PursuedByBears
Go stick your head in a pig
Oat milk is lovely. Soy is good too (and is fewer points on Weight Watchers 
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Milk's impact on the planet dairy, soya, rice, oat and almond compared
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The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
"found glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and a possible carcinogen, in all the foods it tested containing conventionally grown oats and even in one-third of products made with organic oats" thats frightening a fact that I never knew aboutNew article puts oat milk and soya milk as the most environmentally sound, and both miles and miles ahead of dairy milk. That's handy because oat is by far the best milk out there and I like soya milk too.
Soy: back in favor
Soy milk was the go-to alternative long before almond.
According to the Oxford study, soy milk is the joint winner on the sustainability scale. Plus, soy is the only plant milk that comes close to offering a protein content comparable to dairy. It was the go-to alternative long before almond milk came into vogue – but then soy fell out of favor.
“Soy has a relatively high concentration of certain hormones that are similar to human hormones and people got freaked out about that,” says Emery. “But the reality is you would have to consume an impossibly large amount of soy milk and tofu for that to ever be a problem.” Recent studies have instead found that a moderate amount of soy is healthy, especially for women.
The primary environmental drawback to soy milk is that soybeans are grown in massive quantities around the world to feed livestock for meat and dairy production. Large swaths of rainforest in the Amazon have been burned to make way for soy farms. The work-around for this is to simply do a little research and read the carton to find soy milk that is made from organic soybeans grown in the US or Canada.
Oat: a humble hero
Oat milk ‘performs very well on all sustainability metrics’.
Meet the winner: the unassuming oat.
“I’m excited about the surge in oat milk popularity,” says Liz Specht, associate director of science and technology for the Good Food Institute, a not-for-profit that promotes plant-based diets. “Oat milk performs very well on all sustainability metrics.” Also: “I highly doubt there will be unintended environmental consequences that might emerge when the scale of oat milk use gets larger.”
According to Bloomberg Business, retail sales of oat milk in the US have soared from $4.4m in 2017 to $29m in 2019, surpassing almond milk as the fastest-growing dairy alternative. But unlike almonds, there are already plenty of oats to go around. “Right now, 50 to 90% of global oat production goes into animal feed,” says Specht, “so there’s a huge existing acreage that we can safely steal share from without moving the needle at all on total production.”
Oats are grown in cooler climates such as the northern US and Canada, and are therefore not associated with deforestation in developing countries. The only drawback with this trendy and guilt-free option is that most oats come from mass-produced, monoculture operations where they are sprayed with the Roundup pesticide right before harvest. A study by the Environmental Working Group found glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and a possible carcinogen, in all the foods it tested containing conventionally grown oats and even in one-third of products made with organic oats. However, the popular Oatly brand oat milk company maintains its oats are certified glyphosate free.
Almonds are out. Dairy is a disaster. So what milk should we drink?
A glass of dairy milk produces almost three times more greenhouse gas than any plant-based milk. But vegan options have drawbacks of their ownwww.theguardian.com
WouldBe
Dislicksick
Glyphosate is a very powerful plant killer and will kill almost all plants it comes into contact with so I'm not sure why you would be spraying it on crops you want.
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hiraethified
Nothing compared to the scary shit involved in milk production.
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hiraethified
There may be a day when people look back and say, "What? You drank liquid drawn from artificially inseminated, hormone pumped creatures designed for their babies?" That's GROSS!"Oat milk is lovely. Soy is good too (and is fewer points on Weight Watchers
8ball
Decolonise colons!
After we stop teaching about evolution, I guess.
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hiraethified
I'm sure there's a brilliant point in there somewhere. Anyway, non dairy milk....
8ball
Decolonise colons!
A fairly trivial point to some people, but there's always time to catch up.
But anyway yeah, oats are better than almonds now, was the gist, no?
