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The rise of alternative milks

theguardian.com

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Re: The rise of alternative milks

#151

Post by Nasrudith »

SllX wrote: post #141
rebuilder wrote: post #61

I was meeting a client yesterday at their office, they offered me coffee and asked me if I wanted milk, then whether I'd like oat or regular. I said regular (usually drink oat but was somehow preoccupied) and the response was "yea, fortunately that's still available". To me that was a pretty striking example of how the realities of what climage change is going to push us towards are sinking in.

Today we’re (the general “we”, not you and I specifically) looking at the milk we put in our coffee with disdain, tomorrow we’ll be looking at the coffee in a similar manner. Probably someone somewhere out there already is and we’ll start seeing the headlines, blogs and podcasts about it in the near future. By building our societies around globalization, we have in some ways made our societies necessarily globalized.…

That isn't necessarily true that local is better environmentally - even assuming that bulk freighters will still be carbon sourced. It may feel flattering to just think of everything in cozy communities and they may taste better from being fresher but it is more complicated than just shipping miles.

There are other variables involved including farming efficiency, transportation efficiency, and the logistics of distribution. Going to get your groceries from a 5 minute away grocery store that gets their groceries from thousands of miles away in bulk shipments may ironically be more efficient than driving an hour away individually to get groceries from the local farmer's market. Essentially for the same reason that concluding that buses are worse than cars because they get lower miles per gallon is incredibly wrong.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#152

Post by gorilla_fight »

selimthegrim wrote: post #144
gorilla_fight wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd take lactose over fructose or glucose any day. I came to the same conclusion, to expand on this point: lactose = glucose + galactose, and there is some interesting research on the benefits of galactose: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3240634/ Galactose Enhances Oxidative Metabolism and Reveals Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Human Primary Muscle Cells normally it is broken down to glucose, which can…

Overnight oats are quite a popular product...

Yes traditionally oatmeal is soaked overnight, but how many of these producers of oat "milk" products will take the time to perform this extra step?

I first found out about soaked oats from _Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods_ by Sandor Ellix Katz, but interestingly it is an older practice, we now know improves digestability (excerpt from page 118):

> Oatmeal (or "oytmeal", as my father always calls it, in imitation of his immigrant grandmother) is the quintessential comfort food. It is soft and mushy, harkening back to that long ago time of infancy, when all our food was of such a consistency and lovingly spoon-fed to us. In early modern Europe, according to an article by Elizabeth Meyer-Renschhausen in the anthropology journal _Food and Foodways_, porridges were generally fermented and eaten as a "sour soup"[10]. Fermenting oats before cooking them not only makes them more nutritious and digestible, it makes the resulting oatmeal much creamer as well. For the freshest, most nutritious oatmlea, coarsely grind whole oats yourself when you are ready to use them, though steel-cut oats or rolled oats will work fine, too.

[10] _Food and Foodways_: "New Chapter Health Report", Elizabeth Meyer-Renschhausen, 2000

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#153

Post by nickmain »

Pharmakon wrote: post #57
maccard wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are lactose, nut and legume intolerent, why is gluten free important?

The two reasons would be Celiac disease, or pseudoscience. Since there is no reason that someone with Celiac couldn’t also be lactose, nut and legume intolerant, it could be that.

Gluten is also inflammatory for Hashimoto's

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#154

Post by InclinedPlane »

mnm1 wrote: post #80

Milk may not be the healthy food it was touted to be, but neither are most if not all of these "milks" that are basically mostly water and sugar. I'd take lactose over fructose or glucose any day. That's the main selling point: a slightly sweet, natural drink sweetened by lactose rather than fructose and glucose directly. Otherwise, I might as well drink soda--from looking at the sugar content of most of these "milks…

I drink unsweetened soy milk, it contains 1g of sugar per serving. Even the fully sweetened variant contains only about 2/3 the sugar content of regular milk.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#155

Post by InclinedPlane »

dabbledash wrote: post #52

Using “milk” in the name of something doesn’t make an “alternative milk” in any way that doesn’t apply to any other drinkable liquid.

