[kpU8efre7r]

I love cow's milk but only buy local so I imagine this hurts large factory dairy farms.

With that said, I doubt I could ever bring myself to stop drinking ethically sourced milk. All of these plant based milks are overly processed, expensive, and fortified with a bunch of nutrient junk that is lacking.

[the_gastropod]

> All of these plant based milks are overly processed, expensive, and fortified with a bunch of nutrient junk that is lacking.

You can make your own very easily. Oat milk, for example, requires you to:

1. Put rolled oats into a blender

2. Put water in blender

3. Blend

4. Pour through a strainer into a container

5. Drink up

It’s dirt cheap, easy as can be, tastes great, and has no “nutrient junk”. And if you’re so inclined, you can usually buy rolled oats in the bulk bins in most grocery stores, so you can cut out unnecessary packaging too!

ETA: Putting a pitted date in for every ~2 cups of water also adds just enough sweetness to mimic the big manufacturers like Oatly and whatnot. Adding coconut flakes and/or cashews can also bump up the fattiness a bit, which is handy for a frothable “barista” style.

[p1necone]

> Putting a pitted date in for every ~2 cups of water also adds just enough sweetness

Saw this and had to moan, sorry but this particular trend is a pet peeve of mine. You know dates are sweet because they have sugar in them right? Getting an equivalent amount of sweetness from regular table sugar instead wouldn't be any less healthy, and would be much cheaper and less perishable.

I guess you get a bit of dietary fiber and trace amounts of nutrients from a date too, but that doesn't seem relevant when using them as an ingredient with other things.

[strainer]

The only well studied and clinically developed diet for people with serious irritable bowel diseases, known as FODMAP[1] focuses exclusively on minimizing specific types of sugar and carbohydrates. For a severely compromised digestive system, table sugar is likely recommended over dates as a sweetener because they are likely to contain 'free fructose' which may be fine or even better for normal digestive systems since it has lower glycemic index than glucose, but it is found to be complicating for people with serious digestion problems. This goes to show dietary sugar is not metabolically simple or equivalent as commonly thought.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5952847/

[aaronbrethorst]

As long as we’re talking FODMAP diets, be sure those rolled oats are certified gluten free. Oats are often cross contaminated with gluten. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/gluten-in-oats#contamin...

[jjeaff]

A low FODMAP diet generally permits gluten. Especially trace amounts like what you would find in oats.

Pretty much everyone should be fine with trace amounts as long as they aren't Celiacs.

[ghostly_s]

dates, like other fruit, contain sugar in proportion to dietary fiber which helps moderate intake by making you full. Yes, that effect is probably quite negligible in this application but it's certainly not a harmful rule of thumb to use whole fruits instead of refined sugar where sensible.

[dajohnson89]

Maybe OP wanted the flavor from dates, as well as the sugar.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

I'm not saying this is the case, but some fruits and vegetables have fiber that is sweet. And potentially date could act as a better emulsifier than sugar. I know people use honey and syrup over sugar in some cases -- not for the sweetness, but for the properties.

I like to blend dates in my protein shake. I think -- just like if you added blue berries or strawberries -- it gives a distinct flavor to the drink.

I'm not sure if that's desired for the oat milk or not. I'd think people would want their milk to be somewhat plain.

[criley2]

This is actually pretty bad disinformation considering the overwhelming scientific evidence indicating that eating fruit is great for your diet.

A major point is that most fruit isn't sweet enough to dramatically sweeten a product. Most people would over-sweeten their food significantly compared to using fruit. It is in fact difficult to over consume fruit from a sugar perspective, while it is comparatively trivial to over consume sugar from added refined sources.

Another benefit to fruit is that instead of being pure sugar like sugar, there are a wide variety of other more complex carbohydrates

I'll point out that fruit consumption is inversely correlated with obesity [0] while sugar consumption is positively correlated with it [1]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5084020/

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23594708

Fruit and vegetable intake is also positively correlated with basically reduction in all cause mortality but specifically heart disease and cancer https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/46/3/1029/3039477

There is more to fruit than an overly reductive idea of "sugar + fiber" and there are a lot of compounds in there from vitamins and minerals to other things. The science is clearly showing us that fruit is much more healthy for us than refined sugar, because of a variety of things including how much less sugar there is in most fruit compared to foods with added refined sugars.

[p1necone]

The studies you're linking and the conclusion you're reaching are based on the general idea of eating fruit. Dates have a much higher sugar content by volume/weight than fresh fruit (and are higher than a lot of other dried fruits too I believe).

