Which milk alternative should we be drinking?
bbc.com
bbc.com
Oat milk tastes great and it's good for you, for the most part. The problem with oat milk is, they add a bunch of oil to it. they say it's just 2%, but I think thats by volume or mass. if they go by it's actual proportion (by calories), its nearly 25%!
Almond milk is great for you, but it doesn't taste as good as real almonds, so why drink it?
Soymilk is the one I really like but they add a bunch of stuff to it like calcium carbonate, which really didn't need in the first place. you can find soymilk with nothing added to it, but you really got a go to one of those specialty shops.
Personally, I like to make homemade quinoa milk, it's pretty good and you can adjust how much thickness you want based on the ratio of water. it's easy to make.
Is it though? It's essentially flavored water with a thicker texture and a high percentage of the nutritional benefit of Almonds discarded in the production process.
If "great for you" is lower calories compared to dairy fair enough. If you want to loose weight, drink a lot of dairy and swap to almond milk it will help you reduce calorie consumption.
If great is high nutritional value it's not very good and why many brands fortify it adding additional vitamins etc.
I used to drink Almond milk but avoid it now as it's expensive water, little nutritional value and the environmental impact producing almonds at scale is pretty bad.
Because there are some foods that only make sense with a milk substance added (eg cereal). Almond milk, alone, isn't very ... tasty. Usually there are variants (sweetened, vanilla, chocolate) because it's not great. Almonds are also terrible for the environment, vis a vis water conservation, given what it takes to grow them.
I currently prefer Flaxseed milk.
From the article:
> Even almond milk, a notorious water-hogger, takes less water to produce than dairy – needing on average 371 litres of water per litre of milk produced, compared to dairy milk’s 628 litres. Rice milk follows shortly behind, needing 270 litres of water per litre of milk. Soy and oat, on the other hand, need just 28 and 48 respectively.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11566656
But, I remember hearing about it from the talks that Dr Milton Mills (Associate Director of Preventive Medicine with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM)) gave.
And, i've heard it in other places as well. For instance in Forks over Knives (the documentary), they were saying that in Japan there 17 cases of prostate cancer (before they started eating dairy) in the entire country, when in the US there was something like 15000.
And, then there was the China study, also mentioned in that documentary. there's some fairly compelling stuff in that documentary, it blew my mind.
Best if you drink whole milk, because 2 grams more fat in a glass isn't going to hurt you, and actually makes it taste good.
Milk is nice. If you can drink and enjoy it, enjoy it. Sounds simple.
A calf is not killed to provide milk. They're weaned from an early age while the mother continues to provide milk for up to 2 years. Milking cows will provide up to 40 liters twice a day.
The calf, like the mother, will eventually be killed for meat, but that is the reality of all meat we eat.
As for drinking milk, the official recommendation in Scandinavia is drinking 0.5L/day.
Since the whole process is highly inefficient. The cow needs more than 100 litres of water a day. It eats a lot, it produces methane. All that, just for your 80 litres of milk a day.
Yes, a cow produces methane, so did the millions of buffaloes roaming the prairies a couple hundred years ago. And so does just about every other herbivore. It’s natural.
What’s not natural is humanity’s insistence on being transported around to just about everywhere, preferably alone, in a vehicle that has room for 6 or more.
The other day I was shopping and came across a cheese that said, manufactured in Denmark, packed in Poland. I’m guessing the cheese produced way more greenhouse gasses on its way to and from Poland than the cow did producing the milk that went into the cheese.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
That being said, at least in the EU, emissions from agriculture is about 40% less than the transport emissions, and still dropping while transport is increasing.
What? My family had a milk cow during my childhood and we never had to kill the cow or her calves to get milk from her. Patently untrue.
Rice Milk 1 cup cooked brown or white rice 4 cups water ⅛ teaspoon sea salt 1 tablespoon sunflower oil (optional)
Combine the rice, water, and salt in a blender. If you want a creamier milk, add the oil. Blend on high for 1 to 2 minutes, until smooth. Pour into a container, cover, and refrigerate. Rice milk will keep for 4 to 5 days.
Makes 5 cups
But only good sea salt, and only a pinch. Do give it a stir to ensure it dissolves.
Oatly now makes ice cream, which I love. They make a plain oat flavor one that’s really delicate and nice.
Bringing it back to the subject of the article, organic can really make a difference with tree crops - less pesticides wreaking havoc with pollinators, etc. If you really don’t want to give up dairy, pasture raised can be a part of regenerative agriculture, if done at a sustainable scale.
I drink mostly water, but I probably have ~1 cup of milk on average each day (e.g. no milk one day, 2-3 cups another day, etc). I go for whole milk because the higher fat content means I'm having less sugar per calorie, and it makes me feel more full than other kinds of milk. If you like milk, consider increasing the fat content and decreasing the total amount you drink so you're more satisfied when you do have milk.
If you're having multiple coffees everyday with tons of sugar, switching from dairy to non-dairy creamer isn't the right optimization...
Optimizing the dairy while loading in the sugar is completely wrong from a health perspective.