4 ms·

So you want a world no only with no milk but no butter or cheese or sour cream or yogurt or cream cheese or ice cream or ... ? No thanks, I think we have bigger

So you want a world no only with no milk but no butter or cheese or sour cream or yogurt or cream cheese or ice cream or ... ? No thanks, I think we have bigger problems and other ways to solve our environment issues, they are just a lot less popular. Plus, it is kind of silly to think about since it would never happen. Better to tax coal and gas into oblivion.

drewg123 6y ago
Surprisingly, cows are worse for the environment than cars. That sounds insane, and it took me a while to believe it myself. But do your own research. I have had dairy-free versions of all of the foods above. Most are really good, though I have to admit that I don't care for the vegan cream cheeses that I've tried.
- exoji2e 6y ago
  Have you tried this one - I really enjoy it, but maybe I've been vegan for too long to remember what regular cream cheese tastes like... https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/ https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/
  - drewg123 6y ago
    Yes, there is some in my fridge right now! Its the best I've had, but still not as good as the real thing to me. In general, I think Violife does the best job with imitation cheeses.
  - bradbeattie 6y ago
    Tofutti's cream cheese does it for me. Likewise can't quite recall the difference, but I enjoy it nonetheless.
exoji2e 6y ago
There are quite a lot of delicious vegan alternatives. Some cheeses seem difficult to reinvent as vegan options, but the rest that you mention definitely have great alternatives. Those alternatives were a lot worse 5 years ago. The dairy industry will probably not vanish completely or directly, but when the vegan alternatives are good enough for the majority, combined with a generational shift the dairy industry will start decreasing rapidly. So the notion that "it would never happen" is a bit silly imo. I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years.
- core-questions 6y ago
  > I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years. I could have maybe let this go if you'd said "will have stagnant growth or have declining demand relative to the population", but cut in half? Where do you get such a grandiose proclamation from? I wish we could bet money on that, because there's really no chance of this as long as the demand continues to exist. Where exactly do you think the demand is going to go? As long as it exists, the industry will do what it can to ensure the product is inexpensive enough for us to buy; as long as it is inexpensive enough it will be the product of choice. The alternatives are not actually yet produced at sufficient scale to replace dairy, neither are they cheap enough, and there's no guarantee they're actually more sustainable at all (consider the long supply chain to get me some soy milk, vs the farm -> bottling plant -> grocery store pipeline that keeps the entire chain within a single city and its outlying agricultural areas in much of the first world). Don't get me wrong - as someone who has become increasingly lactose intolerant as I age, I'm totally in favour of continued development of alternatives, but let's face it: it's not cheese you're eating, it's not milk you're drinking, and it never will be. You're fighting against thousands of years of co-evolving the dairy industry and our own bodies to be able to digest the bacteria in cheese and yogourt, no doubt helping the microbiome in ways we haven't begun to understand yet.
  - onecommentman 6y ago
    I’ve noticed this rhetorical device a few times on HN. A reasonable argument suddenly make a turn for the extreme at the very end. I think it is a desensitizing technique...you’ve bought everything else, let’s see if I can push you into a more extreme position at the end...the hook at the end, as it were. It’s annoying, and leads instead to a questioning of the argument at the beginning. This whole discussion of this topic is veering into the “paper v. plastic” overthinking/overtalking discussions of the 1990s. It’s a non-trivial analysis to figure out the basic issues and their relative importance. Won’t be done here...

drewg123 6y ago

Surprisingly, cows are worse for the environment than cars. That sounds insane, and it took me a while to believe it myself. But do your own research. I have had dairy-free versions of all of the foods above. Most are really good, though I have to admit that I don't care for the vegan cream cheeses that I've tried.

exoji2e 6y ago
Have you tried this one - I really enjoy it, but maybe I've been vegan for too long to remember what regular cream cheese tastes like... https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/ https://violifefoods.com/product/original-flavour-creamy/
- drewg123 6y ago
  Yes, there is some in my fridge right now! Its the best I've had, but still not as good as the real thing to me. In general, I think Violife does the best job with imitation cheeses.
- bradbeattie 6y ago
  Tofutti's cream cheese does it for me. Likewise can't quite recall the difference, but I enjoy it nonetheless.

exoji2e 6y ago

There are quite a lot of delicious vegan alternatives. Some cheeses seem difficult to reinvent as vegan options, but the rest that you mention definitely have great alternatives. Those alternatives were a lot worse 5 years ago. The dairy industry will probably not vanish completely or directly, but when the vegan alternatives are good enough for the majority, combined with a generational shift the dairy industry will start decreasing rapidly. So the notion that "it would never happen" is a bit silly imo. I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years.

core-questions 6y ago
> I predict that the global dairy industry will be cut by half in 10 years. I could have maybe let this go if you'd said "will have stagnant growth or have declining demand relative to the population", but cut in half? Where do you get such a grandiose proclamation from? I wish we could bet money on that, because there's really no chance of this as long as the demand continues to exist. Where exactly do you think the demand is going to go? As long as it exists, the industry will do what it can to ensure the product is inexpensive enough for us to buy; as long as it is inexpensive enough it will be the product of choice. The alternatives are not actually yet produced at sufficient scale to replace dairy, neither are they cheap enough, and there's no guarantee they're actually more sustainable at all (consider the long supply chain to get me some soy milk, vs the farm -> bottling plant -> grocery store pipeline that keeps the entire chain within a single city and its outlying agricultural areas in much of the first world). Don't get me wrong - as someone who has become increasingly lactose intolerant as I age, I'm totally in favour of continued development of alternatives, but let's face it: it's not cheese you're eating, it's not milk you're drinking, and it never will be. You're fighting against thousands of years of co-evolving the dairy industry and our own bodies to be able to digest the bacteria in cheese and yogourt, no doubt helping the microbiome in ways we haven't begun to understand yet.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  I’ve noticed this rhetorical device a few times on HN. A reasonable argument suddenly make a turn for the extreme at the very end. I think it is a desensitizing technique...you’ve bought everything else, let’s see if I can push you into a more extreme position at the end...the hook at the end, as it were. It’s annoying, and leads instead to a questioning of the argument at the beginning. This whole discussion of this topic is veering into the “paper v. plastic” overthinking/overtalking discussions of the 1990s. It’s a non-trivial analysis to figure out the basic issues and their relative importance. Won’t be done here...