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Comment by throwaway_2047 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway_2047

I suggest everyone to read https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources before jumping the bandwagon that milk is bad and the plant alternative is good.

Quick summary based on hazy memory

- Cow breeding isn't inherently bad. It depends how industrialised the process is

- Not all land can grow crop while cow glazes on infertile land.

- The water usage in raising cow does not account for where the water come from. It come from natural rain water if the cow is relatively free-ranged. Growing almond/oat on the other hand definitely rely on irrigation water. California wastes majority (can't remember the percentage) of its precious water on growing almonds

edit: https://www.sacredcow.info/helpful-resources contains some infographics of those quick facts

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I agree with you that cow breeding isn't inherently bad, at least in its traditional forms. I also agree with you that almonds use so much water that it's incredibly wasteful to use them for milk in California, where they account for a significant percentage of the state's water use.

But in places like California, and the American Southwest in general, dairy farming is not sustainable. In the Colorado River basin, over 50% of the water is used for cows in some fashion (drinking water for the animals, irrigation for food crops, etc). It's just not responsible.

Soy and oats, which are grown in places with lots of water, transported dry and in bulk (i.e. the trucks are not hauling water) and reconstituted locally, are much more responsible. My preference is for soy since it provides a lot more protein.

I'm fairly sure you don't need irrigation to grow oats -- I'm surrounded by oats in Scotland, and I've never noticed any irrigation. On the other hand, the cow watering troughs are definately filled by taps.

Also, that website compares meat to "avocados, walnuts or sugar", 3 foods well known to require lots of water.

The dairy cows that produced the milk you bought at the grocery store, in the USA anyway, were highly unlikely to be eating only grass growing on "infertile land" watered only by the rain. They are eating corn and grain grown on fertile land, probably with irrigation.

Is there even enough "infertile land" in the USA to produce grass to feed enough dairy cows for USA consumption? I doubt it.

So that argument still leads to drastic reduction in dairy consumption required, and in the USA anyway probably much higher dairy prices.

It's not a bandwagon , you're on the popular side here almost everyone in the us consumes dairy and meat. It's actually the other way around people should be more open to alternative milks and meats instead of looking at incorrect reactionary sources

Like just take a look at their meat won't kill you infographic ,it just shows the total daily calories from various sources. It has nothing to do with the actual title ! The whole website got incredibly high production quality but is intellectually bankrupt.

[oops]

Your link says 200g oats have 8g sugar.

To clarify: The linked oat milk has 10% oats, oats have 4% sugar [0]. So if the oat milk only had sugar from oats, it would have 0.8g of sugar (0.1*0.04*200g). So how does it have 5.84g of sugar if they advertise "There is no added sugar whatsoever."? [1] The trick is that some of the oats are chemically converted to sugar.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=oats+100g

https://www.oatly.com/uk/products/oat-drink

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