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Alternative Milks
- Ambolia 5y agoRaw milk (y/n?) and A1 vs A2 milk are the true debates currently ongoing on the milk world: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/a1-vs-a2-milk https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/a1-vs-a2-milk
- m000 5y agoVery interesting. I've stopped drinking milk after moving to Northern Europe. In retrospect, the different type of casein probably played a role in this. It is a pitty though that the only plant-based milk that comes close to the macronutrients profile of dairy milk comes from soy.
- Ambolia 5y agoNot sure how true this is, but I've read that unfermented soy is not very healthy and in traditional societies that consume soy in high quantities they consume it usually after a fermenting process.
- rsynnott 5y agoThis doesn’t sound right; in cultures where they eat a lot of soy, some is fermented (eg soy sauce), some isn’t (eg tofu).
- wyre 5y agoI don’t believe the current literature points toward soy being unhealthy in any scientifically proven ways. Fermented soy is going to be healthier, just like any fermented food is healthier than its unfermented counterpart. Kimchi is healthier than cabbage, etc
- goda90 5y agoInteresting. I imagine it'd be pretty hard to get enough dairy farmers to switch the breed of their herd, but since many cows are artificially inseminated I wonder if we could see genetic engineering to turn regular breed cows into A2 cows without changing other aspects of the breed.
- Metacelsus 5y ago>Raw milk (y/n?) You really don't want this, it can have lots of nasty bacteria (including bovine TB)
- vokep 5y agoWhats the actual quantified likelihood of this?
- dqv 5y agoI don’t drink animal milks, but if I did I would drink the one that had a lower probability of infection. https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/02/cdc-raw-milk-much-more-likely-to-cause-illness/ https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2012/02/cdc-raw-milk-much-mor...
- mleonhard 5y agoRaw milk forgoes one of humanity's most important inventions: pasteurization. Raw dairy products are 150-times more likely to cause disease than pasteurized products [0]. Pasteurization has prevented much suffering and death. It is among the most important technologies of human progress: farming, animal domestication, writing, crop rotation, democracy, pasteurization, vaccines, refrigeration, antibiotics, internal combustion engines, electronics, and the Internet. [0] https://doi.org/10.3201%2Feid1803.111370 https://doi.org/10.3201%2Feid1803.111370
- psychometry 5y agoIt's too bad the alternative milk manufacturers don't seem to care much about packaging waste and energy expended due to transportation. They're all single use plastics or unrecyclable tetrapaks. There's a milk I can buy near me that's made locally and comes in an exchangeable glass bottle. That milk just happens to come from a cow.
- neogodless 5y agoI assume you're talking about things like this? https://productxplorer.tetrapak.com/packaging/package/tetra-rex-1893-max https://productxplorer.tetrapak.com/packaging/package/tetra-... That's basically all I've ever seen. Cardboard + plastic spout. From what I can tell, they are recyclable. https://earth911.com/home-garden/recycling-mystery-milk-and-juice-cartons/ https://earth911.com/home-garden/recycling-mystery-milk-and-...
- criddell 5y agoAnd also this: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/we-answer-your-burning-questions-about-things-like-milk-bags-tariffs-condo-insurance-and-printer-cartridges-1.5409407/here-s-why-milk-comes-in-bags-in-parts-of-canada-1.5409420 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/costofliving/we-answer-your-burning...
- frosted-flakes 5y agoI love milk bags. I can dump them in the fridge drawer and they take up hardly any space, they don't weigh ten pounds each like 4L jugs, when empty they have a volume of zero, unlike 4L jugs, and they are way easier to pour. The only downside is they are not recyclable, but it's such a small volume of plastic I don't think it really matters.
- jefurii 5y agoWestSoy is one major soymilk producer that uses Tetrapak. In stores like Sprouts and Trader Joe's it's often the only soymilk available. Tetrapak is nice in that it doesn't need to be refrigerated until you open it, but it's made of paper with a layer of foil underneath it cannot be recycled.
- chomp 5y agoI 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 "toasted oat" taste, and it'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.
- msdrigg 5y agoIve had the same experience in terms of not-totally-there. But I honestly like the oat milk taste better, especially in coffee and cereal. Those are my two main uses for milk so I dont really buy regular milk anymore unless I need it to cook with or something.