> "A major point is that most fruit isn't sweet enough to dramatically sweeten a product."

Yes, dried dates are not like "most" fruit. They are sweet enough to "dramatically sweeten a product", that would be the reason they are used for that exact purpose.

Edit: I googled it; dates are anywhere from 40-80% sugar, depending on the variety (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sugar-content-of-fresh-a...). Even undried dates are at least 40% sugar, which surprised me.

[glofish]

I will mention though that food is always a lot more than a collection of sugars/fats etc.

Putting a date into your blended oat milk is, nutritionally speaking, very likely immensely different (and very likely more beneficial) than putting the equivalent amount of refined sugar. Then we havent even touched on the many other benefits - like behaviorally you are less likely to overindulge with dates than adding another teaspoon of sugar etc.

[criley2]

You sound like the kind of person who thinks that a spoonful of sugar and a multivitamin is functionally identical to a fruit and that is sad because the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly against your reductive approach to food.

No, the studies I linked cannot be handwaved off as you attempted, and no, they do not support your reductive approach. I urge you to read them again if gaining a greater understanding of why whole food is healthier than refined constituents is actually a goal of yours.

[iscrewyou]

Dates are great in moderation. Everything is. You can say the same thing about bananas or water melons or any melon.

Dates have potassium, fiber, and make anything taste great. But dates aren’t the end all fruit for all your nutrient needs. Nutrition facts and moderation is the key.

[bluedino]

That's also...not milk.

[Tagbert]

“Milk” is used for many kinds of suspension liquids. Milk of Magnesia did not come from a magnesium cow.

[metaphor]

In the US, the legal description of "milk"[1] is not only regulated but well specified.

[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=165f903bfaa729843a...

[everfree]

A counterexample to that is that you can walk into any chain supermarket and see "almond milk", "oat milk", and "soy milk" advertised on the shelves.

They all use the word "milk", yet none of the manufacturers get in trouble with the FDA. It must be because the code you linked only tells part of the story.

I'm guessing that only the word "milk" in isolation is legally required to be from a cow, and that "[blank] milk" (almond, soy, oat, goat, camel) is regulated by different statutes.

[aaronbrethorst]

Not in the EU. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_milk#Labeling_and_termin...

[snakeboy]

If you look closely, these alternatives are all labeled "almondmilk", "oatmilk" and "soymilk" for specifically this regulatory hurdle.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The dairy industry has been agitating to get the FDA to put an end to the unwanted competition. I can't entirely blame them since tofu juice is in no way a milk.

[metaphor]

> A counterexample...

Attention to detail: "([a-z]+) milk" != "\1milk"

> It must be because the code you linked only tells part of the story. I'm guessing...

The entirety of CFR is public domain, readily accessible, regularly maintained, and conveniently searchable at great expense to taxpayers. Care to explain why your speculative assertion isn't supported by proper citation?

[SantalBlush]

This is not evidence against the above point.

[lostlogin]

But it has got a weird system to it. As far as I can tell, a fake “milk” is generally white (or white ish) and it has to be used in situations where milk would usually be used.

You don’t get grape milk and or orange milk for example.

[beatgammit]

You probably could if you ground up the seeds and added water, though I'm sure it's not economically practical.

[Spivak]

It’s as much milk as turkey bacon is bacon.

Food is labeled based on its culinary classification. Something can be culinarily milk without coming out of a teat.

[naniwaduni]

They're not even remotely substitutable. Different plant milks aren't even culinarily substitutable for each other. It's like substituting vinegar for cooking wine: broadly speaking, it'll usually work, but they're really not the same thing.

"milk" is more of a visual descriptor than a culinary classification.

[Retric]

People substituting almond milk for cow milk in cereal is it’s number one use. That’s cooking by the preparing food for consumption definition, even if you don’t use heat that’s hardly required.

[rootw0rm]

I don't know what kind of cooking you do, but in my kitchen substituting vinegar for wine would be considered food-crime.

[naniwaduni]

Oh, absolutely; I'm saying it's not any better to substitute, say, almond milk for cow milk. Worse, even; substituting vinegar for wine won't usually make the whole recipe fall apart altogether the way not enough fat will.

[faemir]

Hyperbole much? If they weren't remotely substitutable then why do coffee shops freely offer them as a... substitute. And interchangeably between different plant-based ones at that.

