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Oatly: The New Coke? (divinations.substack.com)
456 points by dshipper on Aug 8, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 410 comments



I'm sympathetic to marketing counterfactuals, so I wanted to like this article, but its claims did not sway me.

- The appalling environmental footprint of the dairy industry was never addressed.

- The canola oil claims cited were nowhere near conclusive (see twanvl and NotOscarWilde's comments below).

- The nutritional comparison seemed to me to be more or less trivial.

Okay, it's got a higher glycemic index and similar sugar content compared to cow milk. If you share the author's concern about tacitly "health-adjacent" marketing, this is problematic, but not an outright lie. At worst the product has a pretty comparable nutritional portfolio to cow milk. Seems appropriate for a "milk substitute," no?

The author engages in a little deceptive rhetoric himself by setting a 12oz serving as the baseline. It's true that a portion that size is bad for you. Lattes are bad for you. Like many people, though, I only rarely use milk substitutes to add a dash of not-coffee to coffee that would otherwise be too hot or too burnt. Guess I shouldn't be concerned?

- Most glaringly, the moral dimension of dairy consumption is never addressed. I won't harp on about this too much as many other commenters have already, but this seemed like a glaring omission: who cares about sugar content if the alternative is needless suffering? I guess you could have the best of both worlds by not drinking a milk substitute in the first place, but that's not Oatly's market segment, so...

Overall, this article came away as basically validating Oatly's marketing claims to me. Which is frustrating, since as I stated above, I'm biased toward marketing scrutiny!


> The author engages in a little deceptive rhetoric himself by setting a 12oz serving as the baseline.

Yeah what is up with that? 12 oz is over 340 ml, who puts that much milk in their coffee? I had to measure the volume of my coffee cup, it's 250 ml or 8.8 oz.

I usually drink my coffee black, but if I do have milk in it it is usually a tenth of what the author uses. Unless the author is drinking a quarter gallon of coffee at a time he's not drinking coffee, but really drinking milk with a splash of coffee.


As a non-coffee drinker, I drink my oatly pure, in the same way as I drank my milk growing up. So yeah, 340 ml is apt when I use my big mug.

You make it sound as if no-one drinks pure milk in your environment? I find THAT weird.


It's absolutely fascinating to read these replies! We have a very diverse set of people here.

I had no idea that people didn't drink milk on its own. Apparently some Europeans don't. I eat cereal mostly to drink milk. If Oatly was a good substitute, I'd probably have started using it. (I haven't tried it yet.)

340ml is 0.08 gallons. That's consistent with "about a bowl of cereal."


I've seen a bunch of sides of it in the US. In the midwest where I grew up parts of my family required children to drink a glass of milk because the milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true.

But we didn't have the internet yet, so how do you fact check it? The TV said so.

I do see fewer people interested in milk as you go younger here, I think that once it was more broadly understood that milk is marginal the pressure to drink it was gone but there was still some cultural kind of urban legend nonsense that is really hard to get rid of in a society that doesn't trust experts. Which I can't blame anyone for if we're talking about nutritional experts because anyone alive for more than twenty years has seen them flip their opinion on at least a quarter of food types.

It is notable that in that part of my family, half the kids ended up lactose intolerant and still are frustrated about their parents for making them sick all the time as kids by requiring them to drink something they didn't want to drink anyway.

I liked chocolate milk because who doesn't, but after someone for the first time pointed out that it's kinda weird for humans to drink milk intended for calves (maybe I was 13 or 14?) I pretty much just stopped drinking it because it just wasn't that good anyway and now I had an excuse. My brother and mother are both lactose intolerant, it turns out.

I think a lot of people have felt low grade sick their entire lives in the US because they've never gone for long enough without dairy to notice.


>I liked chocolate milk because who doesn't, but after someone for the first time pointed out that it's kinda weird for humans to drink milk intended for calves (maybe I was 13 or 14?) I pretty much just stopped drinking it because it just wasn't that good anyway and now I had an excuse. My brother and mother are both lactose intolerant, it turns out.

Is it weird? Weird is completely abstract. Is eating the female component of a chickens reproductive output (aka an egg) weird? Is it weird to harvest oats and then harvest/extract enzymes, digest oats and mix them with processed rapeseed oil so we can avoid drinking cows milk?

At least if you drink -freshly- pasteurised cows milk you know there are fewer moving parts in the process of getting ingredient into your system.

Food wise everything is weird when you look at it under the right setting. Tofu is like the cheese of a soybean. Burgers are random bits of animal ground up flattened and fried. Mushrooms and fungi are weird almost alien growths. Fish are weird and slimy. Prawns are almost like giant insects from the sea.

When I think about attitudes towards food, I find it weirder that when we eat pork but are happy to throw away all the offal, cheeks, neck, knuckle, ears, ribs(!!!) and just keep the chops and some back for bacon because it is "weird" to eat all those other bits. Or with a chicken we eat just the breast and dump the rest. And look at Chinese people as weird for eating chickens feet. At least they don't waste the animals they eat!


> When I think about attitudes towards food, I find it weirder that when we eat pork but are happy to throw away all the offal, cheeks, neck, knuckle, ears, ribs

Recently on a different discussion board some guy mentioned that he wanted to thaw the fish and left it on a counter instead of in the fridge - after some time he noticed that apparently a fly left eggs on small part of it, after he saw that he threw it into trash. There were various reposnses from "ewwww, you did it right!" to "it was perfectly fine to cook" One of the responses which I remembered was: "you just wasted life and death of this fish"

These are very simple words and seemingly obvious but it caught me by surprise a bit and I noticed that not always I'm thinking about my food like this. In a world where food can be highly processed, where a fish, chicken, pig can no longer resemble living creature but just some meaty pieces it's easy (and comfortable!) to skip, ignore the part that it was living being. I played a bit with this thought in my mind and went into procrastination area - is it "fair" to use life and death of multiple animals and plants to sustain, propel myself and then do nothing productive with this energy?


It's like I said, it was an excuse to avoid drinking something I didn't like that much anyway. Yes, weird will always be subjective, thanks for clearing that up.


Fair enough. It wasn't meant as an attack - I get frustrated how arbitrary and social people's attitudes are with food.

The same people that consider mouldy Roquefort to be delicious might consider durian a sin against humanity with little appreciation of the hypocrisy at play.


Lactose intolerance is actually the original state for (adult) humans, while lactase persistence is an evolved adaption in cultures that drink a lot of unfermented dairy.

Which kind of proves that dairy is a significant enough part of many cultures' diet that it caused an evolutionary change! But these days you can buy lactase very cheaply in pill form, so really anyone can "have" the adaptation.

And many cultures with genetic lactose intolerance still consume a lot of fermented dairy.


> because the milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true.

Care to provide some proofs? I live in a post-soviet country and from stories I heard regarding USSR, even adults in factories received milk (for free) daily.


> milk-industry propaganda at the time said it was important for kids to drink a bunch of milk for bones and growth and other stuff that was never true and was known to never be true.

You seem to be saying that the human body cannot make productive use of the calcium from cow's milk. Do you have a source for this?


Not judging, but around me, it's usually rare to drink milk after the age of 8 (my kid stopped liking milk around that time, and most of their friends too).

We do eat a lot of yogourt and cheese. The province use to over-produce milk and there was so much advertising to consume it. Everyone kind of got fed up I guess.


I've never seen an adult drink pure milk, other than in some movies. I guess it's an american thing? Any Europeans here who drink pints of milk care to comment?


You'll find most Dutch reading this topic slightly confused that people don't drink milk straight-up in the morning or during lunch. It's a staple in the majority of households here still.

Cow milk is recommended as part of the diet of young children, with government guidance noting that although calcium-enriched alternatives to cow milk (such as oat milk with added calcium) seem fine, there is as of yet insufficient data to suggest that replacing cow milk from the diet of young children won't have a negative effect. It's a fair and balanced view I suppose.

In the 70s a dairy campaign taught everyone that three pints of milk a day was healthy, but that kind of propaganda is in the past. Still, the Dutch tend to have a very positive view of our dairy industry, in part aided by animal welfare programs and certifications. That doesn't address the environmental impact of course.

I have switched to cow milk with a certified guarantee of decent treatment of the cows involved for my young son, and oat milk (Oatly usually) for us.


Austrian here. I regularly drink pure milk, sometimes a full litre at once (sometimes raw, which probably isn't a wise decision). Though I have to add that I rarely drink milk outside of my home, i.e. in public or at friends' places, or see other people doing so. I also think that most of my friends don't drink as much milk, as far as I know, and I've heard some of them say that they are lactose intolerant.


North Europe here. Myself & my kids may consume at least 1 liter of milk per day up to multiple liters (with cereal, or just drinking it or making food with it). Not counting all the milk-products we consume...

In time of poverty, cow was actually essential part of life. A life saver. You get milk, butter, sour cream, cheese, cottage cheese. I think not every word from this list makes sense to some living in some other countries, because not all products are consumed in other places in the world.


The comment you reacted to was written by me, a European (Belgium & UK). I love getting a jug of fresh milk (not the supermarket stuff though). Last winter I replaced that with Oatley, as my wife is increasingly becoming vegan. It is not the same, but now I occasionally drink it in the same way.


