The rise of alternative milks • Hacker News Board

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#211

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 10:47 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #185

erikpukinskis wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I would expect the variance in the sustainability to be quite high, with the most sustainable (pasture fed) dairy farms being much better than the average almond milk producer. That’s just an intuition though. Also assuming we’re talking per gram of protein and fat here. Cup for cup almond milk might be more sustainable but there’s far more nutrition in a cup of cow milk.

An almond tree lasts for decades while a dairy cow has a considerably short life during which time she is abused by the Ag system and releases methane, poop, consumes a lot of inputs and a lot of water and labour and fossil fuel and electricity and refrigeration. It costs a dairy farmer more to produce a gallon of milk than it costs the consumer to buy it. It’s an industry entirely supported by subsidies. So it’s not…

It’s easy for me to push my intuitions in either direction. I’ve been contemplating a YouTube channel that compares actual diets along all of these axes and shows real numbers. All I tend to see is hand waving, or very gross comparisons of single metrics (like co2) at the commodity level.

The heuristic “plants are generally more sustainable” reads true to me. But “pick the better kingdom” seems like such a low bar to clear. I’d like to head towards actual understanding of embodied energy, cruelty, etc per unit of useful nutrition in specific meal plans.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#212

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Feb 04, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

jelliclesfarm wrote: post #187

erikpukinskis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Commercial oat milk tends to have far more protein than almond milk too. Almond milk has almost none. Soy has the most. (Although homemade almond milk would seem to have a lot more than boxed. 1.5 cups of almonds to 3 cups water is 7g protein per cup. Close to soy milk. Whereas commercial almond milk has more like 1g per serving)

What about hemp milk? I haven’t tried it yet. I can only assume that it’s not ok to grow hemp in every state(USA)

I’ve seen hemp milk also in the middle range of protein, ~3-4g per cup, similar to oat milks.

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#213

Post by mangoleaf » Wed, Feb 06, 2019, 11:36 PM UTC

There is another reason to switch from milk. For men over the age of 45, there is correlation between the natural (or added) hormones excreted into the milk and prostate growth causing an increase in urination difficulty. [1]

[1] http://vqrn.com/Prostate-Milk-Problem.html

Re: The rise of alternative milks

#214

Post by kbutler » Thu, Feb 07, 2019, 8:38 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #210

kbutler wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almond and coconut milk? Yes, almost as natural as cow milk. But why are you blending and steeping and straining the coconut/almond material instead of just eating it? Oh yeah, because you want it to be like what you'd get from "breastfeeding from a random animal" as an adult. Lactose intolerance is about as relevant as nut allergies, except it's unlikely to kill you.

So cooking is unnatural to you? Uh huh.

Absolutely - cooking is a totally unnatural thing that humans have learned to do, because it provides additional nutrients, calories, and variety. Find an animal in the wild that cooks its food... Closest may be the firehawks, which may spread fire to help hunting (live) prey. (Though many wild animals are happy to consume cooked food if available!)

But in drinking "not animal milk" you're trying to artificially approximate the experience of drinking "animal milk", which you described as unnatural.

Note that I'm not one to say that "unnatural == bad". I think cooking is good. I think dairy is good. I think consuming something nutritious in its natural state is more natural than cooking something.

You're free to differ.