Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition. So it was a pleasant surprise when, shortly after moving to San Francisco, I ordered a drink at Blue Bottle Coffee and didn’t have to ask—or pay extra—for a milk alternative. Since 2022, the once Oakland-based, now Nestlé-owned cafe chain has defaulted to oat milk, both to cut carbon emissions and because lots of its affluent-tending customers were already choosing it as their go-to.
Plant-based milks, a multibillion-dollar global market, aren’t just good for the lactose intolerant: They’re also better for the climate. Dairy cows belch a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide; they contribute at least 7 percent of US methane output, the equivalent emissions of 10 million cars. Cattle need a lot of room to graze, too: Plant-based milks use about a tenth as much land to produce the same quantity of milk. And it takes almost a thousand gallons of water to manufacture a gallon of dairy milk—four times the water cost of alt-milk from oats or soy.
But if climate concerns push us toward the alt-milk aisle, dairy still has price on its side. Even though plant-based milks are generally much less resource-intensive, they’re often more expensive. Walk into any Starbucks, and you’ll likely pay around 70 cents extra for nondairy options.
. Dairy’s affordability edge, explains María Mascaraque, an analyst at market research firm Euromonitor International, relies on the industry’s ability to produce “at larger volumes, which drives down the cost per carton.” American demand for milk alternatives, though expected to grow by 10 percent a year through 2030, can’t beat those economies of scale. (Globally, alt-milks aren’t new on the scene—coconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, which is thousands of years old.)
What else contributes to cow milk’s dominance? Dairy farmers are “political favorites,” says Daniel Sumner, a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist. In addition to support like the “Dairy Checkoff,” a joint government-industry program to promote milk products (including the “Got Milk?” campaign), they’ve long raked in direct subsidies currently worth around $1 billion a year.
Big Milk fights hard to maintain those benefits, spending more than $7 million a year on lobbying. That might help explain why the US Department of Agriculture has talked around the climate virtues of meat and dairy alternatives, refusing to factor sustainability into its dietary guidelines—and why it has featured content, such as a 2013 article by then–Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, trumpeting the dairy industry as “leading the way in sustainable innovation.”
But the USDA doesn’t directly support plant-based milk. It does subsidize some alt-milk ingredients—soybean producers, like dairy, net close to $1 billion a year on average, but that crop largely goes to feeding meat- and dairy-producing livestock and extracting oil. A 2021 report by industry analysts Mintec Limited and Frost Procurement Adventurer also notes that, while the inputs for dairy (such as cattle feed) for dairy are a little more expensive than typical plant-milk ingredients, plant alternatives face higher manufacturing costs. Alt-milk makers, Sumner says, may also have thinner profit margins: Their “strategy for growth is advertisement and promotion and publicity,” which isn’t cheap.
Starbucks, though, does benefit from economies of scale. In Europe, the company is slowly dropping premiums for alt-milks, a move it attributes to wanting to lower corporate emissions. “Market-level conditions allow us to move more quickly” than other companies, a spokesperson for the coffee giant told me, but didn’t say if or when the price drop would happen elsewhere.
In the United States, meanwhile, it’s a waiting game to see whether the government or corporations drive down alt-milk costs. Currently, Sumner says, plant-based milk producers operate under an assumption that “price isn’t the main thing” for their buyers—as long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But it’s going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.
Need to keep the ag subsidies flowing so that rural areas keep voting conservative
It’s not as if Democrats don’t also throw plenty of bones to farmers.
Even if the farmers themselves are likely to be relatively conservative, they’re such a politically sympathetic group that no one wants to be seen as “going after hard-working real American farmers!”. Things like the Iowa caucuses playing a huge role in national politics don’t help either (although the Dems have thankfully killed that).
The industry got too big and too reliant on subsidies. A reckoning will occur at some point, it’s just a matter of whether it’s announced ahead of time or surprises everyone.
Too big and too reliant on subsidies is a feature, not a bug. You want your farmers producing a fairly large surplus most of the time, because the harm resulting from a major food shortage is catastrophic. A widespread drought, disease, natural disaster, crop failure, or other shortage needs to be made up with other foodstuffs.
Subsidization incentivizes production even when market rates fall below profitability, which is what happens when production is significantly greater than actual demand.
Sorry, but that’s horseshit.
Taking away dairy subsidies would drive up milk and milk product prices, pushing more people to buy alternatives instead. Any loss of employment in the dairy industry is balanced by new jobs in manufacturing plant milks and dairy alternatives. This isn’t people being replaced by robots, it’s cows being replaced by plants. You still need pretty much the same workforce to package and distribute it regardless.
I had this fantastic plant-based milk product on my store shelves called “Not Milk”. I really enjoyed it. Had this mild coconut flavor which might turn off some (not me) but anyway, it’s gone now because it was too expensive for the market I’m in.
Meanwhile gallons of milk flow for the same purpose, only subsidized for under half the cost per ounce.