- athorax 5y agoSame, i only buy cows milk for certain baking recipes at this point. Oat Yeah (which i think is just a silk brand) has been my favorite I've found. It doesn't taste quite the same as cows milk which i am more than okay with.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- notahacker 5y agoMaybe I'm just unlucky with brand/batch but I found the opposite: oat milk I bought that was specifically marketed as being ideal for coffee has a rank, salty taste and frankly I'd rather drink or mix something obviously different but pleasant like coconut or almond milk
- izolate 5y agoUnsurprising since most dairy-free milks have more salt/sodium than regular milk.
- jmkr 5y agoLove oat milk, specifically Silk's Oat Yeah! I think it's a good replacement. Since I eat a lot of _replacement_ foods, you kind of learn that you don't need that 100% to appreciate it for what it is. It's all learned taste. I usually drink my coffee black, but a long time ago I made the switch to soy milk, and after a while it became natural in coffee. Oat latte's are pretty great too.
- goda90 5y agoI 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. 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.
- Ambolia 5y agoSimilarly goats can be grown feeding them almost anything in climates where nothing of value can be farmed otherwise.
- mikepurvis 5y agoI see this argument made about other ruminants and even pigs, but is that the reality? Maybe a pet goat eats the vegetable peels out of the family compost bin, but industrially farmed ones will be eating corn-based feed that was specifically grown for the purpose, on land that could grow anything.
- dotancohen 5y agoGo look at satellite imagery of the Israel-Egypt border. The Egyptians herd goats in the area, the Israelis do not. You can clearly see the lighter shade of the Egyptian land, because the goats strip it clean. That is mountainous land that has no value for farming, but the goats can roam it and eat anything that happens to grow.
- gruez 5y ago>but industrially farmed ones will be eating corn-based feed that was specifically grown for the purpose, on land that could grow anything. Not sure how goat farming works, but AFAIK for cows they spend the first half of their lives on pasture (ie. eating grass) and the rest on feetlots (ie. eating corn).
- seanwilson 5y ago> 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. This is why I'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't switching over in droves. Getting people to change their habits is hard without a huge incentive. I can't see how lab grown meat is going to be substantially cheaper (soy/rice/oat milk is more expensive than cow milk in the UK still) or much better tasting to make people switch. I see people saying things like "I'm sure to switch when it's cheaper and tastes the same or better" but I'm not sure how we'll avoid global warming when people aren't willing to really change anything (vs only willing to switch to identical alternatives).
- da_big_ghey 5y agoThey are taste very differently and every time I try to make baked foods with substitute milk something is wrong. Lab meat has appeal because is the exact same.
- notahacker 5y agoAlso, people with ethical concerns about killing cows > people with ethical concerns about drinking their milk
- caturopath 5y agoI don't act much on my moral convictions, but generally I'm anti-torturing farm animals. The lives of beef cows seem way, way better than the lives of dairy cows.
- rsynnott 5y agoDrinking cows’ milk at any scale requires killing cows, though possibly people are less aware of this.
- caturopath 5y agoLab-grown meat (and presumably lab-produced milk) are going to be a different sort of product than Morning Star patties or Pea Milk. Lab-grown meat would be meat, not merely some thing that is vaguely meat-like. I really like soy milk and almond milk, but they remain twice as expensive as milk and distinct in taste. I'm not sure anyone thinks that lab-grown meat will go through the roof if it's not cheaper than farm-grown meat.
- jrm4 5y agoNormally I don't like indulging in pedantic things like this, but I think I'm on-board with "we shouldn't call the stuff that doesn't come out of mammals 'Milk?'" It just doesn't fit with how we seem to most often use words in foods et al, e.g: We call it 'egg substitute' or 'krab' when the thing is not the thing. The only outlier I can think of here is things like 'Root Beer' and 'Ginger Ale' and we know why those are that way.
- sideshowb 5y agohttps://xkcd.com/1483/ https://xkcd.com/1483/
- greenpizza13 5y agoGiven that the title of the post is "Alternative Milks" I think the general usage of "milk" is simply a shorthand for "alternative milks" which would be synonymous with your want to call them milk substitutes.
- caturopath 5y agoWe've been using "soy milk" for the better part of a century and we all know what it means. I don't see how this isn't more like "root beer" now, even if the etymological story isn't quite the same. (edit: see below, attested for many centuries -- 'milk' as non-animal milks.)