[jfim]

They probably don't work interchangeably in scenarios where the physical characteristics of the milk is a linchpin of the recipe. Baking in general requires precise temperature control and ingredient control (eg. cake, pastry, and bread flour types), whereas adding milk is more of a flavoring that doesn't impact the resulting drink at much (your coffee won't be a chewy inedible mess if you put a different kind of milk).

[metaphor]

> Food is labeled based on its culinary classification. Something can be culinarily milk without coming out of a teat.

The FDA[1] would certainly love to hear all about it.

[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=165f903bfaa729843a...

[jraph]

What harm is done by saying plant-based milk? Everybody knows what we are talking about. It is crystal clear (yet white).

Milk is still understood by default as cow milk. It will change when and if cow milk is not as widespread as today, and then the word milk will keep reflecting the reality, as today.

The FDA, as in many parts of the world (in EU too, for instance), forbids calling such plant-based drinks milk because they are bribed and receive aggressive lobbying from the dairy industry [1].

How are we supposed to call them? Plant-based drinks that are white and look like milk? They are not always used as drinks since they can be used to cook, and are not the only plant based drinks. Yes, this makes it difficult to speak about them. Yes, this is possibly the point, along with avoiding that people think them as alternatives to cow milk.

When you are telling people that "this is not milk", you are spreading this lobbying. What is your point? People saying milk for plant based drinks will not be convinced by this prescriptive approach anyway.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/10/the-s...

[arcticfox]

"Plant-based milk" is actually more deceptive to me as a phrase, given the huge efforts the modern "plant-based meats" go to imitate meat.

"Oat milk", "almond milk" etc aren't really making any effort to imitate anything as far as I know, they are what they are.

[metaphor]

> When you are telling people that "this is not milk", you are spreading this lobbying.

I neither object to your fallacious assertion, nor find personal shame in supporting its cause if the objective hammer countinues to drop hard on the class of uncritical marketing wank that you've just demonstrated.

[AlotOfReading]

Plant milks have been called milks for centuries at this point. It's probably okay.

[metaphor]

As nasty and convoluted as they often seem, your remark is a prime example of why I respect the regulations of my country.

[gm3dmo]

Milk of the Poppy I learned from Game of Thrones.

[markdown]

The use of "milk" for these plant juices has been driven by the marketing arms of huge corporations, not historical use.

[the_gastropod]

Source? Afaik, coconut milk and soy milk have not only been made for centuries, but also called something like “milk” where they were consumed (e.g. India, China, Thailand, etc.)

ETA: The Mahābhārata, a book dating back to 400BCE, refers to making rice milk. So...

https://books.google.com/books?id=ivQ6CwAAQBAJ&pg=PT14&lpg=P...

[jtuente]

Is that a translation preference or is the word for milk used specifically?

That excerpt is talking about deceiving someone with dilute pounded rice served as milk.

[markdown]

I don't know about soy milk, but that's not true at all for coconut where it was consumed.

[swiley]

Human breast milk is also called milk but it’s definitely a different thing.

[gambiting]

Different how? It's definitely no less "milk" than cow's or sheep's or goat's milk. As a substance it's definitely as much "milk" as it can possibly be.

[t0ddbonzalez]

Are you serious?

You do know why animals (including humans) produce milk, don't you?

[swiley]

Yes, my point is it tastes very different, I’m not sure I’d want it in my breakfast cereal.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I'll stick to regular milk that humans have been consuming for millennia. I'm a mammal.

[jackbrookes]

Why would you assume drinking milk from a different order of mammal is good for you? And why would you assume that because we have been consuming an item for millennia that it is good for you?

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

That's literally how you could assume it's good for you but there are also plenty of studies that support the assumption. Plenty show that low-fat or non-fat yogurt and milk are "good" for you.

Humans have been milking everything they can get their hands on since prehistoric times. There are a number of reasons to not eat/drink those things (taste, vegan, intolerance, etc) but that doesn't suddenly make yogurt, milk, and cheese "bad" for you.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/food-features/y...

[triceratops]

> because we have been consuming an item for millennia that it is good for you?

This gives me confidence that it's most probably not fatally bad. Which is good enough for something so delicious as dairy.

[rapunkill]

Of all mammals, only humans drink milk into adolescence/adulthood. And only a few of them actually do it regularly.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. Of all mammals, only humans ride bicycles. We should stop riding bicycles.

[mlthoughts2018]

I disagree that plant based milks are overly processed or that, with fortification, the nutritional profile is significantly different than ethically sourced cow’s milk.

