
The rise of alternative milks - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/jan/29/white-gold-the-unstoppable-rise-of-alternative-milks-oat-soy-rice-coconut-plant
======
seanwilson
I've completely switched to soy milk. It tastes a little different to cow milk
but after a few cups of tea over a week I didn't notice anymore. Now cow milk
tastes strange to me. Soy milk also lasts around a year unopened so you can
save time buying it in bulk as a plus.

People need to stop expecting replacements to taste 100% identical to what
they're use to and give their tastebuds some time to adapt. Same with meat
alternatives. It's an extremely unrealistic and pretty silly requirement in my
opinion especially if you're concerned with climate change.

~~~
Rumudiez
I switched to soy milk for about four months, but ultimately went back to
regular milk because it has less sugar and is less sweet. I imagine without
the sugar it’s not as palatable, but it was a noticeable, negative attribute
for me.

~~~
dashundchen
Try it unsweetened. Most non-dairy milk brands sell sweetened and unsweetened,
flavored (usually vanilla) and unflavored. Usually the sweetened one adds up
to 8g of sugar in 8oz!

I find the sugar is completely unnecessary, and usually skip the flavor as
well. Soy and coconut milk have the best texture IMO.

~~~
ianai
Trader Joe’s and eden soy offer soy milks that are soy and water. No added
vitamins even. Low on sodium and lower on carbs than cow.

------
jelliclesfarm
If someone is looking to switch for sustainablity reasons, they shouldn’t be
buying liquid non dairy almond either. You must need a handful of almonds to
make your own almond milk. It’s wasteful in so many ways..from processing to
transporting to the water content and all the middle men charges in the supply
chain.

Soak almonds. Peel. Purée with water..strain. Or don’t. Fresh almond milk.

I realize many people won’t have the time to do it. And that’s ok. But I just
want to put this out there because it’s so easy and there is no special
process or ingredient. And it’s cheaper and more sustainable. And lesser
carbon and fossil fuel foot print.

Plus pistachios make a great nut milk too.

~~~
justin66
I'm told making oat milk is similarly simple. That one is tempting because the
ingredients are so cheap.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Commercial oat milk tends to have far more protein than almond milk too.
Almond milk has almost none. Soy has the most.

(Although homemade almond milk would seem to have a lot more than boxed. 1.5
cups of almonds to 3 cups water is 7g protein per cup. Close to soy milk.
Whereas commercial almond milk has more like 1g per serving)

~~~
jelliclesfarm
What about hemp milk? I haven’t tried it yet.

I can only assume that it’s not ok to grow hemp in every state(USA)

~~~
erikpukinskis
I’ve seen hemp milk also in the middle range of protein, ~3-4g per cup,
similar to oat milks.

------
k__
I know a few vegans who introduced me to soy milk years ago. Now I think it
has a fishy after taste and I can't stand it anymore.

2-3 years ago many grocery stores added other milk alternatives. While I think
almond milk is the best, oat milk is the second place but much cheaper.

Generally, milk is heavily subsidized in Germany and alternatives are 2-4
times more expensive, so I don't know if this a little hype or the start of a
lasting change. Milk costs like 0,60€ a liter, oat milk costs 1,50€ and
organic almond milk can cost up to 4€ a liter.

~~~
vinay427
As soon as you said "oat milk" is "much cheaper," I knew this had to be in
Europe. It's far more expensive in the US than it is here, particularly
compared to American soy and almond milk prices. I believe this will change
over time due to the large increase in interest (Oatly from Sweden has a North
American product and now Silk is starting their own) and the existence of a
significant domestic oat industry.

~~~
k__
Is almond and soy milk a bigger thing in the US?

~~~
vinay427
Yes, they're far more common. I don't recall seeing oat milk on store shelves
until very recently.

According to a source, "almond (64 percent market share), soy (13 percent
market share) and coconut (12 percent market share)"

[http://www.mintel.com/press-centre/food-and-drink/us-non-
dai...](http://www.mintel.com/press-centre/food-and-drink/us-non-dairy-milk-
sales-grow-61-over-the-last-five-years)

EDIT: I should add, for those interested, that this dominance is perhaps less
strange when noting that California alone produces around 80% of the world's
almonds.

------
classichasclass
I put away about three gallons of milk a week. I just drink a lot of it (and
obviously lactose intolerance isn't a problem). I can't ever stomach these.

My wife, on the other hand, budgets her lactose intake, prefers lactose-free
milk (which I find unpleasantly sweet), and will readily drink almond and soy
milks which I can't stand. But I'm firmly ready to believe that I'm the
dinosaur here.

