Milk alternatives produce up to 4.5x less greenhouse gas emissions as milk (opens in new tab)

Same - not veggie but switched to oat milk (despite not liking it much at first) and now strongly prefer the taste, texture, and all of the other benefits like fridge longevity, lack of smell if I leave a thermos with a latte for a few days, etc.

When it comes to Oatly... It tastes good, but that's because it contains plenty of sugars. You'll notice the difference when you make your own oat milk from oats. It's tastes quite terrible actually.

Oatly adds enzymes to break down the starches to sugar.

https://www.gq.com/story/oatly-nutrition-ipo

Yes, longer fridge life is a nice benefit. I have some heavy cream for baking, but use soy milk fine in most sweet recipes.

There's more variation in alternative milks, even within one type, than cow milk. We're mostly soymilk (bean milk, the kids call it), but it took a little while to find one that didn't feel chalky or weird. Happily it's the store brand that's $2 a half gallon. Settled on soy creamer, which is not as thick as dairy creamer but next best thing among non-dairy that tastes good.

With you on cheese! It's what makes plant burgers taste good.

It makes superior hot chocolate as it doesn't burn as it boils compared to regular milk

Do we need big kids? Milk has a ton of calories and could be contributing to childhood obesity: https://nutritionfacts.org/2017/03/16/how-milk-may-contribut...

Milk should be the beverage of choice for growing kids who do not have contraindications. 3.25% milk is recommended up until 2 years of age, and to continue into older age if there are no issues with obesity.

(1) https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/nutrition/i...

As I understand, the reason why children are encouraged to drink milk is mostly about calcium. Many milk alternatives now have the same or more calcium per litre as cow's milk. When you say "growth" is this about bone (calcium) or muscle (protein) growth? In my experience, protein per litre is generally lower for milk alternatives.

100% this. These dairy cows aren't magically unlocking some deeply seated fossil carbon and farting it into the atmosphere. Nature already has a carbon cycle that works in harmony between plants and animals, let's try and work with it and emulate it rather than use even more energy and other resources to produce these highly processed goods. If you are vegan go for it, if you care about the environment stick with milk made from cows which graze on open grass land.

This is talked about literally daily. Unfortunately your message comes off as whataboutism in disguise. Let's focus on the fact that milk alternatives are good and cow farming is problematic in this thread.

Actually we haven't evolved to digest milk after childhood that well:

    While most infants can digest lactose, many people begin to develop lactose malabsorption—a reduced ability to digest lactose—after infancy. Experts estimate that about 68 percent of the world’s population has lactose malabsorption.1
    Lactose malabsorption is more common in some parts of the world than in others. In Africa and Asia, most people have lactose malabsorption. In some regions, such as northern Europe, many people carry a gene that allows them to digest lactose after infancy, and lactose malabsorption is less common.1,2 In the United States, about 36 percent of people have lactose malabsorption.1
    While lactose malabsorption causes lactose intolerance, not all people with lactose malabsorption have lactose intolerance.

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/digestive-disea...

Soy milk is hundreds of years old. I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that the hormone drop is caused by soy milk. American bison digest far better than cows and don't produce methane. What is natural about millions of cows in factories producing milk? Additionally these cows are being fed enormous amounts of gmo monocrops in order to produce. Almond milk is indeed a wasteful product, but the misallocation of scarce water due to regulation is not the same thing as greenhouse gases.

Most soy is AFAIK used as food for farm animals. I wouldn't worry about it, many cultures were eating soy products since millennia and they were fine the whole time. Tofu is just solid soy milk.

Almond milk contains almost no almonds (and tastes horrible IMO, but YMMV, may also just be the brand I tried), I would assume that it's not that big of a chunk of the global almond production.

But in any case, oat milk should be safe, right? It's just a very watery porridge, isn't it? :D

Soy is not exactly a new thing in the history of humans. In fact some of the most populous regions on earth have been eating it widely for a very long time so it seems pretty low down on the list of fertility risk factors to be honest.

You realize a good portion of the human population is (and has always been) lactose intolerant to some degree right?

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langas/article/PIIS2468-1...

Soy milk hasn't been the favored alternative for a decade or more. Vegetable products are going to make more sense than adults breast-feeding from animals they don't even know.

Can't wait until such "real milk" replacements are broadly, cheapish-ly available, so we can get "real" vegan cheese, butter, cream and curd. IMO all current options there suck big time (but YMMV, of course) :D

Thanks for pointing this out, I agree that the article should have mentioned this! I bet this varies widely from country to country too. (e.g. the French probably have a higher cheese-to-fluid ratio than other countries)

Even though it doesn't represent the majority of milk usage, maybe we shouldn't dismiss fluid milk entirely, since it's an easy first step.