I can agree that _some brands_ suffer the problems you mention, but other brands that are easy to find don’t differ significantly in nutrition profile or calorie density from cow’s milk. Unsweetened Oatly for instance matches up very well, with the most significant detractor being a bit less protein per serving than similar cow’s milk (but also the benefit of fewer calories per serving).

I do agree that plant based milks are often more expensive though.

[MaximumYComb]

A lot of them are fortified with nutrients that are lacking from a vegan diet, i.e. B12, D, etc. I don't think the nutrients in them are meant for most people but are meant for a certain demographic who consumes this product.

[TrisMcC]

Vitamin D is lacking in all diets. The only meat that has any measurable D is some fish but one cannot maintain an optimal level on fish alone.

Dairy milk is commonly fortified with Vitamin D. Some mushrooms, if left in the sun, also have vitamin D.

Vitamin D comes from the sun.

[consp]

You could try free roaming chicken eggs if you do not prefer fish or mushrooms. The yolk contains quite some vitamin D.

[htor]

but, there is no harm in getting an extra b12 dose for meat consumers as well! plant-based milks are not meant only for plant-eaters (to put it simply) they are of course meant for everyone

[jamil7]

Sorry but there is no such thing as ethical consumption of cow milk.

[gambiting]

How? My aunt has a cow(a single one) that lives next to her house, has access to a pasture nearby, and by literally any definition you could pick it lives as happy life as a cow can do(unless you subscribe to the idea that no animals should be ever kept by humans, but I am not convinced that would lead to a measurably better life for the cow). It produces a lot of milk that my aunt uses for herself and her neighbours take some of it as well. How is that not "ethical consumption of cow milk"?

[mpol]

I'm definitely not a farmer, but it is my understanding that for a cow to keep giving milk, it needs to give birth once a year. You cannot keep all those calves around, so they go to the slaughterhouse. That means that in an indirect way, the production of cow milk forces calves to be slaughtered.

[zimbatm]

It depends on where you place things on the moral scale.

For example for the cow to lactate, it needs to be inseminated. Every 4 years I think. When the calf is born it's taken away from the mother. Does a cow mother suffer emotionally from having their baby taken away?

Cows are sociable animals so a single cow would probably feel lonely?

I don't have the answers. It seems like research uncovers more and more human-like emotions associated to animals so it doesn't seem completely out of question. Humans also have a tendency to objectify things so they can shut off empathy.

[kaybe]

There is a rare practice where you (for example) separate them just for the night and milk the cow in the morning. During the day, the calf will take the milk. Yes, you lose a lot of the milk that way, but apparently your vet bill also goes down because the calf will be healthier.

Another option is to pool several calves to one cow and foster them for more natural suckling behaviour. This is a bit more common.

Interestingly, apparently cows can choose to either give the milk or not which makes the logistics more complicated.

I can currently only find sources in German for this though ('muttergebundene Kälberaufzucht' / 'ammengebundene Kälberaufzucht').

[sebsito]

It depends on your moral values which can be different.

If you skip the simplification vegans are using to justify eating plants (they don't scream and run away when we're trying to eat them) you hardly can eat anything ethically.

[jamil7]

Plants lack nerves or a central nervous system or the ability to directly react to their circumstances, at somepoint you have to draw a line somewhere and most draw the line there. Regardless, if you really believe that plants feel pain, you're killing a lot more of them by raising animals for dairy and meat.

[ad_hominem]

Industrial plant agriculture kills and displaces untold numbers of small ground mammals. Thus the urban vegan doesn't get to pretend they have clean hands.

A pasture-fed cow kills approximately zero of the same.

Assuming your ethics give equal treatment to all mammals, the rural hobby farmer comes out far, far ahead of the urban vegan.

[igetspam]

Cite your sources. This is a statement made by many without evidence.

Sure, if we all had a cow and two acres and lived in a temperature environment where the animals could graze all year, we could have milk after the cow has had a calf. But who impregnated her? And what are you doing with the calf because it needs two acres of grazing pasture too. And then who impregnates her next year and what do you do with that calf? Another two acres? What about the harsh winter or summer? You're going to need to supplement with extra hay. Off to the agricultural supply who... ah crap, they farm. Farming kills fuzzy animals! Now we're terrible again!

Cows, like all mammals, aren't unending milk supply systems. They dry up because they lactate for a reason. Your imaginary hobby farm is an unsustainable system.

Source: I have a grazing pasture and grazing animals.