I lived in Finland for 5 years and it is very common there. I've seen people drinking milk at pizza place for example, like 300ml~ cups. Also at the University's cafeteria during lunch time students would drink pure milk with their meal.


Finn here, yes it's normal to drink milk. When I was growing up, the school lunch hall had big posters about how milk is important for your health.


Eastern European, I drink milk (though lactose free, I like it but am lactose intolerant) either by itself (cold) or with a croissant or something similar. It is pretty common here for people to drink milk by itself. I was unaware people only consumed milk with their coffee, that is strange to me.

Also, question to people who only drink milk with coffee: Do you buy small processed pouches of milk for one cup of coffee, or do you drink enough coffee to use up a 1L (~4 "cups" in US lingo) packaging of milk before it goes bad in the fridge?


German here, I drink milk almost very day. Most people I know drink some at least occasionally.


Hello from Poland. Milk is actually the item that runs out fastest in my home. I'm drinking half a cup with each coffee which I can drink more than 5 a day since I discovered decaf. Sometimes I drink pure milk when I'm little hungry and thirsty but not enough to bother with a proper meal.

We were given glass of boiled milk every day at school, and I don't remember any kid being lactose intolerant. I didn't like it back then. I prefer cold.

When I'm eating cooked buckwheat grains, glass of milk suits me best to wash it down.


French here.

We always have milk at home, my 16 and 13 yo children drink it, or eat with muesli

One of them drinks pure milk, the other much less. I do it from time to time my wife rarely to never.


Japan, in particular after a hot spring bath. In fact they will have vending machines full of single portion milk bottles for you to enjoy.


Sweden here. Pints might be an exaggeration, but definitely a staple in my fridge.


It's unusual in South-East Europe in my experience. It's far more common to eat Bulgarian yogurt instead.


I'm Canadian and I still drink it as an adult. It's good with desserts.


All the replies so far are about how nobody drinks pure milk, so...

I drink roughly a gallon a week, personally. Whole, usually.


Drank a pint a day until I was 18


I'm not grandparent but no one drinks pure milk in my environment.

I've only seen that in American movies (I'm from Europe).

I have a friend who used to drink milk as a teenager and had to stop because it caused some complication. This was 20 years ago, I don't remember the details.


It's pretty common to drink pure milk in America, if you're lactose tolerant, which the majority of the people here are. Not everyone does, of course, but it's not unusual here by any means.


I would guess they are using this comparison as oatly has become popular in coffee shops for lates etc. So the size is more common there, but probably not common at home.


In Sweden it's historically fairly normal to drink that much milk at least once day, in coffee or otherwise.


I drink about 8oz of oatly barista edition daily in my cappuccino.


I get oat milk lattes reasonably frequently.


really drinking milk with a splash of coffee

Lots of people do this. It's called a latte. Or for hipsters, a "flat white". Or any mocha-frappa-chino equivalent has a lot of milk and cream in it.


flat white and latte are 2 different drinks.


Similar amounts of milk prepared differently. It’s still not the difference between a cup full of milk and a splash of milk.


Thats exactly what a hipster coffee drinker would say.


Google says a flat white doesn’t have milk foam. So 1/3 less ingredients than a latte. A latte, cappuccino, and macchiato all seem way more similar. I’m here to argue that coffee is more normcore than hipster.


1/3 milk foam is not equivalent to 1/3 milk.


12 oz of milk though? My research says a latte contains about 6oz. Fraps probably contain less (mostly ice).


A Starbucks Venti is 20oz (hence the name)


When you steam milk for latte the volume almost doubles so that probably 9 -10 oz milk, still not insignificant but not 20oz.


Venti hot is 20oz - Venti cold is 24oz


They come in a bucket if you go to Starbucks


There is also a "short" version, but you have to explicitly ask for it. It's not on the standard size menu


For all the talk about fat content and quality, the topic of hormones in milk should be discussed. Cows load their milk up with hormones to stimulate growth in their calves. We’re not calves and don’t need stimulating. Further, modern dairy farms pump hormones into cows to induce higher milk production-thus more hormones make it into the milk in the container. There are even morphine-like compounds in milk and dairy products. They’re even more concentrated in cheeses. These same morphine compounds can be concentrated and given from a human mother to her baby through breast milk in non-trivial doses (though the conditions hopefully make this rare). Then there’s just the negatives of having additional cholesterol through the diet.

None of that’s going to be in plant milks.

Ref “your body in balance” by Barnard.


Farmers pumping their cows full of hormones for milk production is a thing of the past, for the majority of US dairies.


Does pasteurization have any effect on the hormones? It deactivates enzymes, maybe it does the same to hormones?


> Ref “your body in balance” by Barnard

A vegan neurologist might be a bit biased...

What does he have to say about plant-based hormones such as phytoestrogens?

Also, what is wrong with a little bit of morphine in your food?


I for one always reach for a piece of cheese when I've had a stressful day, it really takes the edge off.


It's actually a combination of the tyrosine (an amino acid) and the high fat content that makes cheese so satisfying.


Bourbon and a nice dry cheddar are my goto when I need a serious unwind.


Do you cut it with pastry?


> A vegan neurologist might be a bit biased...

“A doctor curing cancer may be a bit biased against tobacco...”


> The author engages in a little deceptive rhetoric himself by setting a 12oz serving as the baseline. It's true that a portion that size is bad for you. Lattes are bad for you. Like many people, though, I only rarely use milk substitutes to add a dash of not-coffee to coffee that would otherwise be too hot or too burnt. Guess I shouldn't be concerned?

Maybe you shouldn't be, but others might. I was regularly using ~1 cup of Oatly (8 ounces) in my weekend pancakes. It's still only 2/3 of their baseline portion, but it's significant enough.

I've already moved from Oatly to Califia Farms Oat Barista Blend, which only has 3 grams of sugar per cup to Oatly's 7. And I'm keeping my eyes open for alternatives with even less sugar.


My current favorite is Oatly, but I've also had a half dozen others. It's worth noting that Oatly also has a barista blend, which loses some sugar in favor of fat. Likely the Califa is the same way; more oil, less sugar.


The author would say that you shouldn’t be eating pancakes, which presumably you are making with refined grains and frying in oil, and likely topping with some sort of sugar... he’s a keto fan. If you’re going to eat pancakes, I’d say it’s worth making them taste good.


I make my pancakes with oat flour, no sugar (other than the chocolate chips--can't give those up), and no dairy. The chips are at least 62% cocoa, so their sugar levels aren't as high as milk chocolate chips. I just checked and the oat flour I use (Bob's Red Mill) is whole grain, not refined. So I think I'm doing alright!

By no means are these pancakes healthy, but after years of experiments I think I managed to find something that just straddles the barrier between nutritional-waste and nutritional sabotage. And that's fine for one meal a week. Thanks for your concern, though!


Keto has some awesome pancakes though, honestly at this point my favorite pancakes are all keto recipes.

Almond hazelnut pancakes are /good/.

Keto has come a long ways since the days of steak and eggs for every meal.


There’s also Elmhurst - though more expensive. It’s basically just water and oats and maybe some salt. They list the number of ingredients on the label though for easy selection as some have more.


I've been making my own oat milk on occasion. I just got some 80 micron nut milk bags (at least two, I double strain) and use the recipe found here: https://minimalistbaker.com/make-oat-milk/

The hardest part is figuring out just how long you need to blend it for. It took me three batches to get it just right. The first was too thin (didn't blend long enough), the second too slimy (blended too long).

It's dirt cheap and gets the job done. Give it a good shake before you use it, though, as it has a tendency to settle.


This is fantastic and I'll be giving a try. Do you think the recipe/process works fine if I scale it down to a 1-cup yield?


I honestly couldn't say, I've only made the batch listed in the link. It tends to keep pretty well, so I usually just make a jug of it and use it over the course of a few weeks. The cleanup can be a little cumbersome, so I'd rather do it in bulk and spend less time on the cleanup.


If it settles, do you get a consistent texture when drinking it? Ever tried to foam it for a latte?


It takes a while for it to separate. I haven't passed it through our steam frother yet, I'll have to give that a run.


Thanks! I'll definitely keep an eye out for it.

Now if only they can make a 16oz product for those us of who don't use it enough to consume 32oz in 7-10 days...


According to the article, the maltose in Oatly is a product of the breakdown of the oats. Would it be listed as an ingredient?


It is not listed. I found out by googling around after noticing that there was added sugar listed in the nutrition facts but no sugar of any kind listed in the ingredients.


False.

> At worst the product has a pretty comparable nutritional portfolio to cow milk

FTA: "Of all the different kinds of sugars you can eat, maltose has the highest glycemic index, with a rating of 105 out of 100.

"Lactose, the sugar in cow’s milk, has a GI of 46."

It is incorrect to call 105 and 46 "comparable".


"High GI == bad" also seems like an oversimplification. A snicker's bar has a GI of 43: http://www.glycemicindex.com/foodSearch.php?num=1774&ak=deta....


The article was about the marketing methods, comparing them to Coke from before. It wasn't about oats vs milk, per se


Picking a nit: “Lattes are bad for you” come now. No food is inherently “bad”. In moderation or in a balanced diet you can regularly eat some amount of “bad” food and remain perfectly healthy. I do agree they aren’t a health food but I dislike “good” and “bad”. I think healthier and unhealthier is a much better axis for food, and making choices around food.


