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Comment by tyfon | Hacker News Reader

Alt milks are usually ultra processed and quite unhealthy compared to regular milk. Not sure this is a viable alternative.

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The op is likely quoting one of the recent 'hit piece' style articles talking about ultra processed foods and trying to argue nut milk is less healthy because it may not always have calcium. It's pretty absurd, and the basis for the claim is fairly well explained here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8634539/

It is ultra processed in name, not nutrition.

By the way, humans are the only species drinking the milk of another animal, or after childhood.

Nut milks in stores almost always have additives, mainly preservatives, which are questionable in terms of healthiness. Now store sold oat milks in particular are very unhealthy, if I remember right it was oatly that has 30% by calorie percentage of canola oil. Cannot get worse that this but so many vegan products do this exact same thing where they stuff whatever processed meat substitute product they sell with canola oil and other ridiculously unhealthy and gross ingredients.

Canola oil isn't the devil everyone makes it out to be. Study after study demonstrate that replacing dairy fats with canola oil has positive health outcomes.

That said, plenty of oil free alt milks out there.

I love how on HN we regularly talk about terraforming Mars, computer/brain interface, the AI "singularity", or even immortality brought by technology, but "sustainable farming" is an unsolvable problem and is so out of our imagination spectrum that we almost shouldn't discuss the possibility...

Folks going to Mars don't ask me to change the status quo and the status quo must be preserved no matter the consequences!

But I don't see any alternatives being discussed, like say, sky scraping towers of factory farmed cows that take up a square block and can feed hundreds of thousands. Like apparently the only solution is abstention or restriction. Where are the crazy visions of feeding tens of billions of people through some high tech magic whatevers.

What you call "abstention or restriction" in 2024 would be the dream diet of anyone before the 1930s. We're supposedly smart monkey, we should be able to eat 25% less bacon if it means avoiding all these long term issues.

Even pigs know when to stop eating

There is a reason people in the 1930s grew up stunted and were shorter than people today. Why in the world would I want to follow their example?

Eating more veg and less meat has got to be a lot cheaper for everyone, and more realistic, than building 100-story towers filled with cows, eh?

You can make your own oat milk with organic oats in like 1 minute with a blender and strainer. Not sure that qualifies as ultra processed, but there’s no risk of H5N1 so I think I’ll stick with it.

Soy milk is cooked, blended and strained. Hardly ultra processed.

Cows milk is also cooked, and homogenised.

You're going to have to provide some sources if you'll be making such bold claims ...

https://www.ewg.org/foodscores/ might help you target specific brands. Many soy milks count as ultra processed because the additives are (calcium, vitamin b etc.). Less healthy than the unadulterated brands? I think the research is still out on that.

(and cow milk often has similar additives, so this isn't supporting the original claim)

I'll bite. I'm currently carrying a bottle of whole milk home from the shop to have a glass.

It has 15g of protein per 500ml, a ton of calcium and 350ish calories.

Super nutritious.

Looking at the carton of soymilk from my fridge.

It has 18g of protein per 480ml, 60mg of calcium, and 200 calories. (Also 2.4mg of iron and 860mg of potassium)

The only ingredients are water and soybeans.

500ml of soy milk has almost twice as many protein and tons of nutrients too. It requires like 5% as much water to produce, 0 antibiotic, and no animals

And when factoring in the negative externalities extremely expensive. When factoring in the moral aspect considering the way the cows are treated it’s an immoral product.

Too bad animal protein increases calcium (and other mineral) excretion so your body can't use all that calcium [1].

That's also 1/3 of your saturated fat in a single glass.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6566930/

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