I've become a particular fan of oat milk over the past couple of years. It's one of the more difficult milk substitutes to find in at restaurants the UK (coffee places usually fair better), almond and soy are relatively common. There are varieties that also froth up really well that barristas now use.
I'm a particular fan of the price point. Being from the UK I can assume that any almond milk I drink would be made from almonds from another country, it's same with the coconut oil I use for cooking. So I am willing to accept some price inflation in order to remove dairy. But oat milk tastes much nicer and would probably get whittled down to a generic price point that beats any other milk substitute because it can be grown locally (almost anywhere in fact) and cheaply.
I don't think its locality that makes oat milk cheap. Oats are cheap. Nuts tend to be expensive, even domestically grown ones.
Oats you can plant and harvest in a season, entirely mechanically. An almond tree, you have to wait years before it starts producing, a few more years to hit peak production, and harvesting isn't nearly so automated.
Not OP, the reasons for eliminating diary are so many - cholesterol, hormones( most notably estrogen), IGF1 which is cancer promoting, antibiotics, casein morphine( which makes milk products addicting), the dairy industry is extremely cruel and the huge environmental impact due to all the resources needed to bring up a cow
I find this list highly amusing. You’ve listed quite a few barely-supported-by-evidence reasons, but you’ve missed the two big reasons that are big deals to a lot of people: lactose intolerance and allergy.
Most adults worldwide are lactose intolerant, although symptoms and the amount of lactose needed to trigger symptoms vary. And allergies to milk aren’t particularly rare.
In Scandinavia, most cafes seem to offer lactose-free milk, which is a great option for lactose-intolerant people. It’s also amusing, since Scandinavia has the lowest incidence of lactose intolerance anywhere. For milk allergies, oat milk is obviously a better choice.
FWIW, I think that foods like ice cream should always use lactose-free or at least lactose-reduced milk. It’s nutritionally identical but sweeter, so ice cream and such can be made with less sugar.
I didn't say your claims were wrong. I said that they were poorly supported and that you ignore the two much larger reasons that large numbers of people avoid dairy.
I read the abstract. It suggests that circulating levels of IGF-1 may be related to cancer. It does not say that drinking IGF-1 is related to cancer or that milk contains absorbable IGF-1. In fact, I found one study that determined that IGF-1 in milk is broken down during digestion and that mechanism by which various dairy products might impact blood IGF-1 levels are unknown.
So I maintain my claim that all the reasons you listed are poorly supported. In contrast, the fact that most people do not have the lactase persistence trait and end up lactose intolerant as adults is very well supported indeed. Similarly, I know people who have done genuine lab tests and determined that they have bona fide IgE-mediated milk allergies. Apparently some people also have non-IgE-mediated immune reactions to milk. Of all of these, among adults, lactose intolerance is far and away the most common issue with dairy products.
If you want to drink milk or eat cheese that is cruelty-free, there are quite a few purveyors in Northern California that have cows that are very happy indeed. If you ever want to feel jealous of a cow's living conditions, just drive near any of the dairies in Point Reyes. Some of them offer tours, and others will let you just drop by and say hi to the cows. I'm sure there are plenty of places like this outside Northern CA, too. Obviously, you'll pay a bit more for this milk, although, the cheese doesn't seem to carry much, if any premium. I suspect the latter is related to the reduced costs of being a Class B dairy that produces cheese in house.
If you want to drink milk or cheese that is cruelty-free, you drink a plant based milk and eat plant based cheeses.
Just because there are a couple of cows that might look like they are living the dream cow life (for 4 years out of 20, because they don't produce enough milk to be economically viable and kept alive after that) and still the calves have to murdered early on to get all that milk (it is originally made for calve consumption, not people).
That might be the most common reason globally, but not necessarily in the UK where only 5% are intolerant. Many of those can tolerate small amounts such as you'd put in tea/coffee.
For men over 45, there is a correlation between milk and BPH (enlarged prostate and difficulty in urination). Farmers inject hormones (and other things), and the animal produces its own. All of these excrete into the milk causing irritation to the prostate and the resulting enlargement causes difficulty in urination. Same problem with whey protein powders and cheese. BUT! If the item is cooked, then there does not seem to be an effect. [1]
1) soak the oats for as long as you like (I do overnight, but can be as little as 30 mins)
2) Pass through a sieve, removing the sitting liquid.
3) Add to a blender with some fresh water and pulse (the amount of fresh water depends on how thick you want it to be afterwards). You can also add cocoa powder here if you want oaty/chocolatey milk.
4) Pass the liquor through a nut milk bag (or muslin etc...) to get the milk.
It separates quite easily so you do need to shake before use, but should be easily achievable with household items.
(Not OP) Oatly's process is patented, so you can look up what they do. That places some restrictions on using it in the same markets, of course. I think it's this one:
This is really just an ad for Oatly, right? There are other brands in the US market (at least), and I've seen a few different options on the shelves of my local food co-op for at least a few years....
I stopped drinking regular milk actively more than a year ago. At work we have soy milk which is good enough, but Oatly is definitely the gold standard milk replacmenet for me. Unfortunately I am finding that in Edinburgh cafés and other establishments are struggling to find suppliers that supply Oatly. This has resulted in a lot of places using other brands of oat milk which are universally terrible, so now asking for oat milk in your coffee is a gamble. As I understand it Oatly's methods are patented. Upon finding this out I even tried to buy shares in Oatly, but unfortunately they aren't publically traded.
