank definitely contributed to some weight gain back then, but it was hardly the main or only cause.
I can't speak to health, but here's some thoughts on the ecological reason.
All the studies (that I have found at least) look at global carbon emissions and land use in production of milk. This is an important distinction.
The US, for example, is the #2 milk producer in the world (arguably #1 if we're only talking about cow milk). It's also the #1 beef producer in the world. The US's livestock methane footprint is barely a blip on the Global Warming Radar (6% of total methane from all sources). There are even ways to reduce the carbon footprint of cow milk further, but it's important to note we are very much in the range where we could easily take action to fund offsets and make the dairy industry 100% carbon neutral in the US. You may not be from the US, and that's not the point. The point is that a lot of European countries that consume milk are in the same boat, and countries that are not as efficient as that could be with some regulatory changes and technological improvements.
Flip-side. As others have said, alt-milks are a lot less "ultra-transformed" than you might think. It's like calling chicken broth "ultra-transformed". You could make your own oatmilk or almond milk. It's not hard or "weird". They're just oats and water, or nuts and water.
Actually, found this quote about the health of milk. "if we're looking at like the nutrient density versus cost, cow’s milk is always going to win". TO BE CLEAR, the expert in this article is saying "plant-based milk is just fine", and she agrees that some plant-based milks are comparable to cow milk if less balanced. She has a long explanation of "you really need to know what you plan to get out of milk", pointing out that most plant milks are too low in protein, but that it doesn't matter if you're just using it to remove acidity from your coffee... but that for a vegan they're just fine.
barely a blip on the Global Warming Radar (6% of total methane from all sources)
6% of all methane is not a blip, are you kidding? There isn't one single easily solvable source of methane worldwide. There are many smaller sources and most of the larger sources are hard to replace.
we could easily take action to fund offsets and make the dairy industry 100% carbon neutral in the US
Offsets are a scam, and offsetting would require more subsidies or make cow's milk more expensive. Instead of offsetting something that we can easily replace with something less polluting, we can offset the things that are much harder to replace.
nutrient density versus cost, cow's milk is always going to win
Is it though? I live in the Netherlands, and in Europe we have really high milk subsidies. As far as I can tell we have essentially no soy milk subsidies. We have the third highest milk consumption as well, with a long history of production and plenty opportunity for efficient production ar scale.
Despite that, home brand skim milk is €0.99/L with a cheaper brand available at €0.85/L versus €0.89/L for home brand (fortified and unsweetened) soy milk.
Dairy has been implicated in everything from heart disease to certain cancers, osteoporosis (ironically the more dairy you consume, the more bone loss you get), autoimmune diseases, and even reproductive disorders. They also contain casomorphins, which are addictive opioids.
As far as plant foods go, plant milks are not particularly beneficial, other than being a convenient choice for suring up a micronutrient deficiency or two that vegans might be missing (most commercial plant milks are fortified with multivitamins). It's more that dairy is so bad that virtually anything is a better choice.
https://nutritionstudies.org/smart-parents-guide-to-why-kids-should-not-have-dairy-products/
https://nutritionstudies.org/dairy-consumption-weight-loss-claims/
Full disclosure, the site you linked offers a non-accredited certificate in vegan nutrition. The "expert" they cite in the crazier claims in your links is the founder and president of the group, and those claims are generally either rejected, or merely "not accepted due to lack of evidence" by the scientific community.
Honestly, to a neutral observer, if you took the vegan propaganda off the site and stripped it to text files, both of them still read like bogey-man anti-meat articles. Between the un-cited claims that contradict the studies I find in a google search and the broad-stroke accusations, I wouldn't be able to take it seriously in a vacuum.
I'd go into details, but if you read the articles it will be obvious to you. If it's not, hit me up and I'll point out just a few of the parts of those two gossip-mag articles are the worst offenders to scientific thinking.
One true statement comes out of it. Drinking cow milk does not seem to be a contributor for weight gain OR loss in a vacuum.
For health? Probably nothing definitive either way. The article is mainly just arguing the ecological implications being better for us
Another misleading title then.
also, milk is just bad for most people. some people need the high fat and protein content, but most of us, including children, would be much better off not drinking milk at all.
Low fat milk has existed for decades, plus doesn't modern research support the idea that carbs are worse than fat? And I don't understand why protein is bad, unless you are eating only protein.
Milk is actually very good for children, just because it replaces other liquids that are worse and it has calcium and vitamin D.
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/dont-forget-dairy-part-childs-healthy-diet/
It sounds like you just don't like natural milk.
Can you make cheese out of almond milk? If I'm doing my math right, 75% of milk is made into cheese.
