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Comment by scoot | Hacker News Reader

My kids are variously vegan / flex, and since I only put milk in coffee, it wasn't worth keeping milk in the fridge for, so switched to one of their alternatives. Soy curdles, so almond it was, until I learned that it takes ~5 litres (1.1 US gallons) of water to produce a single almond!

The Oatly post here a few days ago may have been a shill, but it was enough for me to try it. Far closer to the taste of cows milk than Almond milk IMH(non Vegan)O.

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I’ve seen it estimated that it takes 2,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of cow milk which would be twice what it takes to produce almond milk.

Some quick googling suggests there are 4 cups of almonds in a gallon of almond milk, and ~25 almonds per cup, so about 100 gallons of water per gallon of almond milk from just growing the almonds. That's a factor of 20x, if we believe it takes 2000 gallons of water to make a gallon of milk.

But another source on the top links of Google says it takes about 4 gallons of water to make a gallon of milk. This is a difference of 250x. That would imply almond milk takes 25 times as much.

It shocks me how such a seemingly basic consumer question could have such wild orders of magnitude variance in the apparent answers.

I mean at a minimum that lower number not taking into account the water needed to feed the cow, grow the cows food etc. I'm sure almonds is a lot of water but there is no way it's close to a dairy cow.

Do you count the rain that grew the grass the cows eat or not? In some water usage calculations they only count unnatural usage, ie irrigation and pumped drinking water.

4 to 1 is nowhere close to the right ratio for water to milk produced. The numbers vary a lot depending on the region and how you calculate them but the correct range is between 100:1 and 1000:1.

https://sciblogs.co.nz/waiology/2012/05/24/how-much-water-do...

Your kids can enjoy soy milk so you finish a quart or half gallon together in a week.

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