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Comment by teslabox | Hacker News Reader

> We could do that if we'd only replace cow's milk with nut milk

Agree that meat is very inefficient. But…

Dairy animals concentrate the calories on land that can’t be mechanically farmed, converting them into human-usable nutrition.

Even dairy animals on a conventional dairy farm upcycle calories - just searched and learned dairy farmers can boost a cow’s low-quality straw diet with cottonseed meal (high protein). Humans don’t eat cottonseed meal.

I’ve known people with a single dairy cow, or a few dairy goats. I don’t think “nut milk” works without a nut milk factory.

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> I don’t think “nut milk” works without a nut milk factory.

You are mistaken.

Take 20-100g of any nuts (or oat flakes, or cooked rice/potatoes, what have you), 1-2 dates (or a pinch of sugar), 1 litre of water, and put it in the blender. Filter it through a sieve.

You've got milk, no factory needed !

Nuts are much more expensive them milk and require a gasoline to be transported to places that are quite close to actual cows. Also, that thing you described does not sound like milk. More like rice with nuts mix.

> Nuts are much more expensive than milk

Milk is heavily subsidized, nuts are not. We could integrate (nut) trees into our agricultural fields, it would help with local temperatures, water retention, soil erosion, biodiversity, nutrition availability, the list is endless ... and the price of nuts would go rapidly down.

> require a gasoline to be transported to places that are quite close to actual cows

https://ychef.files.bbci.co.uk/1600x900/p0c41fcj.webp - Emissions (in kg CO2e) from the food supply chain – the climate impact of food miles is often a small proportion (Source: Our World in Data/Poore and Nemecek, Science, 2018)

> that thing you described does not sound like milk

That is a universal recipe for a plant based milk (lookup some recipes on the net if you don't believe it).

Nuts dont grow where I live. You have to transport them from completely different climate. Planting a lot of means changing local biodiversity for the artificially create one.

Cows live where I live. They spend most of the year outside. They definitely dont take 75% of fields for themselves, most of fields are for crops of various kind.

> That is a universal recipe for a plant based milk (lookup some recipes on the net if you don't believe it).

Factually, it is rice + nuts. I can take apple juice and call it non-alcoholic wine, but it wont be wine.

You do realize nut milk isn't literally milk?

I do, the other person claims they are replacements of each other.

You can interchange them in many contexts

I mean, except different composition and nutritional value. They have similar color and consistency.

I don't know where you do live, but ...

> Planting a lot of means changing local biodiversity for the artificially create one

People have been deforesting (fires etc.) the land for the last 10000 years or so, maybe even longer. So what you see, what you're accustomed to, is already a changed, artificial environment.

> ... cows ... spend most of the year outside. They definitely dont take 75% of fields for themselves, most of fields are for crops of various kind.

Yes, they do take as much.

https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/01/Global-land-use-g...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_meat_p...

> apple juice and call it non-alcoholic wine

Let it sit for a while and you'll have an alcoholic apple wine :)

Nuts would be completely new plant, never been present in local ecosystem. The idea that this is somehow supposed to be environmental is absurd.

And no, cows where I live don't take 75% of the fields. And people here do drink quite a lot of milk, most of it local. Maybe elsewhere cows they do take huge amount of space, but not here.

Also, quite a lot of what is pasture is a place unsuitable for crops. That is why it is used for pasture.

Cow's milk is mostly consumed in countries that receive snow or go through extream weather changes. Due to no Sun and in turn lack of Vitamin D.

Yes Almond Milk does contain Vitamine D, but not as much. Cows milk is way more nutritious while Nut based Milk frequently contain added vitamin D, calcium, and protein.

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