Yes, there are almond and oat milk cheese alternatives. Ben and Jerry's has been selling almond milk ice cream for a long time.
Also please consider reading about how supply for cheese is currently outpacing demand.
Because most plant juice tastes like shit and has the wrong mouth-feel for most things we use cow milk for. Its not rocket surgery.
I'm not vegan or even vegetarian, so I feel pretty impartial on this. My partner uses oat milk for their coffee, and over the years I just got used to using it straight, or in cereals, etc. Now I greatly prefer it. It's just "milk" for me now.
Never thought it would happen, but getting cow milk when I'm out feels off - that mouth-feel you mention; just doesn't sit right anymore. It really is an acquired taste.
Spot on. People are out here trying to play like almond, oat, soy and every other milk substitute is exactly the same as dairy based milk, it's not and will not ever be, they're different products
Also pretending that people swapping from dairy to alternate milks will somehow impact the looming climate crisis is also pretty disingenuous
If we all went vegan we'd reduce food based emissions by 70%, which is 15% of the entire planets GHG emissions. Not to mention recovering 75% of farm land.
It really is a no brainer if you want to make a difference. And if I, "a rural New Zealander who grew up on a dairy farm who said he'd never eat a vegetarian meal in his life" can convert to veganism based on the logic of it, surely anyone could.
If this hits market, I'll be all for it.
I haven’t had a glass of milk in years. It kinda grosses me out, but I love some cheese. But I’m doing my small part in not buying gallons of milk.
I actually did a informal survey at work when I was buying milk. Out of 40 people, only two have bought milk (like whole or skim) in the past year. Some did milk alternatives. Some bought half and half. But very little did pure milk.
Not sure who the milk drinkers are.
Kids.
I drink both plant-based dairy substitutes and milk (well, buttermilk because I'm lactose intolerant).
This helps explain the dairy industry's silly lawsuits about what exactly may be called 'milk' on store shelves. We'll ignore the fact that plant-based milks, being referred to as milks, have been around for centuries.
Me
Can you make cheese out of almond milk? If I'm doing my math right, 75% of milk is made into cheese.
I don't see why dairy should be subsidized but some plant milks aren't exactly environmentally friendly either. The best can be said is they're better than dairy, assuming the same land could be used for both. But they can be devastating in their own right. E.g. to grow 1 almond (i.e. one kernel) takes over 3 gallons of water. Other crops used to make milk like oats have lower water consumption.
The almond example is frequently brought up, but this is still half of what dairy milk requires, without taking into account the difference in land use too
The environmental problems of growing plants isn't because of the individual plants, it's because the farming practices used are bad (conventional industrial ag, synthetic fertilizers, monoculture, etc). In a well designed polycultural system, almonds can have their place too. But there is no way to make animal ag sustainable, and since that has both deep ethical and health problems as well - why bother?
Here's why dairy should be subsidized. Because all farms should be subsidized. Most of our food production needs to be subsidized to prevent bad economic shifts creating financial hardships that sink farms and lead to a food shortfall.
I mean, here's a microcosm for you. Some seafood verticals had price swings recently, and when the swings hit bottom, it was actually cheaper to keep the boat in port than go out for a trip. If the swings remained or kept going down, it would have tanked some of the smaller fishing companies. So when that swing would end, the shortage of production would have the opposite effect - dramatically higher fish prices. Yes, that'll get people back into the industry... bigger businesses that will carefully milk the increased prices instead of simply increasing food availability.
Now, the way dairy and and beef farms are subsidized is a problem right now. Even most farmers are against it. Most dairy farms don't get a penny (and in fact, PAY IN. I'm not kidding), while the larger factory farms get their feed fully paid for and large scale production subsidized.
That does mean you're probably not actually seeing a penny of price savings from the subsidies. People tend to forget that when blaming subsidies in the price of milk vs plant-milk.
I see soy/oat/rice milk as their own thing, instead of a direct cow milk substitute/replacement.
There are many, many dairy product that are important as food or ingredients to other foods such as butter, yogurt, ice cream, cream, infant formula, and various cheeses that cannot be replaced directly by plant based alternatives.
And also, if you don't like milk, try getting one of those unhomoginized milk in glass bottles that's usually directly bottled by local farms. You have to shake a lot to get the cream on top dissolved again, but there is nothing that's quite like an ice cold cup of that.
As someone who lives entirely on plants, those ingredients are all easily replaced. Everything cow tit juice can do, plants can do better.
Nah that's just not true. You need milk for baking, vegan bakeries are shit. Milk/Cream is also very important for creamy soups and sauces
Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition.