Many people, including me, think that Oatly's iKaffe tastes better with coffee than milk.
You can see that in the local market here in Finland. Large number of oat and soy milks next to each other, many brands stay fully stacked (they taste bad) but Oatly's iKaffe is always almost out or out.
People have started to buy more of it when it is available, so it vanishes from the shelves even faster.
Oatly actually ran out in London around Christmastime last year. Other oat milks aren't very nice - Minor Figures do great canned mocha drinks for example, but their oat milk makes a poor flat white.
Here's a comparison of nutritional value, from Livestrong[1]
"Let's take Oatly Oat Drink Whole. One cup has:
120 calories
5 grams of fat
3 grams of protein
14 grams of carbohydrate
2 grams of fiber
It also provides 25 percent of the RDA of calcium, 18 percent of the RDA of vitamin D and 11 percent of the RDA of potassium.
The same amount of cow's milk with 3.5 percent fat contains:
146 calories
11 grams of carbohydrate
8 grams of protein
8 grams of fat
It boasts 25 percent of the RDA of calcium, 5 percent of the RDA of vitamin A and 1 percent of the RDA of iron. Unlike oat milk, it has no fiber at all."
Would that be iKaffe vs havremjölk? Because my god iKaffe is so perfect for coffe that I don’t even consider them to belong to the same product category!
What I've found is that milk-alternatives (and actually, even regular milk often times) are extremely varied. One brand of almond milk can taste completely different to another.
The best personal example of this is I hate virtually all versions of soy milk, except for Bonsoy (plentiful in Australian cafes/supermarkets, unfortunately difficult to find in the US).
That's why I don't really believe someone when they say "I hate soy|almond|whatever milk".
Having lived with some vegans, I have tried at least 3 dozen 'milks' and I must say, most are revolting. Some are decent, but seem to be priced accordingly. Personally, anything less than 3% fat, pasture sustained cow juice is an affront to man and nature alike. But everyones tastes vary. Accept that others are different, and thats ok. We arent just being bastards to spite you.
Pea protein milk (like Ripple or the stuff from Bolthouse) is way better than oat milk. It tastes just like almond or coconut milk, but has a way, way better nutrition profile.
Nutrient info for one 8 oz serving of unsweetened original:
exactly, and "milk" is a good descriptor for consumers: a pale liquid with some viscosity and a mild taste that can be used in the same ways cows milk is used. Usually the only people who complain about calling it "milk" are people who sell dairy products (not saying OP is one of them).
Uh, no. The defining characteristic of mammals is the ability to produce milk. The word itself is derived from the latin word breast. There is a definition for the word milk as a verb in the mechanical sense as in to extract a substance from an object mechanically but the product from that extraction is not, in any sense, milk, as in the noun. The only other known animals to provide milk are a specific species of jumping spiders. But, as this is specifically a single species, or perhaps even a small genus of interrelated jumping spiders, it is not a defining characteristic of its entire class from an evolutionary stand point.
Milk is an important substance and the definition of which should be more regulated to prevent distortion or misinterpretation of its function by marketing. The only manufactured food substance that approximates milk is baby formula. It is time to stop calling all of these mechanical extractions that are marketed as substitutions something other than milk. This is important because there is a lot of misinformation and general quackery that is related to these mechanical extractions that endanger the lives of infants such as the parents that killed their 7 month old infant by substituting quinoa milk with actual milk or formula because it was "natural."
Yep. Just checked some corpus data and taking soy milk as an example, "soy milk" is used 76.5% of the time by real people not subject to legal shenanigans imposed by the dairy industry, compared to "soymilk" only 23.5% of the time, in the slice of data I looked at. Not the best data (skewed to a certain US locale home to high tech, cable cars, and some large bridges) but pretty overwhelming. And these are people who are being influenced by commercial labels forced by lawsuits to use "soymilk", yet they still separate the words. Usage ftw.
The point is that the meaning is well established. Milk has long meant "edible white liquid" - see coconut milk, as well and milk of magnesia and poppy milk. The later two are essentially drugs but still fit with that definition! Unless it is believed that the non-animal milk producers are time travelers claiming it is some new deception to be corrected for when everyone has known that for centuries. They aren't changing the meaning - advocates for restricting it are.
IIRC they can't be sold as "milk" inside the EU, they're usually called some variation of "beverage" or "drink". The only product that can be labelled as "milk" has to be produced, as you said, by mammals.
Exactly, and I think "milk" is a confusing term that doesn't even describe what all these beverages are, which usually are way less nutritious than "real" milk.
Milk as a general term for a white liquid made from nuts and grains goes back hundreds of years. Nobody is calling it "milk", they are calling it "oat milk". Calling it "juice" as you have is far more wrong.
To further muddy the milk/not milk waters.
Oatly[1] appears to be grain, soaked in water, with enzymes added to break down starches into simple sugars.
Any brewer should know this is a wort, basically unfermented beer (without hops).
So there you go, you should really be asking for wort in your coffee.
I'm a particular fan of the price point. Being from the UK I can assume that any almond milk I drink would be made from almonds from another country, it's same with the coconut oil I use for cooking. So I am willing to accept some price inflation in order to remove dairy. But oat milk tastes much nicer and would probably get whittled down to a generic price point that beats any other milk substitute because it can be grown locally (almost anywhere in fact) and cheaply.