Buxton acknowledges that when it comes to climate change, many of us are trying to put our money where our mouth is by making consumer decisions that we hope will make a difference, but says he would like to have a more nuanced conversation where the pros and cons are discussed. The cons. notwithstanding.
Almond milk, for example, consumes a lot of water in drought-affected areas, while poorly managed soybean plantations contribute to deforestation. A 2020 study by the University of Nottingham and the Sustainable Food Trust found that a kilogram of soybeans produces 13 pints of soy milk, but up to 150 pints of cow’s milk if fed to a cow.
When it comes to the health and nutrition aspect, the plant-based milk industry has a lot of work to do.
While dairy products are not vital for good health, concerns have been raised about how switching to a plant-based diet makes it harder to reach needed levels of nutrients and vitamins.
Professor Ian Givens, director of the Institute for Food, Nutrition and Health at the University of Reading, says cow’s milk is nutrient-dense and an easy source of vital vitamins. A study published last year by his colleagues, looking at the nutritional value of milk substitutes, showed that plant-based milks have a much lower protein content. Legume substitutions like soy had the highest protein content of the lot but, says Givens, “it was still significantly lower than cow’s milk, which isn’t a big deal for adults, but it is for young children.” “.
Cow’s milk was also the richest in iodine, b12 and b2. There wasn’t much of a difference in calcium, which Givens attributes to the fortified plant-based milks.
While vegans can have a healthy dairy-free diet, she says they have to work harder to get vitamins like B12 from synthetic sources. She points to a worrying demographic, teenage women, whose studies show they have very low intakes of calcium, magnesium, iodine, and iron, which is consistent with following a vegan diet. “One of the big problems in this period of life is bone development.”
Rethinking the dairy industry is vital if we want to address concerns about the environment, says Patrick Holden, founder of the Sustainable Food Trust.
Scooping out the silage each morning on his organic dairy farm in Wales (the oldest established in the country) he listens to the radio: “There are a lot of ads for Veganuary and plant-based this and that right now.”
In addition to being big business, he believes the popularity of plant-based products is a reaction that people are “rightly upset about intensive livestock production and since they don’t have the information to discriminate between livestock products that are part of the problem.” and those who are part of the solution, the solution is to become vegan or vegetarian.”
However, he and Buxton agree that grass-fed dairy products can not only minimize carbon emissions, they can also sequester carbon. “That’s really the holy grail that we should be looking for in the future,” says Buxton.
But how can milk compete while supermarkets treat it like a loss leader, putting farmers on a treadmill to step up prices lower, while the average plant-based milk costs more than £1? (Though many coffee shops, like Starbucks, have stopped charging extra for plant-based milks.)
My own milk drinking journey began with me abstaining from an animal welfare perspective and has seen me come full circle from silver topper to plant-based and back again. A committed milk tea drinker, I’ve learned to love soy and now I’m back on the udder. I’ve found that things are rarely black and white, though I’ve grown to love black tea (if only to avoid the problem altogether). However, as a consumer, I choose organic milk and yogurt. Holden would like us to go further.
“Organic goes a long way in providing a lot of the things we’ve identified as important for sustainability, but I wish we had a labeling system that lets people know which herd their milk comes from,” he says.
“I would like to see us drinking milk that has been produced kindly and lovingly towards the cows. We need to know the story behind all the food we eat. And we don’t do it at the moment.”
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