- rsynnott 5y ago
- chapium 5y agoI’ve been trying Not Milk recently and I’m pretty impressed. Its slightly sweeter than milk, but it seems to work fine with cooking.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwaway_2047 5y agoI suggest everyone to read https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources before jumping the bandwagon that milk is bad and the plant alternative is good. Quick summary based on hazy memory - Cow breeding isn't inherently bad. It depends how industrialised the process is - Not all land can grow crop while cow glazes on infertile land. - 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/oat on the other hand definitely rely on irrigation water. California wastes majority (can't remember the percentage) of its precious water on growing almonds edit: https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources contains some infographics of those quick facts
- CJefferson 5y agoI'm fairly sure you don't need irrigation to grow oats -- I'm surrounded by oats in Scotland, and I've never noticed any irrigation. On the other hand, the cow watering troughs are definately filled by taps. Also, that website compares meat to "avocados, walnuts or sugar", 3 foods well known to require lots of water.
- jefurii 5y agoI agree with you that cow breeding isn't inherently bad, at least in its traditional forms. I also agree with you that almonds use so much water that it's incredibly wasteful to use them for milk in California, where they account for a significant percentage of the state's water use. But in places like California, and the American Southwest in general, dairy farming is not sustainable. In the Colorado River basin, over 50% of the water is used for cows in some fashion (drinking water for the animals, irrigation for food crops, etc). It's just not responsible. Soy and oats, which are grown in places with lots of water, transported dry and in bulk (i.e. the trucks are not hauling water) and reconstituted locally, are much more responsible. My preference is for soy since it provides a lot more protein.
- 0-_-0 5y ago[oops]
- jhickok 5y agoWould have been interested to see Pea Milk. https://www.ripplefoods.com/healthy-environment/ https://www.ripplefoods.com/healthy-environment/
- kibwen 5y agoWhich, for obvious reasons, is not usually marketed as "Pea Milk".
- andrew_ 5y agoWe chose the unsweetened Ripple as the milk of choice for our children once they moved past formula. The nutrition profile is excellent and lacks what I would consider negative carbohydrates [1]. The only thing I could find negative about the product was that it contains sunflower oils, which ingested in mass quantities can cause GI irritation and other negative side effects. An of course, they lack an organic variety. [1] https://www.instacart.com/products/3313587-ripple-pea-milk-nutritious-unsweetened-original-48-oz https://www.instacart.com/products/3313587-ripple-pea-milk-n...
- gniv 5y agoI 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.
- rsynnott 5y agoThey’ve missed pea milk, which as far as I remember is even more efficient than soy. 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Smaug123 5y agoIn 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 "lactose-free" really means "we added lactase so the lactose is pre-digested", not "we removed the lactose". The sugar is all still there, just in simpler forms.
- twoslide 5y agoVery 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's there already.
- himinlomax 5y agoThe 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'll see what I mean. 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. 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. 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's not red wine).
- twoslide 5y agoI think you're engaging in some wishful thinking with grass-fed carbon-negative cows. The climate impact is from methane they produce from digestion, regardless of the food source.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- advisedwang 5y agoAny sources on the cow carbon footprint? This is an interesting point and I'd like to get some detail so I can judge for myself.
- morsch 5y agoI don't know which mountains you were hiking, but the cows in the alps remain there because they get huge subsidies[1] to do so (beyond the subsidies all agriculture gets). The argument being that it's useful and traditional and there's no way to compete under such difficult circumstances. Anyway, I couldn't find any numbers, but I expect it makes up a small percentage of overall milk production, even in countries like Austria or Switzerland, which have a lot of mountainous area. If we exclusively produces milk that way, it'd be a luxury good. Again, I haven't looked up the numbers for Normandy or England, but I expect it's similar to Northern Germany, where you do see cows in pastures (which is lovely, I love cows, they seem very happy), but a) most of them are fed additional grains, b) during the winter you'll see much fewer and c) for every cow you see there, there must be a dozen being kept in a stable year-round. Source: cow farmers in the family. [1] e.g. https://www.bluehendesoesterreich.at/bauernlexikon/bergbauer-bergbaeuerin https://www.bluehendesoesterreich.at/bauernlexikon/bergbauer...
- tgb 5y agoWhere is the oat milk getting it'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?
- zackmorris 5y agoI'm more excited about synthesized milk: https://www.smh.com.au/business/entrepreneurship/csiro-brews-milk-for-animal-free-dairy-startup-20210726-p58cwv.html https://www.smh.com.au/business/entrepreneurship/csiro-brews... I've lifted weights recreationally for 20 years and find most of the dogma and heated debate about dairy products fascinating. It'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. 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. 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'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. 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 "technology" but it works.. astoundingly well. I used it in my 20s with great results. The rest of the hype, eh, I try to tune it out. Avoid dairy to save the planet, that's great. Avoid dairy to save your health and.. your health will probably decline because it's usually something else like poor work-life balance or a sedentary lifestyle that's the culprit.
