Off The Shelf #11: Got (alternative) Milk?

Trim your hipster beard and fill your bowl with obscure 1990s children's breakfast cereals from a weird East London cafe: this week I'm exploring the nutty world of dairy alternatives

It feels like it wasn’t long ago that I’d have to look in some hidden section of the supermarket, somewhere between the world food and the free-from shelves, to find the almond milk I’d been sent out for by the more enlightened member of my household. But now, here it is - a whole selection right next to the milk, in the milk aisle!

Oat, hazelnut, almond, coconut, in all different grades and flavours (light, sweet, unsweetened, chocolate, coffee). There is definitely a fast-growing market in dairy-free milk. If you’ve really got your finger on the pulse, you might have tried potato milk. I have not.

Dairy alternatives is big business, with the industry estimated at more than 20 billion dollars in 2020. Oatly, the biggest oat milk company out there, went public last year at a valuation of around 10 billion dollars (its shares haven’t done well since, but that’s a story for another time).

As an aside, I’d like to point out that I was lightyears ahead of this dairy-alts trend, but I’ve kept it quiet for the past 20 years or so. The truth is that embracing innovation and bucking conventional wisdom can open somebody up to vicious abuse and derision, which is exactly what I would get when I revealed that I didn’t have milk with my cornflakes; I preferred orange juice. The looks of disbelief and disgust from the people I looked to as friends and mentors still haunt me. But I digress.

What’s wrong with cow’s milk? Well, for some people, like me, it’s simply a case of not liking it (although I do have it in tea and will consume dairy in other forms). Other people have allergies or are lactose intolerant, meaning they’re forced to seek out alternatives. But many, as shown by the growth in the vegan movement, avoid dairy on environmental grounds. The evidence is pretty clear: dairy farming is a significant contributor to climate change, for many of the same reasons as I discussed a few weeks ago: land use and methane from the animals themselves. It’s thought that dairy accounts for between a quarter and a third of the carbon footprint from diets in the EU.

Out friends at Our World In Data have again been invaluable in helping to paint the picture around this. The chart below shows that on a number of environmental measures, dairy milk has a far larger impact than plant-based milks. In case you’re wondering what eutrophication is (I had to look it up too), it’s basically water pollution.

What’s interesting to me about this chart, though, is that it shows a more complicated picture when it comes to distinguishing between dairy-alternatives. For example, rice milk (another new one I’ll have to add to my shopping list) looks fantastic in terms of its minimal land use, but the eutrophication (water pollution) factor makes it seem much more harmful than its counterparts. Almond milk, probably the favourite in our household in terms of taste and versatility, produces the least emissions, but uses the most water. This is a bit like top trumps for milk, and it becomes a balancing act when it comes to looking at the overall environmental impact.

So what? Well, I’m summing up with three conclusions today:

🐮 Plant-based alternatives to dairy are obviously more planet-friendly
🌍 Not all dairy-alternatives are equal, so if saving the planet is your thing, do your research
🫖These alternatives might taste OK in coffee, but try telling me you can have a decent cup of tea with them. You can’t.

And as for cereal? Stick to orange juice.

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ENGLISH PASTORAL

Usually, when I read for pleasure, it involves getting through half a page in bed before falling asleep and attempting the same half-page the next night, so I never finish anything. But the weather this weekend has put me into full holiday mode, and I was actually able to finish a book.

English Pastoral, by Cumbrian farmer James Rebanks, is fantastic. Written beautifully, it charts the author’s life in farming, through three generations of his family from his childhood to the present day. It’s an important account because it highlights what the demand for cheap and abundant food has done to our natural environment. Sorry to say this, and it might not come as a shock, but the effect isn’t good. Rebanks evocatively describes the farming methods and philosophy of his grandfather’s generation, and compares this with the large-scale industrialisation which came in the latter part of the last century - a system which is, as he deftly demonstrates throughout the book, unsustainable given the loss of biodiversity and the destruction of soil health it has caused. The last part of the book is an inspiring description of the wholly natural way in which Rebanks now farms, having given much of his estate back to nature, and using traditional ‘rotational’ methods to allow the soil to regenerate and recover over time.

But Rebanks also highlights a complex problem: his way of farming isn’t going to feed the world at the rate it currently demands, and big industrial-scale businesses are still in the driving seat. He suggests that we, as consumers, need to fundamentally reassess our relationship with the food we eat, looking closer to home, eating less, treating meat as a luxury to be valued, and ultimately paying the true cost of the food we eat. On that last point, it’s easy to nod along earnestly, but now is a difficult time in our economic cycle to be telling everyone to pay up for better food. I feel like Rebanks’ vision of a recalibrated food system is going to take some time to play out, but I hope it does. It has to.

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HOW CAN WE STAY IN TOUCH?

📸 I’m on Instagram where I chronicle my cooking @slothychef

👤 Same deal for Facebook Slothy Chef

📧 Drop me a note at info@slothychef.co.uk

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GROWING OUR COMMUNITY

I’ve got big ideas about building a community around this subject. I hope you can get involved. It would mean so much to me if you could share across your networks using the button below.

❤️ It also helps massively if you could give me a sign that you like this!

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