~~~
mixmastamyk
You can stand just about anything, just have to give it a chance. I’m reminded
of a decade or two back when I switched to diet drinks, though I preferred the
sugared. Now sugar soda tastes horrible. In the 80s we moved to low-fat milk,
shortly after whole tasted horrible. How did I ever drink this?

Take a month off then try a unsweetened coconut/almond blend, get over the
hump, wait two months. You’ll be surprised at the taste and possibly disgusted
you ever breastfed as an adult at a random animal you don’t know.

~~~
pofilat
It's tacky to try to describe things in weird terms to make them sound bad
instead of arguing their merirs. I'd rather "breasfeet at a random animal"
than "eat genetically engineered things that grow in dirt and manure, covered
in bugs".

~~~
mixmastamyk
Most gmo free at our market. Drinking milk as an adult is weird. One is
natural, one isn’t.

~~~
kbutler
> One is natural, one isn’t.

Yes, but not the one you mean.

Cow milk: can consume it straight as it is produced by nature, right out of
the cow (but chilled is probably tastier). Can consume milks from lots of
other animals, too. The only reason adult animals don't frequently consume
milk is probably just availability.
[https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/64822/are-
humans...](https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/64822/are-humans-the-
only-species-who-drink-milk-as-adults) has interesting info, including adult
wild birds finding they could peck through aluminum lids to get milk and wild
gulls consuming seal milk.

Soy milk: consuming a liquid produced by soaking, cooking, blending, and
straining a plant part that is unsafe for humans to eat until processed by
heat or fermentation.
[https://healthyeatinghttps://healthyeating.sfgate.com/happen...](https://healthyeatinghttps://healthyeating.sfgate.com/happens-
eat-raw-soybeans-11856.htmlsfgate.com/happens-eat-raw-soybeans-11856.html)
Then if you're buying it from a market, it has probably been packaged into a
plastic or plastic-lined container (like commercial cow's milk) and processed
to be shelf-stable for months, all to provide a close similarity to that
"weird" drinking milk as an adult.

"Natural", although often overloaded and used politically, can't quite stretch
that far.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I don’t drink soy milk. Packaging is hardly relevant. You may have missed the
part of the article that describes how most adult humans are lactose
intolerant.

~~~
kbutler
Almond and coconut milk? Yes, almost as natural as cow milk.

But why are you blending and steeping and straining the coconut/almond
material instead of just eating it? Oh yeah, because you want it to be like
what you'd get from "breastfeeding from a random animal" as an adult.

Lactose intolerance is about as relevant as nut allergies, except it's
unlikely to kill you.

~~~
mixmastamyk
So cooking is unnatural to you? Uh huh.

~~~
kbutler
Absolutely - cooking is a totally unnatural thing that humans have learned to
do, because it provides additional nutrients, calories, and variety. Find an
animal in the wild that cooks its food... Closest may be the firehawks, which
may spread fire to help hunting (live) prey. (Though many wild animals are
happy to consume cooked food if available!)

But in drinking "not animal milk" you're trying to artificially approximate
the experience of drinking "animal milk", which you described as unnatural.

Note that I'm not one to say that "unnatural == bad". I think cooking is good.
I think dairy is good. I think consuming something nutritious in its natural
state is more natural than cooking something.

You're free to differ.

------
raldi
If you can't/won't drink animal milk, try Ripple. It's by a significant margin
the best facsimile thus far, and they even make a heavy-cream version.

~~~
pstuart
The vanilla version was tasty, but the plain version was not "yummy." I like
what they're doing and want them to succeed so maybe have to give it another
go.

------
blfr
Perhaps my ancestors were steppe barbarians or something but nothing beats raw
cow milk, a taste I never get tired of. These alternatives are fine novelties
but they don't come close.

