I think an important thing to look at when considering water usage of a particular food, is the nature of where the food is being produced. Almonds are largely grown in California, where the aquifers are shrinking, and evaporation can take the water much further away. Meanwhile, dairy cows and their food can be raised in lots of climates, including in water-rich places like Wisconsin.
Used water makes it back into the global water cycle someplace. The concern is when we deplete a local water cycle or destroy habitats in our use of it.
Comparing almond water consumption to cattle water consumption is irresponsible, raising cattle takes orders of magnitude more resources. And California also has a huge cattle industry…
>"Comparing almond water consumption to cattle water consumption is irresponsible, raising cattle takes orders of magnitude more resources."
You say it's irresponsible to compare the two, then immediately proceed to do it!
Perhaps you meant to say that it was irresponsible to imply they were similar? In any case, rational decision-making requires comparing options, and reactions of disgust are generally unproductive, both for thinking and for debating.
What resources are used by cattle in Northern Europe? Just go visit Normandy, oh and btw don't forget to bring an umbrella, to witness all the missing water that happens to be falling from the sky.
Raising cattle in most parts of the country relies on renewable resources. Raising almonds in CA requires heavy use of fertilizers and depletes the regional water supplies.
I see this argument made about other ruminants and even pigs, but is that the reality? Maybe a pet goat eats the vegetable peels out of the family compost bin, but industrially farmed ones will be eating corn-based feed that was specifically grown for the purpose, on land that could grow anything.
As someone who does not know anything about herding farm animals... are goats easier to shepherd than cows? My first thought is "yea, they are smaller!", but is that true?
Better question...given the nutritional information on goat's milk painting it as more nutrient rich - why aren't we all drinking it?
Doesn't do much to help with climate change though, which is a much more serious issue. Sounds more like a rationalization for continuing to drink dairy milk.
Another lens: if I remember right, almond crops are actually one of the most lucrative crops in California per unit of water. So if you looked at it from the perspective of "what crop could I grow to make the most money with the least water", then the math changes substantially once again.
Also, w.r.t water consumption, cows still put back in some water to the cycle via peeing and pooping, something that several studies I've seen don't account for.
Trees don't really give back water, they just consume.
My takeaway is that, for water consumption/concerns, alternative milks aren't really beneficial, especially as you mention in California.
I still do believe they have other benefits though (land use, CO2, nutrition, etc.) which is why I keep buying them.
Regarding CO2, seems like cows would only produce as much as they consume from feed that first captured that CO2 from the atmosphere, so if you are sourcing local and not shipping feed / cows around seems like it should be close to zero?
Trees don't "consume" water any more than any other citizen of the natural environment does. The real challenge with trees is that they have a lot of knock-on effects—mostly beneficial—which are pretty hard to quantify, like the effect of root systems in soil, preventing erosion and promoting water retention.
- Cow breeding isn't inherently bad. It depends how industrialised the process is
- Not all land can grow crop while cow glazes on infertile land.
- The water usage in raising cow does not account for where the water come from. It come from natural rain water if the cow is relatively free-ranged. Growing almond/oat on the other hand definitely rely on irrigation water. California wastes majority (can't remember the percentage) of its precious water on growing almonds
I agree with you that cow breeding isn't inherently bad, at least in its traditional forms. I also agree with you that almonds use so much water that it's incredibly wasteful to use them for milk in California, where they account for a significant percentage of the state's water use.
But in places like California, and the American Southwest in general, dairy farming is not sustainable. In the Colorado River basin, over 50% of the water is used for cows in some fashion (drinking water for the animals, irrigation for food crops, etc). It's just not responsible.
Soy and oats, which are grown in places with lots of water, transported dry and in bulk (i.e. the trucks are not hauling water) and reconstituted locally, are much more responsible. My preference is for soy since it provides a lot more protein.
I'm fairly sure you don't need irrigation to grow oats -- I'm surrounded by oats in Scotland, and I've never noticed any irrigation. On the other hand, the cow watering troughs are definately filled by taps.
Also, that website compares meat to "avocados, walnuts or sugar", 3 foods well known to require lots of water.
The dairy cows that produced the milk you bought at the grocery store, in the USA anyway, were highly unlikely to be eating only grass growing on "infertile land" watered only by the rain. They are eating corn and grain grown on fertile land, probably with irrigation.
