
In the Middle Ages, the Upper Class Went Nuts for Almond Milk - Petiver
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages
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chicob
People insist in considering almond milk (and many other vegetable based milks
for that matter) as a mere substitute for cow milk, and not for a kind of food
in its own right.

Where I live, with the exception of oat milk, all soy, rice or almond milk
comes with tricalcium phosphate and sometimes sugar, some flavour and even
vegetable fat. Same for yoghurt.

This tendency to add stuff (particularly sugar and fat) to food is becoming
more frequent in bread and other vegetable products that were healthier once.

~~~
jdavis703
Sure, it's not the same as dairy milk, but I don't get this whole "don't call
plant-based milk 'milk'" meme. What about Milkweed, or the white oozing "milt"
that comes out of a dandelion stalk? Can those also not be called milk?

Maybe if there was a good word that quickly described what rice, soy, or oat
milk was it would be OK. But simply calling them "juice" seems to be even more
of a culinary misnomer.

~~~
nnq
it's not about what you call it... it about _not adding s to it to make it
more like "cow milk" now that you call it milk_

like in, "look, kids are eating this for breakfast, we need to _fortify it
vitamins and stuff to prevent deficiencies_ "... nevermind that those extra
vitamins will just increase the risk of cancers or stuff in adults. it's
becoming hard to find the "un-enhanced" sortiments of many products.

~~~
athenot
While I'm generally a fan of leaving foods as untouched as possible, I have
not seen any link between vitamin D3 in the dosage applied to milk and cancer.
Conversely, vitamin D deficiency is a population health problem (widespread),
so the tradeoff is warranted.

~~~
nnq
> vitamin D deficiency is a population health problem (widespread)

...despite the study that got very popular on HN lately this is far from a
clearly agreed upon theory. There's still only retrospective data and with
enough confounding factors to make drawing any inference on the _causality_ of
things very very hard. Until we all start wearing blood-analyzing implants for
a generation or so, >50% of nutrition related studies will continue either
being bullshit or not meaning what we think they mean,

~~~
lawlessone
In fairness if we're reading hacker news we're probably D3 deficient.

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pacaro
And currently the dairy industry in Europe is litigating to ensure that only
mammalian milk is allowed to be sold as milk, this would appear to going in
the face of hundreds of years of history of calling other things milk. I
wonder what Milk of Magnesia will have to be renamed to

~~~
tom_mellior
> And currently the dairy industry in Europe is litigating to ensure that only
> mammalian milk is allowed to be sold as milk

Not sure what you mean by "currently" and "the dairy industry" and
"litigating", but a (the?) relevant case was decided by the ECJ back in June.
Press release:
[https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-06/cp170063en.pdf;)
full judgement:
[http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=191704&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=543585)

For whatever it's worth, the lawsuit was brought by a German society that aims
to ensure fair competition by truth in advertising. (Were they bought by the
dairy industry? Possible.)

The judgement is clearly based on the definition "The term “milk” shall mean
exclusively the normal mammary secretion obtained from one or more milkings
without either addition thereto or extraction therefrom." from EU law made by
the European Parliament and the Council. (Were they bought by the dairy
industry? Possible. But given this sentence that is part of EU law, the court
didn't have much choice.)

~~~
chicob
Many languages are spoken in the EU (as anyone can check by the several
translations available for the many documents published by the EU:
[https://curia.europa.eu](https://curia.europa.eu)), so this sounds really
silly.

I say this because most meanings are lost in translation if we're to use them
literally.

Take the english word 'oil'.

\- In Spain, oil would be translated to 'aceite': olive oil is 'aceite de
oliva'; engine lubricating oil is 'aceite de motor'. The same thing happens in
French, but a literal translation would sound weird in Portuguese, because

\- In Portugal, olive oil is simply called 'azeite', a word that is not used
for sunflower seed oil, called 'óleo de girassol', or motor oil, called 'óleo'
or 'óleo de motor'.

A similar thing happens with the word 'cream', translated to 'natas' if it
refers to the solid phase of cow milk, or 'creme' if it refers to some form of
paste, be it an edible spread, a soup, or some body lotion.

So the very fact that they translated 'cream' as 'natas', in the portuguese
version, means that the context is everything and that people are not
unquestioning automata.

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Retric
I wonder how much of this was related to the risk that Milk killed a lot of
people in the Middle Ages.

~~~
coldtea
With the access to fresh milk from their own farm animals that they had? Why
would milk kill "a lot of people in the middle ages"?

Lots of rural communities in Europe lived until the 50s or so not much unlike
the middle ages (no fridges, no electricity, farming, etc) and they weren't
harmed by their milk at all.

~~~
emodendroket
Since this is also pre-pasteurization I'm thinking all kinds of diseases could
be transmitted by cow's milk.

~~~
spraak
Pasteurization is only necessary for transportation. If you drink fresh milk
from a clean source, the risk of disease is quite low. And I have nothing to
gain by sharing this as a vegan :P

~~~
emodendroket
There's no risk from drinking milk from cows with open sores on their utters?

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spraak
Ugh. Can you read? I said a clean source and LOW risk, not NO risk.

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emodendroket
And as we all know it was really rare for cattle in the Middle Ages to be ill.

~~~
coldtea
Why would they be ill more frequently than not? If anything, their lives were
much better, and the environment much better than today's cows in industrial
production settings.

In any case, anybody who hasn't spent all their lives in western cities, but
knows rural communities, can attest to millions drinking fresh milk with very
low risk for ages...

~~~
emodendroket
Milkmaids commonly had cowpox, did they not?

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wvlia5
Put 1 cup of Almonds and 3 cups of water in a blender, blend, filter and you
have almond milk. Substitute Almonds for Peanuts or Coconut and you have
Peanut or Coconut Milk. Easy and not expensive.

~~~
tdb7893
Just fyi to people making almond milk this way is often more expensive than
just buying almond milk from the store unless you have a cheap way to buy
almonds in bulk.

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dsego
Store bought is often watered down and has a really small percentage of
almond, at least where I looked.

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hoytech
The book "The Lost Art of Real Cooking" by Alabala and Natziger describes how
to make what they claim to be medieval-style almond milk and almond butter
(apparently quite different from what we buy in stores today).

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Kurtz79
Interesting article!

In Sicily (especially in the eastern part of the island) almond milk is quite
a common beverage, it also makes for a killer "granita".

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lvoudour
A similar (almost identical) dessert is the Turkish Tavuk Göğsü, which
probably implies a common origin for both dishes

~~~
grenoire
I'd say muhallebi is closer to blancmange than tavuk göğsü, which is literally
made from chicken meat.

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erasemus
Blancmange and rice pudding? Yes, I'm definitely in favour of adding almonds
to _those_ delightful desserts.

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empath75
I’m not a big fan of almond milk in general but it’s quite nice to make
oatmeal with.

