Like an estimated two-thirds of the worldās population, I donāt digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition. So it was a pleasant surprise when, shortly after moving to San Francisco, I ordered a drink at Blue Bottle Coffee and didnāt have to askāor pay extraāfor a milk alternative. Since 2022, the once Oakland-based, now NestlĆ©-owned cafe chain has defaulted to oat milk, both to cut carbon emissions and because lots of its affluent-tending customers were already choosing it as their go-to.
Plant-based milks, a multibillion-dollar global market, arenāt just good for the lactose intolerant: Theyāre also better for the climate. Dairy cows belch a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide; they contribute at least 7 percent of US methane output, the equivalent emissions of 10 million cars. Cattle need a lot of room to graze, too: Plant-based milks use about a tenth as much land to produce the same quantity of milk. And it takes almost a thousand gallons of water to manufacture a gallon of dairy milkāfour times the water cost of alt-milk from oats or soy.
But if climate concerns push us toward the alt-milk aisle, dairy still has price on its side. Even though plant-based milks are generally much less resource-intensive, theyāre often more expensive. Walk into any Starbucks, and youāll likely pay around 70 cents extra for nondairy options.
. Dairyās affordability edge, explains MarĆa Mascaraque, an analyst at market research firm Euromonitor International, relies on the industryās ability to produce āat larger volumes, which drives down the cost per carton.ā American demand for milk alternatives, though expected to grow by 10 percent a year through 2030, canāt beat those economies of scale. (Globally, alt-milks arenāt new on the sceneācoconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic MahÄbhÄrata, which is thousands of years old.)
What else contributes to cow milkās dominance? Dairy farmers are āpolitical favorites,ā says Daniel Sumner, a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist. In addition to support like the āDairy Checkoff,ā a joint government-industry program to promote milk products (including the āGot Milk?ā campaign), theyāve long raked in direct subsidies currently worth around $1 billion a year.
Big Milk fights hard to maintain those benefits, spending more than $7 million a year on lobbying. That might help explain why the US Department of Agriculture has talked around the climate virtues of meat and dairy alternatives, refusing to factor sustainability into its dietary guidelinesāand why it has featured content, such as a 2013 article by thenāAgriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, trumpeting the dairy industry as āleading the way in sustainable innovation.ā
But the USDA doesnāt directly support plant-based milk. It does subsidize some alt-milk ingredientsāsoybean producers, like dairy, net close to $1 billion a year on average, but that crop largely goes to feeding meat- and dairy-producing livestock and extracting oil. 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. Alt-milk makers, Sumner says, may also have thinner profit margins: Their āstrategy for growth is advertisement and promotion and publicity,ā which isnāt cheap.
Starbucks, though, does benefit from economies of scale. In Europe, the company is slowly dropping premiums for alt-milks, a move it attributes to wanting to lower corporate emissions. āMarket-level conditions allow us to move more quicklyā than other companies, a spokesperson for the coffee giant told me, but didnāt say if or when the price drop would happen elsewhere.
In the United States, meanwhile, itās 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 āprice isnāt the main thingā for their buyersāas long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But itās going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.
There is zero reason to drink milk past infancy. Plant based milks suck for cooking.
Edit:
That came across wrong. If you like drinking milk, so be it. There used to be a big push that you need to drink milk. Some of it by the dairy lobby, but also the food pyramid thing. Milk is dense nutritionally, yes, but we donāt have a need to drink it, was the point I was trying to say. I know that isnāt pushed as much today, but I was definitely a generation raised being told that you must drink milk, itās a necessity.
Or you could just live and let live, fam. Why be so judgmental?
I said the same thing to my neighbor when he caught me tossing my trash in his back yard. Like, what the fuck dude? Just chill.
Most people prefer the taste and itās often more calorically dense? And yeah, plant based sucks for cooking. I mostly use milk products (half and half, cream) in cooking, and plant based is not it for cooking.
Iām a pretty devout meat eater, I will 10000% give up eating meat before giving up dairy. Also, fwiw, we do need to eat less meat and use fewer animal products, but lets not gaslight ourselves about it.
There are plant milks and creams for cooking purposes. As for the taste, if you feel plant milks have overpowering taste, you can mix multiple different types. For example, when we have made white sauce for lasagna, we use soy-, oat- and almond milk.
I havenāt used dairy in a long time, so I canāt think of anything where plant based products couldnāt be used as a reasonable replacement (apart from cheese, there the options are severely lacking)