Bring that complain to the producers of "oat milk" and similar products. Producing a gallon of oat milk has ingredience costs of about 20ct. You know what you are paying for it in the supermarket. Go figure who gets rich on people who are looking for "alternatives".
A lot of arguments see to be that it tastes better. I don’t want to argue subjective tastes. However, in terms of economics, the better taste would mean that there is no need to subsidize it. The market would bear the additional cost if the taste and utility of milk is there. The question posed is still relevant: why do we subsidize it? Everyone arguing how much better it is than the alternatives are just proving the point that we shouldn’t be subsidizing it.
it's just a century long marketing scam that is now so big it would cause an economic recession to dismantle it over night. It will take a few decades for the subsidies to be lowered, and probably will never go to zero.
A taxpayer funded subsidy is a form of wealth redistribution. It takes a little bit of money from everyone and makes a tasty foodstuff more affordable for everyone. Forcing the poors to drink nasty nut juice isn't exactly what I consider an improvement for society.
This is too narrow. Why do we subsidize food at all? America is supposed to be free market capitalists, right? Subsidies don't fit that definition?
(in reality, farmers need some sort of support system, I believe, as do we all, but subsidies don't fit the free market capitalism narrative.)
We'll you're pointing out how ridiculous it is to believe in a free market. Because one has never existed. What ought we subsidize though? Obviously foods that are better for our environment, climate, health, economy and for animal welfare.
Dairy, meat and egg coalitions have known for years that subsidies and marketing are things they need to pursue for greater success, they've used tactics similar to tobacco companies with their marketing and they've used lobbying tactics similar to oil and gas giants as well. It's clear we need to stop subsidizing them.
We’ll you’re pointing out how ridiculous it is to believe in a free market.
Yep! That was my point.
What ought we subsidize though? Obviously foods that are better for our environment, climate, health, economy and for animal welfare.
Yeah, if we must subsidize something, then sure, those sound good.
Subsidies only benefit the big "farms" (industrial operations) and encourage producing the subsidized crop regardless of its value. The incentives are so perverse that farms end up dumping their milk because there is no market for the amount produced.
Personally am in favor of eliminating all food subsidies. Making food valuable could eliminate so many of our other societal problems - poor health, destruction of natural resources, overpopulation.
Something something corporate lobbyist reaping benefits at the cost of public taxed $
Farming is risky business and people need food. You don't want one bad season ruining a bunch of farmers who then stop farming. Subsidies help reduce that risk so that we have a more stable food supply.
Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well,
That number, like all world population numbers is heavily skewed by just how many people are in China. The mutation that causes adults to continue to produce the enzyme to digest lactose is less common among those of Asian descent.
(Globally, alt-milks aren’t new on the scene—coconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, which is thousands of years old.)
...and there are medieval European recipes that call for almond milk, and tofu is made from soy milk and there are written sources referencing it roughly a thousand years old. You're right, none of these are really new on the scene, aside from maybe oat milk.
A 2021 report by industry analysts Mintec Limited and Frost Procurement Adventurer also notes that, while the inputs for dairy (such as cattle feed) for dairy are a little more expensive than typical plant-milk ingredients, plant alternatives face higher manufacturing costs.
I feel like your first paragraph completely ignored this aspect. You squeeze milk out of a cow. Nut and bean milks require grinding the stuff up with a lot of water, mixing it thoroughly, then squeezing the wet pulp through a fine filter (for small batches something like a cheesecloth) to separate the milk from the pulp.
Commercial oat milk requires further processing, because just pulping, mixing with water and straining oats does not produce anything appetizing at all.
In the United States, meanwhile, it’s a waiting game to see whether the government or corporations drive down alt-milk costs. Currently, Sumner says, plant-based milk producers operate under an assumption that “price isn’t the main thing” for their buyers—as long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But it’s going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.
That's not a bad assumption on their part - people who are deeply concerned with the emissions involved in producing their food tend to be richer, in no small part because poor folks are going to put price first, because they have to think about how food fits into their budget more.
Also cheese - you can't make cheese from plant milks. Well, you can try, but that's basically how you make tofu, and performing a similar process on other plant milks creates something closer to tofu than cheese.
Further processing? You mean a tiny amount of added sweetener. That's all that really needs to be added to oat milk.
Plant cheeses are entirely doable, there's an entire industry of nut-based artisan cheeses. Plants can be fermented as easily as dairy, the only things they're missing is the highly addictive opioids, osteoporosis (dairy = bone loss), heart disease, and possibly even things like endometriosis and autoimmune diseases.
Further processing? You mean a tiny amount of added sweetener. That’s all that really needs to be added to oat milk.
