> That's not the only problem Dean Foods has faced. Walmart (WMT), which was one of Dean Food's biggest customers, dropped them last year after building its own dairy plant.
Burying the lead here... I’m sure that had an outsized impact on them.
Walmart wasn't the first company to do this, many of the big grocers are in housing milk production, or so I heard from someone who works at Walmart HQ.
> The trouble started in 1930s with "marketing order" regulations. Those rules set minimum prices that dairy processors must pay to dairy farmers in 10 regions of the country. Today, about two–thirds of milk is produced under federal marketing orders, and most of the rest is produced under similar state schemes such as California's.
> Marketing orders limit competition, because entrepreneurs are not allowed to supply milk at less than the government prices.
> On top of marketing orders, Congress added a dairy price–support program in 1949. This program helps to keep prices high by guaranteeing that the government will purchase any amount of cheese, butter, and dry milk from processors at a set minimum price.
> The Government Accountability Office compared U.S. dairy prices to world prices over the period 1998 to 2004. It found that U.S. prices for butter averaged twice the world price, cheese prices were about 50 percent higher, and dry milk prices were 24 percent or more higher.
On the assumption that insourcing your milk production effectively exempts you from the price floor on outsourced milk, what's surprising is that there are grocers that don't do this.
Really, just, not. You can spell it either way; if you're writing for (or as) an editor, or just for the affectation of knowing editor jargon, "lede"; if in conversational English, "lead".
(I write "lede" all the time, and it is totally an affectation).
I notice you tend to use semicolons more than anyone else I know. Is that also an affectation? I mean, are you sometimes reformulating your thoughts in order to avail yourself to the opportunity of using a semicolon? Because me, rarely does a thought come to me in a way which would be best communicated with the usage of a semicolon, but maybe that's just me and my thinking style.
Semicolon usage could be an affectation or preference; it is generally used in place of a regular conjunction like "but" or "and".
There isn't any usage that I can think of where it would be the only "correct" way to write something; it's stronger than a comma but weaker than a period.
(I don't ever use semicolons normally. Was just trying to show some examples.)
Nope. I'm just not a very good writer. How I know that's not an affectation is that I can't remember ever once thinking about using a semicolon; they just happen.
This has much less to do with the rise of plant-based milk than the article implies. USDA checkoff programs force diary farmers to fund marketing while USDA marketing orders set minimum dairy prices. The result of this meddling is an enormous oversupply of dairy products. The USDA buys surplus cheese to encourage domestic cheese production. They buy surplus milk and give it to food banks. The oversupply caused by this bizarre fixation was noticed decades ago and a warning was published in the Federal Register in 1983:
The articles indicates that Dean Foods owns the Organic Valley cooperative, which is not accurate. There is a 50/50 partnership between Dean and Organic Valley called Organic Valley Fresh, but Dean certainly does not own Organic Valley.
It's not surprising at all. Dairy industry has for long time pushed various flavoured milk drink on schoolchildren and now with war on obesity it stopped being viable. There was long lasting myth about milk preventing bone fractures and osteoporosis and when someone finally decided to do a study on it [0][1], these claims fell apart too. Vegans are another factor. People drink milk now because they actually like, instead of drinking it for some dubious health benefits. And that's fine.
I read elsewhere that there is a massive overcapacity of milk right now. It's part of the trade arguments between the US and Canada.
So I suspect very low milk prices probably didn't help.
Anecdotally it seems to me the market these days is for milk products like Greek yogurt and aged cheeses.
Also, I was bored one day and watched a lot of dairy farm videos - it's become very automated, where just a couple of people can manage an enormous herd of cows, and the cows even have better living conditions than at typical farms.
So that probably drives the massive overproduction as well since it's so easy to have a running farm.
Where it's not uncommon to see milk as a loss-leader in big US markets (i.e. $0.99/gallon) the price in Canada is much higher and stable. I suspect our farmers are going to be hurt by the new NAFTA deal (when/if Congress ratifies it) in the long term.
And the Greek yogurt and cheese don’t see to be getting cheaper. I understand like with 20 months aged parmesan that the warehouse time and labor probably far outweigh the milk as input costs, but yogurt cmon, I’ve made it myself for way cheaper (without economies of scale) but its still expensive for brand names at the grocery store (like $8 for big jar).
