Hacker News Reader

Comment by vanilla-almond | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com