I mean, many recipes for home creation also include adding amylase to help keep it from having that slimy texture, and potentially either adding nut milk or adding pulverized nuts to the oats to add some creaminess, and also sweetening it.
Plant cheeses are entirely doable, there’s an entire industry of nut-based artisan cheeses.
You can make plant-based cheese analogs, but they are never so simple as "take milk, add coagulant, stir, separate curd from whey, press curd", which is the basic process for cheese (and for soy milk produces tofu and for many plant milks produces something analogous to tofu).
is the highly addictive opioids,
Casomorphins occur in milk at 200-500 nanograms per liter. For comparison, the most powerful opioid we use (fentanyl) has a standard effective dose of 1000-2000 nanograms per kilogram weight of the patient, and that's 100 times more powerful than morphine. So, if the opioids occurring in milk were as powerful as fentanyl you would need to drink 2-5 liters per kilogram of weight to achieve a dose, which is such a volume compared to, you know, the size of the human digestive tract as to be absurd (especially when you consider that the opioid peptides naturally occurring in milk are not remotely as powerful as fentanyl).
It does have a higher concentration in cheese, mostly because going from milk->cheese is about a 10:1 ratio by weight, but not all the casomorphins from the milk make it into the curd (some are left in the whey), and not all the casomorphins in the curd survive the process (brining, aging, etc as appropriate for the cheese in question). So at the very highest, if you started from the high end of casomorphins in milk, managed to capture all the casomorphins in the curd, lost none of them in processing, and casomorphins were as powerful as fentanyl you'd only have to eat... 20% of your body weight in cheese to achieve a dose.
There aren't a lot of drugs that do anything meaningful to an adult human in the quantities that casomorphins are present in milk given the amounts of dairy humans typically consume. We're talking a scale where the things to compare it to in terms of dose are things like LSD microdosing and botulinum poisoning.
In other words, there's a reason we don't use a dairy-rich diet as a replacement for methadone and it's not that the pharmaceutical industry can't patent dairy.
osteoporosis (dairy = bone loss),
Do you have any good, reputable studies on this one? Because most studies out there I've seen suggest either no effect or exactly the opposite. By comparison, plant milks tend not to be as high in calcium.
Hey, just so you know, that whole lactose intolerance is just hundreds of years of the west drinking milk a lot.
And you can make cheese without milk. Obviously with a different process but Gouda is one of the cheeses that is already replicated very well.Oat milk does not need much processing btw. You can make really good tasting oatmilk at home.
Hey, just so you know, that whole lactose intolerance is just hundreds of years of the west drinking milk a lot.
Like any genetic trait, frequency of lactose tolerance is entirely about selection pressures on your ancestors. Being able to tolerate milk to use it to supplement the diet was more important for survival in Europe and Africa than elsewhere historically. The more your ancestors needed to lean on milk for calories, the more likely the ones who couldn't didn't make it, the more common that mutation is in later generations. Same reason why sickle cell is much more common in black folks - having the sickle cell trait also confers a degree of malaria resistance and malaria is historically a bigger pressure on African populations than on many other regions.
Oat milk does not need much processing btw. You can make really good tasting oatmilk at home.
If you're really careful about how long it's in the water, how much it's been blended, and/or you add some amylase to make it less slimy, maybe some nuts to make it creamier, and probably sweeten it a bit. It's still more involved than "blend nuts with water, pour in filter, press", which in turn is more involved than "pull on nipple."
I'm explicitly not hating on plant milks here, but they aren't a fill in in all applications and for basically any case where the chemical or physical properties of milk are relevant in which case they often need some extra steps involved and even that is assuming the flavor is OK (which depends on the context they are being used in). For example, I find that coconut milk works really well in a lot of dishes from or inspired by food from east Asia or India, but I wouldn't try having it over a bowl of cereal, and I suspect it wouldn't work great in coffee or tea either (though I haven't tried and I find almond milk is pretty OK in coffee but definitely not as good as actual dairy in a strong black tea).
Because cows eat corn and cornfields have more power than people in America
So what you're saying is we need to make cornmilk.
We do, it's called whiskey.
Milk, cream, cheese (most of what milk ends up as), and butter, are all delicious, despite the corrupting economic and political arrangements. Is the quantity consumed appropriate? The US diet is demanding.
The article sort of glosses over the input required to grow plant-based milk products effectively at scale, and the fact they don't constantly produce like cows, the ways the crops can be destroyed and what's required to protect them. A byproduct of dairy farming is manure, often used to fertilize vegetable crops, but the nitrogen fixation used in synthetic fertilizers requires a lot of energy input as well.