Is there even enough "infertile land" in the USA to produce grass to feed enough dairy cows for USA consumption? I doubt it.
So that argument still leads to drastic reduction in dairy consumption required, and in the USA anyway probably much higher dairy prices.
It's not a bandwagon , you're on the popular side here almost everyone in the us consumes dairy and meat. It's actually the other way around people should be more open to alternative milks and meats instead of looking at incorrect reactionary sources
Like just take a look at their meat won't kill you infographic ,it just shows the total daily calories from various sources. It has nothing to do with the actual title ! The whole website got incredibly high production quality but is intellectually bankrupt.
I find the oat milk I drink is like 95% of the way there in terms of being exactly the same taste as regular milk (not oatly, I found that one to be not great). The last 5% is an almost imperceptible "toasted oat" taste, and it's a little on the thick side. I also find that I have to dilute it 1:1 with water if I want it to work right in my coffee.
Same, i only buy cows milk for certain baking recipes at this point. Oat Yeah (which i think is just a silk brand) has been my favorite I've found. It doesn't taste quite the same as cows milk which i am more than okay with.
I think it's a good replacement. Since I eat a lot of _replacement_ foods, you kind of learn that you don't need that 100% to appreciate it for what it is. It's all learned taste.
I usually drink my coffee black, but a long time ago I made the switch to soy milk, and after a while it became natural in coffee. Oat latte's are pretty great too.
I have an issue with coffee + soy sometimes where the soy proteins appear to... curdle? cook? It seems to vary by brand of soy and coffee. As a result, I've generally been happier with my wife's recent switch to oat milk.
Seconded. Of all the milk alternatives, oat milk tastes the best and has great viscosity. (maybe even better than whole milk, certainly better than 2%)
It also serves as a great ingredient in beverages and avoids the allergen & California drought issues of almond milk.
Oat milk was what got me to drop whole milk (and now ice cream with oat based deserts). That was pretty much the remaining bit in terms of being full vegan. I still eat local eggs and fish maybe once a year. But as a latte drinker, milk had been one of the high carbon impact foods I was still consuming and oat milk made it easy to drop. I was never a big fan of almond milk in my coffee — too rancid when steamed for my taste.
I also buy oat milk now (since I use it as an additive, not for nutrition), but haven't replaced yogurt. I've not yet seen any research comparing yogurt with its alternatives.
Worth noting that the "added sugar" in a lot of oat milks is a regulatory labelling artifact, and it doesn't appear in some places. They've undergone an enzyme treatment that converts some starch into sugar, but the total carbohydrate content isn't changed.
Bingo. Most oat milks, including standard Oatly, have significant added processed vegetable oils to achieve the fattiness that most expect from milk. Can’t be healthy.
The only one I’ve found without them is an Oatly “lite” version but even that is hard to find.
I tried soy and almond and didn't care for them at all. When oat milk was all the rage I wrote it off as hype. Last week I decided to buy a half gallon of planet oat unsweetened original and I was surprised how much I liked it. I actually wound up pouring small cups as a treat and finished the half gallon in a week. I bought the dark chocolate version yesterday to give it a go. It has a pleasant coca flavor without being too chocolaty or sweet. Its like a thin chocolate shake. Dangerous as I drank 2/3 of it already.
Maybe I'm just unlucky with brand/batch but I found the opposite: oat milk I bought that was specifically marketed as being ideal for coffee has a rank, salty taste and frankly I'd rather drink or mix something obviously different but pleasant like coconut or almond milk
Ditto. Did not enjoy Oatly, but the store brand was great for use in cereal (and I drank regular milk forever). It was the same for my kids. Not complaining since the store brand is even cheaper.
iirc the taste was ok but I was unimpressed with the nutrition label. I tried a pea-based milk substitute and loved the flavor and the nutrition label. Just wish it wasn't so expensive (got it on a one-off sale for 50% off)
Normally I don't like indulging in pedantic things like this, but I think I'm on-board with "we shouldn't call the stuff that doesn't come out of mammals 'Milk?'"
It just doesn't fit with how we seem to most often use words in foods et al, e.g: We call it 'egg substitute' or 'krab' when the thing is not the thing.
The only outlier I can think of here is things like 'Root Beer' and 'Ginger Ale' and we know why those are that way.