As we do, we stifle innovation ourselves based on our past.
check out your local Aldi. They’ve got a range of almond, soy, coconut and oat milk at very reasonable prices. I was loving coconut milk until my friend told me how high in saturated fat it is (like really high.) Since then I do about half coconut and half light almond for my oatmeal and I can’t say enough how good it tastes. I’m eating oatmeal as a dessert now sometimes because I like it so much.
Edit: had originally said cholesterol but totally had meant saturated fat. Thanks to @DarthFrodo for bringing the error to my attention.
Depends on where they are grown.
California is a huge Almond supplier, but they have had frequent droughts. People get angry when they are asked to conserve water and then everything they’ve conserved is used to grow a water-hungry crop.
This could be solved by growing them somewhere else, or desalinating (California is a coastal state after all).
Plants don’t produce cholesterol, only animals. Coconut oil is high in saturated fat that seems to be bad for blood cholesterol levels, but coconut milk (for drinking, in cartons) has hardly any fat in it. The one I looked up has half of the saturated fat compared to 3,5% fat cows milk.
Butter and heavy cream don’t really have a good replacement, but regular milk has so many alternatives it’s crazy. Almond milk and oat milk I prefer to regular old milk.
Because things that aren’t milk taste like flavored water, and not…you know…milk…
I hate to break this simple truth to you, but that’s the whole reason why. Milk simply tastes better, and is a superior product to alt-milk.
Guess I uploaded it badly. It’s a Big Lebowski gif of the line, “well, that’s just like, your opinion, man”
You’re getting downvoted but you’re right. I think some people just like their milk to taste like coconut or something.
They’re not getting downvotes for saying they don’t taste the same. They’re getting downvoted for speaking an entirely subjective opinion as some hard truth.
It is a hard truth. If it wasn’t a hard truth, it wouldn’t be the way it is.
The milk solids weaken the connections between the gluten proteins to create a softer bread. It’s also what is responsible for the browning that is characteristic of bread. It also helps activate other leaveners and is what helps keep bread moist. So…a little bit more than that.
And that’s just bread… do I need to go further?
My personal theory is that we subsidize dairy not for the milk, but for the cheese. As far as I’m aware you can’t make cheese out of plant milks, and we’ve gotten pretty reliant on cheese as a source of protein and other nutrients in our American diets - especially among children and lower income diets.
You can make plant-based cheeses. And some of them are pretty good. But they lack all of the same properties. Like, you can get a cheese that that when hot will stretch a little bit like the cheese on a pizza, but as it cools off it loses all of that elasticity and is not great for lukewarm pizza. You can get cheese that is pretty decent for lukewarm and hot pizza, but it doesn’t have that stretch. It more just rips apart. And you definitely don’t have the span of “flavors” of cheese or whatever you’d call it. Some of the big ones, sure, but again, they don’t have all the same physical properties.
I don’t mind the loss of those properties, but many people do.
Cheese isn’t a great source for protein compared to beans in regards to price though.
Honestly, I think we subsidize the dairy industry simply because they’ve been lobbying so long. Meat is subsidized too. It’s the one market that the conservatives are fine with ignoring the mantra of “free market” and support regulating the hell out of it in whatever way supports the “farmers” (big farm is nothing like the labeling suggests and is all headed by big guys in suits who likely never have been on a farm in their life).
Beans can taste amazing when prepared by a competent chef, but often taste like shit when prepared wrong.
Cheese, on the other hand, is much more forgiving of poor preparation. Eat it straight out of the package, sliced and on bread or crackers, melt it into sauces, or grill it, or any number of other uses.
Simply put, cheese is fast and easy, and can elevate almost any other food.
Also, try to get kids to eat beans. It can happen. But not easily, and often you have to do it in the form of chili, with loads of cheese.
You’re just describing American children raised in a poor diet. Beans are a staple food among not of the world population, including their children. They’re super easy to prepare as well. Talking about the extremely fatty and unhealthy cheese like that is probably one of the many reasons the US is obese and unhealthy.
Cheese is not a healthy part of a diet in any quantity where it provides a significant protein of the person’s protein needs.
I think it depends on context and how you are raised. I was given exposure to a broad array of vegetables and beans as a kid, and liked most of them, even as a kid. I think its a cultural thing - if you (or TV, or peers, or media) tell kids that “kids don’t like X”, well, they probably won’t.
In short: There is so much excess cheese out there that the US government is literally storing billions of pounds of it in underground caves.
Cheese was one of our main obstacles toward cutting out dairy. I came across a vegan cheese sauce recipe that utilizes blended steamed potatoes & carrots for the texture and nutritional yeast and other spices for the flavor. Been using it for a few years now and haven’t looked back yet.
It’s hard to find good nutritional yeast though. Since they are quite expensive, it is not easy to try around until you find one, that does not taste like garbage.
Yes it’s an expensive purchase, but I buy it once every 6 months or so. It goes a long way and I use little (⅓ cup) at a time.
Some of my family think we’re living large because we can “afford” cashew nuts, which we use for many purposes, but don’t think twice about spending 3 times more on meat every single week.
