Alternative Milks

I think an important thing to look at when considering water usage of a particular food, is the nature of where the food is being produced. Almonds are largely grown in California, where the aquifers are shrinking, and evaporation can take the water much further away. Meanwhile, dairy cows and their food can be raised in lots of climates, including in water-rich places like Wisconsin.<p>Used water makes it back into the global water cycle someplace. The concern is when we deplete a local water cycle or destroy habitats in our use of it.

I suggest everyone to read <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sacredcow.info&#x2F;helpful-resources" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sacredcow.info&#x2F;helpful-resources</a> before jumping the bandwagon that milk is bad and the plant alternative is good.<p>Quick summary based on hazy memory<p>- Cow breeding isn&#x27;t inherently bad. It depends how industrialised the process is<p>- Not all land can grow crop while cow glazes on infertile land.<p>- The water usage in raising cow does not account for where the water come from. It come from natural rain water if the cow is relatively free-ranged. Growing almond&#x2F;oat on the other hand definitely rely on irrigation water. California wastes majority (can&#x27;t remember the percentage) of its precious water on growing almonds<p>edit: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sacredcow.info&#x2F;helpful-resources" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sacredcow.info&#x2F;helpful-resources</a> contains some infographics of those quick facts

I find the oat milk I drink is like 95% of the way there in terms of being exactly the same taste as regular milk (not oatly, I found that one to be not great). The last 5% is an almost imperceptible &quot;toasted oat&quot; taste, and it&#x27;s a little on the thick side. I also find that I have to dilute it 1:1 with water if I want it to work right in my coffee.

Normally I don&#x27;t like indulging in pedantic things like this, but I think I&#x27;m on-board with &quot;we shouldn&#x27;t call the stuff that doesn&#x27;t come out of mammals &#x27;Milk?&#x27;&quot;<p>It just doesn&#x27;t fit with how we seem to most often use words in foods et al, e.g: We call it &#x27;egg substitute&#x27; or &#x27;krab&#x27; when the thing is not the thing.<p>The only outlier I can think of here is things like &#x27;Root Beer&#x27; and &#x27;Ginger Ale&#x27; and we know why those are that way.

I have recently started drinking almond milk. It does feel like a rip-off because a 1 litre carton of almond milk is approximately 97% water, 2% almonds, 1% thickeners.<p>Companies charge what they think the market will pay and in this case, consumers (like me!) are willing to pay for almond milk even when it costs <i>more</i> than fresh dairy milk.<p>But make up your own mind: is almond milk a rip-off given the ingredients? Or a perfectly fine product? Here are the ingredients for two different unsweentened almond milk brands:<p>- <i>Alpro Almond Milk - 1 litre</i> (Alpro is a popular European brand)<p>Water, Almonds (2.3%), Calcium (Tri-Calcium Phosphate), Sea Salt, Stabilisers (Locust Bean Gum, Gellan Gum), Emulsifier (Lecithins (Sunflower)), Vitamins (B2, B12, E, D2)<p>- <i>Asda Almond Milk - 1 litre</i> (UK supermarket own brand)<p>Water, Almonds (2%), Emulsifier (Sunflower Lecithins), Calcium Phosphate, Stabilisers (Gellan Gum, Carboxy Methyl Cellulose, Xanthan Gum), Salt, Potassium Iodide, Vitamins (B12, D2, B2)<p>Prices:<p>- Alpro: £1.80 ($2.50, 2.10€)<p>- Asda: £0.85 ($1.15, 1.00€)

They’ve missed pea milk, which as far as I remember is even more efficient than soy.<p>Though people are a bit weird about peas; while a lot of meat substitutes use pea protein, they’re virtually never marketed as such. Oat and even soy protein seem to be more consumer friendly.

I&#x27;m more excited about synthesized milk:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smh.com.au&#x2F;business&#x2F;entrepreneurship&#x2F;csiro-brews-milk-for-animal-free-dairy-startup-20210726-p58cwv.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.smh.com.au&#x2F;business&#x2F;entrepreneurship&#x2F;csiro-brews...</a><p>I&#x27;ve lifted weights recreationally for 20 years and find most of the dogma and heated debate about dairy products fascinating. It&#x27;s not uncommon to see a fitness enthusiast warning about the dangers of dairy while simultaneously selling nutrition supplements derived from milk as part of a multilevel marketing scheme.<p>At this point, I think everyone should have the dignity to believe what they want to believe. But personally, I consider all milk substitutes to be a waste of time unless someone has a specific reason (like lactose intolerance) to drink them.<p>Some other truths that people love to debate for some reason: yes dairy is horrible for the environment so it is best to eat it in moderation if you aren&#x27;t exercising (best to get to it soon though). Yes diary is always more ethical than meat. Yes most nutrition advice post-WWII is propaganda put out to bolster certain big agriculture companies. Yes high cholesterol in the body probably has more to do with genetics and other risk factors than how much cholesterol is consumed.<p>The fastest way to get healthy that I know of is to go on the gallon of milk a day (GOMAD) diet and hit the gym 3 times per week for 45 minutes or less with no cardio. This is 1970s &quot;technology&quot; but it works.. astoundingly well. I used it in my 20s with great results.<p>The rest of the hype, eh, I try to tune it out. Avoid dairy to save the planet, that&#x27;s great. Avoid dairy to save your health and.. your health will probably decline because it&#x27;s usually something else like poor work-life balance or a sedentary lifestyle that&#x27;s the culprit.

