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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

Oatly makes a good product but disappointed to see them trademark bullying.

Their ice cream alternative is pretty good too.

I'm glad that Oatly lost the court case. The name and packing design of the other brand looked nothing like the Oatly design. It's baffling that Oatly even took this matter to court.

It's interesting that fresh, pasteurised cow's milk is cheaper than a carton of oat milk which is approximately 90% water + oats and thickeners. Almond milk is even worse: approximately 95-97% water + 2-3% almonds and thickeners.

When it comes to price, that's what government subsidies do for the cow's milk and high demand does for the oat milk. Although, I've seen Temple Grandin's methods live and a milk farm with milking robots basically runs itself (all cows just walk to the robot to be milked and the robot finds the teats with a bit of computer vision).

But yes, other than a good soy milk, most of plant-based milks are just empty calories.

Well, the Oatly Barista Edition matches cow's milk for nutritional content surprisingly closely - fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals and so on. We give it to our toddler, who's allergic to cow's milk protein.

1g of protein per 100mL is not as much as cow's milk. Although, human milk also does have around 1g of protein per 100mL, so I guess it's fine for toddlers.

Tell me more about the milking robots fellow traveler, I need some entertainment after 6 hours of meetings today.

Milkbots and the teat detectors were great opening for Metallica!

Temple Grandin's corridors provide a stress free roaming path for the cows that feel the urge to be milked. The corridor ends with a proper curve that makes the cow stop right above the ground mounted camera that is trying to capture the teats. The moment the teats are visible, the mounted and immovable milking robot reaches out with the hand and is trying to catch on the teats with the feedback from the camera. Eventually it latches on and sucks around 20 L of milk. The cow for some reason stands still during the whole process and after it's done the cow continues forward, making room for the new cow that is waiting in line.

To be fair, cow's milk is also about 90% water. You're right, though, that the ingredient cost using commodity oats and rapeseed oil should only be about 4-5 cents per liter. The price of cow's milk, on the other hand, is a lot closer to the price of the inputs (corn, alfalfa, grazing land, etc.) which are about 16 cents per liter.

I'm hopeful that eventually the price of oat milk will approach the cost of its inputs, but it might take a while.

To be fair, you are about 60% water…

To be fairer, water is 99% H2O

My exact thoughts, my wife and I have been fans of Oatly for a time. It's the only oat milk I've tried that tastes somewhat like cow's milk.

I always felt their branding and overall approach was on point which makes this quite out character and a total dick move on their part.

Try Vitasoy oat milk if that's available. Easily my favourite brand and much cheaper than Oatly (in Australia at least).

In the US, I prefer Chobani having tried many other brands. Also a decent company.

I used to think that. Then I started wearing a continuous glucose monitor (levels) for longevity reasons. Holy crap, a latte with Oatly spikes my blood glucose like crazy compared to whole milk. There’s way more sugar in there vs fat and it really causes a strong insulin response. That isn’t the kind of thing you want to be consuming long term.

A good rule of thumb is low fat = high sugar and vice versa.

Yes agreed. Oatly is horrible for you. It's one of the worst Oat milks they sell in my store. (when comparing by nutrition facts).

It is so bizarre this alternative milk that goes around. I am totally onboard with finding an alternative to save cows from inhumane practice, however, very little of the alternative milk that is out there is anywhere near as healthy as normal milk.

Meanwhile anyone can produce any type of alternative milk and people think they are buying health food.

Expensive though, at least in Germany it's twice the price of normal milk and they don't even have to hold cows. I understand it's also a smaller market but still, I wonder if this is really warranted. It also won't help less determined consumers switch away from dairy products, though luckily there are knock-off brands that also taste nearly the same.

Cow milk is also highly subsidised in the EU and sold at closer to zero margin because of the high control over the market relatively few retail chains have, especially in Germany.

Oldy but goody: https://www.kuechenstud.io/kuechenradio/episode/kr_121-milch...

Edit: obviously we shouldn't subsidize industrial farming and its carbon emissions and instead charge for these negative externalities. We are all paying for this cheap milk consumption with our climate.

If dairy products get more expensive, people will just switch to eating more meat. People outside of subsistence economies choose food on desires more than on price. I suspect far less negative environmental externality than you think.

TL;DR If bacon costs the same as cheese, might as well get bacon.

By the time you price in all negative externalities, meat would of course be even more expensive.

Afaik cheese might actually be worse than bacon, I think pig meat was about on par with cheese and only cow meat was worse (because cheese is so co2e-intensive, not because pig is so good), but I understand your general point.

They sort of have to, you can't selectively enforce trademarks like you can with other IP

Well in a sense yes but also they can pick and choose their targets more carefully.

For starters - PureOaty sounds nothing like Oatly. Secondly, it's made on minuscule scale at one farm from what I can make out.

I don’t think size matters for this kind of thing — if they grow, and you didn’t enforce action when they were small, you don’t have much claim when they’re large (and the violation is worth more, and they’re more established in it, and they’ve built more of a brand around it).

but yeah Oaty vs Oatly might have been reasonable but PureOaty is quite the stretch

No they don't. This is a common myth when it comes to cases like this.

If the defendants had been selling their product with the exact same name, or ripping off their logo directly, then you have a point.

》No they don't. This is a common myth when it comes to cases like this.

This is the UK, where digital reproductions of public domain documents do get a copyright. While I agree they overstep here (especially that a regular customer would see the two products differently), IP laws in UK are much more sensitive with these issues.

Indeed. The only oat milk or for that matter any non-milk milk that I like in my coffee. I don't see the similarities at all in the branding or packaging. Like oatly, glad they lost.

Have you tried the Chobani Extra Creamy? I now like it even better than Oatly.

They're also partly owned by the state-owned China Resources holdings company.

That said, I still buy their products regularly. And I'm proud they started in my home town.

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