~~~
timbit42
They're probably not really trying to come that close. If you drink almond
milk expecting it to taste like milk, you'll be disappointed but if you drink
it for what it is, not expecting it to taste like milk, it's fine.

~~~
dabbledash
I agree with you completely, but the marketing and narrative around these
products really invite the comparison.

~~~
pofilat
Sadly they need to cater to a audience that craves familiarity and fears
change.

------
code_duck
I have lactose intolerance, I am allergic to tree nuts, have an intolerance to
legumes, and have yet to find a certified gluten-free coconut milk. Let me
know.

~~~
maccard
If you are lactose, nut and legume intolerent, why is gluten free important?

~~~
Pharmakon
The two reasons would be Celiac disease, or pseudoscience. Since there is no
reason that someone with Celiac couldn’t also be lactose, nut and legume
intolerant, it could be that.

~~~
maccard
I assumed thay given they called our lactose nut and legume allergies that if
they were celiac,they would have mentioned.

~~~
maxerickson
Lactose intolerance isn't an allergy. It's lack of an enzyme, so
microorganisms end up breaking down the sugar, leading to the gas and other
symptoms.

------
new_here
Oatly is awesome. It’s a great example of the potential of synthesised foods
to replace our current consumption habits.

------
scoot
My kids are variously vegan / flex, and since I only put milk in coffee, it
wasn't worth keeping milk in the fridge for, so switched to one of their
alternatives. Soy curdles, so almond it was, until I learned that it takes ~5
litres (1.1 US gallons) of water to produce a single almond!

The Oatly post here a few days ago may have been a shill, but it was enough
for me to try it. Far closer to the taste of cows milk than Almond milk
IMH(non Vegan)O.

~~~
lprubin
I’ve seen it estimated that it takes 2,000 gallons of water to produce a
gallon of cow milk which would be twice what it takes to produce almond milk.

~~~
YokoZar
Some quick googling suggests there are 4 cups of almonds in a gallon of almond
milk, and ~25 almonds per cup, so about 100 gallons of water per gallon of
almond milk from just growing the almonds. That's a factor of 20x, if we
believe it takes 2000 gallons of water to make a gallon of milk.

But another source on the top links of Google says it takes about 4 gallons of
water to make a gallon of milk. This is a difference of 250x. That would imply
almond milk takes 25 times as much.

It shocks me how such a seemingly basic consumer question could have such wild
orders of magnitude variance in the apparent answers.

~~~
sgarman
I mean at a minimum that lower number not taking into account the water needed
to feed the cow, grow the cows food etc. I'm sure almonds is a lot of water
but there is no way it's close to a dairy cow.

------
rebuilder
I was meeting a client yesterday at their office, they offered me coffee and
asked me if I wanted milk, then whether I'd like oat or regular. I said
regular (usually drink oat but was somehow preoccupied) and the response was
"yea, fortunately that's still available".

To me that was a pretty striking example of how the realities of what climage
change is going to push us towards are sinking in.

~~~
SllX
Today we’re (the general “we”, not you and I specifically) looking at the milk
we put in our coffee with disdain, tomorrow we’ll be looking at the coffee in
a similar manner.

Probably someone somewhere out there already is and we’ll start seeing the
headlines, blogs and podcasts about it in the near future. By building our
societies around globalization, we have in some ways made our societies
necessarily globalized. Everything we import/export has a fuel cost including
ourselves when we’re the passengers, and that cost doesn’t stop at National
borders, but incurs every time we move anything anywhere any distance.

So when you have a popular crop, coffee, almonds, tea, coconuts, whatever that
can only be grown in certain parts of the world, it is going to have an
outsized impact on the global fuel economy relative to crops that are grown
and consumed locally. The more fuel we consume, the greater the amount of
carbon emissions we output, and carbon dioxide only has a global warming
potential of 1 (as the base unit). Methane has a GWP of 86 across a score of
years and 34 across a century.