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hiraethified
Please don't think you can go on one of your disruptive bonanzas in this thread.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
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The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
Two wrongs dont make a right.Im a big fan of oats and although I should have had some suspicion about modern farming the % quoted on organic is shocking.
andysays
Love and solidarity
One of the issues with pesticide spraying is the danger of spray drift on to plants other than those targeted.Glyphosate is a very powerful plant killer and will kill almost all plants it comes into contact with so I'm not sure why you would be spraying it on crops you want.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Some people are very shortsighted. They fail to see the devastation that insecticides and herbicides are going to cause if they get their way.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Yeah, pretty sure that stuff ain't allowed if you're growing 'organic' stuff, though I suppose it could fall on it.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
I dunno. Some people already spout ridiculous, hyperbolic nonsense about milk production.
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hiraethified
So naturally you can provide some peer reviewed studies that show that oat milk production will have a worse impact on the environment than the dairy/meat industry, yes?
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Why drink flavoured water when it takes almost 300 litres of water to make a litre of it? Do you think that's sustainable? Do you think that will be sustainable when everyone has been convinced to drink plenty of good, healthy soy milk?
Here's another dilemma, for those whose moral compass dictates that they only consume plants, and only organically produced plants... Where do you think the fertiliser comes from to grow those plants? The clue's in the name. It's organic, and most of It comes from either live animals or dead animals that are being bred specifically for food.
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hiraethified
I didn't ask for a load of pointless waffle from you. I asked if you could provide some peer reviewed studies that show that oat milk production will have a worse impact on the environment than the dairy/meat industry.
If you haven't got any actual science to back it up, just say so.
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hiraethified
Oh dear oh dear. Here's some actual science from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers that shows that dairy milk needs over three times as much water to produce a litre of the stuff.
The best global estimate of the total water needed (green + blue + grey) to produce a litre of milk is about 1020 litres.
oduce-one-litre-of-milk/Sciblogs | Farewell to Sciblogs
sciblogs.co.nz
And:
Typical values for the volume of water required to produce common foodstuffs
Milk - 1 x 250ml glass = 255 litres
To [rodice one litre - 1,020 litres of water is needed
How much water is needed to produce food and how much do we waste?
As much as 50% of all food produced in the world ends up as waste every year according to figures from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. But how much water is needed to produce it?
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
Similarly, I'd consider an alternative to meat, but there are none worth eating.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Doesn't make NZ's dairy production unsustainable, though. It's relatively wet in most of NZ most of the time, and especially wet in the milk-making areas like Canterbury and Otago.
Water usage figures need to be given with that context, no? Using 1000 litres of water somewhere like Canterbury means something very different from using 1000 litres of water in, say, dry bits of the Middle East.
Water usage figures need to be given with that context, no? Using 1000 litres of water somewhere like Canterbury means something very different from using 1000 litres of water in, say, dry bits of the Middle East.
Saul Goodman
It's all good, man
You seem to be arguing against yourself here, or against another of your silly straw men.Oh dear oh dear. Here's some actual science from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers that shows that dairy milk needs over three times as much water to produce a litre of the stuff.
And:
Typical values for the volume of water required to produce common foodstuffs
Milk - 1 x 250ml glass = 255 litres
To [rodice one litre - 1,020 litres of water is needed
How much water is needed to produce food and how much do we waste?
As much as 50% of all food produced in the world ends up as waste every year according to figures from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. But how much water is needed to produce it?www.theguardian.com
Your post seems to suggest that I said soy 'milk' (which isn't actually milk. It's coloured water) takes more water to produce than cow's milk. Feel free to point out where you think I stated that, if that's what you think I said.
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hiraethified
It's not me arguing about sustainability here, by the way.
Spymaster
Plastic Paddy
Shush with your sensible perspectives. Dissent is not allowed!!!
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hiraethified
Seeing as the recent discussion is about soya and oat milk being proven the most sustainable, perhaps you'd better tell everyone exactly what it is you're going on about.
In the UK, oat milk is enjoying the biggest surge in popularity and as I have just illustrated, it is hugely more sustainable than dairy milk. So what is your point here?
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hiraethified
And you've tried them all, right?