The weirdest thing about Greek yoghurt is that it is so hard to find any that isn't ultra-low or nonfat. The only brand that seems to sell full-fat yoghurt is Cabot, at least that I've seen. It's wildly better, and usually far lower sugar.
That has not been my experience at all. Trader Joe's, for one, has sold full-fat Greek yogurt for at least ten years. It's in a blue and white container. Thicker than sour cream and will probably kill me at 50, but damn good!
Fat will not kill you as quickly as too much sugar. Most yoghurts have added sugar (insane amounts sometimes). I prefer plain with no added sugar; if I want some other flavoring I can add it myself. Once you get used to the plain varieties the tang is actually very pleasing. Not a big fan of the greek kinds as they are extremely wasteful to make.
Why would it kill you? Cultures that consume yogurt generally have a higher than average life span. The protein and fats in yogurt are healthy for you.
To be fair they filed for bankruptcy and arranged a loan to help keep the pension in place.
I thought it was a nice gestures.
Most story like these I've seen the tax payers end up footing the bill for the pension. A particular coal company that John Oliver's cover recently did the same thing.
This is great news. Dairy, although it tastes incredibly delicious, is pretty bad for people's health. Dairy is very closely linked to Liver Cancer (the landmark china study), ovarian cancer, prostate cancer (very closely linked), diabetes in children, etc. In forks over knives they even sited one study that showed Dairy proteins (casein) could actually feed and active growth of cancerous cells. In experiments they were able to turn on and off the cancerous growth just by chaning the percentage of casein protein.
And, lets not forget milk increases the chance of osteoporosis and bone fractures. prolonged ingestion of dairy leads to metabolic acidosis which causes the body to leach calcium from the bones increasing the rate of bone fractures. All that calcium in the milk can't be absorbed by the body anyways, it just gets pissed out of the body: they've demonstrated this in labs by measuring the amount of calcium that leaves the body after drinking milk. It's much better to get your calcium from natural sources. there's so many foods that are naturally high in calcium: https://kale.world/c (set the bar for calcium) leafy green vegetables, Oranges, potatoes, kidney beans etc.
Your claims are dubious. The Forks Over Knives study was on rats, not humans. That milk increases osteoporosis or causes the body to leach calcium from the bones are decades old myths that have no basis in science. Please check Dr. Michael Greger’s videos or lookup what some vegan dietitians who follow science have said. Myths like these cause more harm and eliminate trust. I say this as someone who doesn’t want animals to be harmed.
the connection between dairy intake and bone fractures is undeniable. the countries with the greatest milk intake also have the highest number of bone fractures. And the links between dairy and cancer (especially prostate cancer) are also very strong: there are numerous studies making this connection ~ check out what Dr. Milton Mills has to say on all this, he knows what he's talking about.
>> Once a staple of the American refrigerator, milk has slowly fallen out of favor with consumers as they seek less-sugary or plant-based alternatives.
Call me a clueless European bumpkin but I was a bit shocked about that. Milk in the US has sugar added to it.
Another comment explains that it's particularly low-fat milk that has sugar added to it. But that's pointless. Supposedly one prefers low-fat milk because it's more healthy. What's the point of adding sugar and making it less ealthy again?
Chocolate milk and other flavored milk have added sugars, but I think the the article is referring to the naturally occurring sugars in regular white milk (lactose primarily), which has no added sugar.
There is about 12g of these natural sugars per serving and show up on the label as simply "sugars" in the USA. Some consumers are turned off by this. Because of that, there has been a fight in the USA to change labeling to be explicit about whether sugars in a product are added or naturally occurring. Companies have lined up on both sides of the fight. Milk companies, for example, would generally like this, but others are opposed. (One example of companies opposed are cranberry producers--they often add sugar to their products (e.g., Craisins, cranberry juice) to make cranberries more palatable.)
>> There is about 12g of these natural sugars per serving and show up on the label as simply "sugars" in the USA. Some consumers are turned off by this.
That's a reasonable explanation. I'm very confused by the CNN article's use of "sugary", which to me means "sweet" or "sweetened with sugar".
I don't blame you for being suspicious about added sugar. It's an interesting exercise to look at the ingredients of "peanut butter" while grocery shopping in the United States.