Let's see, how about mincemeat, mountain oysters, pork butt, Welsh rabbit, prairie oyster, black pudding, sweetbreads, and (the most delicious of the bunch) beavertails.
There are plenty of names of foods that do not at all describe the actual ingredients in them, and people get along just fine. Nobody believes almonds have tiny mammary glands that are being milked. As long as you clearly label the source ingredient (almond, soy, oat, etc.) for reasons of preference and allergens, nobody's getting confused here.
Right, perfectly reasonable. I'm still sort of on the fence.
I guess where I would respond though is: Most of what you're talking about are singular rare-ish exceptions. We're talking about a very common staple here (which means, yes, there will be confusion of some sort, perhaps in baking?)
I think my reasoning here is, we're not calling margarine "plant butter," we're not talking about "tapioca/potato eggs" (had to look that one up.)
Overall, even, I feel like things would go smoother if we used some other word, e.g. I know "Silk" is trademarked, but something along those lines.
We've been using "soy milk" for the better part of a century and we all know what it means. I don't see how this isn't more like "root beer" now, even if the etymological story isn't quite the same.
(edit: see below, attested for many centuries -- 'milk' as non-animal milks.)
And “almond milk” for almost a thousand years (it was big in the Middle Ages because it was then not acceptable amongst many Christian and Muslim communities to use milk during fasting periods).
Given that the title of the post is "Alternative Milks" I think the general usage of "milk" is simply a shorthand for "alternative milks" which would be synonymous with your want to call them milk substitutes.
Not only milky liquids are called "milk", but oily liquids are called "oil" e.g. fish oil (etymologically oil refers only to oil extracted from olives, but already Pliny the Elder used the name "fish oil" and many other oil names for oils extracted from other things than olives) and buttery substances are called "butter", e.g. cocoa butter, even if the bu- from butter means cow (in Greek).
Its as ridiculous as when I see a package in the store labelled “beefless beef.” Why not just call it what it is, which is plant based ground chuck. Beefless beef sounds like something from rick and morty. Lots of things have some references to chicken too.
Nut/Seed drinks are not milks. They're just as much milk as coffee is tea and apple juice is vodka.
It's absolute nonsense to call it milk, just because some "clever" marketing department somewhere decided to name it such in an effort to peddle their product more effectively.
I have recently started drinking almond milk. It does feel like a rip-off because a 1 litre carton of almond milk is approximately 97% water, 2% almonds, 1% thickeners.
Companies charge what they think the market will pay and in this case, consumers (like me!) are willing to pay for almond milk even when it costs more than fresh dairy milk.
But make up your own mind: is almond milk a rip-off given the ingredients? Or a perfectly fine product? Here are the ingredients for two different unsweentened almond milk brands:
- Alpro Almond Milk - 1 litre (Alpro is a popular European brand)
I have noticed the same problems with the ingredients.
Some time ago I have bought samples of 6 or 7 brands of various kinds of vegetable milks and I have tested the results of making vanilla cream and cocoa cream when the cow milk is substituted with cashew milk, almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk and so on.
The creams with vegetable milk were acceptable, but I also did not like the list of ingredients found in all brands, without exception.
There is no doubt that instead of buying commercial vegetable milk it is far more healthy to just buy almonds, cashew nuts etc. and make milk yourself using just water, whenever you need it.
The problem is that you need to have a suitable blender and much more importantly you have to spend extra time with this activity instead of just buying the milk.
It is likely that the commercial vegetable milk needs stabilizers and emulsifiers to have a reasonable shelf life.
If you make yourself vegetable milk and consume it immediately, there is no need for those.
Alpro is part of Danone. I generally avoid their products because of the amount of thickeners, emulsifiers, sugars etc. they add.
Emulsifiers lead to a more stable drink that does not coagulate when poured into coffee. Thickeners and sugar probably let them get away with lower almond content.
They’ve missed pea milk, which as far as I remember is even more efficient than soy.
Though people are a bit weird about peas; while a lot of meat substitutes use pea protein, they’re virtually never marketed as such. Oat and even soy protein seem to be more consumer friendly.
I've lifted weights recreationally for 20 years and find most of the dogma and heated debate about dairy products fascinating. It's not uncommon to see a fitness enthusiast warning about the dangers of dairy while simultaneously selling nutrition supplements derived from milk as part of a multilevel marketing scheme.