You have it backwards. No food is inherently “good” for you. Most people are better off skipping meals until they absolutely need nutrients. There’s toxins in all food.


Another note: there is no such thing as “toxins” in food. Barring things like heavy metals, and actual poison. You won’t see any research about nutrition and food talk about “toxins” in a context like this.


There's toxins in all air, but we don't hold our breath until we need to breathe...


I mean we kind of do. If everyone breathed like they ate(in the US) there would be people fainting all over the place.


False. Lattes ARE most definitely bad for you when they contain 30-40 grams of sugar or almost 3 TABLESPOONS.[1]

[1] https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/414/hot?parent=%2Fdri...


You picked a dessert drink.

An actual Latte has less than half the number of carbs as that https://www.starbucks.com/menu/product/407/hot?parent=%2Fdri...


You can also get it with almond milk reduce it by another 1/3


Lattes aren't defined by that specific recipe served at Starbucks.


Surely they are. They are one possible example.


Salads aren’t bad because McDonald’s gives you one with a dressing with 900 calories in it.


And that example has a cinnamon sugar syrup added to it.


That drink is a latte, but a latte isn't that drink. A latte is made with two ingredients: espresso and milk. Anything else is a variation.


I prefer unsweetened lattes. For some reason sweet just clashes with the mouthfeel and flavor to me.


The claim is that Oatly is not a good substitute for milk, and that cow milk is perfectly fine to drink for a good percentage of people, which I judge the article demonstrated satisfactorily.

You can of course say you don't want to (or can't) drink milk for a very long list of absolutely fine reasons. The solution then is to just not drink milk, not substitute it with oat-canola slurry. Or you could reduce your consumption to the point where its price can go up (as more of a luxury product) and allow manufacturers to treat animals ethically. Or buy it from responsible farms.

You can also make the point here that there is a great number of people who, when faced with the choice of "drink less milk" vs "continue cow abuse", will pick the latter because they like drinking milk more than they care about cows (which are bred specifically for human consumption). In that case you could argue that substituting Oatly for milk will make the world better, because it lets them lower their milk consumption without requiring sacrifice on their part. The thing that worries me here are second order effects - if Oatly is indeed not very healthy (which it sounds like it isn't, at least compared to regular milk), then these people will then suffer lowered cognition and worse health, leading to them making less than ideal choices in democratic elections, and putting more strain on the health system.

Again - there are good critiques that can be leveraged against our current farming practices regarding milk production and more, but I don't see the solution being switching to synthetic alternatives with potentially harmful effects that marketing makes their best to prevent you from knowing. Just go without and advocate for change.


> cow milk is perfectly fine to drink for a good percentage of people

There's no debating that milk is heavy to digest, more so than water infused with whatever you want (tea, rice, soy, oat, almond...), whatever your ancestry. You actually need some enzyme to cut it down so that you can metabolize it. This process doesn't exist for infused water.

> The solution then is to just not drink milk, not substitute it with oat-canola slurry.

No, you can buy very fine "vegetable milks", just not oatly. I don't have any experience in US but in every west-european supermarket you can find heaps of them in the organic section. And if you wanna argue about the price: just make it yourself, it's dirt-cheap, just buy bulk cereals/beans (oat, soy, rice, chickpea ... be creative it works with mostly anything), boil it in water, mix it and drain it. Ta-Da, you just got pure vegetable milk for pennies and as bonus heaps of dry draining residue you can use as wheat replacement in cakes or croquettes (or used as semolina).


This, absolutely. Making milk from almonds is silly easy and dirt cheap. Soak 1 cup of almonds overnight, drain, add 3:1 ratio of water to almond nuts. Blend. Strain. Done. Optionally make ricciarelli cookies from the almonds left behind :)


At least where I'm from in the US, there is no "bulk goods aisle" in the grocery. It makes it a hell of a lot harder to eat healthy because we have no alternatives to canned and packaged goods in many categories of foods.


Whole Foods does. There's also bulk grain stores most everywhere there's "regular" grocery stores, but of course far fewer because there's little demand for such. Bulk goods also trivial to buy online.


I honestly never thought to try online just because I was worried about food safety during shipment. I could try Whole Foods but everything I've bought there in the past has been massively overpriced. I haven't shopped there since Amazon acquired them though, our local chain has been fine for most of my needs, besides bulk goods.


Amazon works for bulk nuts, as well as Costco.


The article completely hand waves cows milk as fine while references weak studies for damages of oatly.

Oatly or cows milk can be part of a perfectly healthy diet provided use in moderation. If you’re having 3, 12+oz lattes maybe you should consider not doing that.


There are other brands with no canola, or any oil added.

My favourite in the uk is "innocent".

But I think if you're going to get wound up about canola oil, there are bigger targets than milk substitutes.


"Made for humans" also draws attention to the fact that the milk you're drinking from a cow is not being drank by the offspring of that cow like it normally would and many people don't realise you have to keep making diary cows give birth to get more milk. Newly born male cows are usually turned into veal in a few weeks and female cows are separated from their mothers so they don't drink the valuable milk. Milk giving cows are then slaughtered for meat when they stop yielding enough milk after several births.

This reality isn't obvious from milk ads. I'll admit I only learned the above in the last few years because nobody talks about it and when you try people will instinctively defend these uncomfortable facts.


That probably should be taught at school. That's the way farms work. Animals are slaughtered so you can eat them.

The reason I think it should be taught at school is first because it basic knowledge. Farms employ a significant portion of the population of most countries, and that's what puts food on the table and keeps you alive. That's pretty important.

Another reason is that school can teach that with a neutral point of view. Not like extremists who will describe any farm work involving animals as torture, and not like the interested food industry who wants you to forget that yes, animals are slaughtered to feed you.

Personally, as a meat eater, I think that realizing that an animal died for your food helps respecting it. By that I mean don't waste it, cook it properly, appreciate the taste, and of course, prefer respectful farming practices as much as you can.


I learned all of this in school in a country where agriculture was a significant segment of the economy. It was most definitely not taught with a "neutral point of view".

Now that I have learned to understand the world with a more informed and nuanced perspective than the one my public education provided me with, I would certainly agree much more with the "extremists" you mention than any meat-eater justifications of how it "keeps you alive" or "respecting" the animals by eating them. And I say this as someone who still consumes meat and other animal products.


It takes quite a lot of doublethink to mention respect and eating animals in the same sentence. And I say this as a meat eater as well (although I heavily reduced consumption of animal products in the last few months).


The thing is that you have to kill to eat. Doesn't really matter what do you eat - something has to die for you to live. When you realize that, it's much easier to treat not only cows but everything around you with respect. We've got this respect long time ago and we've forgot about it all after agricultural revolution. Kind of sad...


We don't need to kill cows to live though so in what way is it respectful treatment to kill something to eat when you don't need to?

Could you explain what you mean without using the word "respect" so I can understand your definition of it?


I hosted a meetup on “dairy tech”. Before the presentation, I think I had an implicit assumption that cattle raised for beef were treated poorly. I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. In the most efficient dairies, they never leave their enclosure, are kept pregnant continuously via artificial insemination, and are injected with hormones.


> I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more.

I think you could certainly argue that. Beef cows are slaughtered at around 3 years and diary cows are slaughtered at around 5 years but after giving birth with their offspring taken away several times (both have about a 20 year life span).

Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal cruelty. You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit.


> Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal cruelty. You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit.

I've been vegan for years and I wish people wouldn't take this position publicly.

I agree with you, but it's more effective to have lots of people consuming fewer animal products than a few people cutting out animal products "100%". (Of course it's never 100%, that'd be impossible unless you left society.)

Let's be optimistic about the amount of change that normal people can do instead of chastising allies for not doing enough.


You get around 500 pounds of meat from a full grown cow. So, based on average US consumption that’s ~1 cow per 9 years per person. A single dairy cow produces ~100,000 lbs of milk over their lifespan. At average US consumption that’s ~1 cow per 200 years per person.

US waste and exports make it hard to sanity check these numbers, but in 2018 there where 31.4 Million beef cows in US vs 9.4 milk cows adjusting for longer lifespan that’s possibly a 5.5:1 ratio.


Out of curiosity, do you have a source for these numbers? It's interesting to hear that one dairy cow's lifespan effectively covers enough milk for two average human lifespans worth of consumption.


After posting that I kept digging and got slightly different numbers. Annual milk consumption from Wikipedia is just over 600lb per year in the US, where another source listed 500 lb (Might be milk vs milk + dairy products or an approximation?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_milk_cons...

For total milk production from Wikipedia “ The United States dairy herd produced 84.2 billion kilograms (185.7 billion pounds) of milk in 2007” https://www.statista.com/statistics/194302/number-of-beef-an.... Lists numbers of beef and dairy cows.

185.7 billion lb / 9.4 million cows = ~20,000 lb per year * ~5 year lifespan ~100k lb. https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/how-long-does-the-a... However, I am not sure it’s a clear comparison as this may be excluding calf’s from these counts. Which would drop lifetime production closer to 60,000lb and better line up with other sources.

https://extension.sdstate.edu/how-much-meat-can-you-expect-f... Suggest a typical cow at 490 lb of beef and this https://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/st... gives annual beef consumption of 58.1 lb beef per person per year (2019).

