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Comment by mtkd | Hacker News Reader

> vegan meat products saw a 21 percent increase in unit sales from 2020 to 2022

> During the same period, animal-based meat and milk sales dropped by eight and nine percent, respectively

There are likely additional factors at play in the animal based drop

UK ONS shows whole milk at low of 43p/l in 2020 increasing to 70p/l in Mar 23 and minced beef from 609p/kg to 812p/kg in 23 -- but those numbers likely do not reflect the reality of multi-buy discount offers commonly being available in 2020 that are rarer now in 23 -- so the inflation felt by consumers is potentially even higher

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The headline seems to be mixing two trends in food randomly. The drop in meat & milk is likely independent of vegan trends - the $ figures are different orders of magnitude. This isn't substitution at all, so there is no reason to think they are interacting.

Europe is probably being hit by some sort of hardship right now meaning people can't eat as well as usual. The UK seems to be being hit by an energy crisis for example, although they also seem to be having a much worse time of it than mainland Europe. Per capita figures are lower than China and it might drop below the global average in a decade if the current trend keeps up.

Pure hopium.

> Europe is probably being hit by some sort of hardship right now meaning people can't eat as well as usual.

Isn't Europe experiencing an inflation wave of around 10%? That tends to take away meat from the diet.

Edit: Eurostat says it's 6.9% in the euro area, and 8.3 in the EU as a whole.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/16324910/2-1...

It's cheapest and healthiest to go to unprocessed vegan food and yet vegan replacements that usually have a premium over meat and dairy are also up, while their incremental production costs are probably less than meat/dairy.

This implies that meat/dairy have neither the top of the market nor the bottom. If more and more people are willing to pay that premium then I'm not sure what would come back and why once the costs of processed vegan food no longer includes early R&D and risk premiums.

Milk was heavily subsidized and the prices were pushed to a point where all but the largest scale producers were making losses (~30 cents per liter) where I live whereas the price of plant based milk used to have a huge novely / vegan markup that wasn't based in production cost. The cost of plant based milk is not exactly much less than dairy now, but it is actually cheaper if you go by discount brand prices.

That so many people don't mind switching with so little monetary incentive is great, that's a lot of animal harm prevented.

Here in the UK, plant based milks are typically more expensive than cow’s milk, particularly if you go for the well-known brands (Alpro, Oatly, etc)

Typically in a corner shop you’re paying around £2 for 1 litre of plant milk, compared to £1.25 for 2 pints (1.13L) of cow’s milk.

That doesn’t seem to have dampened demand for plant milks, however!

Jealous that you get a choice. Netherlands here which is actually better for vegan options as a whole than the UK in my experience but never found a corner shop With anything but cow dairy.

> With anything but cow dairy.

The Dutch love their cows? Who would have imagined that? :D

s/love/torture/. If anything, brutality of dairy produce is hundred times worse than butchering them for meat.

End result of selective pressures on cow farmers. Humane treatment would raise the cost by like 20%, but the inhumane treatment readily visible to the buyer while the price is.

Other than the corner shops it's the most vegan friendly place I've seen in Europe. The farmers and their supporters aren't the whole population.

> "never found a corner shop With anything but cow dairy"

That's strange. They certainly are popular in the UK, and their long shelf life means there's little risk for shops in stocking them. I wonder if dutch "big dairy" could be using dirty tricks to keep plant alternatives off shop shelves?

Is this just a London thing or can you actually get alternatives as easily in other parts of the country?

You can get them everywhere. All the mainstream supermarkets sell them. In London you might well have a choice between 10 different plant based milks.

Everywhere, and also a large selection of fake meat and other vegan stuff in big supermarkets. UK is great for this

It's not cheaper here. The moment it is I'll switch to oat milk. I think it tastes better.

Oat milk has no lactoferrin, a powerful anti-viral/bacterial/fungal compound in milk, so you are going to eliminate a significant immunity boost.

You can supplement with lactoferrin if you so choose, and on the flip side oat milk doesn't contain any hormones, antibiotics or pus, all of which can slip into cow milk.

Oat milk would likely contain pesticides and other chemical residues. There is no hiding from bad chemicals but one can choose food that contains support for their removal. I'd be concerned about pure vegan diet for its lack of certain removal-supporting compounds, leading to massive issues after many years as one can read on Internet. I doubt they will supplement missing things.

It also doesn’t have hormones or antibiotics.

So I'll throw in some cinnamon. There's no shortage of foods that preserve themselves.

Make your own. It's easy and cheaper than dairy. Takes minutes. Not drank dairy in five years, never miss it. Guests never tell that they been given oat milk and usually convert to drinking and/or making their own oat milk immediately following the experience.

> Guests never tell that they been given oat milk

And everyone clapped!

Come off it.