At this point, I think everyone should have the dignity to believe what they want to believe. But personally, I consider all milk substitutes to be a waste of time unless someone has a specific reason (like lactose intolerance) to drink them.
Some other truths that people love to debate for some reason: yes dairy is horrible for the environment so it is best to eat it in moderation if you aren't exercising (best to get to it soon though). Yes diary is always more ethical than meat. Yes most nutrition advice post-WWII is propaganda put out to bolster certain big agriculture companies. Yes high cholesterol in the body probably has more to do with genetics and other risk factors than how much cholesterol is consumed.
The fastest way to get healthy that I know of is to go on the gallon of milk a day (GOMAD) diet and hit the gym 3 times per week for 45 minutes or less with no cardio. This is 1970s "technology" but it works.. astoundingly well. I used it in my 20s with great results.
The rest of the hype, eh, I try to tune it out. Avoid dairy to save the planet, that's great. Avoid dairy to save your health and.. your health will probably decline because it's usually something else like poor work-life balance or a sedentary lifestyle that's the culprit.
Strength is only one aspect of healthy. Another is longevity, and yet another is avoiding illness. I.e. do powerlifters live longer? Are they less likely to develop cancers?
Furthermore, being healthy in your 20s is like not having engine problems in a brand new car.
> One way I tried to do this, was to switch the kind of milk I drink. This also had a secondary impact on reducing my environmental impact.
This is why I'm not hopeful that lab grown meat will be transformational. We already have a handful of sustainable, widely available, and affordable cow milk alternatives right now and people aren't switching over in droves. Getting people to change their habits is hard without a huge incentive. I can't see how lab grown meat is going to be substantially cheaper (soy/rice/oat milk is more expensive than cow milk in the UK still) or much better tasting to make people switch.
I see people saying things like "I'm sure to switch when it's cheaper and tastes the same or better" but I'm not sure how we'll avoid global warming when people aren't willing to really change anything (vs only willing to switch to identical alternatives).
Something I've noticed about both vegan/plant-based customers and the industry, is that no one is willing to change their eating habits.
Asian and African cuisine are far less reliant on meat (as a percent of their diet) to bring flavor to their food. However, I rarely see vegans driving adoption for Indian/Haitian/west-african food. Instead it is the same old efforts towards mastering the vegan beef patty/sausage and vegan pizza. Guess what, India has had an amazing mc Aloo Tikki & mcVeggie in McDonald's for 20 years and they taste better than any vegan burger that is readily available. Let alone native dishes that are far more aligned with vegan ingredients.
As long as our diets are reliant on meat and dairy as the sources of flavor and lynchpins of the cuisines, we won't see a perceptible change in net contributions to environmental degradation and climate change.
At the same time, the recycle campaigns of the 2000s have shown that expecting ground up action from the customer almost never works. There needs to be a production side once give to push sustainable solutions. Maybe we could start with. Ew balancing subsidies to push sustainable practises in the food industry. But food luck getting past that lobby.
> Asian and African cuisine are far less reliant on meat (as a percent of their diet) to bring flavor to their food. However, I rarely see vegans driving adoption for Indian/Haitian/west-african food. Instead it is the same old efforts towards mastering the vegan beef patty/sausage and vegan pizza. Guess what, India has had an amazing mc Aloo Tikki & mcVeggie in McDonald's for 20 years and they taste better than any vegan burger that is readily available. Let alone native dishes that are far more aligned with vegan ingredients.
I agree with this. It's odd when you think about it that many people expect cow, chicken, pig or cheese to be part of every meal they eat.
The alternative to meat shouldn't be Beyond burgers, it should be plants, vegetables, tofu, tempeh, setain etc. and a change in mindset about food.
> However, I rarely see vegans driving adoption for Indian/Haitian/west-african food.
I really question if you actually know any/many vegans saying this. "Meat substitutes" are far more common among people who aren't very serious about it, are only just trying to shift their diet, or are only really doing it for dubious 'health' reasons.
Any vegan I've ever known who's been vegan for more than a couple years has a diet that consists almost exclusively of meals designed around vegetables, with maybe one or two things like you're talking about as nostalgia-pleasers.
That said, "alternative milks" are not like beyond burgers. Liquids that contain fat, protein, and sugar are almost universally called milks and have been for a very long time, and are very useful in daily use and for cooking.