They are being effectively grown at scale and are still insanely less resource intensive.
The article doesn't really differentiate what alt-milks are being grown at scale or factor in locations where this is possible. Certainly oats, soy, and coconut are grown at scale (palm plantations are their own environmental disaster). Nut-milk from almonds or nutsedge aren't really mentioned. The "insanely less resource intensive" is basically because plants don't output constantly like cows, so they are absolutely less resource intensive simply because they only produce once a season all at once.
I'm curious what makes milk bad for you. Could someone explain this? I understand why it is bad for the climate, but not why it's bad for human health provided you can digest lactose properly.
It's a similar issue to why gluten became a fad diet, once the public zeitgeist got the idea that some people can't digest gluten properly people started thinking that maybe no one should eat gluten and the hucksters followed suit.
Do not believe any scammer who tries to tell you that milk is somehow not healthy or that the dairy industry is some kind of scam trying to poison America.
It isn't healthy in the same way candy bars with added vitamins aren't healthy: it's a bunch of sugar and fat you don't need with some protein and calcium somewhere in there.
But maybe you want it anyways, because it's yummy.
Saturated fats, hormones, antibiotics, bacteria (only if consumed raw)
Consuming over 1.25 liters of milk a day increases the risk of prostate cancer (however also decreases risk of colon cancer)
It's also not only bad for the climate but also for the cows who have to be impregnated and giving birth before there is any milk
It's not. The Mayo Clinic clearly states that milk is healthier than plant milks. Fortified soymilk is their second-best.
While there are saturated fats in cow milk, it's a low enough percent of calories that you can drink any amount of milk and still never cross the "healthy to unhealthy" line.
Also, be wary of people quoting nutritionstudies.org as it's a vegan propaganda mill with a founder that likes to make claims that are either unsubstantiated or rejected by medical experts and nutritionists in general. Using one of the cited references from that site "nobody needs to drink milk", he claims that casein causes tumor growth. There is a weak correlation between casein intake and tumor growth that puts it in the same category of "may possibly cause cancer" as hundreds of things you do every day (to add, there's similar evidence that dairy "may possibly" prevent some forms of cancer). Milk is not known to cause or worsen cancer, nor even **likely to ** cause/worsen cancer, from a scientific point of view. More frustrating, milk's nutritional balance and high protein makes it something doctors generally encourage cancer patients to drink.
There's a lot that makes milk bad.
https://nutritionstudies.org/dairy-consumption-weight-loss-claims/
I'm allergic to milk, so fuck big dairy.
I’m not allergic to milk, but fuck big dairy too.
I'm allergic to oats, but still fuck big dairy. Live little dairy!
Because it's a relatively new competitor on the market that doesn't have the same agricultural base as dairy products which warrants subsidies aimed at keeping farmers from losing their shirts during lean seasons?
I agree with cutting off subsidies, but for people calling stopping production, it clearly just doesn't taste the same.
Those people prioritize reducing the suffering the dairy industry causes over that taste people like.
Oat milk > Almond milk. Almond milk has a weird and bitter taste to it, oat milk doesn't.
I also like the coconut water with rice drinks, but they hardly classify as milk even tho some brands may claim it's a milk alternative.
I've tried a few different oat milks and they just seem so watery tasting, with an artificial thickness to them. None of the milk alternatives I've tried come close actually... Maybe in coffee, but in a bowl of cereal, or a glass all by itself?
Hopefully we can bio-engineer milk production like meat and get the benefits without the drawbacks (could make it lactose free too I bet).
You could try making your own oat milk in a blender, it's pretty easy if you have the filtering bags. Took me a couple batches to figure out the right amount of blending, but once you get it right it's great. Blend too much and it comes out almost slimy, too little and it's watery. I had to adjust blending times by about 2-3 seconds to dial it in.
I actually prefer the taste of almond milk, but I only consume milks as part of something else, like coffee or something. Chia seed pudding with almond milk is absolutely delicious imo.
But I'm glad that there are lots of alternatives available because I know people that prefer soy milk or oat milk for coconut milk for various reasons. Personally, I use different milks for different occasions because they all have unique characters that make them better for certain things.
We all just say "capitalism" and end the thread right?
We don't need non human milk in the first place so I don't need a milk alternative either lol
Also, for the record I'm mostly off human milk too now that I'm an adult
mostly
ಠ_ಠ
We also don't need couches, or entertainment. Stop ruining tasty milk :(
Also, for the record I’m mostly off human milk too now that I’m an adult
Don't worry, babysteps (no pun intended) for the win, you can do it!
The stuff in the carton at the store is cows milk. Not human.