I love oat milk (and think almond milk suuuuuucks). I haven’t had dairy milk in nearly 8 years at home.

But it doesn’t taste the same, doesn’t have the same mouthfeel, and can’t be cooked with in the same way.

They’re literally entirely unique things. Pretending otherwise is just as stupid as religion.

Store-bought oat milk is a different thing again, and I agree, mouthfeel and taste are unconvincing with store-bought.

I cook with homemade just fine in pasta dishes.

Which animal harm do you mean by having cows for milk? Its easy to buy bio milk which comes from free grazing cows, the cost of it is almost the same as basic milk where I live. I can tell you from my daily personal experience those are some of the happiest non-wild animals you can meet in person.

I mean if we move away from it, yes technically there will be 0 harm possible because we will have to kill all the diary cows, and prevent their offsprings from ever again being born. But thats kind of argument like killing all humans apart from me will end all of human suffering, technically true but not what we want.

Plant based 'milk' aint no milk, just drink with some flavors. Not judging or arguing for/against, but its not equivalent nor replacement in ie nutrition nor taste.

1. Cows, like humans, only produce milk after giving birth

2. These cows, in order to get pregnant in the first place, are artificially inseminated (and it isn't a very nice process)

3. What do you think happens to the offspring if it's male and thus uneconomical to keep?

The fact that these statements (which are incredibly obvious if you have an eighth grade education or higher) have to be spelled out is a testament to the power of the milk lobby that people think there are some bucolic scenes where farmkids go to milk Bessie each morning, who produces day in and day out without fuss.

The fact you’re getting downvoted so much also illustrates how much our species is willing to hide our head in the sand and buy the milk lobbies’ lies.

I just really like cheese and yogurt and milk and other cow milk products.

It doesn’t change the suffering and abuse involved in making it. Downvoting parent won’t make that go away even if you don’t like hearing it.

I love cheese too. I was eating some almost every day growing up in cheese country. But I gave it up once I learned the cost of making it in term of animal abuse and pollution.

We mostly gave up raping and pillaging so maybe one day we’ll also vastly reduce the abuse we inflict onto the billions of animals we “raise”…

I did not downvote, just wanted to share that me, and maybe many like me are not buying the milk industries’ lies. I would support legislation that increased quality of life for cows and all animals.

> its not equivalent nor replacement in ie nutrition nor taste

Speak for yourself, it might not have the same nutritional value (but also not the same amount of hormones and/or antibiotics), but there are a few oat based milks (e.g. Alpro This Is Not Milk) that have almost the same mouth feel as cow milk (personally, I find that too fatty and prefer the non-fatty tasting oat milk).

> Its easy to buy bio milk which comes from free grazing cows

Uh huh, and how many people are doing that, especially close to the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder? There are plenty of plant based milk with a hefty trend markup, but least here in Germany the discount supermarkets have plenty of cheap plant based milk that is the same price as cow milk, and you don't have to squeeze milk from an animal for that.

At least in Germany, and presumably most places in Europe are the same or similar, milk can be labeled organic without the animals ever being grazed. Though apparently they always have access to an outdoor area.

Even milk that's specifically sold as being from free grazing animals in actual fact only requires them to be on a pasture 6h a day for 120 days a year.

https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/wissen/lebensmittel/leben...

Far from being easy and cheap, I think in Europe it's close to impossible to buy milk from cows that are predominantly free grazing. Even though, from what I can tell, cows are perfectly capable of being outside year round in most of the continent.

> Plant based 'milk' aint no milk, just drink with some flavors

Do you also say "peanut butter ain't no butter"?

"Milk" has meant "fatty white liquid" since forever. The oldest surviving cookbook in the English language references "almond milk."

> Milk was heavily subsidized (...)

The whole agricultural industry in Europe is heavily subsidized through Europe's common agriculture policy. It's a strategic and national interest policy so that Europe's access to food is not jeopardized in case of war.

It's ok that these subsidies exist, and they surely won't go away any time soon.

At least in Germany the subsidiary is disproportionate for the large scale industry as it got paid by animal, so the more you can cram into a building, the more you get subsidized.

Animals in Germany are living through an extreme hell because of several financial incentives which make it so profitable for the one's willing to ignore the animals.

And the farmers that have even a tiny bit of a conscience are getting in severe financial trouble as they just can't compete on price. Especially as that kind of animal cruelty they're forced into comes with it's own psychological issues.

Cow’s milk has bucked the inflation trend and fallen in price recently in the UK.[1]

Dairy farmers are also suffering significant cuts in “farm gate” prices they receive, due to a glut of supply amid weak demand.[2]

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65267367.amp

[2] https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/markets-and-trends/milk-price...

Soo "unit sales". Is this by weight? By volume? By calorie?

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