Just because something resembles a meat or dairy product doesn't mean it exists solely to be a placating replacement. Sometimes it's just a convenient form factor. Like, a black bean patty is nothing like a beef patty. But you eat it the same way. Oh no they're copying meat!
If by "driving adoption" you mean being the cause of a shift to these things I dunno what you really expect. Vegans are a vanishing minority of all people in terms of "western" diets, they can't drive the market to the corner store.
> I rarely see vegans driving adoption for Indian/Haitian/west-african food.
As a vegan-ish non-indian american person, i am a huge advocate for more indian food. I LOVE indian food.
But not everyone is onboard. I see the issue more to do with culture and flavor than anything. Americans want american food not indian food (at least in part). Thats why impossible burgers are more popular than Aloo burgers.
On the flip side, i see tofu appearing in all sorts of dishes, even Tofu tacos and the like. This is because tofu is less imposing. You can make tofu whatever you want (like meat), which is not as true of more flavorful alternatives from eg. india. This makes it a better "gateway" alternative". Thats why alt-milk is getting popular now - its just milk, but made differently and now better. Everyone already knows and likes Almonds and Oats, so why be nervous about the change?
I have noticed that very few of the products launched are actual ingredients in food. They sort of are the food. With tofu, there are a gazillion ways to cook and prepare it. With these other foods there is one way, and then you serve it differently.
I have a tendency to always come back to tofu, tempeh and seitan. They are extremely versatile, and at least the first two feel "healthy". Soy mince makes me extremely full and leaves me feeling bloated all day. Sure, I eat it sometimes (it is probably the only one of the more modern products In regularly eat), but it is never my preferred food.
There are plenty of vegans who don't regularly use meat substitutes. Imo, it seems like most of them are more directed to curious meat-eaters rather than vegans.
Lab-grown meat (and presumably lab-produced milk) are going to be a different sort of product than Morning Star patties or Pea Milk. Lab-grown meat would be meat, not merely some thing that is vaguely meat-like.
I really like soy milk and almond milk, but they remain twice as expensive as milk and distinct in taste.
I'm not sure anyone thinks that lab-grown meat will go through the roof if it's not cheaper than farm-grown meat.
Sure but very few of those affordable cow milk alternatives are a really good facsimile.
I've had so many of them and the pea protein ones are probably the closest in texture and the barista oat milk tastes pretty good but none of them are exact copies.
Lab grown meat is by definition a good facsimile. I don't think people care too much if it spent time as part of a cow or in a bag/vat.
Maybe people aren't switching over in droves but when I opened up my 21 yr. old daughter's fridge the other day she had oat, soy and almond milk in there but no dairy.
Personally, I like all the alternatives except soy but my goto remains 2% cow milk for my tea in the morning. All other uses I could switch to alternatives without too much pain.
We need to get rid of all meat and dairy subsidies asap. If the price of milk and meat reflected their social costs then consumption would drop pretty quickly
Lab grown meat (and milk, for that matter; there’s some work on that) should taste much like real meat. Milk substitutes don’t really taste like real milk.
It’s also likely that at some point animal agriculture subsidy will end, and cost of externalities may be tacked on. At that point price will influence consumer behaviour. Plant ‘milks’ are currently more expensive than actual milk largely because farmers don’t have to pay for emissions, largely don’t have to pay for water, and are quite heavily subsidised in other ways; this can’t continue indefinitely.
So why aren't we demanding incentives? Let's make policy which causes plant-based diets to be the path of least resistance for most people. We do this for plenty of other things.
They are taste very differently and every time I try to make baked foods with substitute milk something is wrong. Lab meat has appeal because is the exact same.
In the EU, people are switching over in droves - to the point that the dairy lobby got a law passed that they cannot be called milk, and cannot be advertised in ways evocative of milk.
Readit News
Used water makes it back into the global water cycle someplace. The concern is when we deplete a local water cycle or destroy habitats in our use of it.
You say it's irresponsible to compare the two, then immediately proceed to do it!
Perhaps you meant to say that it was irresponsible to imply they were similar? In any case, rational decision-making requires comparing options, and reactions of disgust are generally unproductive, both for thinking and for debating.
Deleted Comment
Better question...given the nutritional information on goat's milk painting it as more nutrient rich - why aren't we all drinking it?
