The dairy industry uses about 10 times more land and 2 to 20 times more water than producing soy, oat, almond or rice milk, according to an analysis from the 2018 study by the non-profit organization Global Change Data Lab and the University of Oxford in the UK.
Dairy products also generate about three times more greenhouse gas emissions, according to the analysis. burps and poop of ruminant animals such as cattle, sheep and goats generate methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in global warming over the span of 20 years, the United Nations Environment Program said.
Still, people drink milk for nutritional reasons, and it is an essential source of protein and nutrients in some parts of the world. That could make the answer to which milk is better for the planet and for you and your children more complicated. This is what science says.
Do you have milk?
The ad featuring a pearl white cow’s milk mustache on a smiley face sends an oft-repeated message at home: cow’s milk is good for you. It has calcium, protein, and other nutrients that help people grow tall and strong.
“Milk is quite amazing from a nutritional standpoint, because a young mammal can live on milk alone for many months and grow,” Dr. Walter Willett, a leading nutrition researcher, told CNN. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an optimal food for our entire lives.”
Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and his Harvard colleague, endocrinologist and pediatrician Dr. David Ludwig, addressed the topic of milk. and human health in a 2020 review by The New England Journal of Medicine.
Strong bones: The pair took a close look at the common belief that drinking milk creates healthy bones that are less likely to fracture. That’s a primary justification, Willett said, for the current US Nutritional Recommendations 3 cups a day of skim milk or other dairy products for children 9-18 years and adults and 2½ cups a day for children 2-8 years.
Curiously, meta-analysis reviews of studies that examined drinking up to 4 cups of milk per day found no definite benefit for fracture prevention, even in children, Willett said. A 2014 study he and his colleagues found a 9 percent increased risk of subsequent hip fracture for each additional glass of milk per day consumed by adolescent boys, but not by girls. And in a country-by-country comparison, Willett and Ludwig found higher rates of hip fractures in nations that consumed the highest amounts of milk and calcium.
Height: Milk helps children grow taller, much taller, Willett said. What’s wrong with that? Tall people have more bone fractures, she said, because “mechanically, if you have a long stick, it’s easier to break than a short one.”
Studies have also shown an association between height and an increased risk of many types of cancer Y lung problems. Tall people appear to have less heart disease, but are at higher risk of atrial fibrillationor irregular heartbeat and varicose veins.
Lactose intolerance: Dairy products can only be introduced to a human baby after 12 months due to the overabundance of protein and minerals they contain, Willett said. Dairy products given before the age of 1 year can cause intestinal bleeding and damage the kidneys of a young baby, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..
But unless your ancestors are from a part of the world where it was genetically advantageous to consume dairy products, your body will stop producing the lactase enzyme in early childhood. Without that enzyme, your body struggles to break down the sugars in milk.
Studies have estimated 68 percent of the world’s population may be sensitive to milk, leading to bloating, cramping, and pain.
“Milk and dairy products were mainly consumed in northern European countries,” Willett said. “Most of the world’s population does not consume milk after infancy.”
Hormones and antibiotics: Dairy cows are almost always pregnant, Willett said, which naturally increases the levels of progestins, estrogens and other hormones in the milk. To increase milk productionHe said, today’s cows are also bred to produce higher levels of insulin-like growth factor 1, or IGF-1.
An excess of IGF-1 in humans has been related to cancer, insulin resistance and may play a role in age-related decline. Cattle can also be given antibiotics to keep infections at bay. consumer concern about impact of hormones Y antibiotic resistance has been going up
Weightloss: Low-fat or fat-free milk is obviously a healthier beverage choice than sweetened or diet soda, teas and other processed drinks in the market. But studies studies on dairy have shown that only yogurt is associated with less weight gain, Willett said.
The available evidence also finds no clear advantage in drinking low-fat milk over whole milk for weight control in adults or kids, he said. A 2020 meta-analysis review it even found that whole milk may contribute to lower childhood obesity.
The verdict? “We need to look at everything we do from an environmental perspective,” Willett said. “The answer is not just zero dairy for everyone, but three servings a day is not necessary for health and is a disaster for the environment.”
