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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

Because cereal tastes terrible with water?

Because the dairy industry in the US alone gets $4 billion per year in subsidies from taxpayers?

Considering milk drinking predates both of those considerably, I don't think it is quite that simple.

That said, I find most cereal is much better dry, particularly flavorful cereals like grape nuts. I am not a fan of milk at all.

I love Kashi brand cereals without milk. I buy them, and when I see my roommates eating them with milk, I tell them they're ruining the experience.

Really, I like eating plain Kashi cereals and drinking a glass of milk separately. It provides close to complete nutrition, from protein to fiber to vitamins. I just don't like them combined. Even the plain, tastes-like-cardboard Kashi cereals, I eat like a snack.

You must have a lot better teeth than I do... I eat Grape Nuts about four times a week and can't imagine eating even a bite without milk on them to make them a bit softer.

There is a trick to it, you have to kind of grind them with themselves. Grapenuts is actually the only cereal that I can stand with milk as well, but I prefer them usually without.

I've found almond milk to be an excellent replacement for cereal. Better than soy anyways.

It's weird how almond, soy or coconut liquids can legally be called "milk" none of those sources have nipples. Coffee is liquid from fermented beans similar to soy it's no more milk than soy is.

I know here in Canada for decades margarine had to be smuggled into the country, when it was legal it couldn't be yellow like butter (but even butter has artificial yellow colour added), it certainly couldn't be called butter.

They can be called "milk" legally because the definition of milk includes the whitish fluid produced by plants. The dairy industry has tried to argue against its use "to prevent consumer confusion" to no avail: http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/04/dairy-lobby-t...

Lewis Black said it (ranted it?) better: "There's no such thing as soy milk, okay? And I know that because there's no soy tit, now is there? I don't know a lot, but I know you need a breast for milk."—Rules of Enragement, "Ireland and Health", 7:04-7:11.

> I know here in Canada for decades margarine had to be smuggled into the country

Sounds like anticompetitive political corruption by the dairy industry; I can't imagine how that protects consumers.

Do you also have a problem with ground peanut spread being called "peanut butter"?

I don't think it was anticompetitive reasons although the end result was that I believe it was farmers created a market for butter that margarine would benefit from.

As for PB I'm not a dairy farmer.

IIRC, some U.S. states (Wisconsin might have been one) had similar laws. The margarine companies used the workaround of including a separate food coloring packet, which the customer could mix in at home.

But then what is the point? I know why manufacturers want to defraud consumers, but do consumers really want to defraud their families?

It's not about defrauding anyone in this case: Margarine looks disgusting without added colour. Even if you prefer margarine or have made a fully informed choice you might still very well prefer to add colour to it before using it.

The reason for laws restricting colour additions to margarine was explicitly because it is sufficiently close to butter in taste, texture and usage that it created a substantial competitive pressure on butter sales because people would happily pick margarine over butter to save money. So much so that the separate coloring failed to stem the growing demand.

Calling margarine "butter" is not the same as calling coconut liquid "milk" - it's called "coconut milk".

I guess it's all about the color, see milk glass.

On the other hand, we do have peanut butter, cocoa butter, apple butter...

You should try vanilla Silk, if you live somewhere it's available. Silk is the brand of soy milk that made me realize soy milk is better than cow milk.

And the sugar content? that might explain it. =/ Almond is drinkable with 40% of the calories.

There's unsweetened (and unflavored) soy milk. Don't know about unsweetened vanilla soy.

For the unsweetened unflavored variety, my local Whole Foods carries Silk, 365, and/or Earth Balance. All three have about 1-2 g sugar per cup, instead of 6-8g in normal (sweetened) soy milk. Some other kinds of milk are worse. I used to know someone who drank goat's milk and some other powdered milk that had 11g and 12g sugar per cup, respectively.

My cereal is moderately low on sugar already (6g per serving among 30g carbs), and it took some getting used to it with low-sugar soy milk, but I can't go back now. If I have to use "normal" (really: sweetened) soy milk, which is still only 6 or 7g sugar per cup, I can feel the sugar rush and it makes me mad.

It's made me hypersensitive to (added) sugar in most foods. I recently tried drinking some sweetened almond milk and I couldn't drink it. It was awful.

For my money, Almond's unsweetened flavour profile wins hands down. It has 1/2 the calories of "unsweetened" Silk. Here are some data for those interested in the comparison. The issue is that most people don't understand what they are drinking.

Almond milk has 60 cal per 12 oz,

Vanilla Silk has 150, "Unsweetened" silk has 120.

Coca Cola has ~145

___________________

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-blue-diamond-almond-b...

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-silk-soymilk-vanilla-...

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-silk-soymilk-unsweete...

http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-coca-cola-classic-i98...

Coconut milk is more closer to cow's milk with regards to fat content, however almond milk is indeed excellent.

I don't think Coconut milk is intended as a replacement for regular/soy milk though. Its even packaged in tin cans, so I'm assuming the primary usage is as an ingredient in Southeast Asian foods (esp. Thai Curries)

I think the commenter you're replying to is referring to a type of drink that's a milk-substitute containing coconuts, not the canned stuff that's got tons of coconut oil (and thus very fatty) ... though I love both, it's kind of confusing that their names are very similar.

[1] http://dairyfreecooking.about.com/od/dairyfreebasics/tp/Milk...

Did you read beyond the title? Subsidies wouldn't matter if everyone was lactose-intolerant. The article is an interesting discussion of how we don't really understand why adult humans are able to drink milk at all.

Also, the title here has nothing to do with the story on Slate.

It's in the URL, I wonder if Slate updated it because it was confusing. I also initially read it as "keep drinking (even in 2012)" when it's really "keep drinking into adulthood."

I might be remembering incorrectly but I believe that my grandma told me once that they used to use water on their cereal instead of milk. I have not been able to find any sources of it being true (everywhere) so it might have been just their family or perhaps because of the depression or other circumstances.

I can believe it. More than a decade after the Depression, my grandma saved money by feeding my dad and his brothers watered-down reconstituted powdered milk. There was an entire category of foods my grandpa didn't allow in their house because he ate them as a child in the Depression, including turnips, rutabagas, millet, and certain kinds of beans, but they still felt like they couldn't afford to use the full ratio of milk powder.

Was this meant to be funny?

If not you clearly didn't read the article, as this is basically an article about human evolution/genetic mutation.

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