[cowfriend]

Almost this. The better answer is because we want to get ALL the milk.

So instead of letting the mother cow nurse her calf for the first few months and then start taking her milk for our use, the more "modern" practice is to separate the calf immediately.

Which means if you are drinking milk, you are drinking it from seriously depressed cows.

I wonder how this contributes to our culture's growing mood of depression?

see i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/29/mums-ask...

or just google dairy cows separate from calves

[sbmthakur]

Back in my ancestral village the practice was to let cow nurse her calf and get the remaining for the owner's family. This kinda ensured co-existence. The modern dairy industry has all evil practices baked into its operations. It is the thing that keeps me from going vegetarian. Even with going off meat, I would still harm the livestock by consuming dairy. A lot of vegetarians (at least those who virtue signal) do not understand this.

[aziaziazi]

One way to reduce that practice is to simply reduce one consumption of meat/milk, no need to be fully gandhi to improve some cow’s life. You anyway can’t save the world alone.

There’s a ton of mushrooms and fabaceae, very cheap nutritious and as much delicious if you learn to cook them well (like meat). My favorite is Tempeh which combine both! And quite cheap if you make it yourself.

http://tempeh.info/

[bamboozled]

I like the stuff, but interestingly, I found it easiest to buy in Indonesia, Australia and the USA. Outside of that, it's hard to get or very expensive.

[maeil]

Plenty of tofu dishes in Korea and part of China. Almost never vegan, but often vegetarian.

[lotsofpulp]

In the US, almost every broth or dish at an East/southeast restaurant uses shrimp/fish sauce or other animal product like beef/chicken stock.

They usually prep it in advance, so it’s rare to find one that has an actually vegan dish they don’t custom make even if it says tofu.

[ornornor]

You can make your own! It’s deleicious and very cheap if you make it yourself.

[AnonHP]

> It is the thing that keeps me from going vegetarian. Even with going off meat, I would still harm the livestock by consuming dairy.

You could go vegan.

[throwaway290]

What if no one was strictly vegan or vegetarian but everyone refused to buy food created by inhumane suffering and tortured conditions. Can't make it illegal but can make it very unfashionable. Just need more people to see things people see on a farm, then you gotta be a psycho to not care. Just no one properly lived on a farm next to animals these days when most people move to megapolises...

[aziaziazi]

> Just need more people to see things people see on a farm

There's many "educational farms" to show kids live farms animals and sometimes pick the eggs and milk a cow. I'm very confused about them: it's good to let urban kids see-smell-touch real farms animals. However they have nothing in common with modern farming, even the not-inhumane ones.

BUT telling a 6yo toddler "look that cute cow, this is where your morning milk is from" will engrave it deep in the way they see farming. One day or another they will learn about factory farming but what you learn at 16yo doesn't "engrave" as easy and deep as at 6. I mean yes you quickly understand that education farms are not the reality but it require a big mental shift to overcome the feeling that the milk you drink in the morning is from an inhumane famr, especially when everyone around keeps doing it (I don't blame them, it's cheap, easy, convenient, traditional, delicious, practical...).

Some schools or parents brings their child in real farms which is a bit better, but it still doesn't depict the reality for 99% of consumption (think gelatin candies, croissants, cakes, ice creams...).

For the courageous -- DONT SHOW THAT TO YOUR TODDLER (yet) -- 8 hours of pigs in a typical/normal gas chamber that probably will end up in soap/jelly/bacon. : https://www.farmtransparency.org/videos?id=hg8cyu393v

[Panoramix]

When I was a small child in a rural environment, my uncle slaughtered a lamb for eating. It was a bloody messy hell. It was an eye opener but it didn't have the impact you think it had, if anything it desensitizes you. My uncle also showed respect and gratefulness to the animals and I also understood why we don't waste animal products.

[bamboozled]

I grew up doing a lot of diving, I'd put myself into the ocean, there were sharks and other dangers, but I caught my own fish and I never ever felt bad about it. I could selective take what I needed, I'd never take a mother / pregnant fish if I could help it. I could tell most of the time.

You also get to see how the wild world works, and most fish would prefer to be taken by a skilled spear fisherman than have their face mauled off by a squid, at least as far as I could tell.

Unfortunately we live in a world with 9 billion people on it, which means we don't have the room to grow and harvest all our own food. In my opinion, that's the issue. Sourcing all our food "ethically" is basically not possible.

I'd much prefer to be producing and hunting my own food.

[aziaziazi]

Ok I admit all I write is only guess... in fact what you said makes me relate to some of my mother stories about her childhood. Thanks for remind me that.

[throwaway290]

I know someone who is hard core vegetarian because of impression from childhood, it all depends.

Maybe you see a normal farm and get to know the animals then see an actual factory where it is industrialized...

[csomar]

The real crime is that alternatives are expensive due to how our new economy is structured. I personally prefer oatmilk (oatside) to dairy milk. However, it’s too damn expensive that I find myself only drinking it from time to time. Now how is a vegetarian milk more expensive than a full cycle of cow milk (cows are too burdening to maintain) you might ask?!?

My guess is that we are seeing something along the lines of EVs. Instead of making these healthier alternatives mainstream, they are being sold as a status symbol for the rich and making them unaffordable to the common man.

Here waiting for my chinese oat milk.

[spondylosaurus]

I don't think non-dairy milks are artificially expensive so much as cow milk is artificially cheap. At least in the US. Federal dairy subsidies and all that.