Woooosh
side question, what is the impact of goat milk?
I don't know but it's not the best option out there lol
It depends how they're raised, but iirc goats are easier to feed, and at least some companies use them for managing growth in solar fields.
What's more local, whatever is more local is likely better for the planet unless that UK oat milk in that Toronto Coffee shop flew there on its own.
Even with transportation costs across the ocean, animal agriculture has insane emissions. I doubt that would even come close to animal ag
As for the answer to the question....
Because milking nuts is hard. Their teats are so small!
I can't make milk kefir with almond milk
How is it better for us? Most plant milks have no protein in them or a fraction of the protein of real milk. Not to mention plant milk often doesn’t taste great. Oat milk is the only one I find acceptable and even then I don’t prefer it to real milk.
Also, there are other dairy products like yogurt and cheese that you need real milk for.
We get most of our protein from sources other than milk. Humans are the only animal that continues to drink milk past weaning and the only animal that drinks milk from another animal and only a minority does it...
So... how does the majority of humans survive without drinking milk?
you don't need breast milk for yoghurt and cheese.
I make both myself, my soy yoghurt tastes very similar to Greek yoghurt and works very well in curries etc. It's not just the flavour, it's fermented.
My blue and white cheeses are awesome, I serve them to people who thank me for buying them "real" cheese (something I would never do lmao). Again they're properly cultured, you just need to mix protein and fat sources in similar ratios to the target cheese. you can even use peas as the base for surprisingly tasty but weirdly green cheese.
Dairy milk is gross. I stopped drinking it nearly 15 years ago. I wasn't vegan or vegetarian at the time. It just tasted awful. I still would eat cheese than, but as a drink, dairy milk is plain awful. It's also terribly inefficient. It's not shelf stable. It has a short lifespan. It requires a lot of water and energy per cup than many others.
Do plant-based milks taste exactly like milk? No. But they don't have to.
And how is it better for us? Considering a majority of the world can't digest it is a big sign as to why plant based is better. Soy isn't the only option. There's almond, pea, banana, cashew and coconut to name a few.
Dairy milk is gross.
as a drink, dairy milk is plain awful.I mean, you have to realize that this is strictly subjective, no? One could just as easily say that oat milk is gross and plain awful. I'd disagree - I think it's great - but "it's icky" is not a useful argument, speaking as someone who mostly buys oat milk nowadays.
It’s not shelf stable. It has a short lifespan.
Ultra-pasteurized milk has a remarkable shelf life, even when unrefrigerated.
And how is it better for us? Considering a majority of the world can’t digest it is a big sign as to why plant based is better.
Your argument becomes a non-sequitur when extended to people who are lactose tolerant. The mere existence or ubiquity of lactose intolerance does not entail that milk is bad for the lactose tolerant. Perhaps plant substitutes to cow milk are better for even the lactose tolerant, but lactose intolerance is completely irrelevant to the minority of us such as myself who produce sufficient enzymes to digest lactose without any difficulty whatsoever.
Subsidies have devalued food and the value of farms and farm labor. If they went away, meat and dairy consumption would fall simply because we would have to pay the true dollar value of producing those foods.
I don't agree with the environmental assessment in this article though. The quantity produced might be the same, but a cup of cow milk has a lot more calories and micronutrients than plant milk. Sure, many people don't have the genetics to digest it, but there's a reason mammals drink milk until they can eat other foods. They wouldn't survive long sipping puddles of soy water.
Even after adjusting for calories, the environmental impact of animal agriculture is insane. Meat is obviously waaaay worse than dairy, but dairy still uses way more land and water, with a disproportionate environmental impact on any measure you can think of.
It’s wild how many people think they know so much about this topic and then comment something nonsensical on this post lol
Given how inflammatory dairy is, and all the many links it has to so many health problems, I have no idea how it can still be pitched as a health food, but then, old habits die very hard in this country. Seeing how people treat "protein" as a health food is nearly as absurd. SMH.
Protein is an essential macronutrient. Life does not exist without protein. So yes, it is a health food.
I don't think anyone denies it is an essential macronutrient. I'm talking about the bro science you'll hear all the time from people touting how many grams are in their protein shake, their protein bar and so on.
Of course, the hysteria has been taken up by the restaurant industry now prominently displaying the amount of protein in their items and when ordering food they offer "a protein" to be added on top - which they should call "a fat", really, because in this context "protein" nearly always equals meat, which is just mind-bogglingly silly.
I choose to have a high protein diet because I feel better that way. However, I don't think all protein = meat, nor animals for that matter. I mix it up a lot.