Willett is aiming for the goal of 250 grams or 1 cup of dairy per day set by the EAT-Lancet Commissionwhich tries to create a universal diet that is healthy and sustainable.
“That serving a day is probably best as unsweetened yogurt or maybe cheese, and then if you want you can add some plant-based milk alternatives,” Willett said. “I think from a health and environmental standpoint, that’s a reasonable starting point.”
The best vegetable milk
The plant-based milk market is booming.
“Almost all nuts, as well as legumes and grains, are becoming options for plant-based milks. The most recent alternative I’ve found is banana milk!” said nutrition expert Christopher Gardner, a research professor of medicine at the Stanford Prevention Research Center in California, who is writing a book chapter on the subject of milk.
So far, Gardner has found milks based on legumes (soy, pea, peanut, lupine, and cowpea), tree nuts (almond, coconut, hazelnut, pistachio, walnut, macadamia, and cashew), seeds (sesame, flax, hemp, and sunflower), cereals (oats, rice, corn, spelt, quinoa, teff and amaranth) and a potato milk.
Impact on the environment: Science has yet to analyze the environmental impact of each new entry into the alternative milk market, but you can compare rice milk to soy, almond, and oat milk.
The winner? According to analysis by the Global Change Data Lab, it depends. Rice has the lowest impact on land use, almonds have the lowest impact on greenhouse emissions, and soybeans have the lowest impact on freshwater use and eutrophication, which is the pollution of a body of water with nutrients that cause excessive growth of plants and algae. Oat milks fall somewhere in the middle.
From a nutritional standpoint, each milk-alternative category has advantages and disadvantages compared to dairy, Gardner said, adding that he hasn’t been able to review all of the brands on the market, which are “too numerous to cover comprehensively.” realistic”.
Calcium: Dairy is the winner here, but non-dairy milk manufacturers have solved that problem by adding calcium to bring their milks to at least 300 milligrams, which is the calcium level in dairy, Gardner said.
“The exceptions to this that I found were coconut milk and rice milk, for which some brands have levels of 130 milligrams of calcium per serving or less,” he said.
Protein: Soy and pea milk, for example, have as much protein as dairy: about 8 grams of protein in each 8-ounce glass, Gardner said. Other legume-based milks are also good options.
Coconut and rice milk, however, have negligible levels of protein, almond milk has less than a gram of protein per serving, and oat milks range from 1 to 3 grams per serving, he said.
Fat, sodium and cholesterol: Compared to the dietary cholesterol in full-fat dairy, most plant milks are good choices: Plant foods never have dietary cholesterol, Gardner said. Sodium levels are relatively equal between non-dairy milks and dairy products with around 100 milligrams of sodium. Saturated fat is low, with the exception of coconut milk, a tropical plant that generally has high levels, she added.
“There’s no need to fear the fat in most plant-based milks: Unsaturated fats are considered healthy in the modest amounts found in plant-based milks,” Gardner said.
Vitamins A, D and B12: The only reason dairy is a good source of vitamins A and D is that it’s fortified with those vitamins when it’s manufactured, Gardner said. Vegetable milks have done the same.
Vitamin B12 is found naturally in dairy products in very small amounts, as cows obtain the vitamin from bacteria on grazing grass. Some plant milks are fortified with B12, Gardner said, but not all. To tell the tale, he says to look on the label for cobalamin, the technical name.
Additive sweeteners: Dairy has its own built-in sweetener, lactose, the sugar that gives many people an upset stomach.
“For cow’s milk, lactose is a natural milk sugar and is therefore included as part of the total sugar content, but not considered added sugar,” Gardner said.
Plant-based milks don’t have that advantage, and this is where nutrition can stumble, Gardner said. In general, original versions of almond, soy, and coconut milks have cane sugar added to bring them up to the dairy level of sweetness. The vanilla options have even more added sugars, with chocolate being the most.
However, many alternative milk brands offer an unsweetened version. “There’s no added cane or other sugar, total carbs tend to be lower, total sugar tends to be lower, and added sugars tend to be zero,” Gardner said.
“Try the sugar-free versions. They’re usually just as tasty as the original version, but with fewer calories, fewer carbs, fewer sugars, and fewer added sugars,” she said.
CNN