How is it better for us? Most plant milks have no protein in them or a fraction of the protein of real milk. Not to mention plant milk often doesn’t taste great. Oat milk is the only one I find acceptable and even then I don’t prefer it to real milk.
Also, there are other dairy products like yogurt and cheese that you need real milk for.
I guess that the soy yogurt I had for breakfast and the vegan mozzarella that I had on my lasagna for dinner last night were all just in my imagination.
Not everyone is able to handle soy, there is no solution for every person.
As an avid consumer of yogurt, what you consumed isn’t yogurt.
what you consumed isn’t yogurt.
Considering yogurt was just a made up word at some point, I have no problem with words evolving over time like literally every other word in our language.
Yogurt is about the end-product. It’s like calling only some things bread because they have extra ingredients or don’t use the same grains that ancient societies used to make the original bread.
Not being able to handle soy?
Is baked chicken too spicy for you? Hahahaha 😂😂
I bet you can’t even throw a baseball, dude just puts it on the ground and walks home to his couch.
Dairy milk is gross. I stopped drinking it nearly 15 years ago. I wasn’t vegan or vegetarian at the time. It just tasted awful. I still would eat cheese than, but as a drink, dairy milk is plain awful. It’s also terribly inefficient. It’s not shelf stable. It has a short lifespan. It requires a lot of water and energy per cup than many others.
Do plant-based milks taste exactly like milk? No. But they don’t have to.
And how is it better for us? Considering a majority of the world can’t digest it is a big sign as to why plant based is better. Soy isn’t the only option. There’s almond, pea, banana, cashew and coconut to name a few.
It’s not shelf stable. It has a short lifespan.
Ultra-pasteurized milk has a remarkable shelf life, even when unrefrigerated.
And how is it better for us? Considering a majority of the world can’t digest it is a big sign as to why plant based is better.
Your argument becomes a non-sequitur when extended to people who are lactose tolerant. The mere existence or ubiquity of lactose intolerance does not entail that milk is bad for the lactose tolerant. Perhaps plant substitutes to cow milk are better for even the lactose tolerant, but lactose intolerance is completely irrelevant to the minority of us such as myself who produce sufficient enzymes to digest lactose without any difficulty whatsoever.
Sorry, didn’t realize the world revolves around the extreme minority when discussing what’s good for the human race as a whole.
You’re right. How could anyone ever make any argument against anecdotal case by case stories. Obviously the entire collected data on human nutrition is useless as a whole because it doesn’t apply to small percentages of the population. Oh silly me and not understanding that general concepts aren’t important.
Dairy milk is gross.
as a drink, dairy milk is plain awful.
I mean, you have to realize that this is strictly subjective, no? One could just as easily say that oat milk is gross and plain awful. I’d disagree - I think it’s great - but “it’s icky” is not a useful argument, speaking as someone who mostly buys oat milk nowadays.
We get most of our protein from sources other than milk. Humans are the only animal that continues to drink milk past weaning and the only animal that drinks milk from another animal and only a minority does it…
So… how does the majority of humans survive without drinking milk?
Humans are the only animal that continues to drink milk past weaning and the only animal that drinks milk from another animal
objectively false
Just because you were breast-fed until past middle school, doesn’t mean it’s true for the rest of us.
you don’t need breast milk for yoghurt and cheese.
I make both myself, my soy yoghurt tastes very similar to Greek yoghurt and works very well in curries etc. It’s not just the flavour, it’s fermented.
My blue and white cheeses are awesome, I serve them to people who thank me for buying them “real” cheese (something I would never do lmao). Again they’re properly cultured, you just need to mix protein and fat sources in similar ratios to the target cheese. you can even use peas as the base for surprisingly tasty but weirdly green cheese.
Can you recommend any resources for the yoghurt and cheese that you make yourself?
So the yoghurt just start by making your own soy milk. Any old recipe will do, store bought is generally too low protein to set. You can set it with gelling agents lile tapioca starch but I’m not really into cooking that way personally.
So make your milk, add a yoghurt culture (unfortunately starting one it’s unlikely you’ll be able to find vegan culture. I just started with the dregs of a neighbour’s Greek yoghurt. Probs gonna be excommunicated for that. Whatever you do keep a separe culture healthy so you don’t have to buy more), pop it somewhere warm (low temp oven, ~30 degrees iirc), leave it for 12 hours.
Your first results will be all over the shop, you’ll need to find an amount of water for the soybeans you get that doesn’t basically just make silken tofu. That’ll depend on specifically how mature they are etc so you’ll have to experiment with your local source. It’ll taste very tofu-y till you add salt (since it basically is sour tofu). Enjoy!
Cheeses umm: cashewbert is an EU store with vegan cultures, no ethical quandary there. This lady is a good place to start https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxMAl_LiSUU
Umm if using coconut oil use the descented stuff. soap makers often have food safe descented for sale. Otherwise it’ll taste like coconut. I prefer macadamia oil.
for new styles start by looking at protein and fat ratios for the animal milk version and copying them. I hate to plug reddit but the vegan cheese making sub there is great.
As with all ferments cleanliness! cleanliness! cleanliness!