Trees don't really give back water, they just consume.
My takeaway is that, for water consumption/concerns, alternative milks aren't really beneficial, especially as you mention in California.
I still do believe they have other benefits though (land use, CO2, nutrition, etc.) which is why I keep buying them.
Quick summary based on hazy memory
- Cow breeding isn't inherently bad. It depends how industrialised the process is
- Not all land can grow crop while cow glazes on infertile land.
- The water usage in raising cow does not account for where the water come from. It come from natural rain water if the cow is relatively free-ranged. Growing almond/oat on the other hand definitely rely on irrigation water. California wastes majority (can't remember the percentage) of its precious water on growing almonds
edit: https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources contains some infographics of those quick facts
But in places like California, and the American Southwest in general, dairy farming is not sustainable. In the Colorado River basin, over 50% of the water is used for cows in some fashion (drinking water for the animals, irrigation for food crops, etc). It's just not responsible.
Soy and oats, which are grown in places with lots of water, transported dry and in bulk (i.e. the trucks are not hauling water) and reconstituted locally, are much more responsible. My preference is for soy since it provides a lot more protein.
Also, that website compares meat to "avocados, walnuts or sugar", 3 foods well known to require lots of water.
Is there even enough "infertile land" in the USA to produce grass to feed enough dairy cows for USA consumption? I doubt it.
So that argument still leads to drastic reduction in dairy consumption required, and in the USA anyway probably much higher dairy prices.
Like just take a look at their meat won't kill you infographic ,it just shows the total daily calories from various sources. It has nothing to do with the actual title ! The whole website got incredibly high production quality but is intellectually bankrupt.
Those are my two main uses for milk so I dont really buy regular milk anymore unless I need it to cook with or something.
Deleted Comment
I think it's a good replacement. Since I eat a lot of _replacement_ foods, you kind of learn that you don't need that 100% to appreciate it for what it is. It's all learned taste.
I usually drink my coffee black, but a long time ago I made the switch to soy milk, and after a while it became natural in coffee. Oat latte's are pretty great too.
Have you had similar issues?
It also serves as a great ingredient in beverages and avoids the allergen & California drought issues of almond milk.
For example, Oatly has 7g of added sugars, rapeseed oil and a few other additives.
The only one I’ve found without them is an Oatly “lite” version but even that is hard to find.
Try brands/packaging explicitly made for baristas. I find them perfect for coffee. It even works for frothing and steaming if you're into that.
It just doesn't fit with how we seem to most often use words in foods et al, e.g: We call it 'egg substitute' or 'krab' when the thing is not the thing.
The only outlier I can think of here is things like 'Root Beer' and 'Ginger Ale' and we know why those are that way.
There are plenty of names of foods that do not at all describe the actual ingredients in them, and people get along just fine. Nobody believes almonds have tiny mammary glands that are being milked. As long as you clearly label the source ingredient (almond, soy, oat, etc.) for reasons of preference and allergens, nobody's getting confused here.
I guess where I would respond though is: Most of what you're talking about are singular rare-ish exceptions. We're talking about a very common staple here (which means, yes, there will be confusion of some sort, perhaps in baking?)
I think my reasoning here is, we're not calling margarine "plant butter," we're not talking about "tapioca/potato eggs" (had to look that one up.)
Overall, even, I feel like things would go smoother if we used some other word, e.g. I know "Silk" is trademarked, but something along those lines.
(edit: see below, attested for many centuries -- 'milk' as non-animal milks.)
> Of milk-like plant juices or saps from c. 1200.
Deleted Comment
Nut/Seed drinks are not milks. They're just as much milk as coffee is tea and apple juice is vodka.
It's absolute nonsense to call it milk, just because some "clever" marketing department somewhere decided to name it such in an effort to peddle their product more effectively.
You brew coffee and you brew tea. Tea is plant products brewed in hot water, and coffee is... a plant product in hot water?
We call all sorts of soups soup even though they contain different ingredients, so why not Milk?
Companies charge what they think the market will pay and in this case, consumers (like me!) are willing to pay for almond milk even when it costs more than fresh dairy milk.