Hey, whatever works for you. But I cannot tell you how many people assume I am going to die without "protein". I remember reading a book written by a body builder who actually got his degree in nutrition finding that when measured, most of his supposed "necessary" protein was excreted in his urine, and he really didn't need anything extra than what he was already getting via normal diet to maintain lean muscle mass. It sounded like he was eating the SAD, but all the protein powders and shakes were mostly hokum.
Good news, you can pay premium money for A2 milk that's less inflammatory 🙃
I'm talking the chronic disease kind of inflammatory, but I guess that's good for people that are allergic and don't want to take the hint...
This is a weird advertisement. Drink water. Plant milk does not have the protein or calorie density as dairy milk. You may as well drink water and eat your greens instead of supporting industries that are gentle rapists of the earth. I'll drink my own vomit before reading that rag again.
Cereal with water is weird. I like my oats with oatmilk.
Soy milk has comparable amounts of protein with dairy.
Not to mention, many soy milks have more calcium due to being fortified. Which means you can get lots of potassium, Vitamin D, and B12 from them.
Because protein and calorie density are the only two conceivable reasons to drink a non-dairy milk? That's a weird take.
FWIW, 8 oz of soy milk gives you 7 grams of protein vs. cow milk's 8 grams. And 8 oz of soy milk will give you 80 calories to cow milk's 103.
I mean, if you're really that hard up over 1 gram of protein and calories, you could just pour a little more soy milk.
I think you misunderstood or I stated it poorly. Plant milk is a waste of time and resources to approximate milk.
If there's anything Americans in particular should not worry about, it's protein and calorie density in their food.
wash your ass
I didn't know everyone was so defensive of milk. Looks like a got my macros wrong.
i switched to milk from local cows that are happy and grass fed... and damn does it taste better. like measurably better, in everything i use it for. grocery store milk now tastes strange to me. it's more expensive, but who really needs to use that much milk? i don't drink it casually, just in baking, etc.
non dairy milks are a scam to sell water to rich city people.
Cuz mhn milk gud
Plant milk also tastes absolutely disgusting in my opinion and comes nowhere near to actual milk from a cow. The moment when I can't taste the difference is the point where I'll switch over, but so far nothing has impressed me.
Maybe try some of the newer oat milks.
They don't taste the same but they taste good.The moment where it tastes the same, and costs the same or less, I’ll switch over.
I would actually agree with this plant milk thing if it wasn't even of a worse alternative to cow milk and with so much sugar and chemicals as a can of Pepsi:
Don't even need to waste my time clicking that link to know it's full of crap. Pretty much every single major cow milk alternative has less sugar than cow milk. And 'chemicals' is a scary word that has no meaning in this context.
"Chemicals" are actually good and based when they make food have better taste, texture, and preservation qualities, especially when they are used to make things that replace environmentally destructive and more fatty or sugary alternatives - increasing agricultural efficiency and by-proxy reducing land use and runoff -and especially when the fact they're "artificial" means they actually get tested for negative health effects . nya
Also low sugar plant milks are very common, just drank some unsweetened soya milk right now and it was good shit ;p
Often they are only sweetened to appeal to people accustomed to high-sugar dairy too. I started on sweetened soya milk then moved to unsweetened after a bit. Feels good to have less sugar in your diet, in general .
Cos fake milk tastes like shit
Good question. For some dumb reason, we keep telling kids to drink milk, too, as well as try to get them to drink it in schools, when we should be doing anything BUT that. We should be telling them to cut dairy to as close to zero as possible.
It's still part of the food pyramid is it not? WTAF.
Sorry but plant milk is a processed food with no nutritional value. It is not better for us or the planet. This is just a silly article.
Unless you're a raw milk TB-chaser type the milk you drink is probably processed too. Being processed doesn't make something inherently worse, and "no nutritional value" is a daft claim. OK if you consume milk as your only source of protein or fat, you probably want to choose your milk substitute tailored to whichever the rest of your diet is deficient in, but better or worse for us is a fairly arbitrary concept.
Livestock for dairy production are unarguably bad for the planet though.
" are unarguably"
Nope no point in arguing then I guess I just need to assume you're right.
The nutritional value is debatable, but the environmental impact isn’t even close. Cows are a massive problem for the environment. The amount of water they use, the food they consume (the water that we need for that food too), it’s an insane comparison.
Can't make a bechamel with plant based. Doesn't have to be cow, but can't be nut or oat or whatever.
Wat? Sure you can
i dont really like anything but whole cows milk. skim is just basically water and i would rather drink water than watery milk. but i havent had milk for a long time. i just eat cheese all the time. i will never give up cheese. yummy
Because the fiction that plant-based products are healthy has been heavily debunked by just how sickly vegans are on average?
