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Maria.vegan4ever posted a meme saying, “Do you have milk? Well, baby cows don’t, ”with a calf that says,“ My mom made this milk for me! ”The caption stated that we shouldn’t drink“ stolen ”milk and that milk is inherently bad for us. Another account, Milkhurts, advertises “creepy facts about dairy products”. These are just two of the thousands of accounts that beat up the dairy industry. In the past few decades, cow’s milk has been maligned for everything from sugar levels and fat to milking practices and antibiotics.
This hatred of milk puts an incredible burden on hard-working farmers across the country, and misinformation about milk substitutes continues to mislead consumers. More of us need to explore our obsession with dairy alternatives and understand how it affects farmers and the general public.
Years ago, everyone was talking about milk. In the early 1900s, cow’s milk was a national good, and in 1946 Congress passed legislation to ensure that milk was available at all school meals. Dairy farms have been owned and operated by families for generations, and this still applies to nearly 95% of dairy farms. In the 1930s, milk production stretched from North Carolina to Wisconsin, with production even growing in Texas when Borden set up processing operations across the state. In the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, milk was widely recognized as a good source of calcium, vitamins, and protein. In the 1990s, Got Milk? My generation’s ad campaign featured Beyoncé and Britney Spears with milk mustaches.
But in the late 2000s, things started to change. Enter “milk” alternatives.
Blue Diamond Growers, an almond growers cooperative in California, took the opportunity to enter the non-dairy market and surpass Silk, which made and sold soy milk. The result, Almond Breeze, was extremely successful. In 2011 alone, almond milk sales rose nearly 80%, and Almond Breeze became the country’s best-selling herbal drink in 2013.
In the years to come, we would see the rise of hemp, rice, cashew, and oat milk, to name a few. Plant-based drinks made up nearly 15% of the dairy category in 2019, and plant-based milk sales increased 5%. In the same year, total milk sales declined $ 1 billion, attributed to the strong growth of alternative “milk” products. The growth has really been staggering: the dairy alternative industry’s market size was estimated at $ 11.9 billion in 2017 and is set to grow every year. The desire for oat milk, for example, was so great that the drink became scarce in 2018 – which resulted in online marketplace Oatly selling boxes of the product for $ 200 or more. $ 200?
But there is misinformation about milk substitutes. Calling each of these drinks “milk” is not really correct. In 2019, the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration said that nut milk should not be labeled “milk” because nuts contain no lactate – an important distinguishing feature of any type of milk – cow, goat, sheep, etc.
In addition, there are important nutrients in dairy products that are completely absent in plant-based products. For example, cow’s milk contains nine essential nutrients; some almond-based drinks contain zero. While I understand that some people can’t drink milk (I have a lot of lactose intolerant friends), at the very least we need to be more aware of what’s in nut drinks and the impact this beverage industry is having.
I’m tired of seeing memes from cows – a nutritionist friend sent me a picture of the dairy farm she recently visited in Fort Worth and said it was amazing to meet the farming family and learn more about their commitment to them Learn craft. In fact, the Texan dairy industry contributes approximately $ 50.3 billion to its nationwide economic impact and $ 1.6 billion in state taxes, with Texas ranking fifth nationwide for milk production and cow use.
So let’s stop the #ditchdairy trends and instead see the burden this puts on local farmers across the country and understand the real information behind dairy substitutes. This is going to be so much more a-mu-sing.
Annika Olson is Associate Director of Policy Research at the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin.
A version of this comment appeared in the San Antonio Express News and the Austin American-Statesman.
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