Yes, I thought of lactose, but the CNN article says consumers are looking for "less-sugary" milk. Is that really what they mean by "sugary", that it has lactose? I would have thought that "sugary" means, well, tasting of sugar, as in sucrose, i.e. sweet.
For the record, this is the other comment I refer to:
It's saying plant-based milks are a less-sugary alternative. That doesn't imply that cow milk has added sugar, just that it has more sugar naturally than e.g. oat or soy milk
Here in India, when I was young, the milkman would bring his cow with him and milk it right in front of you. Just to prove to his customers that the milk was unadulterated.
Maybe its childhood nostalgia, but milk has never tasted as good again.
How do the logistics of this work? Did he bring one cow or several? Or is one cow enough to cover the sales of the day? Or is there a stash of cows nearby and he exchanges them? Are they on different milking time rhythms? So many questions. Can you elaborate a little please?
This is still prevalent in small Indian towns and villages. There is a stash of cows nearby and he chooses a cow, brings it to the residence, you provide your wide-container/pail and he milks the cow at your veranda. Milk is served at only one time - early morning.
You still need to boil the milk for several minutes to kill all bacteria.
Presumably those cows are treated quite well too. I've been stuck in cow related traffic jams before and I've seen how well they're regarded, so I can only assume milk cows are taken very good care of. Injections seem like they would be off the table because they're both not free and inflict pain. That means there are probably calves involved. Any idea what happens to them?
It's possible you've had "lactose free" milk, whereby lactase is added, breaking down lactose into simpler sugars. The amount of sugar is the same, but the simpler sugar tastes sweeter than the longer chain lactose. U.S. milk doesn't have sugar added to it, unless it's flavored milk e.g. chocolate milk.
There's a lot of sugar in skimmed milk in the UK too. You are essentially making a trade off between sugar and fat when choosing between skimmed / full fat.
... I was typing up a long reply about the excessive power and influence of companies like Walmart, Amazon, or Apple (the app store) and the effects of companies pursuing vertical monopolies and monocultures, but, seriously, do I need to explain this?
Yes, but try to stay specific to this situation. How is Walmart obligated to buy milk from one specific supplier forever?
You seem to want to go wide with this, but the question isn't a generic one; it's very particular to Walmart, milk, and the claim that Walmart is somehow supposed to buy from Dean Foods, or else they're acting immorally.
The issue here from the article, specifically, is Walmart cut them out of the supply chain after building their own dairy plant - the buried lede, and literally the last sentence.
So it follows: Walmart dropped Dean as a result of its continued efforts to vertically integrate its supply chain. This kills Dean.
And given we are talking Walmart here, I feel pretty safe assuming it's the key actor in this situation, not the 50 some million dollar almond milk industry :P
That is a profoundly complicated question. The simplest answer is they aren't responsible for Dean's bankruptcy, even though they might be responsible for the direct chain of events that lead to it. Walmart has caused a lot of similar events in the past.
So, my position would be: Walmart is a paperclip optimizer and a bad neighbor, and deserves to be called out for it whenever it does its thing.
Between being forced to reduce margins to meet Walmart and other grocery stores price points and then the sudden loss of 4% of their sales volume. I feel pretty comfortable in the assertion.
What's trolly is to derail a conversation, repeatedly trying to get on your soapbox to parrot word association rants about a company that you agree did nothing wrong in this specific situation.
The artificial increase in milk production by injecting cows with hormones takes its toll after how many years? 30-40?
It did not matter that they (for your sample of 'they') caused health problems to cows - including mastitis - and it also did not matter that the side-effects of these hormones on human consumption were not fully considered.
One commercial that I clearly remember was by one of those "farmers" saying that if you as a farmer do not inject your cow to increase milk production, you are simply leaving money on the table.
> "accelerated decline in the conventional white milk category."
Overall it's not looking like people are drinking less milk, they simply want more variety and this company seems to be having a hard time in all area's from Walmart to slowly upcoming alternative milk replacers.
Seems also in part they haven't innovated enough in new types of product to draw more customers.
Cows need to lactate when they have calves. They're not unending milk machines. They're like other mammals: they lactate to help their young survive. If you don't take away their calf and beat it to death, it'll drink all that milk and the mother cower won't suffer one bit. So is it just the hormones that make this cruel? What happened to the calf and why isn't that cruel?