As a lactose intolerant person personally I love the fact that there is now a wide proliferation of non-diary creamers that aren't gross french vanilla coffee mate stuff. I used to drink my coffee black because that stuff always made me feel sick. Now I can enjoy it with some almond or oat milk.

"Milk" still means "cows milk" at every coffee shop I've been to, and I would be embarrassed to say "cows milk", as if I'm importing some internet culture war into the real world. Literally everyone will know what you mean if you say "with milk", unless you are at some specifically vegan coffee shop.

I'm not a vegan and I'm not lactose intolerant, but I'm 100% convinced that oat milk in coffee tastes much better than other options. It smoothes out the acidity and adds a mild nutty aroma. Almond milk and soy milk are good too, but oat is the best.

Dairy is not going anywhere in your lifetime, you (and I) don't have to worry. Choice is good.

I think the best ice-cream is dairy-free.

I've always been a huge ice-cream fan so the fact that it's been retooled in a more addictive form is very concerning.

> What percentage of land use for dairy cows is arable?

Pretty much all of it. It's either being used directly for grass, or indirectly to grow grains which are fed to the cows.

> What percentage of greenhouse gas emissions are added to the environment over already existing in the environment and just being moved?

I think the number itself is the amount over what already existed.

Cows emit a lot of methane, and are in fact the single largest source of agricultural GHG emissions globally. As I understand it, there's a fair bit of research going into how to reduce emissions from cows, but it would also be good to reduce the number of cows if possible.

If it’s not arable then the cow’s food has to come from arable land somewhere else. You can’t just put a cow on a rock and expect it to produce milk.

It’s not just about land use for cows directly, but also for their feed. Industrial dairy farms have way more cows than just the land can support.

Not if this is related, but WaPo published a big story on how American beef consumption is destroying the Amazon today:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/amazon...

This is more about beef than milk, but the situation is likely very similar.

"Are Cows really Bad for the Planet? Why did we start blaming them?":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdrhpThqlCo

The milk alternatives that can achieve the same foaminess can cost 2x the price of regular milk, so I guess it makes sense

As a badly lactose intolerant person, I get that oatmilk is 2x the cost. But please, you are putting in 15 cents of oatmilk, and charging 0.75 to 1.00 extra for it.

A small cup of black coffee with oatmilk for $3.50. Please.

There's still a rather significant cost difference between the two. In my local market, a one gallon container of whole milk is $3.89 retail, while the barista-blend of Califa Oat Milk is $4.39 for a one quart container (or $4.99 for a half gal of Oatly).

Because it costs them more.

The fact that it's more ecological to produce doesn't translate to lower prices for many reasons.

Not really super surprising— the volumes are way lower and there's less subsidizing going on. On a grocery store shelf here in Ontario, you can get 4L of 2% regular milk for $5. But the Earth's Own products, which include oat and soy milk? Those are more like $6 for a single litre.

Beyond the cost from the supplier, perhaps because there is a greater overhead associated with supplying that milk to a minority of customers. If everyone was drinking oat milk by default I don't think there would be a $1 upcharge.

It costs more.

it costs more... but only because the dairy industry is heavily subsidized.

Sure we're burning down the planet and allocating massive amounts of water to feed and maintain livestock during drought conditions.

BUT! The ranchers need their 5th house and the proles need their artificially cheap meat that is blocking their arteries.

( not a vegan just annoyed by mis-allocation of resources )

they'd roughly cost the same if not for dairy subsidies

This really pisses me off, even starbucks charges like a dollar for almond/oat milk.

I don’t see what your point is… this isn’t an either or thing.

It’s not literally milk, but these are clearly milk substitutes, where people use them when they would otherwise use milk.

There is a death spiral that can occur when demand for dairy milk declines below a level where the supply chain can no longer support itself economically. Milk consumption is down 40% from the 70s in the US, 2730 dairy farms went out of business between 2018 and 2020, and if I had to hazard a guess, younger folks are going to prefer non dairy alternatives (for a variety of reasons).

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2020/jan/06/us-dairy-indust...

And how many people are those "some people?" If it's less than 100% of all current milk drinkers, there is some benefit to be had, and the more people that are comfortable with milk substitutes more often, the greater that benefit. The point is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not get to 0, which isn't possible with milk alternatives either.

Saying you will never give up something regardless of the costs is the definition of being unreasonable

Here's the math: https://mrdrscienceteacher.wordpress.com/2019/09/21/bison-vs...

Presumably you're referring to this report: https://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/global-resources-outlo...

"The extraction and processing of natural resources has accelerated over the last two decades, and accounts for more than 90 per cent of our biodiversity loss and water stress and approximately half of our climate change impacts."