[ValentineC]

Oat/almond milk suppliers are definitely pricing them artificially expensive.

Here in Singapore, where soy milk has been around for decades, soy milk in both fresh and UHT forms tend to be much cheaper than dairy.

[spondylosaurus]

If Singapore doesn't have dairy subsidies and/or imports a lot of dairy... that's probably why. You're paying the "real" price while US consumers are paying the "discount" price.

Also, soy milk's been around for decades in the US too! I drank a lot as a kid. My mom would keep these little single-serving cartons in her purse for us, like juicebox-sized.

[dotancohen]

How much does 1 liter of almond or oat milk substitute cost in Singapore? How much does one liter of milk cost?

[Daub]

It might be a demand issue. In Singapore a lot of people are lactose intolerant, hence the demand for dairy substitutes is greater.

[bythreads]

Milk is a byproduct of producing meat, and its a fallacy to see it in isolation.

Plantmilks are firstorder product.

This means that clinate impact of most plantmilks are higher than milks, excepting oat and ryemilk.

On a cost note - : making oat milk is literally just blending some oats and let them soak a day or 2, filter the water and done, perhaps do that if cost is an issue?

On a sidenote, if you drink soy, almond or worse ricemilk you're actually doing something worse for the climate/environment

[maeil]

This completely ignores second order effects, which lead to the opposite conclusion.

If milk is a byproduct of producing meat that can be sold for money, this means milk subsidizes the price of meat. Even if the effect is small, this is almost certainly enough to make it worse for the environment than e.g. soy milk, as the difference between raising cattle and growing soy is orders of magnitudes.

[troyvit]

This is what drives me crazy about oat milk. Oats grow everywhere. Almonds, on the other hand, take a gallon of water per almond to make[1]. Despite this, at my store anyway, almond milk is about $2.89/half gallon while oat milk is at least $4/half gallon. What in our economy makes this feasible?

[1] https://bastyr.edu/about/news/ugly-truth-about-almonds

[mrguyorama]

>What in our economy makes this feasible?

What do you mean "feasible"? It's profitable to sell something for more than it costs to make. If the only companies that offer Oat milk for sale price it at $4 a gallon, that's the price you have to pay to get it.

Meanwhile there are laws around the pricing of Milk, and in my neck of the woods that includes a MINIMUM price.

People wave their hands like "the market" is magic. As long as some consumers are willing to pay $4 a gallon for oat milk, companies will not reduce the price, and plenty of people are willing to pay MORE for oat milk than for cow milk.

If you wonder why nobody starts a company that undercuts the $4 oat milk, the simple answer is that the second you are done spending $1 million on a factory to make cheap oat milk, the producers already in the market drop their price and your business fails. This is why Google Fiber for example struggled. There is no technical reason prices are high. There's just no competition because the current producers are so massive and have such giant war chests that they can just kill your brand new competitive business, and soon your business will be dead and they can slowly ratchet up prices again.

There's also the fact that homemade oat milk is trivial to produce, results in a great product, and is cheaper than even that mythical competitive industry would produce.

[troyvit]

I mean maybe you're right. Maybe people are like, "Oat milk is so different than almond milk that I am going to pay twice the price." I'm like uhhh it's white, vegan, and I can dunk a cookie in it. I'll buy what's cheaper.

[barbazoo]

> if you drink soy, almond or worse ricemilk you're actually doing something worse for the climate/environment

In what way? Data seems to suggest otherwise but maybe I'm misunderstanding

https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks

[ZeroGravitas]

So still a near perfect metaphor for EV Vs ICE. I actually thought this is what they meant at first.

[aziaziazi]

Do It Yourself! You can beat milk price:

You already got the oat. Got a blender? Grind those little flakes with water and a spoon of your favorite oil. Et voilà !

Pro tips:

- filter for extra smoothness but no need if you intent to mix with whole oat flakes

- 1h in the fridge and mix again for double extra smoothness

- pinch of salt or cinnamon or cacao… yummi

- bored of oat? Check your supermarket shelf for other ideas. (Soy need to be cooked then blend then filter).

[bamboozled]

Doesn't milk contain protein ? Do oats contain the same amount of protein?

[aziaziazi]

Quick search says milk contains twice protein as oat milk, and moreover more complete one. However for protein intake I would recommend soy products that are super healthy, cheap and contains fibers. The only plant milk I drink is a dip in my morning beverage and for cooking cakes.

But if you’re protein intake comes substantially from milk, indeed you should consider that.

[vasco]

> Now how is a vegetarian milk more expensive than a full cycle of cow milk (cows are too burdening to maintain) you might ask?!?

Not enough scale because little demand compared to regular milk.

[ValentineC]

What's baffling is that the supply chain for non-dairy milk is so much simpler, since all non-dairy milk can be packaged as UHT which doesn't need any form of refrigeration until open.

[mulmen]

Their margin is your opportunity. If you think oat milk is overpriced then simply start making and selling it at a lower price.

[maeil]

As mentioned, the subsidies are the biggest player.

What you mentioned does probably play a role as well, with much more $/revenue being spent on marketing for non-animal milk than cow milk. None of the big milk players are trying to present themselves as a hip startup like Oatly is. Wouldn't be surprised if the latter was even VC backed.

But again, good ole' communist subsidies are the number one cause.