I love cow's milk but only buy local so I imagine this hurts large factory dairy farms.
With that said, I doubt I could ever bring myself to stop drinking ethically sourced milk. All of these plant based milks are overly processed, expensive, and fortified with a bunch of nutrient junk that is lacking.
> All of these plant based milks are overly processed, expensive, and fortified with a bunch of nutrient junk that is lacking.
You can make your own very easily. Oat milk, for example, requires you to:
1. Put rolled oats into a blender
2. Put water in blender
3. Blend
4. Pour through a strainer into a container
5. Drink up
It’s dirt cheap, easy as can be, tastes great, and has no “nutrient junk”. And if you’re so inclined, you can usually buy rolled oats in the bulk bins in most grocery stores, so you can cut out unnecessary packaging too!
ETA: Putting a pitted date in for every ~2 cups of water also adds just enough sweetness to mimic the big manufacturers like Oatly and whatnot. Adding coconut flakes and/or cashews can also bump up the fattiness a bit, which is handy for a frothable “barista” style.
> Putting a pitted date in for every ~2 cups of water also adds just enough sweetness
Saw this and had to moan, sorry but this particular trend is a pet peeve of mine. You know dates are sweet because they have sugar in them right? Getting an equivalent amount of sweetness from regular table sugar instead wouldn't be any less healthy, and would be much cheaper and less perishable.
I guess you get a bit of dietary fiber and trace amounts of nutrients from a date too, but that doesn't seem relevant when using them as an ingredient with other things.
The only well studied and clinically developed diet for people with serious irritable bowel diseases, known as FODMAP[1] focuses exclusively on minimizing specific types of sugar and carbohydrates. For a severely compromised digestive system, table sugar is likely recommended over dates as a sweetener because they are likely to contain 'free fructose' which may be fine or even better for normal digestive systems since it has lower glycemic index than glucose, but it is found to be complicating for people with serious digestion problems. This goes to show dietary sugar is not metabolically simple or equivalent as commonly thought.
dates, like other fruit, contain sugar in proportion to dietary fiber which helps moderate intake by making you full. Yes, that effect is probably quite negligible in this application but it's certainly not a harmful rule of thumb to use whole fruits instead of refined sugar where sensible.
I'm not saying this is the case, but some fruits and vegetables have fiber that is sweet. And potentially date could act as a better emulsifier than sugar. I know people use honey and syrup over sugar in some cases -- not for the sweetness, but for the properties.
I like to blend dates in my protein shake. I think -- just like if you added blue berries or strawberries -- it gives a distinct flavor to the drink.
I'm not sure if that's desired for the oat milk or not. I'd think people would want their milk to be somewhat plain.
This is actually pretty bad disinformation considering the overwhelming scientific evidence indicating that eating fruit is great for your diet.
A major point is that most fruit isn't sweet enough to dramatically sweeten a product. Most people would over-sweeten their food significantly compared to using fruit. It is in fact difficult to over consume fruit from a sugar perspective, while it is comparatively trivial to over consume sugar from added refined sources.
Another benefit to fruit is that instead of being pure sugar like sugar, there are a wide variety of other more complex carbohydrates
I'll point out that fruit consumption is inversely correlated with obesity [0] while sugar consumption is positively correlated with it [1]
There is more to fruit than an overly reductive idea of "sugar + fiber" and there are a lot of compounds in there from vitamins and minerals to other things. The science is clearly showing us that fruit is much more healthy for us than refined sugar, because of a variety of things including how much less sugar there is in most fruit compared to foods with added refined sugars.
The studies you're linking and the conclusion you're reaching are based on the general idea of eating fruit. Dates have a much higher sugar content by volume/weight than fresh fruit (and are higher than a lot of other dried fruits too I believe).
> "A major point is that most fruit isn't sweet enough to dramatically sweeten a product."
Yes, dried dates are not like "most" fruit. They are sweet enough to "dramatically sweeten a product", that would be the reason they are used for that exact purpose.
I will mention though that food is always a lot more than a collection of sugars/fats etc.
Putting a date into your blended oat milk is, nutritionally speaking, very likely immensely different (and very likely more beneficial) than putting the equivalent amount of refined sugar. Then we havent even touched on the many other benefits - like behaviorally you are less likely to overindulge with dates than adding another teaspoon of sugar etc.