PS: Of note dairy cows are also consumed for meat, though generally of lower quality. Which further muddles the issue suggesting that reducing milk consumption might simply increase the number of beef cattle ~1:1 to compensate.


> You're still paying into a system that's killing animals for your benefit

Still a net improvement over buying milk and meat isn't it?

Also, people are vegetarian for all sorts of reasons. For some it's about eating meat, for some it's about animal cruelty, for some it's about environmental impact, and probably there's plenty of other reasons


I think no milk but meat would be better.


I think it's quite simple: many vegetarians have no idea of the conditions in an average dairy farm. I was vegetarian for a number of years before I went vegan. I had assumed dairy cows had it reasonably good and it was quite a shock to find out how horrible their treatment teens to be.


My understanding is that it's significantly easier to eat a healthy vegetarian diet than a healthy vegan diet. Therefore, it seems to me that vegetarianism is a reasonable compromise.


Because they like milk. You can justify anything if you want it to be true.

Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die?

This comes back to killing humans, one way or the other. How many insects are a foetus? Are poor people not allowed to have children so that insects can keep on living?


I think most people acknowledge that just by existing they’re causing harm. If you cut meat and diary out of your diet, you’re vastly reducing that harm. This isn’t just taking into consideration the cows, it’s also the vast quantities of crops that are grown to feed livestock. The largest study done on farm use was done by Oxford University a couple of years back and they found that “80 percent of the planet’s total farmland is used to rear livestock.” It continues with “freeing up land mass the size of Australia, China, the EU, and the U.S. – combined. This would lead to immensely fewer greenhouse gas emissions. It would also lessen the amount of wild land lost to agriculture, which is one of the leading causes of mass wildlife species extinction.”

So for me, it ends at the meat and diary have a huge negative impact on the environment and I’ll do my best to reduce my share by avoiding meat and diary.


> Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die?

Instead of doing nothing because there aren't any perfect solutions, start by aiming to minimise harm when there's realistic options to do so? e.g. avoid cow milk in favour of oat or soy milk.

Dairy cows eat crops from industrial farming as well so if you're concerned about insects dying, less diary will likely help e.g. you could make milk directly from soy beans instead of feeding them to cows.


We should figure out how to grow only the milk production parts.


I hope you realize that according to your description, there are very few of those "most efficient" dairies. For best milk production, the cows need to be kept happy and healthy. That means letting them have a place to go out of their barn, walk around, lay in the sun, etc. Also pumping them full of hormones is a thing of the past. Source: lived on a dairy farm all my life


I’m ideologically positive to vegetarianism and veganism but I’m so sick of this argument. Something being “made for humans” is in no way a positive — so is cocaine.


Look, if the marketing for oatly just focused entirely and explicitly on the cruelty of the dairy industry that they are competing against, they would never be a successful alternative to dairy because most consumers don’t respond positively to being exposed to graphic, disturbing, and negative information about competitors on product packaging. If anything it makes consumers want to look away, reach for humor to trivialize the issues, or rationalize away any role they choose to play in the cruelty. “Made for humans” here really doesn’t mean anything other than “not being taken from calves” except phrased in a more positive way. This isn’t about “natural” versus “artificial” as it is about making choices which are less ethically fraught, but vegans are hated by the large majority of the rest of us because we don’t care for others explicitly or implicitly condemning us for our lack of ethical integrity when we choose convenience and comfort over doing less harm.


> vegans are hated by the large majority of the rest of us

This a very weird claim. I know some fringe groups like ridiculing vegans, but I find it very hard to believe that a majority of people would have a negative view towards veganism.


>the cruelty of the dairy industry that they are competing against

I have first-hand knowledge of "the dairy industry". I don't see cruelty. Can you fill me on what's cruel about it?


Cruelty is subjective, so I'll play the vegan's advocate here since I'm not vegan myself: Dairy cows are forcibly inseminated and then used for their milk way beyond the time period they normally would produce milk. In many parts of the world they are kept in conditions which are cruel, and they may also suffer physically from this treatment (infections etc). In essence, dairy animals are treated like machines rather than animals and very little concern is given to their well being rather than their profitability. Morality is, as always, subjective, but from a vegan perspective, this is unnecessary and cruel exploitation.

I'd also like to add that most vegans are not magically averse to meat or dairy as a product: they are mostly concerned with the industrial complex of producing animal products. I think most vegans would have no, or at least a lot less, problems with dairy production if it happened in a way where cows were treated very well and did not suffer in any way from having their milk taken (which would make milk prohibitively expensive, I assume).


> I think most vegans would have no, or at least a lot less, problems with dairy production if it happened in a way where cows were treated very well

What are you going to do with the cows after 5 years into their 20 year life span when they stop producing as much milk? I can't see any way you're going to make people against animal slaughter happy with the only practical option.


If you're going to approach every animal life as a profit calculation, completely ignoring the moral argument made by vegans, obviously the answer will always be what you expect it to be. There's no point in having an honest discussion if you phrase every question from your own assumptions of morality and practicality instead of asking open questions.

Also, I'm not a vegan so I'm not going to debate you on this.


> Something being “made for humans” is in no way a positive — so is cocaine.

It's more of a spin from the phase "milk is for baby cows" though (not sure what the equivalent would be for cocaine). I used to roll my eyes at this as a naturalistic fallacy but point the being made here is:

1) cows do not give milk unless they've been pregnant

2) the newly born calves need to be separated from their mothers so there's more milk sell

There's no similar ethical difficult with oats.


It's a pretty ridiculous simplification of how nature works. Animals being dependent on each-other is found everywhere in nature, and the fact is that cows at this point would stand almost no chance in nature since we have bred them to the point of cuddly teddy bears. So you could argue that cows get protection and we get milk, it's not necessarily exploitation in my mind until you get to the point where you talk about industrial production of meat and dairy, which to be honest is pretty cruel and horrifying in parts.


> Animals being dependent on each-other is found everywhere in nature

Human ethics clearly shouldn't and aren't based on what other animals do to each other though.

> the fact is that cows at this point would stand almost no chance in nature since we have bred them to the point of cuddly teddy bears

You could justify anything with this argument: "doing X to Y is bad, but we've specifically bred Y to have X done to them such that Y can't survive in the wild anymore, therefore it's okay to do X".

Just stop breeding them. There's related species in the wild that will live on.


Sure, from a vegan perspective you can stop the entire meat and dairy industry completely based on the fact that it's not strictly necessary for our survival, but a lot of things aren't strictly necessary for our survival. You can also argue that humans have an ethical responsibility to be "more" and that because of this we shouldn't consume anything that causes suffering in living beings. Both of these arguments come out of personal ethics though.

In ethical terms, most people simply do not feel that the suffering of animals is equal to that of humans. One may not agree with this, but it's why people eat meat in the first place, or accept animal testing for medicine. So, as long as "specism" is the reigning morality that people subscribe to, it's unlikely we'll see a vegan wave, unless perhaps there's a climate component driving it as well.


I really don't have a problem with these things. I don't have a problem killing animals for food, even baby cows. I also don't have a problem killing animals that can't be properly cared for (hello PETA).

What I _do_ care about is how those animals are treated before they are killed. I am aware of the process for keeping dairy cows productive. I also am uncertain if the separation of calves and cows causes distress. I find it just as likely that assuming so is to anthropomorphize them. However, the reason I don't know the answer to that is because the treatment of farm animals in factory farms is far more concerning to me.

The biggest disconnect between vegans and non-vegans seems to be the assertion that animals can't be raised ethically for food. Instead of focusing on areas of commonality between each other, a distaste for the unnecessary suffering of animals, each party focuses on the disagreements and can't get anything done together.

Also, as an aside, the process you describe makes the cow's milk "made for humans" as much as anything is. Humans manipulate the cow's biology to produce milk for humans.


> I also am uncertain if the separation of calves and cows causes distress.

There's plenty of YouTube videos of how cows react to this. Most animals instinctively protect their offspring, and cows are social animals on top of this.


I believe that some dairies use "sexed" semen to minimise the ratio of male calves. Doesn't detract from the separation, etc though.


I didn't believe you, but:

> The method works by staining sperm with a DNA-binding fluorescent dye. The bovine Y-chromosome-bearing sperm contain 3.8% less DNA than the X-chromosome-bearing sperm. Because of the dye, the male and female sperm can be electrically charged differently. This allows for their separation by a fluorescence-activated cell sorter (Seidel, 2007). The method is fairly accurate with ~90% of the sperm containing the desired sex (Garner and Seidel, 2003; DeJarnette et al., 2008). Sexed semen will contain a lower concentration of sperm per straw (approximately 2 million) than non-sexed semen (approximately 20 million) because the sorting process is relatively slow. Because of lower doses of sperm per straw, and possibly a negative effect of the sorting process, fertility of sexed sperm is typically lower compared with conventional sperm (Garner and Seidel, 2003; DeJarnette et al., 2008).[1]

1. https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/the-economics-of-sexed-se....


I did some work filming dairies late last year and it was mentioned in the interviews.