Now so far as I know, the GWP metric is only used for individual gases, but if
you were to try to isolate it on a commodity by commodity basis, I’m betting
Cow’s milk as transported to and sold in the supermarket today wouldn’t look
great. I’ve worked in a cafe and I know approximately how much milk we went
through in a week, often because I was the one buying it. Even a small mom and
pop café can easily go through 40+ gallons a week, and that was hardly the
only dairy product sold (cheeses of all sorts, whipped cream, ice cream,
cheese cakes, chocolate cakes, pastries). I don’t even want to think about the
amount of milk a single corporate chain like Starbucks or Peet’s goes through
on a weekly basis.

Fortunately cow’s milk is still available. That is really an understatement on
your client’s part. I think humanity will sooner die out or go back to a
technological dark age from which it never fully recovers before we give up
cow’s milk in its entirety in just the US, never mind the rest of the world.

~~~
Nasrudith
That isn't necessarily true that local is better environmentally - even
assuming that bulk freighters will still be carbon sourced. It may feel
flattering to just think of everything in cozy communities and they may taste
better from being fresher but it is more complicated than just shipping miles.

There are other variables involved including farming efficiency,
transportation efficiency, and the logistics of distribution. Going to get
your groceries from a 5 minute away grocery store that gets their groceries
from thousands of miles away in bulk shipments may ironically be more
efficient than driving an hour away individually to get groceries from the
local farmer's market. Essentially for the same reason that concluding that
buses are worse than cars because they get lower miles per gallon is
incredibly wrong.

------
mangoleaf
There is another reason to switch from milk. For men over the age of 45, there
is correlation between the natural (or added) hormones excreted into the milk
and prostate growth causing an increase in urination difficulty. [1]

[1] [http://vqrn.com/Prostate-Milk-Problem.html](http://vqrn.com/Prostate-
Milk-Problem.html)

------
dang
We just had this one too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025957](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19025957)

------
superpermutat0r
I do care about nutrition, currently anything but soy milk is just water.
Still environmentally friendly. Almond Milk has a couple of almonds in the
bottle.

------
pascalxus
All those milks and yet i still can't find a single one that's not completely
saturated with Calcium. The levels of calcium added to these milks is truely
staggering. Sure, the carton says 30%, but it's actually 65% of your RDI
because here in the US the dairy industry has been pressuring for higher and
higher recommendations of Calcium. the WHO recommends 500mg, not 1200mg!

~~~
wbraun
Is there any reason to avoid the USDA intake of 1200mg instead of the WHO
500mg? Is it a health issue? A taste issue?

~~~
KitDuncan
I am not at all a medical professional and I am on my phone so I can't give
sources, but consuming calcium reduces iron absorption? Don't know about side
effects, but I know you want your calcium and iron levels balanced. Same with
zinc and copper.

------
RyanShook
TIL the weirdest term ever, “share of throat.”

------
brailsafe
As a vegan/firefighter I made the leap from not drinking milk to drinking milk
about a year ago and I'm never looking back. Milk is the future.

~~~
KitDuncan
You consider yourself a vegan, but you drink milk? Am I missing something?
Also why are you so excited about milk, you don't really explain.

------
Cenk
See also: [https://www.relay.fm/topfour/48](https://www.relay.fm/topfour/48)

------
mnm1
Milk may not be the healthy food it was touted to be, but neither are most if
not all of these "milks" that are basically mostly water and sugar. I'd take
lactose over fructose or glucose any day. That's the main selling point: a
slightly sweet, natural drink sweetened by lactose rather than fructose and
glucose directly. Otherwise, I might as well drink soda--from looking at the
sugar content of most of these "milks" it's roughly as healthy.

~~~
dashundchen
I don't know what region you are in, but in the US almost any store that
stocks non-dairy milks will sell sweetened and unsweetened.

Though I agree with disliking the sweetened stuff. I'm not sure who the market
for the sweetened stuff is for - coffee creamer maybe, or trying to simulate
milk lactose? but the unsweetened works just as well in any scenario.

Additionally, nut and oat milks are very easy and cheap to make with just a
blender and cheesecloth. You can control the amount of food you want to "milk"
and change the thickness/mouthfeel, add a little vanilla and end up with a
much better result than the 'watered-down' store brands.