What vegans do you meet lol?
Every vegan I've known has ended up the same way, their body starts to react negatively to the diet, they get sick, doctors tell them that they are low on some essential vitamin, they eat meat, it's the most delicious thing that they had an ages, they realize the entire vegan movement is a scam and a death cult.
The only people I know who don't have this happen to them, are rich celebrities who can afford all of these supplements.
by just how sickly vegans are on average?
???
Milk is seen as a waste product in the meat industry.
Yeah, the climate would be better if we lowered our meat intake and switched to plant milk.
But unless that first one changes, it is more effective drinking the waste than it is setting up entire fields to create a new product.
That’s not how milk production works. It’s not a byproduct of meat
Beef cattle are male. You don't want to drink their milk.
Speak for yourself.
It it doesn't come from a mammal it ain't milk.
Doesn't taste as good to many meat eaters.
They simply haven't tried enough. A good oat milk is better than cow's milk 100% of the time, and I'm not vegan or anything.
Because it tastes like shit. And I don't even drink milk but you can't even cook with the substitute shit.
Oatmilk creamer in coffee or chai, however, is delicious. Some brands are better tasting than others.
Oatmilk is pretty close to the real thing without being an all out substitute. I use it for day to day stuff and if I have a recipe that requires milk I buy a small amount versus a whole gallon. Most do just taste like nut juice though.
It’s also 1000x better for the environment. I don’t give a fuck if my brand tastes 87% like milk at that point. I still and will use creams for cooking, but milk and cereal is such a weird industry now that it’s all really expensive.
I don't believe you have used the correct plant milks for the correct uses.
- Soya Milk: Kinda meh taste for hot and cold beverages. U won't go wrong with it. However, this ain't the best product for all uses. U can make tofu tho, which is nice.
- Oat milk: The best choice for cold beverages. Oat milk has a flavor that is just much better than soy milk in my opinion. While u can use it for hot beverages (and it's delicious there), u need to be kinda careful. The more u heat up oat milk, the thicker it becomes due to the starch present in it. Therefore, never try to boil, or come close to boiling oat milk ever.
- Coconut milk: If u have anything to say about coconut milk, gtfo from here. It's fatty and can be a substitute for cream. Needless to say, it is absolutely delicious! South Indian curries make use of this. There's also a drink that I love called "Solkadhi", which is an Indian drink made using coconut milk. U just can't talk smack abt it....
- Chickpea milk: Now this is a use case which I don't know if many people would agree with me out on or no. What I do is, I make chickpea milk to make youghurt out of it (just ferment it using soaking water). Now, in my experience, this yogurt tastes like shit if u consume it alone. HOWEVER, if you use it in curries, gohdddd r u in for the treat of ur lifetime! One, u get a beautiful thick curry and two, u get that amazing acidic flavor. It's just rlly rlly good! Highly recommend if u guys haven't tried this out yet.
- Other plant milks: There are a gazillion other plant milks. I just mentioned the ones above that I have personal experience with.
In conclusion, try not to fixate on one plant milk alternative and then attempt to use it for all use cases of dairy milk. Remember, there is no monolithic "dairy milk alternative". Different plant milks serve different purposes. If used correctly, u'll get the best culinary experience of ur life!
Because things that aren't milk taste like flavored water, and not...you know...milk...
I hate to break this simple truth to you, but that's the whole reason why. Milk simply tastes better, and is a superior product to alt-milk.
I agree with you, but that doesn't mean we should be subsidizing its production. If we're gonna do that I say we also pay car makers to start making fun hatchbacks again because I prefer them.
i don't drink other "milks" but i do drink soylent and, to my pallet, it's a perfect milk substitute. and, in a lot of ways, it's better nutritionally: every 400kcal delivers 20% of the RDA for 28 essential nutrients, and a (reasonable) blend of carbs, fat, and protein.
You're getting downvoted but you're right. I think some people just like their milk to taste like coconut or something.
There are milks and additives that eliminate getting ill from milk if you're sensitive, you know. Don't need to create a wasteful fake milk industry just because you can't drink it normally.
The entire article is about how it’s less wasteful lol
You're such a die hard fan of drinking your puss and blood drinks that you don't see the reason why we created alternatives in the first place
Puss and blood? Oh yeah? You think your almond nut juice is any better?
I still can't have lactose free milk and other dairy products because I have a dairy sensitivity which is to a protein in the milk and not lactose itself. So, I very much appreciate the increasing popularity of alternatives.
That won't do much for all the ethical and environmental problems, however. Nor will it do anything for all the related health problems.
