(yes, it even uses less water in water-scarce places)

  • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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    10 months ago

    Not to rain on the parade, but plant milks are astronomically expensive compared to dairy milk. Plant milks need to become way cheaper than currently 5x the cost for me in India. There is only import, no local making.

    • Ephera
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      710 months ago

      That surprises me, since I’m told (a large part of) India deems cows holy and over here, the cheapest milk is from cows kept under inhumane conditions…

      • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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        210 months ago

        Cows are also kept under “humane” conditions. Amul is the largest dairy of Asia and the second largest behind Danone globally, and they are a socialist cooperative of women.

        • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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          110 months ago

          Standard pratices in the dairy industry are pretty brutal and really the only way to make anything cheap. For instance, what happens to the male calves after they are born? They are separated from their mothers and then shortly killed because they don’t produce milk

          If you want something looking at Indian dairy farms in particular:

          We found serious welfare violations on every farm we visited [over 100], including cows tethered with ropes so tightly that they couldn’t move and babies torn away from their mothers. Animals spent their entire lives tied with ropes so short they could barely lay down.

          Cows were injected with harmful drugs that caused painful symptoms of labor and destroyed their reproductive systems under the mistaken notion that they increased milk production. Our investigators documented routine use of these drugs, though they are banned by the Indian government.

          We even witnessed a cow being bludgeoned with a hammer, in a heartbreaking act of cruelty.

          Sadly, these are all considered standard practices in India, the world’s largest producer and consumer of dairy.

          https://animalequality.org/blog/2022/03/08/our-global-mission-to-expose-dairys-hidden-cruelty/

    • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      610 months ago

      Depends on where you live. In some parts of the world, it’s already cheaper. It’s worth noting here that the dairy industry receives massively outsized subsidies compared to other industries all around the world

    • @Tangentism@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      To make them cheap, make it yourself.

      Making oat milk is a really simple process & to make it more like commercially available products, you can add various other ingredients such as xanthan gum to bind it as well as various things for flavour such as a small amount of cinnamon.

      • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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        10 months ago

        Nobody has the time to do that. I am not going to put that much work (and that is not laziness) in manually making oat milk when I have a million other things to think, manage and do. This mindset will absolutely never help adoption of more vegan practices. I am all for inching towards less meat/animal related foods but it has to be viable, optimal and must not be a nutritional compromise (protein combining with one compact meal is fair).

        • @Kultronx@lemmygrad.ml
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          210 months ago

          It’s literally putting stuff in a blender and then straining. with your reasoning, why even bother baking or cooking?

          • @0xc0ba17@lemmy.ml
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            310 months ago

            No idea how long it takes to make 1L of almond milk, but if it’s literally blending and straining, that’s not really comparable to cooking or baking where half the enjoyment is in the process.

        • @Tangentism@lemmy.ml
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          210 months ago

          Nobody has the time to do that.

          Plant milks need to become way cheaper than currently 5x the cost for me in India.

          So you have 3 choices there:

          1. Examine your time management as you will have time that youre actually just procrastinating or pursuing bullshit that doesnt really matter as much as you think. (Dont lie - Very few people actually dont).

          It takes 10 minutes to make a batch. Less time than will take you to walk to a shop (see here for a simple recipe/process: https://minimalistbaker.com/make-oat-milk/ )

          1. Pay 5x the cost for plant based products - is your time really worth that much in exchange for the convenience?

          2. Keep drinking disgusting cows milk.

          • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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            510 months ago

            Keep drinking disgusting cows milk.

            These are the kind of reasons why vegans will never be able to convince people. Go on. That advocacy is surely working.

            • @Tangentism@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              I’m not vegan. I just don’t drink milk and I’m certainly not advocating veganism because you don’t have the ability to commit to 10 minutes to make your own oat milk so howTF are you going to make such a lifestyle change?

              All I did was say how easy it is to make yourself as you complained about the cost and when you bleated about your very busy important lifestyle, laid out your options.

              It’s quite obvious the biggest hurdle to you making changes to your life is you so good luck with that and I hope it works out.

              • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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                -310 months ago

                the biggest hurdle to you making changes to your life

                Have you not realised yet, how unreasonable is it for people to obsess over food instead of other things? Veganism is a lifestyle and becomes something to obsess about in daily life, due to the lack of calorie dense non-fat foods compared to meat/dairy, and its just a whole lot effort to do anything. Stop selling it as 10 minutes, this liberal behaviour exists with products like Nestlé Maggi 2-minute noodles where nobody ever cooked them in 2 minutes.

                I will inch towards making those changes, but not at the cost of revolving my life around veganism lifestyle and habits. This is not an issue with omnivore way of eating, where I can adjust on a gradient how much dairy and meat I eat to cover for vegan macro and micro nutritional deficiencies.

      • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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        410 months ago

        The one I am tasting right now, is a Thailand import. Oat milk is absolutely the closest of plant milks to replicate milk taste, and I can see why the only difference is due to lactose. Mixing a couple teaspoons of powdered sugar makes it sweet fantastic, and the only issue I see is cost.

        • Ephera
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          110 months ago

          It’s generally assumed that oat milk will easily become cheaper than cow milk when mass production takes off. It requires fewer resources (no cows consuming energy) and the process is easy to automate.
          But yeah, for now, lactose-intolerant and vegan folks need to pay high prices to kickstart that…

          • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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            110 months ago

            I would also argue about oat protein not being as bioavailable as 4 parts whey 1 part casein protein exists in dairy milk. Casein and whey are twice as bioavailable as plant proteins, which brings in the requirement of pairing up a protein rich meal.

            • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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              210 months ago

              Interestingly enough, there are now non-animal whey milks out there (made via fermentation). It’s worth noting that protein bioavailable numbers are pretty misleading because the way they are done overvalues the availability of animal products and undervalues it for plant-based foods

              While multiple strengths characterize the DIAAS, substantial limitations remain, many of which are accentuated in the context of a plant-based dietary pattern. Some of these limitations include a failure to translate differences in nitrogen-to-protein conversion factors between plant- and animal-based foods, limited representation of commonly consumed plant-based foods within the scoring framework, inadequate recognition of the increased digestibility of commonly consumed heat-treated and processed plant-based foods, its formulation centered on fast-growing animal models rather than humans, and a focus on individual isolated foods vs the food matrix. The DIAAS is also increasingly being used out of context where its application could produce erroneous results such as exercise settings. When investigating protein quality, particularly in a plant-based dietary context, the DIAAS should ideally be avoided.

              (emphasis mine)

              https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13668-020-00348-8.pdf

              • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
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                010 months ago

                I would prefer going through the study instead of taking the summary at face value. The study is heavily paywalled, and I will retain the findings of DIAAS and PDCAAS being relevant in case of plant proteins.

                • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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                  110 months ago

                  I can quote some of the relevant sections here (not supposed to share the whole thing). These are just some of the problems listed with the metrics there’s quite a lot more but this comment is getting too long

                  The relative protein content, IAA content, and IAA profile of a given food are required to calculate the DIAAS. The FAO has not prescribed a specific methodology to determine protein content for the DIAAS but acknowledged that nitrogen con- tent can be used to estimate protein content for the PDCAAS [24]. Food-specific nitrogen-to-protein conversion factors have been determined for various foods and can be used for this calculation; however, the FAO does not recommend their use. Instead, it recommends that the generalized nitrogen-to- protein conversion factor be utilized [29]. The generalized factor was set at 6.25 because all proteins were originally estimated to contain 16% nitrogen; however, this varies great- ly between proteins [32]. Importantly, estimating protein content using the general- ized or food-specific factors influences the corresponding PDCAAS and DIAAS. For example, the food-specific factors for almonds and soybeans are 5.20 and 5.61, respectively. As a result, using the generalized factor to calculate their DIAAS yields 16.8% and 10.2% lower values, respectively, than when they are calculated based on their food-specific factors. Conversely, the food-specific factors for skim milk and yogurt are 6.36 and 6.40, respectively [33]. Accordingly, their DIAAS are higher when generalized factors are used. In ad- dition, greater discrepancies exist between conversion factors for plant foods than animal foods, with recent values ranging from 5.3 to 5.8 for grains compared with 5.85–6.15 for milk products [34]. The particular methodology used to calculate protein content therefore influences the DIAAS of plant and animal foods differently, decreasing scores for plant-based sources of protein while increasing scores for animal-based sources of protein. Due to differences in the ranges of food- specific factors, use of the generalized factor may also lead to more inaccurate scores for plant foods than animal foods.