~~~
mnm1
Yeah but the problem with unsweetened soy and almond milk (and even slightly
sweetened) is that it's fucking disgusting so it has no use for me and for
anyone that feels that way. I highly doubt any of the other veggie milks here
are less disgusting. I would guess that lactose free milk is also disgusting
before they add sugar back in but can't prove it.

~~~
williamdclt
> fucking disgusting so it has no use for me and for anyone that feels that
> way

That's a completely different argument from your original one. And you could
apply it to any food, a lot of people find cow milk "fucking disgusting",
there's no point arguing on subjective taste

~~~
mnm1
It's a different argument because it addresses a different point: "unsweetened
works just as well in any scenario." Clearly, that's not the case as the
sweetened and unsweetened versions are not comparable due to taste.

------
skybrian
It's not marketed that way, but Soylent seems kind of similar in the bland-
but-supposedly-healthy drink niche?

~~~
Havoc
Soylent isn't really aimed at health, more convenience & novelty. Its not
unhealthy either, but you get my point

~~~
azinman2
I’d suggest it is unhealthy. We don’t even know what all is in the food we
eat, so to pretend we can combine a bunch of synthetic stuff into some well
rounded meal for daily consumption I believe is dangerous.

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Fruit juice is most likely much worse than soylent. Ditto for milk.sugar and
calorie bombs. Look at the ingrediants in soylent .its fine and nothing stands
out as non food

~~~
azinman2
It’s meant to be your entire meal, not just a drink.

------
dabbledash
Using “milk” in the name of something doesn’t make an “alternative milk” in
any way that doesn’t apply to any other drinkable liquid.

~~~
Pharmakon
It’s pure marketing, where the reality would be “juice” if we’re being
charitable. In a lot of cases it’s water with a hint of X, and a lot of added
sugar. All told drinking a lot of anything other than water is probably a bad
move, but evidence suggests that if you’re not lactose intolerant, milk is a
healthier choice for what you put on cereal.

All things being equal, my major issue with alternative “milk” isn’t the
semantic debate though. The fact that they’re often high in sugar, low in
protein and fat is a bad sign. The fact that many (especially almond milk) are
mostly water isn’t promising, and the environmental impact of chugging almond
milk should become clear to California within a decade or so.

Mostly it’s just another fad (in terms of scale), promulgated by people who
should know better, and others trying to sell you their “milks.”

~~~
greglindahl
Cow's milk is mostly water.

As for alternative milks being a fad, it's a fad that's more than a thousand
years old -- for example, almond milk was important in Europe for meatless
Fridays and during Lent. I'm not sure who "should know better" when it comes
to religious doctrine affecting food choices.

~~~
Pharmakon
You’re the second person to latch on to a single sentence fragment,
unfortunately without the context about sugar and protein content. As far as
religion goes, what percentage of current “alt-milk” consumption do you think
is religiously motivated? A rounding error? A rounding error of a rounding
error? Less?

If you wanted to focus on a single point I made, I’d suggest: _All told
drinking a lot of anything other than water is probably a bad move..._.

~~~
dashundchen
Soy milk has protein and doesn't necessarily have sugar depending on the
brand, if you are looking for a response to that.

And if we want to talk water usage and environmental impact, any cattle/dairy
product is consuming at least order of magnitude more resources and emissions
than oats or soy beans.

~~~
Pharmakon
_Soy milk has protein and doesn 't necessarily have sugar depending on the
brand, if you are looking for a response to that. And if we want to talk water
usage and environmental impact, any cattle/dairy product is consuming at least
order of magnitude more resources and emissions than oats or soy beans._

Oat milk isn’t even a rounding error of total plant “milk” consumption.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/693015/dairy-
alternative...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/693015/dairy-alternatives-
global-sales-value-by-category/)

Almond dominates by an order of magnitude, and has grown a loooot just since
2013, while soy milk consumption has actually dropped. Worse, it is projected
that consumption of almond milk will more than double, while all other types
are effectively flat.