This includes farming, as well as extraction of fossil fuels, minerals etc. In fact, the climate change impact of farming (biomass extraction) is about the same as fossil fuel extraction, according to that study.

Here's a guardian article about the report (but the official summary is also very readable): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/12/resource...

Barely scratched the surface on the first two tbh, but it makes complete sense to do this.

Changing their diet with some kind of algae reduces metane emisions by a lot.

I don't have a source at hand right now but you can look it up.

Thankfully, this isn't the only think people are trying to be better about. I think it's good to try and tackle a problem from multiple angles.

I also don't think anyone is trying to (realistically) take away your milk. It is useful though to inform people about the impacts of their choice, and let them make an informed decision.

> no surprise, seeing as how most of eco-leftism is really just propaganda aimed to increasing profits.

Maybe, or maybe the incumbent products are massively subsidized.

The “soy can mess with hormones” meme comes from the fact that soy contains weak estrogen like compounds, and the internet has blown up about it (particularly in health and fitness circles where there’s a good deal of concern about maintaining one’s manliness).

What gets left out is the fact that phytoestrogens are ubiquitous, found in many plant foods. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogen?wprov=sfti1

The soy thing is if you drink gallons a day for years. I'm not aware of any long term studies that found anything.

The fear surrounding soy milk were unfounded. No studies have shown an impact on us but the proposition that it could is very persistent.

Most oat milk people are drinking have half its calories from processed vegetable oils. There have been many threads on HN about the unhealthy issues with these oils. Get the ones that are just oats and water, but they won't be "creamy" like milk without fats.

Having consumed some of the grain-based alternatives, that's a "nope" from me.

Let's for a moment assume that an almond tree serves no other purpose than to produce almonds (for almond milk), and a dairy cow serves no other purpose than to produce milk.

The average dairy cow produces 2320 gallons of milk per year. Dairy cows drink 40 gallons of water per day, which is about 14600 gallons per year. A grown dairy cow eats about 30 pounds of food per day - 50% grain and 50% grass, so about 5475 pounds of grain per year. It takes 127 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of maize. Not counting the water requirements for grass, and assuming that our cow only eats maize, we'll need 695325 gallons to of water to feed the cow.

It takes 22000 gallons of water to irrigate an acre of land. Each acre produces 2 tons of hay, so we'll need 11000 gallons per ton of hay or 11 gallons per pound, which is 60225 gallons of water for grass.

Total water consumption of 1 cow per year for grass + grain + drinking water = 770150 gallons.

That brings us to needing 770150 gallons of water to produce 2320 gallons of cow milk. So, about 331 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of cow milk.

They say that each almond requires 1.1 gallons of water. 1 pound of shelled almonds = 3.63 cups of almonds. There are 416 almonds in a pound. So, about 26 per ounce, and 208 per cup. There are 16 cups in a gallon. To make almond milk, we mix 6 cups of water for each cup of almonds, which will yield us about 6.5 cups of almond milk. It'll take 2.46 cups of almonds to make 1 gallon of almond milk, so 512 almonds, so 563 gallons of water.

Things we're not accounting for in the above comparison:

The water cost of producing pesticides, fertilizers.

The water cost of producing health treatments for cows.

The water cost of producing diesel to transport grains to the cows.

The water cost of producing electricity and packaging.

I'm sure I'm missing a lot.

Sources:

- https://albertamilk.com/ask-dairy-farmer/what-do-dairy-cows-...

- https://dairy-cattle.extension.org/how-much-milk-does-the-av...

- https://thelivestockexpert.com/how-much-water-does-a-cow-dri...

- https://informedfarmers.com/how-much-grass-does-a-cow-eat/

- https://www.derthickscornmaze.com/interesting-about-corn/how...

- https://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_almonds_are_in_a_pound

- http://anniekateshomeschoolreviews.com/2011/10/shelled-vs-un...

- https://www.openfit.com/how-many-nuts-are-in-an-ounce

- https://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_water_does_it_take_to_mak...

- https://www.freightwaves.com/news/how-much-weight-can-a-big-...

- https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-many-miles-per-gallon-do-se...

- https://askinglot.com/how-much-water-does-a-farm-use-per-acr...

- https://otonomic.com/how-many-bales-of-hay-per-acre/

cow milk is an incredible nutrient rich food with associated health benefits for children. I haven't seen that milk alternatives have those benefits.

> In some countries cow milk is even subsidized

Because poor people consume it. Dairy products are also a replacement for meat if you're poor enough.

You can milk a hamster?

Has anyone checked the cave-paintings for aurochs farts?

Wait until they learn about termites!