                  Most literature examining dietary protein consumption and postprandial muscle protein synthesis (MPS) has focused on isolated protein sources, as used in the DIASS method, with limited literature focusing on the influence of whole foods on MPS [31•]. In most settings, protein is not consumed in isolation. Rather, whole foods are consumed with their intrinsic nutrients exhibiting a synergistic and concerted effect [48] and can influence the post-exercise MPS [49–51].

                  Raw foodstuff is used for most DIAAS modeling, whereas protein-rich plant foods (legumes, grains, etc.) typically un- dergo heat treatment, processing, or both before human con- sumption. Common cooking techniques modify proteins, with heat-treated plant-based proteins demonstrating higher digest- ibility compared with unprocessed sources [30, 52]. One such modification relates to the protease inhibitor trypsin, and pro- cessing treatments have been shown to deactivate as much as 80% of its inhibitory activity in raw flour [52]. Malting and fermentation processes can also increase the digestibility of some proteins, likely by bacterial protein pre-digestion and the lessening of “anti-nutrients” like oxalates, tannins, and phytic acid [31•, 53]. Their effects are significant, both for foods and supplements. The fermentation of grain coupled with other cooking techniques, as is often employed in tradi- tional cooking methods (e.g., sourdough bread), can increase the digestibility of grain protein to a level approaching that of meat [53]. Further, compared with untreated pea seeds, pea protein concentrate demonstrated 12% higher digestibility, matching the protein digestibility of casein [52].

  • @Ilikemoney@beehaw.org
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    1310 months ago

    I like oat milk. It tastes the best and it’s one of the least environmentally impactful, I think

  • @wintrparkgrl@beehaw.org
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    610 months ago

    oat milk is the best I’ve ever had, it’s the only one someone has given me and i didn’t immediately identify it as not real milk

  • @WhoRoger@lemmy.ml
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    410 months ago

    I don’t know if there’s any way for humanity to continue at all at this point, it seems that whatever is done, there’s always a downside to it. Never mind the cost (not just monetary) to an average person regarding many of the alternatives.

    • @Weaselmaster@beehaw.org
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      110 months ago

      It is BONKERS to me that I get up-charged $1 to have 6oz. of steamed oat milk in my coffee instead of cow’s milk. Carbon footprint of oat milk is tiny by comparison, cost of production is lower, WTF?

  • Yozul
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    210 months ago

    Almond milk would arguably be one of the better options if it weren’t for the fact that 80% of the world’s almonds are being grown in a desert going through a mega-drought.

    • @usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
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      110 months ago

      Yeah, though it’s worth pointing out here again that dairy milk is still worse in that regard in those regions:

      One graph even has California’s animal feed water usage so large it actually goes off the chart at 15.2 million acre-feet of water (it is distorted to make it fit as it notes). For some comparison, the blue water usage of animal feed is larger than all of almonds water usage of ~2 million acre-feet of water

      https://pacinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ca_ftprint_full_report3.pdf#page=25

      Pastures themselves are often in areas that don’t receive much rainfall and need watering. For example, one chart from 2003 put California’s water usage just for pastures higher than crops from human consumption. Since then the rankings may have changed a tiny bit, but the water usage is still enormous just on pastures alone

      https://www.researchgate.net/figure/California-Total-Water-Use-by-Crop-2003_fig3_294579954

      • Yozul
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        110 months ago

        Oh absolutely. I’m just saying that in ways other than water use almond milk is actually better than a lot of other plant based milks. It’s just the combination of high water use and being mostly grown in an area suffering from a major water shortage that makes other plant based milks a clearly better choice if they’re practical for you. It’s still better than cow milk though.