The biggest "industrial" dairy we visited had most of the cows under cover in large, open-sided sheds. The sheds were ventilated and the cows had fresh bedding regularly, and I'm confident this wasn't put on for us given we were a tiny camera crew. I expected it to be completely miserable but the areas the cows lay to ruminate was clean and they all looked very content. The cows in this operation were much, much cleaner than those at traditional, smaller dairies we visited (who got absolutely filthy with each other's waste, lying out in fields to ruminate). I imagine it's like being given food and allowed to sit on the couch watching TV all day, which is what half of us do already.

Not sure if they have a solution for the separation and permanent pregnancy issues.


I wonder if veal farmers are using the exact same technology to increase the ratio of male calves


How do dairy farmers do it in India (where milk is a huge thing, while beef, while also actually a large industry, is much more controversial)?


A cow does lactate for around 10 months before it would need to have a calf again. Also, a cow produces faaar more milk then one calf needs. Source: live on a dairy, grew up feeding calves. Used milk replacer for a while but then switched to plain milk cause it's healthier for the calves (no surprise)


“Made for humans” has nothing to do with human nutrition, it’s about making humans rich selling a low content, high profit product.

The ads and PR about the various sugary cloudy white water drinks always de-empathize the sugar delivery, and the marketing always subtly supports the ignorant faux ethical arguments around dairy pushed with religious zeal by certain groups.


> the marketing always subtly supports the ignorant faux ethical arguments around dairy

What faux ethical arguments are those? Oat milk is less resource intensive and reduces animal cruelty - those are compelling ethical arguments to me.


I drink milk, but I think the strongest case against drinking cows milk is industrial-scale dairy farming. We (consumers) are to blame because we want milk as cheap as possible.

We've seen protests across Europe in the past by farmers who say they can't provide milk at such cheap prices and maintain welfare standards. Unfortunately, we consumers seem unwilling to pay for high welfare. Sure we say otherwise when asked, but our actions at the supermarket tell a different story.

Also, most consumers don't even know what conditions are like for dairy animals. In Europe, consumers smugly assume we have high welfare standards (maybe we do relative to other countries), but I was shocked to learned that some farms still tie and tether cows in small cramped indoor spaces [1]. In fact, most dairy cows will spend the majority of their life indoors rather than outside grazing on pasture. This is the price of cheap, industrial-scale agriculture.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/08/its-medi...


> We (consumers) are to blame because we want milk as cheap as possible.

So, you're not going to blame Lactalis are you ?

It's so easy for a seller to escape from any responsibility "we're just selling what consumers want !". This is fallacious because consumers buy whatever product available for sale that is closest to what they want.

Consumers don't decide how industry invests to make their product. I mean, I buy milk, cream, cheese, from a local farm, I have my own chicken and so on, but that's because I can, but I wouldn't feel like blaming people who don't and claim of having better morality or whatnot.


Just to point out how things are all connected ... the relatively affluent on up to the obscenely rich can afford to pay for "high welfare" animal food production.

If minimum wage and/or the fraction of GDP that ended up in the pockets of employees had stayed in line with (say) mid-1970s levels, I would imagine that most people could (at least choose to) afford "high welfare" animal food production.


> We (consumers) are to blame

No, the farmers are to blame. This is the kind of thing regulations solve. If we force the use of sustainable and ethical farming methods through regulation, like how we force producers to obey all other aspects of food safety and production, then the market will adjust to the new prices, whatever they may be.


Actually I think the fault mostly lies with discounters leveraging the fuck out of farmers to compete against other discounters. There's a EU directive being implemented currently that would prohibit discounters from selling below cost, and it's very necessary.


I would say the fault is with EU and its subsidies: https://m.dw.com/en/are-subsidies-driving-dairy-farmers-into...

Agriculture is a surprisingly difficult market. Part of that is an understandable desire of governments to maintain local production. Nobody wants to risk being cut-off their food supply.


The only way to make cattle farming sustainable is by doing far far less of it. Governments need to impose massive taxes on dairy and beef products in order to severely reduce their consumption. But they do the opposite and subsidise it instead, often to the point that we are throwing out viable animal products because there is too much of it.


A tangent on Canola and rapeseed oil:

I have recently watched a Chinese Cooking Demystified video (I believe it was [1]) about the Chinese rapeseed oil and its comparison in taste and erucic acid contents to Canola oil, which is its only available variant in Western countries.

The video stated a thesis echoed on Wikipedia's page on Erucic acid [2]:

> Studies done on laboratory animals in the early 1970s show that erucic acid appears to have toxic effects on the heart at high enough doses. However, more recent research has cast doubt on the relevance of rat studies to the human health of erucic acid. Rats are unusual in their inability to process erucic acid, and the symptoms in rats caused by a diet with high levels of erucic acid has not been observed in pigs, primates, or any other animals.

From what I understand, all the references in the Oatly article focus on Canola oil, which is supposed to be low on erucic acid. However, the few (~3) research sources in the Oatly article that I clicked on all do rat/mouse studies. Isn't that kind of strange, considering the erucic acid rat research controversy?

The Wikipedia page on Canola oil [3] does not mention the health risks aside from the erucic acid controversy. Still, since Canola oil is such an important product, I can imagine any negative studies or claims could be contested. (Disclaimer: I have not checked the edit history of that page myself.)

To sum up, I currently have no idea if Canola oil or rapeseed oils in general are risky, healthy in reasonable doses, or something else completely. If anyone with any expertise comes around, please educate me.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDP9t65PVsY

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erucic_acid

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola_oil


Whoa! I wrote the text you quoted from Wikipedia [1]. I learned about mustard oil [2] from a couple of Indian recipes and was surprised that it's one of the primary oils used in India while being banned for human consumption in the US (leading to the development of canola oil). Trying to resolve this dissonance led to an evening of research which I then contributed to wikipedia. It's neat to see the research loop closed, actually having an impact when other people read the stuff.

I'm reminded of when I checked a dissertation out of the university library once; it had only been checked out once before. The librarian at the checkout counter looked up at me with a grin and said, "I wrote that!"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Erucic_acid&diff=... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mustard_oil&diff=...


Good shout on the studies maybe not being obviously relevant.

I checked them, and the score is: Rat, Rat, actually about cooking in canola oil, any vegetable oil versus less olive oil, Rat, actually about a different oil with quite different content of the active acid being trialled, Rat, Rat.

After this review, it is clear to me they cheated with what could have been the most quantitative part of the argument: a bad sign indeed. And yeah, turns out this is written by SEO marketer.


Sorry I don't get what you're saying. "Rat"?


Think 'rat' indicates a study the OP found that was performed on rats


This comment is the long form equivalent of the excellent https://mobile.twitter.com/justsaysinmice (and just as great, thanks)


There's also mustard oil, which is banned for human consumption in the US due to fears about erucic acid.

Mustard oil is one of the most common cooking oils in India and Pakistan. As a result, all mustard oil in the US is labeled "for external use only". People still use it for cooking.


> There's also mustard oil, which is banned for human consumption in the US due to fears about erucic acid.

Fun snippet from the wikipedia page on Mustard Oil: "Rats are unusual in their inability to process erucic acid, and the symptoms in rats caused by a diet with high levels of erucic acid has not been observed in pigs, primates, or any other animals"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_oil


> As a result, all mustard oil in the US is labeled "for external use only"

Huh, same in the UK too - I wondered why on earth it would say that on a bottle of mustard oil, now I know!


What health risks do you imagine might exist?

We can break down the composition of it very precisely and have lots of information about each molecule present in it. It's not some big mystery.

And it's not invalidating for a safety study to be rat based if the rats are more sensitive to the molecule than humans...


But it may invalidate it if rats are unique among mammals in suffering any harm at all.


That doesn't really invalidate a 'safe' result.

(it's not a particularly useful result at that point, I agree)


Great write up on debunking oatly's "health benefits". But fails to mention the the moral reasons to choose oat milk over cow's milk.

TBF lot of the meat replacements are plagued by similar problems. [1]

[1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/impossible-and-beyond-ho...


Exactly what I had in mind.

The article does not mention cow milk's health implications, and only focuses on debunking Oatly's alleged health benefits. This creates the same "Obscure the Truth" effect the article opens with, giving the impression that there's nothing wrong with cow milk.

If both options are equally unhealthy (which is at the minimum the biased impression the article gives by not discussing cow milk), at the minimum the moral one should be chosen.


Yeah, and one shouldn't ignore the economic and environmental drawbacks of milk – in the US, at least, the government subsidises milk production heavily so it's profitable for the farmers. And dairy milk is terrible for the environment: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46654042


That’s a bunk argument.

The HFCS in every milk substitute that sells is the ultimate subsidy crop. Soy and rice are as well. Dairy isn’t profitable for farmers and is rapidly declining as beverage giants and more politically powerful agriculture interests push their policy goals.

The environmental arguments aren’t very convincing to me. I grew up in an agricultural area where dairy was king and there was a diversified crop economy. Now it’s corn+fertilizer. Carbon impact may be lower, but the impact on the environment is more than carbon. Water depletion in the Midwest, pollution from runoff and over utilization and other factors matter too.


There’s no HFCS in Oatly.

I don’t really see how water depletion is a relevant issue when most cows are being fed grain and soy.

Vegans probably ignore the harms of monoculture in their arguments. But a lot of meat eaters like to point to studies of how cattle and sheep can graze on land that can’t support other agriculture. Sure, but what % of cattle are actually raised that way? How much does a burger or gallon of milk cost when it’s grass fed.


