Other Plant Milks > Almond Milk > Dairy Milk
(yes, it even uses less water in water-scarce places)
Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.ml(yes, it even uses less water in water-scarce places)
65 replies
Oat milk is the goat 👌
Can't spell goat without the "oat."
I'm going to
shamelessly steal thatborrow thatoat 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
Oat milk is the way
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...
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:
https://animalequality.org/blog/2022/03/08/our-global-mission-to-expose-dairys-hidden-cruelty/
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
What a scam. Here in Germany it's more expensive but not by much
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...
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
(emphasis mine)
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s13668-020-00348-8.pdf
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
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.
I agree, it's not convenient to make at home, but it is possible. I think we need to remove or adjust government funding now that cow milk is no longer the only popular option.
So you have 3 choices there:
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/ )
Pay 5x the cost for plant based products - is your time really worth that much in exchange for the convenience?
Keep drinking disgusting cows milk.
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.
It's literally putting stuff in a blender and then straining. with your reasoning, why even bother baking or cooking?
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.
I like oat milk. It tastes the best and it's one of the least environmentally impactful, I think
Oat milk is pretty solid across all metrics:
https://ourworldindata.org/environmental-impact-milks
Easiest to make at home, no need to buy EXCEPT for convenience. You can also get calcium powder to add to what you make so..yeah. oat "milk" is the best really. Love it.
With all this said, I do love to taste of Horizon UHT whole milk that my kid drinks... Lol so if I forget to make my oat milk, I grab one of these.
The inconvenience really killed my drive to make it myself, so instead I got a plant milk maker. Haha. Paid for itself after about a year.
How does it work? I'd love to not have to buy oat milk anymore, but I've never had good results trying to make it at home.
It's pretty much a blender with a tank, a heating function and self-cleaning. It has different options for different type of plant milks, which (I suppose) change how much it heats the water and how long it blends everything. Which is pretty much what they do for the store bought oat milk as well.
What makes the biggest difference in taste though is not the maker itself (although it does make a difference) but using Amylase when you're done blending. It's an enzyme that breaks starch into sugar. Without it the oat milk will probably be pretty thick or even kind of slimy. As far as I know it is also used in store bought milk to give it a natural sweetness.
Okay I so want to try this now.
That's very intriguing! What brand/model milk maker did you buy?
I have a Springlane plantmilk maker. It was just under 200€. Can't speak for the brand in general but I have the maker since last year and I am still happy with it.
Thanks!
oh wow that's a good hint! Whenever i tried making oat milk myself yet it ended up either slimy or otherwise to watery.
I wonder why i have never seen it as an ingredient in commercial plant milk yet.
You don't necessarily need to declare enzymes in food manufacturing. They are consumed/used/deactivated before the final product. They would be listed as "processing aids" in the process description, just like pH adjustment chemicals, activated carbon treatment, antifoamer, etc.
Source: engineer in food industry.
With answers like this I have the feeling Lemmy is finaly complete! Thank you!
Ohhh, which one are you using? Mine is incredibly loud.
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.
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?
Subsidies on cows probably.
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.
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
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.
Certainly, that's what I thought you were saying, but I just wanted to clarify for others as well
Soy milk is best milk for cereal 👌
Soy is great. IMO it tastes worse than oat when it's basic milk (no flavorings etc.) but if I'm not mistaken it has much better nutritional values and so much protein I simply can't pass on it (as a vegan I get basically 0 protein a day, as you would probably know, and soy milk is the only source of it)
You likely get more than you might think from other foods. A surprising number of foods have decent amounts of protein that you wouldn't expect and that can add up
I'm into fitness so I prefer soy milk, 6g protein once or twice a day goes a long way towards reaching my goals! I was joking about the no protein lol
Ah lol
Me, I like hemp milk
I'd happily switch to a non-dairy alternative, but finding a plant-milk that has the right mouthfeel seems to be an uphill challenge.
If you're into chocolate milk, I've found pre-mixed chocolate oat milk to have a really nice mouthfeel (IMHO better than cow milk). Obviously, your mileage might vary, though, depending on the brand...
I'll have to give it a try
So I don't think it was the intended purpose, but I recommend trying barista styles. I was the same, I found the nondairy alternatives too watery, like skimmed milk. However getting ones that call themselves barista style fixes that, the viscosity is closer to real milk. Personally I go for Oatly, you can probably guess what it uses. Will vary based on location of course.
https://www.oatly.com/en-gb/stuff-we-make/oat-drinks/oat-drink-barista-edition
I'll have a loook next time I'm in Tesco
I haven't personally tried these, but there are some plant milks that try to be closer to dairy out there like NotMilk, NextMilk, WonderMilk, etc. I've also read that peamilk is generally pretty close to dairy
wellllllllllllll that's going on the ol shopping list tyvm
I've never seen hazelnut milk in Germany. That sounds insanely good
I saw it in Edeka i believe. It's very "heavy" and creamy.
Sadly no Edeka near me. Will have to check that out in the future
I just checked and what I meant was the Haselnussdrink from Alpro, so they should have it in other stores as well. Good luck!
Thanks! Will check it out.
Too nutty for me - gets in the way of coffee flavor, IMO.
I am using job's tears milk (soaking oats in, later adding fruits) as a breakfast.
Veganism is a scam and leads to malnutrition. Plant based milks are processed garbage and unhealthy.
I agree. I eat a lot of meat. But one day in the week I have oats with fruits as breakfast. Having no access to raw milk, i looked for replacement to soak the oats in. First a ricemilk, but after having found out it had some form of soy added, i dumped it. The job's tears is 100% pure. excellent replacement IMO.
Whoops was meaning to reply to the post rather than your comment. Hope you find a raw milk source. Recently lost my cow milk source so I know how that goes. Got some goat milk, but it's pricier not great for making butter.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27886704/