&gt; One way I tried to do this, was to switch the kind of milk I drink. This also had a secondary impact on reducing my environmental impact.<p>This is why I&#x27;m not hopeful that lab grown meat will be transformational. We already have a handful of sustainable, widely available, and affordable cow milk alternatives right now and people aren&#x27;t switching over in droves. Getting people to change their habits is hard without a huge incentive. I can&#x27;t see how lab grown meat is going to be substantially cheaper (soy&#x2F;rice&#x2F;oat milk is more expensive than cow milk in the UK still) or much better tasting to make people switch.<p>I see people saying things like &quot;I&#x27;m sure to switch when it&#x27;s cheaper and tastes the same or better&quot; but I&#x27;m not sure how we&#x27;ll avoid global warming when people aren&#x27;t willing to really change anything (vs only willing to switch to identical alternatives).

One aspect of environmental impact that may be overlooked here is the use of refrigeration. Some milk requires refrigeration depending on its processing and packaging. There are also cultural norms in play; Americans often believe that milk of any kind must always be kept cold, and American supermarkets often have completely open refrigerated shelving, which I have to imagine is very wasteful.<p>Photo of what I&#x27;m referring to: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newhope.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;newhope360.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;styles&#x2F;article_featured_retina&#x2F;public&#x2F;dairy-aisle.jpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newhope.com&#x2F;sites&#x2F;newhope360.com&#x2F;files&#x2F;styles&#x2F;ar...</a>

This table hides a lot of important information.<p>If you look at calories and sugar, you could think that oat milk is equivalent to cow milk.<p>First calorie measurement is imprecise at best, and then, there&#x27;s how what you eat influences your metabolism.<p>These two articles might help you make up your own mind:<p>- Death of the calorie - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;1843&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;death-of-the-calorie" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;1843&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;death-of-the-calor...</a><p>- Oatly: The New Coke - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;every.to&#x2F;almanack&#x2F;oatly-the-new-coke-821556" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;every.to&#x2F;almanack&#x2F;oatly-the-new-coke-821556</a>

Very useful resource, but I wonder if emissions (kg) takes into account methane emissions from cows, which tend to have a stronger warming effect than CO2. There are conversions from methane to equivalent CO2, so hopefully that&#x27;s there already.

In case anyone else got confused about how lactose-free milk somehow managed to have exactly the same macronutritional profile as ordinary milk, it turns out to be because &quot;lactose-free&quot; really means &quot;we added lactase so the lactose is pre-digested&quot;, not &quot;we removed the lactose&quot;. The sugar is all still there, just in simpler forms.

Would have been interested to see Pea Milk.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ripplefoods.com&#x2F;healthy-environment&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ripplefoods.com&#x2F;healthy-environment&#x2F;</a>

I was surprised that human milk has so little saturated fat, but it seems the table is wrong? The source linked shows 4g of sat fat per 200g of milk.

Where is the oat milk getting it&#x27;s extra calories? Using the usual 9kcals per gram fat and 4kcals per gram protein and gram carbohydrates, I get the expected 120ish amount for cow milk but only 71kcal for oat milk (listed at 100kcals). I guess the table is missing non-sugar carbohydrates?

The water usage metric is a joke. Do you think dairy cows in Normandy or England lack any water, or that anyone is impacted by said water usage? Just visit there, you&#x27;ll see what I mean.<p>The carbon metric is also a joke, for a different reason: cows raised on mostly grass can have a negative impact. Cattle fed corn is another story, but the problem here is not the cows or the milk but industrial agriculture.<p>Next we have land usage. I just came back from a hike in the mountain. Saw plenty of cows munching on ski slopes, they make excellent cheese. What kind of food could be produced there instead? Certainly not rice or almonds or whatever.<p>Finally the nutriments is all dependent on what you make of fats. Ansel Keyes and his followers have been claiming saturated fat was bad for your heart, in the mean time France has the highest butter consumption in the world by far and we also happen to have among the best heart health numbers (and no, it&#x27;s not red wine).

Raw milk (y&#x2F;n?) and A1 vs A2 milk are the true debates currently ongoing on the milk world:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.healthline.com&#x2F;nutrition&#x2F;a1-vs-a2-milk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.healthline.com&#x2F;nutrition&#x2F;a1-vs-a2-milk</a>

I’ve been trying Not Milk recently and I’m pretty impressed. Its slightly sweeter than milk, but it seems to work fine with cooking.

It&#x27;s too bad the alternative milk manufacturers don&#x27;t seem to care much about packaging waste and energy expended due to transportation. They&#x27;re all single use plastics or unrecyclable tetrapaks.<p>There&#x27;s a milk I can buy near me that&#x27;s made locally and comes in an exchangeable glass bottle. That milk just happens to come from a cow.

why push for alternatives? only to create more products to sell you, i really hate this western mentality, no wonder asia is becoming the dominant civilization