What actual proven health implications does cows milk have?


TFA links to this article which discusses the health pros and cons of cows milk: https://www.healthline.com/health/is-milk-bad-for-you


So unless you are allergic/intolerant or drink a vast amount there are no proven health risks. Indeed it is a healthy food.


Most people have some level of lactose malabsorption.

Also cows milk has pretty grave health implications for the cows


Globally, yeah, but not in the areas where people actually drink milk. Being able to digest cow milk is basically a regional mutation.


So does eating meat.


I also imagine drinking diluted cows pregnancy and chronic inflammation hormones with extra cortisol on top from all the stress they experience because of their living conditions can’t be beneficial for you as well.


I asked my vegan friends if they’d rather these animals would not exist at all rather than be used for milk production (because they are only bred into existence for that).

I wonder how that logic applies to humans born into living in rough countries, would vegans rather they would not exist at all?

It’s not like a dairy cow has a life of eternal suffering after all. It eats, grazes, rests and socializes. It does cow things.


Dairy cows exist because we actively breed them. We inject dairy cows with sperm to keep them pregnant so they keep producing milk, then take their calf away and repeat the process. They're not multiplying on their own.


That’s exactly my point. With no utility, these animals would not exist. Are their lives so miserable that we can morally assert that they should not be living?


It’s like saying: these are my children, without me they wouldn’t exist, I can subject them to anything and they should be happy that they have existence.

I would argue that no existence is better than existence filled with endless misery, agony and pain.

Factory farms are a disgrace to humanity. It is my opinion that until we develop enough compassion to see this and stop, humans have no hope of creating lasting peace amongst each other. Our morality has a deadly wound at its core, and it’s rotting away at our souls.


I mean you could extend this argument to anything, should we all be procreating all day every day to ensure every possible life is lived? Should dogs be forced to have 10s of litters? Should we encourage insects?

The answer to all of these is obviously no. So why do you make the case for cows?


Yes, they are extremely miserable (look up "factory farming").


I suggest you look up "factory farming" before making claims like "It’s not like a dairy cow has a life of eternal suffering after all". They literally don't do any of the activities you mention.


I know dairy farming very, very well. It varies between areas. In France for example, there are no mega farms, all farms are small to medium, many family owned. Hormones are banned. This is true for other parts of Western Europe.

Mega Farms are mostly an American issue. I do not support them at all.


This is substantially incorrect, especially for France [1]: While cows indeed aren't grown in intensive farming in France, 95% of pork in France is raised in intensive factory farming, and other species have similar stats. Most of the western world has similar stats.

This is far from a US-only problem.

[1] https://www.liberation.fr/france/2018/06/04/porcs-bovins-vol...


I was specifically talking about dairy farming. Pork, chicken and beef all have their own issues. The average USA farm size is about 220 cows vs. about 70 cows in France, and the practices used in Europe as a whole are more humane (my numbers are from closed market studies published by IFCN). These animals are very well monitored and cared for. I wouldn't want to change place with them, but then I also wouldn't trade places with many other humans around the world.


I agree that cows are better off in France, but this is an anomaly.


They are to some extent better off in Norway too, although their lot should still be improved.


You have made broad, sweeping remarks about the ethics of dairy farming and it's only here that you considerably narrow the scope of your statements to farms that you deem ethical.

Yes, some farms may operate in line with an acceptable standard of ethics, but for many people, it is easier to live a vegan lifestyle than to carefully ensure that all their dairy is ethically sourced.


I'd recommend some more research into the how cows in dairy farms are treated. Your description is rather more idyllic than the reality, I think. For one, most male calves are not needed on a dairy farm, so they are either slaughtered for veal, raised as beef cattle, or euthanized at birth [1]. Whether this matter to you depends on where you stand on vegetarianism of course, and anyway the issues with the wellfare of meat herds is not what I wanted to discuss.

The dairy cows are also not quite so happy, I think. Mastitis is a potentially fatal disease of the udder, usually caused by bacteria entering the teat; many of the practices on a dairy farm make this far more likely, and while of course the farmers are doing all they can to stop it, it is still one of the biggest issues in the industry, and it seems that some level of mastitis is expected in all dairy herds [2]. It is perhaps a side note to the animal wellfare aspect, but the use of antibiotics is a big part of the mitigations, and seems to be administered as a matter of course; this is an issue because it promotes antibiotic resistance in bacteria, which has implications for humans too.

There are other wellfare issues around overwork of cows from producing much larger amounts of milk than they would to feed a calf, whether grains are a healthy food compared to grasses, and even mental health issues such as separating cows from their calves and whether they have enough access to the outdoors.

I've tried to select links that are balanced and non-hyperbolic, but it's tricky to do. Like I said, I recommend more research but try not to be too turned off the hyperbolic articles on both sides. Articles from vegans are often under-researched and manipulative, but if you dig around you'll find that many of the issues they discuss are real. On the other hand, farmers are of course not animal hating devils and so write to defend themselves and their livelihood, but they can often go the other way and underplay the issues that are there.

And finally, animal wellfare is not the only argument for veganism, because livestock has an environmental impact comparable to the transport industry [3].

[1] https://www.dairy.com.au/dairy-matters/you-ask-we-answer/wha...

[2] https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/404/404-233/404-233.html [3] https://news.trust.org/item/20180918083629-d2wf0


> The article does not mention cow milk's health implications, and only focuses on debunking Oatly's alleged health benefits

The article links to an entire other article discussing cow milk's health implications.

> If both options are equally unhealthy (which is at the minimum the biased impression the article gives by not discussing cow milk), at the minimum the moral one should be chosen.

Cow's milk and oat milk aren't the only two alternatives, though. Milk substitutes abound, some of them having much better health and moral implications (and as discussed in this thread, milk substitutes can be made at home).


The article is about the failings of Oatly, not the failures of milk.

There’s lots of milk substitutes that aren’t as bad for you as Oatly.

I read the comparison to milk as just a comparison to the baseline or what Oatly wants to taste like, not as an endorsement of cow milk.


Which milk substitutes are better? Especially in the sense that they wouldn't be able to accrue complaints from an assailant as dogged as this writer.


I think almond milk tastes awful, Oatly was the first milk substitute I actually liked (maybe preferred!) to dairy milk.

Currently I rotate through Oatly, Califa farms, and Silk oat milks depending on what's available.

The water footprint of almond milk is just mind-blowing. I can't fathom ripping out other productive agriculture so that we can suck up more water than other crops just to sell almonds overseas and turn it into.. milk.


Of all the mammal milk alternatives oat milk seems the most environmentally friendly in temperate climates, as it can be grown regionally.

Although some point out that any plant-based milk is significantly better for the environment than mammal milk:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/28/what-pla...


Soy milk is just as reasonable environmentally and probably a little healthier as a nutrition source compared to oat milk. Though the flavor of soy is a little harder to get used to.


I think unsweetened almond milk is maybe the best overall pick if you want a milk substitute. From my understanding it's fairly healthy, natural, and the taste / "mouth feel" is good. Downsides are cost and maybe the amount of water/bees used to make the almonds.


I'm also a fan of almond milk from a taste perspective, but I've always been a bit unsure about how it is processed – and the amount of water used is definitely an ethical downside in my book (I used to live in California, where this was a controversy during times of drought).

After a bit of research just now, though, there don't seem to be many credible claims of commercial Almond Milk's chemical processing being very scary (at least compared to Oatly, which also has a few additives) so that doesn't seem too problematic to me.

This article discusses the environmental impact of various milk alternatives:

https://medium.com/@tabitha.whiting/what-milk-should-you-buy....

> Greenhouse gas emissions: a 200ml glass of oat milk is responsible for around 0.18kg of CO2e. That’s slightly more than almond milk, but less than soy or cow’s milk.

> Swedish oat milk producer Oatly put the greenhouse gas emissions of a litre of their oat milk at 0.34kg, which is a lot less than the general estimate above of 0.18kg per 200ml

> Water: a litre of oat milk needs about 48 litres of water produce. In terms of water, then, oat milk is much lower impact than other milks.

In comparison, a liter of almond milk needs 386 liters of water to produce, and cow's milk, 1016, as per https://treadingmyownpath.com/2017/04/20/is-almond-milk-bad-....

The takeaway for me is that I might prefer oat milk to almond milk for "health/eco impact" reasons by a very narrow margin, but would strongly prefer either to cow's milk for those reasons.


"Innocent" branded oat milk-substitute contains no added oil of any kind, so all of his canola objections would be moot there.

I guess it still contains oat sugars though, at 3.2g per 100ml (of 7g carbs per 100ml)


100ml == ~3.4oz, so that's probably still a pretty equivalent amount of sugar to oatly. Either way, they're pretty negligible – most juices have at least 20g sugar in a cup.


I personally really enjoy hazelnut milk too. It has oils and sugars from the nuts, I have no idea if it's 'good' for you, but it is delicious.


There are many milk substitutes that don’t have the sugar of Oatly, the ones I’ve tried are the unsweetened almond and coconut milks.

I think they suck in coffee (so does Oatly) but they are good for cereal or smoothies or just liquid protein.


>just liquid protein.

Almond and coconut milk have very limited amounts of protein.