When we talk about this subject, it’s important to realize that to the first
order, we’re _just_ talking about almond milk, a trend which continue into the
future.

~~~
dashundchen
And? I'm not sure what your point is. I was pointing out there are non-dairy
milks with protein in them.

Almond milk still uses less water and way less CO2e emissions than dairy to
produce the same volume of milk.

Animal agriculture is horrendous for the planet, any increase in non-dairy
milk at the expense of dairy milk is a definite win for the environment.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science-
environment-46459714](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46459714)

From the BBC calculator, which comes from University of Oxford researcher
Joseph Poore, and Thomas Nemecek of the Agroecology and Environment Research
Division in Zurich, Switzerland

1 glass (200ml) per serving almond milk daily

Over an entire year your consumption of almond milk is contributing 51kg to
your annual greenhouse gas emissions. ... 27,042 litres of water

1 glass (200ml) per serving dairy milk daily

Over an entire year your consumption of dairy milk is contributing 229kg to
your annual greenhouse gas emissions ... 45,733 litres of water 652m² land

~~~
Pharmakon
I can’t tell from that calculation, but it seems they’re comparing X of
almonds, to a whole dairy cow. That’s... weird. It’s also odd that they
compare by volume, and not by calorie. All I’m all I’m left wanting to see the
data behind the calculator so fair comparisons can be made. Either way given
that my advice was, and remains “drink water” and not “drink milk” I’m also
not sure what your point is.

Especially when looking at the graph on the page you linked to, it becomes
clear that the CO2 emission question is spurious. Dairy is fairly efficient,
but actually killing and eating the animal isn’t. Fortunately beef cattle are
not dairy cattle, and while the industries are linked, they are not
inextricably linked. Most of all though, I’ll say it again, _All told drinking
a lot of anything other than water is probably a bad move..._ To that I’d add
that if your real concern is environmental, milk is the least of it, cheese
being a far bigger offender. Cheese being effectively condensed milk means
that your kilogram of cheese took 10kg of milk to make.

------
ggm
I personally wish the same stringent law of domain d'origine was applied here.
We can't call Australian sparkling wine made on Pinot noir grapes champagne.
If it didn't come out of a cow, sheep, goat, or in the case of "red dwarf" dog
teat, I don't think it should be called milk or even mylk.

Partner of a nut anaphylaxis sufferer, parent of a formerly cow milk
intolerant child so I've straddled both sides of what people need in their
life. The answer imnsho is clarity: call it what it is specifically. (Which
most people here do. Nut milk. Oat milk. Soy milk) but please, don't call it
milk, unqualified.

~~~
greglindahl
So, even though "milk" has been used for centuries for almond milk, rice milk,
etc, it should suddenly be outlawed?

I've got some medieval cookbooks digitized on my webpages, what punishment do
you propose for people like me?

~~~
ggm
I think we should milk this for all its worth.

------
coldtea
Also known as "the rise of non-milks, usually colored artificially white to
lure people to believe they're like the real thing".

~~~
vinay427
I've made cashew milk and oat milk at home and they're naturally colored as
they are on store shelves. Also, you can look at the ingredients list to
verify that they are not colored. I don't recall the last time I saw or
purchased one that was artificially colored.

EDIT: Removed the first sentence as recommended.

~~~
coldtea
> _Please don 't lie_

Please don't accuse people you don't know and second guess their motives in a
conversation with them.

> _I 've made cashew milk and oat milk at home and they're naturally colored
> as they are on store shelves_

Which is neither here nor there. I didn't say all are colored white: I used
the term "usually". Second, even naturally white "alternative milks" have
artificial coloring added for when they hit the shelves for consistency etc
(manufacturers that don't do that are glad to advertise it in the box).

Second, both are not milks. Milks are what comes out of animals mammary glands
(even legally in most jurisdictions). Advertisers and "health product"
peddlers hijacked the term (that existed for millennia) to mean "random
juices".

~~~
jamesgagan
Funny enough, nobody complains about "peanut butter"!

"In English, the word "milk" (at the time spelt "mylk") has been used to refer
to "milk-like plant juices" since at least 1200 AD."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk)
[https://www.etymonline.com/word/milk#etymonline_v_16158](https://www.etymonline.com/word/milk#etymonline_v_16158)