- rsynnott 5y ago> Yes diary is always more ethical than meat How do you figure that?
- crackercrews 5y agoBecause you don't have to kill the animal to get it?
- rsynnott 5y agoTo give milk, a cow has to be pregnant about once a year. So unless you want a geometric expansion of cows, you're going to be killing quite a lot of calves.
- vanilla-almond 5y agoI 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. 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 more than fresh dairy milk. 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: - Alpro Almond Milk - 1 litre (Alpro is a popular European brand) Water, Almonds (2.3%), Calcium (Tri-Calcium Phosphate), Sea Salt, Stabilisers (Locust Bean Gum, Gellan Gum), Emulsifier (Lecithins (Sunflower)), Vitamins (B2, B12, E, D2) - Asda Almond Milk - 1 litre (UK supermarket own brand) Water, Almonds (2%), Emulsifier (Sunflower Lecithins), Calcium Phosphate, Stabilisers (Gellan Gum, Carboxy Methyl Cellulose, Xanthan Gum), Salt, Potassium Iodide, Vitamins (B12, D2, B2) Prices: - Alpro: £1.80 ($2.50, 2.10€) - Asda: £0.85 ($1.15, 1.00€)
- adrian_b 5y agoI have noticed the same problems with the ingredients. Some time ago I have bought samples of 6 or 7 brands of various kinds of vegetable milks and I have tested the results of making vanilla cream and cocoa cream when the cow milk is substituted with cashew milk, almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk and so on. The creams with vegetable milk were acceptable, but I also did not like the list of ingredients found in all brands, without exception. There is no doubt that instead of buying commercial vegetable milk it is far more healthy to just buy almonds, cashew nuts etc. and make milk yourself using just water, whenever you need it. The problem is that you need to have a suitable blender and much more importantly you have to spend extra time with this activity instead of just buying the milk. It is likely that the commercial vegetable milk needs stabilizers and emulsifiers to have a reasonable shelf life. If you make yourself vegetable milk and consume it immediately, there is no need for those.
- andor 5y agoAlpro is part of Danone. I generally avoid their products because of the amount of thickeners, emulsifiers, sugars etc. they add. Emulsifiers lead to a more stable drink that does not coagulate when poured into coffee. Thickeners and sugar probably let them get away with lower almond content. There are much better options, but I can't tell you where to find them in the UK. For instance, this almond milk is made of only water, almonds (7%) and sea salt: https://www.alnatura.de/de-de/produkte/alle-produkte/milch-und-milchersatzprodukte/milchersatz/kokosdrinks-mandeldrinks-und-andere-nuesse/mandeldrink-ungesuesst-210696/ https://www.alnatura.de/de-de/produkte/alle-produkte/milch-u... With 70g of almonds per liter for EUR 2.69 it's about twice as expensive as unprocessed almonds from the same brand.
- Shadonototro 5y agowhy 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
- shin_lao 5y agoThis table hides a lot of important information. If you look at calories and sugar, you could think that oat milk is equivalent to cow milk. First calorie measurement is imprecise at best, and then, there's how what you eat influences your metabolism. These two articles might help you make up your own mind: - Death of the calorie - https://www.economist.com/1843/2019/02/28/death-of-the-calorie https://www.economist.com/1843/2019/02/28/death-of-the-calor... - Oatly: The New Coke - https://every.to/almanack/oatly-the-new-coke-821556 https://every.to/almanack/oatly-the-new-coke-821556
- phonypc 5y agoThe second articles claims about sugar in Oatly (really oat milk in general, they mostly all use a similar enzyme treatment) are rather misleading. "GI is a measure of how much of a negative response your body has to certain sugars" is a gross mischaracteriztion, but even if you take it at face value, it's not useful to compare the GI of the component sugars in oat vs. dairy milk alone (maltose vs. lactose). Let alone represent oat milk as being pure maltose in a comparison to Coke, a product with no fibre, protein or fat or micronutrients.
- oftenwrong 5y agoOne 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. Photo of what I'm referring to: https://www.newhope.com/sites/newhope360.com/files/styles/article_featured_retina/public/dairy-aisle.jpg https://www.newhope.com/sites/newhope360.com/files/styles/ar...
- mossnot 5y agoThis is shapiro level of ignorance.You can sense they don't know one thing about agriculture. Almond tree produce 30kg max a year.A cow produces 1500kgs of milk. And water is not a limiting factor at all.