But make up your own mind: is almond milk a rip-off given the ingredients? Or a perfectly fine product? Here are the ingredients for two different unsweentened almond milk brands:
- Alpro Almond Milk - 1 litre (Alpro is a popular European brand)
Water, Almonds (2.3%), Calcium (Tri-Calcium Phosphate), Sea Salt, Stabilisers (Locust Bean Gum, Gellan Gum), Emulsifier (Lecithins (Sunflower)), Vitamins (B2, B12, E, D2)
- Asda Almond Milk - 1 litre (UK supermarket own brand)
Water, Almonds (2%), Emulsifier (Sunflower Lecithins), Calcium Phosphate, Stabilisers (Gellan Gum, Carboxy Methyl Cellulose, Xanthan Gum), Salt, Potassium Iodide, Vitamins (B12, D2, B2)
Prices:
- Alpro: £1.80 ($2.50, 2.10€)
- Asda: £0.85 ($1.15, 1.00€)
Some time ago I have bought samples of 6 or 7 brands of various kinds of vegetable milks and I have tested the results of making vanilla cream and cocoa cream when the cow milk is substituted with cashew milk, almond milk, coconut milk, soy milk and so on.
The creams with vegetable milk were acceptable, but I also did not like the list of ingredients found in all brands, without exception.
There is no doubt that instead of buying commercial vegetable milk it is far more healthy to just buy almonds, cashew nuts etc. and make milk yourself using just water, whenever you need it.
The problem is that you need to have a suitable blender and much more importantly you have to spend extra time with this activity instead of just buying the milk.
It is likely that the commercial vegetable milk needs stabilizers and emulsifiers to have a reasonable shelf life.
If you make yourself vegetable milk and consume it immediately, there is no need for those.
Emulsifiers lead to a more stable drink that does not coagulate when poured into coffee. Thickeners and sugar probably let them get away with lower almond content.
There are much better options, but I can't tell you where to find them in the UK. For instance, this almond milk is made of only water, almonds (7%) and sea salt: https://www.alnatura.de/de-de/produkte/alle-produkte/milch-u...
With 70g of almonds per liter for EUR 2.69 it's about twice as expensive as unprocessed almonds from the same brand.
Though people are a bit weird about peas; while a lot of meat substitutes use pea protein, they’re virtually never marketed as such. Oat and even soy protein seem to be more consumer friendly.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/entrepreneurship/csiro-brews...
I've lifted weights recreationally for 20 years and find most of the dogma and heated debate about dairy products fascinating. It's not uncommon to see a fitness enthusiast warning about the dangers of dairy while simultaneously selling nutrition supplements derived from milk as part of a multilevel marketing scheme.
At this point, I think everyone should have the dignity to believe what they want to believe. But personally, I consider all milk substitutes to be a waste of time unless someone has a specific reason (like lactose intolerance) to drink them.
Some other truths that people love to debate for some reason: yes dairy is horrible for the environment so it is best to eat it in moderation if you aren't exercising (best to get to it soon though). Yes diary is always more ethical than meat. Yes most nutrition advice post-WWII is propaganda put out to bolster certain big agriculture companies. Yes high cholesterol in the body probably has more to do with genetics and other risk factors than how much cholesterol is consumed.
The fastest way to get healthy that I know of is to go on the gallon of milk a day (GOMAD) diet and hit the gym 3 times per week for 45 minutes or less with no cardio. This is 1970s "technology" but it works.. astoundingly well. I used it in my 20s with great results.
The rest of the hype, eh, I try to tune it out. Avoid dairy to save the planet, that's great. Avoid dairy to save your health and.. your health will probably decline because it's usually something else like poor work-life balance or a sedentary lifestyle that's the culprit.
Furthermore, being healthy in your 20s is like not having engine problems in a brand new car.
How do you figure that?
This is why I'm not hopeful that lab grown meat will be transformational. We already have a handful of sustainable, widely available, and affordable cow milk alternatives right now and people aren't switching over in droves. Getting people to change their habits is hard without a huge incentive. I can't see how lab grown meat is going to be substantially cheaper (soy/rice/oat milk is more expensive than cow milk in the UK still) or much better tasting to make people switch.
I see people saying things like "I'm sure to switch when it's cheaper and tastes the same or better" but I'm not sure how we'll avoid global warming when people aren't willing to really change anything (vs only willing to switch to identical alternatives).