[j2bax]

Is rural hobby farming a massively scalable lifestyle? Would it still be less detrimental to the environment if everyone was doing it? I can’t imagine how much land, forests, wild animals that would displace.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

Apologies for giving both your posts the snip, but:

>> Plants lack nerves or a central nervous system or the ability to directly react to their circumstances

Is the same as:

>> they don't scream and run away when we're trying to eat them

[ancarda]

If we were to raise genetically modified cows that do not feel pain, would it be ok to eat them?

[sebsito]

That's a great point! The pain rule seems a little arbitrary to me. Pain evolved only in some life forms for which it was beneficiary. It doesn't seem to make killing them more problematic than life forms which can't feel pain. It's only our emotions which react to pain and thus it seems worse.

[liaukovv]

Most draw the line somewhere around dogs

[corodra]

There's also no such thing as an ethical person. Somewhere on the economic scale, in any country, a person's happiness is derived from another's suffering. Africa's cocoa farming. Sugar cane farming and production. Foxconn treatment of workers on cellphones and other goods. Clothing and shoe worker treatment in China and Vietnam. Slave labor use in cobalt mining.

But yea. I mean, let's gang up on cow farmers instead.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

What? The dairy farm that is near me allows you to go and actually pet the cows. They're treated as ethically as a pet.

[tayleeganj]

they just add Vit D right is that so bad?

[MaximumYComb]

B12 is a big one here too

[mirekrusin]

It makes cows sad.

[kevin_thibedeau]

They aren't recapturing the cow farts.

[elhudy]

...and dont get me started on the iodine added to my salt!

[TheHypnotist]

I prefer almond milk and have been drinking it for 5+ years now. Luckily most stores carry their own brand of Almond milk now which usually costs 25% less than Almond Breeze or a similar brand.

[kawsper]

Do you avoid dairy when eating out, or inquire the restaurant about where they buy it from?

[girvo]

This style of "gotcha" holier-than-thou bad-faith arguments frustrates me. One doesn't need to go from being a straight omnivore to a Level 5 vegan that doesn't eat anything with a shadow for changing a diet in large part being a good thing.

Perfect is the enemy of the good in our line of work, what makes diet any different? One should strive to do the best they can within their location, health, dietary framework and ethical choices. It's as simple as that.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The problem is that orthorexics are enacting punitive policies that make it harder to buy cheaper food that is perfectly fine to consume.

[kian]

orthorexia - what a fascinating word!

[blondin]

well, can't remember where i saw it but almond milk seemed to have been at the top spot for a while now.

[ilaksh]

I love almond milk. Unfortunately, almonds are now evil. By the way, Goliath is a great show.

[igetspam]

Almond milk requires a lot of water to produce but it still take significantly less water to produce than cow milk. Even if you take into account the potential for meat (which is ridiculous because milling cows aren't typical steaks), the amount water used to sustain a cow (through drinking and watering plants) is huge.

If your options are cow vs almond and you want to choose the lesser of evils and only care about the negatives of the almond (water) it's still less evil than cow milk.

[hervature]

Cow's milk is so processed that it needs to be refortified with vitamin D because it was destroyed in the process and the calcium would be useless without the added vitamin D.

[refurb]

Huh? That’s not true at all. Vitamin D was added to milk as a part of public health policy to prevent rickets since milk consumption was near universal.[1]

[1] https://phpa.health.maryland.gov/OEHFP/OFPCHS/Milk/Shared%20...

[hervature]

Ok, I admit, saying it gets destroyed was a poor choice of words. But from your article:

>> Although milk as it comes from the cow is a poor source of vitamin D, fortified milk is considered an excellent source, especially because of its calcium content. Other foods considered good dietary sources of vitamin D are relatively rare but do include fatty fish, eggs and liver. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin.

As for the "destroyed" part of my comment, I meant that both it and vitamin A are fat soluble. So when you "skim" the milk, you lose lots of the vitamins. You lose so much, that vitamin A has to be re-added. Again from your article:

>> As skim and lower fat milks became popular, the reduction of vitamin A levels with fat reduction became an issue since whole milk was considered a good source of vitamin A.

TL;DR - I should've said vitamin A but got lazy/greedy. Vitamin D, while subject to the same problem as vitamin A, is added as refurb explains.

[adtac]

Peer-reviewed sources please? I'd love for this to be true, I can show this to anyone who brings up the "but what about all the vitamin D you're missing?" argument.

[hervature]

See refurb's sibling comment and my reply. They have the actual source.