Drinking cows’ milk now feels a bit... passé. Like owning a CD player or wearing a denim mini-skirt over black leggings. Not bad, necessarily, but definitely not au courant. Without wishing to sound like someone in bewildered middle-age, there really are an awful lot of dairy-free alternatives to milk out there, and there’s no denying that what was always termed 'normal milk' is fast falling out of favour.
Dairy-free milks have never been more popular. Health bloggers are always telling us that soy milk is 'better' for us or 'more natural' (sure) and there’s a growing sense of unease around dairy farming – thanks in part to programmes such as Simon Amstell’s vegan comedy Carnage – and that inescapable fact that the industry is unconscionably cruel.
In fact no-milk-milks are so popular Euromonitor found that global sales of dairy-free milk alternatives more than doubled between 2009 and 2015, when they were valued at $21bn. Even soy milk is fading out of fashion as almond, coconut, oat, hemp and cashew 'milks' jostle for popularity on supermarket shelves. I was dairy-free in 2010 for dietary reasons and finding non-gross non-dairy milks was a Sisyphean task. Now it’s never been easier. Hurray!
Or, is it really a sign of such great things? While wanting to be a more ethical consumer is obviously brilliant, there have been scare tactics putting people off what most dieticians believe is a perfectly harmless food. However, young people are increasingly frightened of cows’ milk – almost 8% of 16-24-year-olds believe they’re allergic to it, which is more than five times higher than the over-75 age range, according to a survey by the Food Standards Agency.
Well-respected health-food bloggers perpetuate the false claim that drinking milk is more likely to cause calcium deficiency that leads to problems such as osteoporosis, which is demonstrably false.
However, there have been many concerns about a link between drinking cows’ milk and cancer, and worries about dairy cows being injected with hormones which then go on to make us produce excess oestrogen. Furthermore, there’s been the emergence of the ‘raw milk’ movement, which argues that unpasteurised milk is better for the human body as it’s not been through a chemical process. Seeing as pasteurisation was created so people stopped getting cowpox and dying, the ‘raw milk’ thing is a pretty tough sell. It still doesn’t solve the problem that we’re increasingly worried about what we put in our tea.
Nutritionist Shona Wilkinson, who is a Senior Associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine, says that milk is highly nutritious, but they’re nutrients you can get from other places, or not. Basically, unless you have an actual allergy choosing to or choosing not to drink cows’ milk isn’t a massive deal.
'There are certainly more people wanting to reduce or stop their intake of dairy,' she agrees. 'It is partly due to intolerances and partly to do with people being concerned about the quality of their milk and the discussions on social media of cows being injected with hormones et cetera. There is also the point that no other animal carries on drinking milk once they are weaned.'
Is cutting milk out bad for us even if we’re not allergic? Will we miss out on all the good stuff in milk? 'People do always worry about their calcium intake if they cut out dairy so you just have to make sure you are getting calcium from elsewhere in your diet such as dark green leafy vegetables,' Wilkinson says.
Milk also isn’t necessarily the font of nutrients we were told it was when we were kids. 'It only has vitamin D in it because it has been fortified – it isn’t a natural source of Vitamin D and doesn’t contain enough to give you the health benefits. It is certainly a source of protein but again, there are other alternatives that are easily available if you give up dairy.'
Basically, if you want to cut it out then it’s not a massive biggie. There’s a solid environmental argument against cutting out milk – dairy farming is a significant contributor to harmful greenhousegases, because cows produce methane.
The WWF points out that, in addition to this, 'dairy operations can also be significant contributors to water pollution and soil degradation when manure and feed crop production are poorly managed.'
On the other hand, at least it’s not imported, right? And just how eco-friendly are milk alternatives anyway? Proving that no good deed can go unpunished, soya is famously not-that-eco-friendly. Europe imports millions of tonnes of it every year – much of which goes towards feeding cows – but you have to be very careful when selecting a supplier that uses GM-free stuff that’s not from rainforest regions. Some soybean farmers mow down fragile ecosystems in order to feed a growing global population. There’s more here at the Cornucopia Institute if you want extra not-cheery reading
Oh and don’t go thinking almond milk is much better. To grow almonds takes a lot of valuable water, and it takes around 100litres of water to make 100ml of almond milk and 5litres of water to grow one measly almond. Many almonds are grown in drought-hit areas such as California, so that water is extra-precious, and reports say that farmers are resorting to ever-more unscrupulous and damaging methods to drill down into the earth to get the water necessary to grow the almonds. Might be worth considering when you’re using almond milk to make porridge. A Swedish study found that oat milk compared very favourably to cows’so that could be a good option if you’re keen to treat lightly upon the earth.
Studies do suggest that vegans have the lowest carbon footprint of all people in the UK and that cutting down on dairy could have a good impact. When you’re considering cutting out ‘regular’ milk, it’s important that we don’t just blithely assume anything with a nut, bean or grain on the package is better for us and better for the planet. It’s important that we don’t absorb messages from self-appointed health gurus.
In the words of my favourite anti-Trump sign: 'What do we want? Evidence-based science. When do we want it? After peer review.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.