> I think they suck in coffee (so does Oatly)

Are you referring to the normal Oatly or the Barista version? Because the normal one doesn't work for coffee, but the latter is the best coffee milk I've had. I used to use real cream but actually now prefer that Oatly, it's that good.


Califia unsweetened almond milk is delicious.


> But fails to mention the the moral reasons to choose oat milk over cow's milk.

This is kind a red herring. Cow's milk should be irrelevant because you don't have to choose between the two. You can leave both out if you have moral reasons to avoid cow's milk and health reasons to avoid oat milk.


The author compares them to each other, so it makes sense to talk about why you should take it out of the picture.

As it happens, though, unsweetened almond milk does seem to have much less sugar – 0.2g by one measure I found (another just says 2g carbs of which 1g is fiber) and a glycemic index of 25 (low).

So it is a bit surprising that the author didn't make this comparison – it's much more favorable to his point.


Moral and environmental. Milk is one level up from eating vegetables. Some milk consumption is probably sustainable, but we can't feed the entire world on quark cheese.


We can feed the entire world on bugs. Are you prepared to eat bugs on a daily basis? I possibly would, occasionally, but maybe I'd like them cooked with a bit of butter, which is made out of cows milk.


Is Glycemic Index important for healthy people or is it mainly of concern to people with diabetes?

The NHS suggests the latter, but it doesn't seem to have a very strong position - unlike the article, which seems very sure that high GI is bad for you.

However, using the glycaemic index to decide whether foods or combinations of foods are healthy can be misleading.

https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/food-and-diet/wha...


Glycemic index is a somewhat deceptive measurement. A snickers bar has a lower glycemic index than a slice of whole wheat bread[0][1]. That doesn't make it better for you.

What glycemic index is actually showing you is the ratio of fat to carbs. And carbs are not inherently unhealthy. As a distance runner, I consume a lot more carbs than the average person, and I'm in the best shape of my life.

[0] https://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/glycemicIndexDetails.php...

[1] http://www.dietandfitnesstoday.com/glycemicIndexDetails.php?...


I think it's only really relevant if you have diabetes or other disorders that affect blood glucose (e.g. reactive hypoglycemia), as long as people know that in general sugars (and potatoes!) will cause spikes in blood sugar, and so should be consumed in moderation.

Although, even if you do have diabetes or the like, IMO just using the number of grams of carbohydrate and sugar in something is usually enough information, as you know that, in general, carbohydrates will cause your blood sugar to rise, and sugars will cause it to rise rapidly.

I have reactive hypoglycemia, and knowing the GI of a few foods is useful, only because you wouldn't think they were that bad (potatoes!) - but after learning it, just the macros are enough make a decision.


> The evidence for the harms of canola oil is still in its early days, but continues to grow. Research has linked it to: Memory impairment [1], Alzheimer’s risk [1], Cardiovascular disease [2], [5], [6], [8], Diabetes [2], Increased all-cause mortality [2], [6], [7], Metabolic syndrome [3], Decreased brain function [4], and Oxidative stress [5], [7].

Most of these references talk about how there is no clear benefit of vegetable oils over animal oils or how "chronic canola oil consumption" results in obesity in transgenic mice. That is not really the same thing as "growing evidence for the harms of canola oil".


For completeness, I checked them all and the score is:

* Rat

* Rat

* actually about cooking _in_ canola oil

* about switching _any_ vegetable oil to _less_ olive oil

* Rat

* actually about a different oil with quite different content of the active acid being trialled

* Rat

* Rat

(Oh, and the article is written by a SEO marketer)


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24090817 points out that rats, rather uniquely, cannot process erucic acid (part of canola oil) and the rat studies likely do not apply to most other mammals (including humans).


At this point, we should all just flag this article til it's gone. It's FUD


I'm curious of your actual hunch, are you actually skeptical that canola (and other industrial seed oils) are not harmful?), or just pointing something out about the evidence?


I read it as twanvl pointing out that there is a lack of evidence to support the article's claims.


I would be interested to know if these studies refer to low quality vegetable oils using a chemical process to extract oil. For example, in the UK, supermarkets sell cold-pressed rapeseed oil (canola oil in the US). The cold-press process is sold as making rapeseed oil as relatively healthy cooking oil.

Does cold-pressing rapeseed/canola seed turn it into a relatively healthy cooking oil (vs the expeller-pressed or chemical extraction process)?


The problem is the fats in those oils are very susceptible to oxidation and have low smoke points, they are never safe as cooking oils for this reason.

For cooking the best options outside of animal fats are olive oil and coconut oil, but of course olive oil is most versatile and better tasting imo.


I don’t know where you’re getting this from. I use canola oil when pan-frying food and it stands heat better then most olive oils. The cold-pressed variety tastes like shit though (well, actually it tastes like canola which has a kale-like flavor that I find unappealing). The refined canola oil is perfect for frying.


Right, I think what he's saying is that you shouldn't use cold-pressed oils for cooking/frying. Cheaper refined oils are better for this purpose. Keep the fancy cold-pressed oils for salads, dipping, drizzling, etc.

Refined olive oil does have a slightly higher smoke point than refined canola/rapeseed oil, but for most home cooking purposes it's probably within the margin of error. Something like refined sunflower oil or refined avocado oil has a higher smoke point still.


Quoting this study https://actascientific.com/ASNH/pdf/ASNH-02-0083.pdf (note: I get an error opening the PDF)

> Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) yielded low levels of polar compounds and oxidative by-products, in contrast to the high levels of by-products generated for oils such as canola oil.

But I formed my position from many other points, the degradation in public health in the USA has tracked perfectly with the switch from animal fats to seed oils for cooking (and other uses but frying is the worse offender)


Any idea where I can find that study? The link above is dead. I have been using Canola oil for frying because I thought it was a neutral tasting oil that didn't produce as many toxic compounds when exposed to high heat—vs olive oil which purportedly did produce them. Seems I've been misinformed.


Here's an article that makes the same point with a great overview of the underlying mechanisms: https://breaknutrition.com/omega-6-fatty-acids-alternative-h...


Unfortunately no, the title is " Evaluation of chemical and physical changes in different commercial oils during heating", hopefully you can find it.


It also tracks perfectly with increased calorie consumption.

So one potential explanation is that people are eating more, and then another potential explanation is that there is some as yet mysterious biological process whereby processing calories through some long extant metabolic pathways triggers changes in health.


It might be good from a culinary perspective, perhaps smoke point is irrelevant, I was thinking of what causes degradation of the fats when subjected to heat.


The smoke point of olive oil varies significantly from extra light to extra virgin. Extra virgin actually has a much lower smoke point than canola oil.


From memory the good stuff in olive oil is destroyed by heat (if you swallow olive oil and it's good quality, you get a distinct 'burn' at the back of your throat).

Also IME olive oil loses its interesting taste rapidly when cooked with, but others may not find that.


Give avocado oil a shot. Great smoke point, no real flavor. I am allergic to avacado somehow and the oil doesn’t bother me.


Most allergies are to a protein in the thing you are allergic to, and refined oils that have a high smoke point usually have all of that removed (or it would cause the oil to smoke.) I have a peanut allergy but can eat anything fried by a cheap restaurant in Sysco peanut oil while I have had a reaction to something done by a three star restaurant because they used unrefined oil (looking at you Manressa...)


Makes sense. Good to know, thanks.


Avocado oil is much better than olive oil, which has a low boiling point.


It's probably equivalent but the taste doesn't go with most foods, also it goes bad much easier which again suggests less stability.


If you're concerned about the taste of Avocado oil you may have just had poor quality oil. I've had some bad experiences, but the one from Chosen Foods (we have it at Costco in Ontario) is a very neutral oil with a high smoke point.


> obesity in transgenic mice.

I definitely read this as "obesity in transgender mice" the first couple times and was seriously wondering if that was actually a thing.


When I used to go to Japan, they had some kind of artificial creamer that was awesome. I actually preferred it to milk. I used to look forward to guzzling cup after cup of coffee in the hotel breakfast restaurant.

It was probably 100% artificial, but it was great. I normally can't stand non-dairy creamers, of any kind, in the US.

They seem to have an industry that makes artificial food, and it's quite advanced.

I remember these artificial strawberries that were made of something like white chocolate. They were better than the "real thing."

I'm probably gonna drop dead, because I consumed these things, but I did like them.


The author should write a similar article about himself, because the whole article is filled with dubious claims and misguided evidence. The two main claims are "Since the GI is a measure of how much of a negative response your body has to certain sugars" and "research showing harms from canola oil". Neither can be ascertained. A big problem with nutritional science is that it's complex, therefore it is neigh impossible to discover the truth how specific foods really impact the body. I'm also of the opinion that the term "healthy" shouldn't be really used. Here I go with Paracelsus: "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison." The author invites us to his newsletter "on getting healthy, wealthy, and wise." Yeah, it's all a baseless marketing ploy by, and for, the author.