"Soy milk" as a term in the english language dates back to the late 1890s. It's a term that has been in common use for a very long period.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#156

Post by seanwilson »

rlue wrote: post #148
seanwilson wrote: post #67

I've completely switched to soy milk. It tastes a little different to cow milk but after a few cups of tea over a week I didn't notice anymore. Now cow milk tastes strange to me. Soy milk also lasts around a year unopened so you can save time buying it in bulk as a plus. People need to stop expecting replacements to taste 100% identical to what they're use to and give their tastebuds some time to adapt. Same with mea…

> Same with meat alternatives. I politely disagree. 1. If you don't want people to expect it to taste identical, don't call it a "meat alternative". Just call it what it is (“soy patty”?), and then people will expect it to taste like that. 2. Have you tried the Impossible Burger? It’s pretty damn close.

I'd say if you want to reduce meat consumption because you care about climate change but you'll only switch if alternatives tastes identical to meat you probably don't care that much.

Maybe beef burger replacements are coming but we're not going to have indistinguishable alternatives to bacon, whole roast chicken, pulled pork, sirloin steak, duck etc. any time soon so people are going to have to be less picky for global meat consumption to be reduced.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#157

Post by Alex3917 »

justin66 wrote: post #123
jelliclesfarm wrote: post #113

If someone is looking to switch for sustainablity reasons, they shouldn’t be buying liquid non dairy almond either. You must need a handful of almonds to make your own almond milk. It’s wasteful in so many ways..from processing to transporting to the water content and all the middle men charges in the supply chain. Soak almonds. Peel. Purée with water..strain. Or don’t. Fresh almond milk. I realize many people won’t…

I'm told making oat milk is similarly simple. That one is tempting because the ingredients are so cheap.

> I'm told making oat milk is similarly simple.

The oat milk you get in a latte only tastes the way it does because it has oil and emulsifiers in it. If you just stick oats in a soy milk maker it's not going to come out the same way.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#158

Post by mnm1 »

williamdclt wrote: post #126
mnm1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the problem with unsweetened soy and almond milk (and even slightly sweetened) is that it's fucking disgusting so it has no use for me and for anyone that feels that way. I highly doubt any of the other veggie milks here are less disgusting. I would guess that lactose free milk is also disgusting before they add sugar back in but can't prove it.

> fucking disgusting so it has no use for me and for anyone that feels that way That's a completely different argument from your original one. And you could apply it to any food, a lot of people find cow milk "fucking disgusting", there's no point arguing on subjective taste

It's a different argument because it addresses a different point: "unsweetened works just as well in any scenario." Clearly, that's not the case as the sweetened and unsweetened versions are not comparable due to taste.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#159

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

yesenadam wrote: post #20
vinay427 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've made cashew milk and oat milk at home and they're naturally colored as they are on store shelves. Also, you can look at the ingredients list to verify that they are not colored. I don't recall the last time I saw or purchased one that was artificially colored. EDIT: Removed the first sentence as recommended.

Please don't tell people they're lying on HN when you have no idea whether that's true. (Apologies if you know the person you responded to well enough to know they're lying - I'm assuming you don't.) edit: Ah, I should have quoted, lesson learned. The comment began "Please don't lie", which has been removed, and people are downvoting me and responding as if I'd read the edited comment, so mine appears nonsensical.

> ...when you have no idea whether that's true

If you're familiar with soy milk and almond milk, it's a pretty dubious claim. The most well known brand in the US is Silk, which contains no such whitening ingredients that I have seen (see https://silk.com/products for ingredient information) nor have I encountered any other brands that contain whitening ingredients.

I think it's justifiable to say that claim is a falsehood.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#160

Post by bpicolo »

MrMember wrote: post #134
bpicolo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The texture of oat milk is offputting for me. So thick

I'll mix oat milk with coffee but I cant drink it plain. The texture and taste are not good.

Coffee is the main place I've experienced it, really dislike the texture vs other milk alternatives. Almond milk I think is actively better than milk in some scenarios (matcha lattes)
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