Need to keep the ag subsidies flowing so that rural areas keep voting conservative

One thing nobody has commented on - how that article slips in a seemingly positive mention of Nestlé (they own the cafe that uses plant milks). That raised my eyebrows.

The dairy lobby in the US is huge money. If you ever want to know why we're making a seemingly stupid decision follow the money, look at the entrenched interests and read some history. We subsidize dairy farmers because we used to subsidize dairy farmers and they spent a bunch of their earnings lobbying for more subsidies.

Except almonds. Almonds are terrible water wasters, and mostly grown in California where they can least afford the water.

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.

Probably because everyone tried only the shittiest alt-malks, assume they are all bad, and somehow don't get heartburn and diarrhea and gunky mouth and throat feel from cow milk. I save all my lactose intolerance suffering for cheese and ice cream.

Seriously though it's the same as people that say only bad things about tofu but have only eaten white American 'recipes' that genuinely suck. Meanwhile Asians happily inhaling literal tons of it prepared in actually good meals. Try making bread from scratch without salt (or salty ingredients) and that's what tofu foods for the white market remind me of.

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.

Because lots of people in your country drink it, like it, and even more eat things made from it. Like cheese.

"Two thirds of people can't tolerate lactose" is utterly fucking meaningless in this context. Most of those are in Asia. Last I checked, it was countries giving out subsidies, not some nebulous world council.

And nearly all farming gets subsidised, because that reduces reliance on external countries. You've seen what capitalism did to housing. You don't want that to happen to food.

My takeaway from this is that Nestle probably doesn't own any dairy companies, but probably does own a plant that makes oat milk. They keep all the profit in their own ecosystem by buying their supplies from themself and then get to tell us how green and thoughtful they are.

I prefer plant-based milk over dairy, it tastes better and it lasts longer. I tried plant based milk years ago and never went back. I've tried cashew, macadamia, rice, soy, almond, coconut, oat, and sunflower. Some of my favorites are vanilla almond, dark chocolate almond and cashew, vanilla macadamia, and vanilla coconut. My family still buys dairy milk, but we always bought plant-based butter. I buy cream cheese to use as bread spread.

Are there actual studies showing that plant-based alternatives are better for health (for individuals that digest lactose just fine like me) ?

I switched to alt-milks for ecological reason but media keep talking about the negative health effects of «ultra-transformed food», which alt-milk very much sounds like...

Can you make cheese out of almond milk? If I'm doing my math right, 75% of milk is made into cheese.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/milk-day.html#:~:text=Milk%20production%20in%20the%2024,1.4%20percent%20from%20November%202021.

https://hartdesign.com/industry-news/annual-cheese-production-up/#:~:text=U.S.%20cheese%20production%20in%202021,(all%20figures%20are%20rounded).

Because most plant juice tastes like shit and has the wrong mouth-feel for most things we use cow milk for. Its not rocket surgery.

I don't see why dairy should be subsidized but some plant milks aren't exactly environmentally friendly either. The best can be said is they're better than dairy, assuming the same land could be used for both. But they can be devastating in their own right. E.g. to grow 1 almond (i.e. one kernel) takes over 3 gallons of water. Other crops used to make milk like oats have lower water consumption.

I see soy/oat/rice milk as their own thing, instead of a direct cow milk substitute/replacement.

There are many, many dairy product that are important as food or ingredients to other foods such as butter, yogurt, ice cream, cream, infant formula, and various cheeses that cannot be replaced directly by plant based alternatives.

And also, if you don't like milk, try getting one of those unhomoginized milk in glass bottles that's usually directly bottled by local farms. You have to shake a lot to get the cream on top dissolved again, but there is nothing that's quite like an ice cold cup of that.

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.

Bring that complain to the producers of "oat milk" and similar products. Producing a gallon of oat milk has ingredience costs of about 20ct. You know what you are paying for it in the supermarket. Go figure who gets rich on people who are looking for "alternatives".

A lot of arguments see to be that it tastes better. I don’t want to argue subjective tastes. However, in terms of economics, the better taste would mean that there is no need to subsidize it. The market would bear the additional cost if the taste and utility of milk is there. The question posed is still relevant: why do we subsidize it? Everyone arguing how much better it is than the alternatives are just proving the point that we shouldn’t be subsidizing it.

This is too narrow. Why do we subsidize food at all? America is supposed to be free market capitalists, right? Subsidies don't fit that definition?

(in reality, farmers need some sort of support system, I believe, as do we all, but subsidies don't fit the free market capitalism narrative.)

Because cows eat corn and cornfields have more power than people in America

Milk, cream, cheese (most of what milk ends up as), and butter, are all delicious, despite the corrupting economic and political arrangements. Is the quantity consumed appropriate? The US diet is demanding.

The article sort of glosses over the input required to grow plant-based milk products effectively at scale, and the fact they don't constantly produce like cows, the ways the crops can be destroyed and what's required to protect them. A byproduct of dairy farming is manure, often used to fertilize vegetable crops, but the nitrogen fixation used in synthetic fertilizers requires a lot of energy input as well.

Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well,

That number, like all world population numbers is heavily skewed by just how many people are in China. The mutation that causes adults to continue to produce the enzyme to digest lactose is less common among those of Asian descent.