I want to note, I'm making no argument that Oatly should be considered healthy though.


i agree wholeheartedly with the spirit of your comment, but saying "nutritional science is complex" or "the dosage alone makes it so that a thing is not a poison" does not help people figure out what foods to choose or how much to consume.

looking at the glycemic index is a useful heuristic and some of the research on canola oil makes me skeptical of it, and i think it is good for the author to point that out, as it suggests that oat milk might not be as safe as it is marketed to be.

another heuristic is biasing in favor of food that is processed less eg eating a bowl of oats is probably a better idea than drinking the analogous amount of oatly. similarly, it is a good idea to eat foods that people like you have been eating for long times, which in the oats vs oatly example favors the oats.

the precautionary principle suggests that the onus is to verify the safety of a given new food, not to prove that it is unsafe.


The one thing I'd change there is to delete the word "new" from the last sentence.

There are all sorts of foods that are terrible from a health perspective, but get grandfathered into a culture because they became popular before science really caught on. If you're closely analyzing the biochemistry of oatly or soy milk or whatever, and finger-wagging at others for drinking them, but still drink beer on a regular basis, you may be engaging in premature optimization.

Or, just looking at sugars: A serving of Oatly does contain 7g of sugar. The same amount of whole milk contains 13. You don't notice it because lactose tastes less sweet than many other sugars, but it's still a pretty generous dose of calories in the form of simple carbohydrates. I can't personally make the glycemic index comparison, because, while I can guess, I have no actual idea what the glycemic index of two tablespoons of lactose would be. Or even if measuring that would tell you anything about the glycemic index of a complex foodstuff that happens to contain that much lactose. I suspect you can't actually directly infer the one from the other, so, unlike the author of TFA, I think I might choose to proceed with caution there.

As far as what to consume: The messaging out there is remarkably consistent, as long as you tune out any information that's being provided by people who are trying to sell you something. Be it an actual foodstuff, a book, fitness lessons, or even just advertising. Even Michael Pollan nailed it pretty early in his career. In a single sentence, too. It's just that then he had to keep going, because stopping there wouldn't have made for much of a career as an author.


> There are all sorts of foods that are terrible from a health perspective, but get grandfathered into a culture because they became popular before science really caught on.

Yes and no. There is some element of an inherent scientific method involved in having cultures eat various foods for tens of thousands of years and then seeing which ones are still around at the end of the “experiment”


Perhaps there's some effect there, but this idea that more competitively successful cultures have healthier diets is difficult to reconcile with a lot of other memes around health food.

One also has to reckon with the fact that people's health needs were very different a couple hundred years ago. Once upon a time, the greatest health concern was getting enough nutrition. Also, when your life expectancy is 30, you probably don't give a damn that, if by some chance you live to see 70, all those preserved foods you used to get through the winter will end up having increased the chance that the thing that eventually kills you is stomach cancer.

As TFA's hand-wringing about sugar clearly indicates, though, we're just not playing the same game our ancestors did. The major worry nowadays that it is now, uniquely in history, possible for almost anyone's primary health concern to be that they're getting too much of a good thing.


Surely the species of most foods available nowadays are only a couple centuries or decades old?

Plus there's survivor bias: just because population A survived on food X, doesn't mean it won't halve the life expectancy when introduced to population B. E.g. high calory foods in the oceania populations caused obesity.


Not to mention Glycemic Index of foods is misleading. If you have a lot of fiber in your gut it slows down the digestion of everything. GI can’t be used in isolation. It’s useful to know, but Oatly also has a lot of fiber in it. I am less keen on the Canola oil though.


No only that, its only relevant if you have diabetes/pre-diabetic markers. If you're not then it's as relevant to you as being concerned about lactose if you're not lactose intolerant.


It’s relevant, but also easy to measure. GI is a guess at what the product will do to your blood sugar. A diet high in fiber they included oatly with a meal is going to give a very different insulin response than oatly in isolation which will likely be different again when compared to pure maltose. I am not diabetic and had fun measuring my blood sugar for a while. Full meals with a lot of fiber, even if they included high GI foods didn’t do a lot to my blood sugar compared to high GI foods in isolation. So, as a diabetic, you just have to know how your body handles some foods and how best to consume them (or not).


It's true that if you eat fat, protein and fibre alongside sugars, the effective GI of the sugars is reduced.

But I really don't think see how that makes measurements of individual foods misleading. How is it any different than individual foods being labelled with calorie counts and macro-nutrient figures?

Edit: I think the article uses the high GI of a sugar ingredient to claim that Oatly is bad - yes, this is misleading; the GI of the whole product is what matters.


I suspect the article is mostly about getting seo juice for the newsletter so it boosts his clients more when he links to them.

Though I’m not in seo myself, so I don’t know how these things work really.


That's the main problem I face with studies with Food/Dieting etc etc.

You can equally claims both sides and reject both studies. Nobody know anything for sure and you can prove equally wrong/right both sides.

Eg: Cow milk is bad while whole generations have drank them.


TFA cites eight peer reviewed articles to support his claims about the harms of canola oil. "We can't know anything" is an easier argument to make than taking an affirmative position one way or another, but it isn't insightful or interesting.

Edit: Others in this thread have made more substantive arguments about flaws with the research cited.


Was the main problem the glucose spike? Could a person just test it out by measuring their blood glucose levels?


Though this is my anecdotal experience, I've had an interesting journey related to food sensitivities and realizing how much certain foods actually caused physical pain when eating them once I had removed them and allowed my body to become de-conditioned to that level of pain/stress; conditioning is the action of not noticing, eliminating it from your awareness, however from my experience that shows that that doesn't mean something you don't notice isn't harming you or causing you problem. I had done an Igg food sensitivity test (inflammatory marker diagnostic; just a few drops of blood on a card that would get sent in) to test for ~200 foods. I removed the foods that showed up and I felt better. Weeks later multiple times with different foods I would eat one of the foods on the list and I was amazed at how clearly I could feel, experience the physical pain - some severe - that I would experience from now eating it.

This brings me to another point I wanted to make. You said the term "healthy" shouldn't be used, I'd posit that a caveat is necessary to avoid generalization - generalization which is the actual culprit: "may not be healthy for you specifically." It's very naive to ignore that though most of us have a head, two arms, two legs, etc. that our inner workings aren't complex and diverse - including our sensitivity level and tolerances for different types of stressors. We can know however inflammation in the body can lead to Alzheimers-Dementia, and that sugars carbohydrates, and certain other foods like dairy are highly inflammatory (for everyone) - whether that causes enough dysfunction for you to eliminate them from your diet or not is one question. Another question is perhaps a person is using these foods to self-medicate: inflammation has a depressant effect on the nervous system, and so they could be eating certain foods - perhaps dependant on them - to regulate their mood, stress, etc. This may work for some people their whole lives, it may also lead to dis-ease progression over decades.

And to reference your Paracelsus quote, it's not solely the dosage but a dosage that acts poisonous will differ between people. Some might be okay for some people, any tiny amount may be problematic for some people. The vague and arguably dismissive rhetoric of "everything in moderation" in response to when people reply in regards to people's comments on eating food they know is unhealthy for them and makes them feel sick. The dismissive behaviour of of parents for when their children not liking certain food and not wanting to eat it, they force or incentivize them to continue to eat food that harms them with a reward like dessert that further harms them is also problematic and I believe the starting point for many people who then struggle later in life in various ways. Eventually the child may become conditioned to not feeling the harm of the food, perhaps with the added aid of the numbing effect of the inflammation (the depressant effect on the nervous system), and become disconnected from a foundational cause or source of future dis-ease progression related symptoms. Parts of this pattern were certainly part of my journey.


You can criticize the health of anything like this. There isn't a comparison; how healthy is it compared to cow milk? The comparison to coke is ridiculous.

Some sugar and canola oil doesn't even seem bad to me, seems perfectly fine. Especially given that I think it tastes way way better than other alternatives, without making me feel sick and having ethical/moral issues.


Agreed; this felt like an unfair hit piece - if anything, I feel more comfortable drinking oatly (though perhaps not in large quantities).

It was disappointing that the author didn't discuss how much fiber is in oatly, and how that can affect health and glycemic impact.

The coke comparison felt particularly hypocritical - what's the glycemic load of 8oz of coke vs 8oz of oatly?

If the takeaway is supposed to be, "the glycemic load of oatly is a little higher than milk", well, that doesn't exactly convince me this is going to be the new cause if a major diabetes epidemic (which drinks like coke do have a hand in).


> Oatly compares their sugar to the sugar in cow’s milk, but they’re not the same sugar. Lactose, the sugar in cow’s milk, has a GI of 46. Since the GI is a measure of how much of a negative response your body has to certain sugars, the 7g of sugar in Oatly with its 100+ GI is actually potentially worse than the 12g of sugar in whole milk with a 46 GI. We can use something called the “glycemic load” to measure this, which gives us a GL for the sugar in 8oz of Oatly of 7.35, and a GL for the sugar in 8oz of whole milk of 5.52.

The "glycemic load" is just the result of the multiplication of the sugar mass by the glycemic index: 7x1.05=7.35 and 12x0.46=5.52; it would be more clear to simply state that.


The article was also cleverly worded in a way that I find a little hypocritical – they're only comparing the _sugars_ of the two beverages. Oatly also has more complex carbohydrates, including 0.8g of fiber, per serving.

A GL of 7 doesn't seem that high; a serving of almost any grain, including whole wheat kernels (11), are higher. Quinoa is 13. A ripe banana is 16.

Source: https://dlife.com/glycemic-index-chart-and-effects-of-low-an...


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