Asian and African cuisine are far less reliant on meat (as a percent of their diet) to bring flavor to their food. However, I rarely see vegans driving adoption for Indian/Haitian/west-african food. Instead it is the same old efforts towards mastering the vegan beef patty/sausage and vegan pizza. Guess what, India has had an amazing mc Aloo Tikki & mcVeggie in McDonald's for 20 years and they taste better than any vegan burger that is readily available. Let alone native dishes that are far more aligned with vegan ingredients.
As long as our diets are reliant on meat and dairy as the sources of flavor and lynchpins of the cuisines, we won't see a perceptible change in net contributions to environmental degradation and climate change.
At the same time, the recycle campaigns of the 2000s have shown that expecting ground up action from the customer almost never works. There needs to be a production side once give to push sustainable solutions. Maybe we could start with. Ew balancing subsidies to push sustainable practises in the food industry. But food luck getting past that lobby.
I agree with this. It's odd when you think about it that many people expect cow, chicken, pig or cheese to be part of every meal they eat.
The alternative to meat shouldn't be Beyond burgers, it should be plants, vegetables, tofu, tempeh, setain etc. and a change in mindset about food.
I really question if you actually know any/many vegans saying this. "Meat substitutes" are far more common among people who aren't very serious about it, are only just trying to shift their diet, or are only really doing it for dubious 'health' reasons.
Any vegan I've ever known who's been vegan for more than a couple years has a diet that consists almost exclusively of meals designed around vegetables, with maybe one or two things like you're talking about as nostalgia-pleasers.
That said, "alternative milks" are not like beyond burgers. Liquids that contain fat, protein, and sugar are almost universally called milks and have been for a very long time, and are very useful in daily use and for cooking.
Just because something resembles a meat or dairy product doesn't mean it exists solely to be a placating replacement. Sometimes it's just a convenient form factor. Like, a black bean patty is nothing like a beef patty. But you eat it the same way. Oh no they're copying meat!
If by "driving adoption" you mean being the cause of a shift to these things I dunno what you really expect. Vegans are a vanishing minority of all people in terms of "western" diets, they can't drive the market to the corner store.
> I rarely see vegans driving adoption for Indian/Haitian/west-african food.
As a vegan-ish non-indian american person, i am a huge advocate for more indian food. I LOVE indian food.
But not everyone is onboard. I see the issue more to do with culture and flavor than anything. Americans want american food not indian food (at least in part). Thats why impossible burgers are more popular than Aloo burgers.
On the flip side, i see tofu appearing in all sorts of dishes, even Tofu tacos and the like. This is because tofu is less imposing. You can make tofu whatever you want (like meat), which is not as true of more flavorful alternatives from eg. india. This makes it a better "gateway" alternative". Thats why alt-milk is getting popular now - its just milk, but made differently and now better. Everyone already knows and likes Almonds and Oats, so why be nervous about the change?
I have a tendency to always come back to tofu, tempeh and seitan. They are extremely versatile, and at least the first two feel "healthy". Soy mince makes me extremely full and leaves me feeling bloated all day. Sure, I eat it sometimes (it is probably the only one of the more modern products In regularly eat), but it is never my preferred food.
But I do think in general people will buy whatever's cheapest, and it is an uphill battle against the many dairy assistance programs the government provides: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/animal-products/dairy/policy...
I really like soy milk and almond milk, but they remain twice as expensive as milk and distinct in taste.
I'm not sure anyone thinks that lab-grown meat will go through the roof if it's not cheaper than farm-grown meat.
I've had so many of them and the pea protein ones are probably the closest in texture and the barista oat milk tastes pretty good but none of them are exact copies.
Lab grown meat is by definition a good facsimile. I don't think people care too much if it spent time as part of a cow or in a bag/vat.
Personally, I like all the alternatives except soy but my goto remains 2% cow milk for my tea in the morning. All other uses I could switch to alternatives without too much pain.
If the trend continues, in 6 years, they're likely to make up ~50%.
[1] https://www.totallyveganbuzz.com/news/vegan-milk-sales-grow-...
Deleted Comment
It’s also likely that at some point animal agriculture subsidy will end, and cost of externalities may be tacked on. At that point price will influence consumer behaviour. Plant ‘milks’ are currently more expensive than actual milk largely because farmers don’t have to pay for emissions, largely don’t have to pay for water, and are quite heavily subsidised in other ways; this can’t continue indefinitely.