(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.)

...and there are medieval European recipes that call for almond milk, and tofu is made from soy milk and there are written sources referencing it roughly a thousand years old. You're right, none of these are really new on the scene, aside from maybe oat milk.

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.

I feel like your first paragraph completely ignored this aspect. You squeeze milk out of a cow. Nut and bean milks require grinding the stuff up with a lot of water, mixing it thoroughly, then squeezing the wet pulp through a fine filter (for small batches something like a cheesecloth) to separate the milk from the pulp.

Commercial oat milk requires further processing, because just pulping, mixing with water and straining oats does not produce anything appetizing at all.

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.

That's not a bad assumption on their part - people who are deeply concerned with the emissions involved in producing their food tend to be richer, in no small part because poor folks are going to put price first, because they have to think about how food fits into their budget more.

Also cheese - you can't make cheese from plant milks. Well, you can try, but that's basically how you make tofu, and performing a similar process on other plant milks creates something closer to tofu than cheese.

I'm curious what makes milk bad for you. Could someone explain this? I understand why it is bad for the climate, but not why it's bad for human health provided you can digest lactose properly.

I'm allergic to milk, so fuck big dairy.

Because it's a relatively new competitor on the market that doesn't have the same agricultural base as dairy products which warrants subsidies aimed at keeping farmers from losing their shirts during lean seasons?

Oat milk > Almond milk. Almond milk has a weird and bitter taste to it, oat milk doesn't.

I also like the coconut water with rice drinks, but they hardly classify as milk even tho some brands may claim it's a milk alternative.

We all just say "capitalism" and end the thread right?

We don't need non human milk in the first place so I don't need a milk alternative either lol

Also, for the record I'm mostly off human milk too now that I'm an adult

side question, what is the impact of goat milk?

What's more local, whatever is more local is likely better for the planet unless that UK oat milk in that Toronto Coffee shop flew there on its own.

I can't make milk kefir with almond milk

Because milking nuts is hard. Their teats are so small!

As for the answer to the question....

https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=yKf40CLF9MU

Subsidies have devalued food and the value of farms and farm labor. If they went away, meat and dairy consumption would fall simply because we would have to pay the true dollar value of producing those foods.

I don't agree with the environmental assessment in this article though. The quantity produced might be the same, but a cup of cow milk has a lot more calories and micronutrients than plant milk. Sure, many people don't have the genetics to digest it, but there's a reason mammals drink milk until they can eat other foods. They wouldn't survive long sipping puddles of soy water.

Given how inflammatory dairy is, and all the many links it has to so many health problems, I have no idea how it can still be pitched as a health food, but then, old habits die very hard in this country. Seeing how people treat "protein" as a health food is nearly as absurd. SMH.

ITT people who dont like milk or allergic to it are complaining about milk, just like vegan bitching about meat eaters.

This is a weird advertisement. Drink water. Plant milk does not have the protein or calorie density as dairy milk. You may as well drink water and eat your greens instead of supporting industries that are gentle rapists of the earth. I'll drink my own vomit before reading that rag again.

i switched to milk from local cows that are happy and grass fed... and damn does it taste better. like measurably better, in everything i use it for. grocery store milk now tastes strange to me. it's more expensive, but who really needs to use that much milk? i don't drink it casually, just in baking, etc.

non dairy milks are a scam to sell water to rich city people.

Cuz mhn milk gud

Plant milk also tastes absolutely disgusting in my opinion and comes nowhere near to actual milk from a cow. The moment when I can't taste the difference is the point where I'll switch over, but so far nothing has impressed me.

Cos fake milk tastes like shit

Good question. For some dumb reason, we keep telling kids to drink milk, too, as well as try to get them to drink it in schools, when we should be doing anything BUT that. We should be telling them to cut dairy to as close to zero as possible.

It's still part of the food pyramid is it not? WTAF.

I would actually agree with this plant milk thing if it wasn't even of a worse alternative to cow milk and with so much sugar and chemicals as a can of Pepsi:

https://youtu.be/oLjEG8Qu1Qw?feature=shared

Sorry but plant milk is a processed food with no nutritional value. It is not better for us or the planet. This is just a silly article.

Because the fiction that plant-based products are healthy has been heavily debunked by just how sickly vegans are on average?

Milk is seen as a waste product in the meat industry.

Yeah, the climate would be better if we lowered our meat intake and switched to plant milk.

But unless that first one changes, it is more effective drinking the waste than it is setting up entire fields to create a new product.

i dont really like anything but whole cows milk. skim is just basically water and i would rather drink water than watery milk. but i havent had milk for a long time. i just eat cheese all the time. i will never give up cheese. yummy

Can't make a bechamel with plant based. Doesn't have to be cow, but can't be nut or oat or whatever.

It it doesn't come from a mammal it ain't milk.

Doesn't taste as good to many meat eaters.

Because it tastes like shit. And I don't even drink milk but you can't even cook with the substitute shit.

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.

There are milks and additives that eliminate getting ill from milk if you're sensitive, you know. Don't need to create a wasteful fake milk industry just because you can't drink it normally.