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Oatly: The New Coke?

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Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hosted a meetup on “dairy tech”. Before the presentation, I think I had an implicit assumption that cattle raised for beef were treated poorly. I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. In the most efficient dairies, they never leave their enclosure, are kept pregnant continuously via artificial insemination, and are injected with hormones.

> I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. I think you could certainly argue that. Beef cows are slaughtered at around 3 years and diary cows are slaughtered at around 5 years but after giving birth with their offspring taken away several times (both have about a 20 year life span). Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal crue…

Because they like milk. You can justify anything if you want it to be true.

Where does this end? Industrial farming kills insects. We obviously don't have the same amount of love for insects as we have for cows. But why should cows live and insects die?

This comes back to killing humans, one way or the other. How many insects are a foetus? Are poor people not allowed to have children so that insects can keep on living?

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#172
post #24

Any recommendations for a different good-tasting, ‘healthy’ milk alternative, then? Porridge or cereal with water is inedible...

Milk is healthy, there is a reason they used to give it to school age children on a government subsidized program. The new wave of alternative milk is an ethical one even if it poses as a health one. You don't get skinny by having a soy latte instead of a regular one, you get skinny by reducing your meal size and or frequency and eating whole foods.

You might want to have a look at this:

Health Concerns About Dairy - by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine

https://www.pcrm.org/good-nutrition/nutrition-information/he...

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#173

"Made for humans" also draws attention to the fact that the milk you're drinking from a cow is not being drank by the offspring of that cow like it normally would and many people don't realise you have to keep making diary cows give birth to get more milk. Newly born male cows are usually turned into veal in a few weeks and female cows are separated from their mothers so they don't drink the valuable milk. Milk givin…

I believe that some dairies use "sexed" semen to minimise the ratio of male calves. Doesn't detract from the separation, etc though.

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#174

I'm sympathetic to marketing counterfactuals, so I wanted to like this article, but its claims did not sway me. - The appalling environmental footprint of the dairy industry was never addressed. - The canola oil claims cited were nowhere near conclusive (see twanvl and NotOscarWilde's comments below). - The nutritional comparison seemed to me to be more or less trivial. Okay, it's got a higher glycemic index and simi…

For all the talk about fat content and quality, the topic of hormones in milk should be discussed. Cows load their milk up with hormones to stimulate growth in their calves. We’re not calves and don’t need stimulating. Further, modern dairy farms pump hormones into cows to induce higher milk production-thus more hormones make it into the milk in the container. There are even morphine-like compounds in milk and dairy products. They’re even more concentrated in cheeses. These same morphine compounds can be concentrated and given from a human mother to her baby through breast milk in non-trivial doses (though the conditions hopefully make this rare). Then there’s just the negatives of having additional cholesterol through the diet.

None of that’s going to be in plant milks.

Ref “your body in balance” by Barnard.

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#175
post #109
post #5

Great write up on debunking oatly's "health benefits". But fails to mention the the moral reasons to choose oat milk over cow's milk. TBF lot of the meat replacements are plagued by similar problems. [1] [1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/impossible-and-beyond-ho...

> But fails to mention the the moral reasons to choose oat milk over cow's milk. This is kind a red herring. Cow's milk should be irrelevant because you don't have to choose between the two. You can leave both out if you have moral reasons to avoid cow's milk and health reasons to avoid oat milk.

The author compares them to each other, so it makes sense to talk about why you should take it out of the picture.

As it happens, though, unsweetened almond milk does seem to have much less sugar – 0.2g by one measure I found (another just says 2g carbs of which 1g is fiber) and a glycemic index of 25 (low).

So it is a bit surprising that the author didn't make this comparison – it's much more favorable to his point.

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suggest you look up "factory farming" before making claims like "It’s not like a dairy cow has a life of eternal suffering after all". They literally don't do any of the activities you mention.

I know dairy farming very, very well. It varies between areas. In France for example, there are no mega farms, all farms are small to medium, many family owned. Hormones are banned. This is true for other parts of Western Europe. Mega Farms are mostly an American issue. I do not support them at all.

You have made broad, sweeping remarks about the ethics of dairy farming and it's only here that you considerably narrow the scope of your statements to farms that you deem ethical.

Yes, some farms may operate in line with an acceptable standard of ethics, but for many people, it is easier to live a vegan lifestyle than to carefully ensure that all their dairy is ethically sourced.

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#178
post #166

I'm sympathetic to marketing counterfactuals, so I wanted to like this article, but its claims did not sway me. - The appalling environmental footprint of the dairy industry was never addressed. - The canola oil claims cited were nowhere near conclusive (see twanvl and NotOscarWilde's comments below). - The nutritional comparison seemed to me to be more or less trivial. Okay, it's got a higher glycemic index and simi…

> The author engages in a little deceptive rhetoric himself by setting a 12oz serving as the baseline. It's true that a portion that size is bad for you. Lattes are bad for you. Like many people, though, I only rarely use milk substitutes to add a dash of not-coffee to coffee that would otherwise be too hot or too burnt. Guess I shouldn't be concerned? Maybe you shouldn't be, but others might. I was regularly using ~…

There’s also Elmhurst - though more expensive. It’s basically just water and oats and maybe some salt. They list the number of ingredients on the label though for easy selection as some have more.

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hosted a meetup on “dairy tech”. Before the presentation, I think I had an implicit assumption that cattle raised for beef were treated poorly. I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. In the most efficient dairies, they never leave their enclosure, are kept pregnant continuously via artificial insemination, and are injected with hormones.

> I came away realizing that cattle used for milk production suffer more. I think you could certainly argue that. Beef cows are slaughtered at around 3 years and diary cows are slaughtered at around 5 years but after giving birth with their offspring taken away several times (both have about a 20 year life span). Personally, I don't understand how vegetarians justify it as being much different in terms of animal crue…

I think it's quite simple: many vegetarians have no idea of the conditions in an average dairy farm. I was vegetarian for a number of years before I went vegan. I had assumed dairy cows had it reasonably good and it was quite a shock to find out how horrible their treatment teens to be.

Re: Oatly: The New Coke?

#180
post #152

The author should write a similar article about himself, because the whole article is filled with dubious claims and misguided evidence. The two main claims are "Since the GI is a measure of how much of a negative response your body has to certain sugars" and "research showing harms from canola oil". Neither can be ascertained. A big problem with nutritional science is that it's complex, therefore it is neigh impossi…

I suspect the article is mostly about getting seo juice for the newsletter so it boosts his clients more when he links to them.

Though I’m not in seo myself, so I don’t know how these things work really.

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