You sound like the kind of person who thinks that a spoonful of sugar and a multivitamin is functionally identical to a fruit and that is sad because the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly against your reductive approach to food.
No, the studies I linked cannot be handwaved off as you attempted, and no, they do not support your reductive approach. I urge you to read them again if gaining a greater understanding of why whole food is healthier than refined constituents is actually a goal of yours.
Dates are great in moderation. Everything is. You can say the same thing about bananas or water melons or any melon.
Dates have potassium, fiber, and make anything taste great. But dates aren’t the end all fruit for all your nutrient needs. Nutrition facts and moderation is the key.
A counterexample to that is that you can walk into any chain supermarket and see "almond milk", "oat milk", and "soy milk" advertised on the shelves.
They all use the word "milk", yet none of the manufacturers get in trouble with the FDA. It must be because the code you linked only tells part of the story.
I'm guessing that only the word "milk" in isolation is legally required to be from a cow, and that "[blank] milk" (almond, soy, oat, goat, camel) is regulated by different statutes.
The dairy industry has been agitating to get the FDA to put an end to the unwanted competition. I can't entirely blame them since tofu juice is in no way a milk.
> It must be because the code you linked only tells part of the story. I'm guessing...
The entirety of CFR is public domain, readily accessible, regularly maintained, and conveniently searchable at great expense to taxpayers. Care to explain why your speculative assertion isn't supported by proper citation?
Attention to detail would be noticing that that is exactly what they state in their last paragraph.
What's the point of linking to the FDA definition anyway? Apart from it obviously being a result of lobbying, it's completely irrelevant to the question of whether or not plant milks are, well, milk. It is overly specific as is, for starters, nobody would deny that mammals other than cows give milk.
The only result following from the regulation you linked is that people selling milk can legally only drop the specifier "cow's", but not "donkey" nor "almond", before the word "milk". Plant milks will keep being milks, as they have been in the English language since at least the 13th century.
But it has got a weird system to it.
As far as I can tell, a fake “milk” is generally white (or white ish) and it has to be used in situations where milk would usually be used.
You don’t get grape milk and or orange milk for example.
They're not even remotely substitutable. Different plant milks aren't even culinarily substitutable for each other. It's like substituting vinegar for cooking wine: broadly speaking, it'll usually work, but they're really not the same thing.
"milk" is more of a visual descriptor than a culinary classification.
People substituting almond milk for cow milk in cereal is it’s number one use. That’s cooking by the preparing food for consumption definition, even if you don’t use heat that’s hardly required.
Oh, absolutely; I'm saying it's not any better to substitute, say, almond milk for cow milk. Worse, even; substituting vinegar for wine won't usually make the whole recipe fall apart altogether the way not enough fat will.
Hyperbole much? If they weren't remotely substitutable then why do coffee shops freely offer them as a... substitute. And interchangeably between different plant-based ones at that.
They probably don't work interchangeably in scenarios where the physical characteristics of the milk is a linchpin of the recipe. Baking in general requires precise temperature control and ingredient control (eg. cake, pastry, and bread flour types), whereas adding milk is more of a flavoring that doesn't impact the resulting drink at much (your coffee won't be a chewy inedible mess if you put a different kind of milk).
What harm is done by saying plant-based milk? Everybody knows what we are talking about. It is crystal clear (yet white).
Milk is still understood by default as cow milk. It will change when and if cow milk is not as widespread as today, and then the word milk will keep reflecting the reality, as today.
The FDA, as in many parts of the world (in EU too, for instance), forbids calling such plant-based drinks milk because they are bribed and receive aggressive lobbying from the dairy industry [1].
How are we supposed to call them? Plant-based drinks that are white and look like milk? They are not always used as drinks since they can be used to cook, and are not the only plant based drinks. Yes, this makes it difficult to speak about them. Yes, this is possibly the point, along with avoiding that people think them as alternatives to cow milk.
When you are telling people that "this is not milk", you are spreading this lobbying. What is your point? People saying milk for plant based drinks will not be convinced by this prescriptive approach anyway.
> When you are telling people that "this is not milk", you are spreading this lobbying.
I neither object to your fallacious assertion, nor find personal shame in supporting its cause if the objective hammer countinues to drop hard on the class of uncritical marketing wank that you've just demonstrated.
Source? Afaik, coconut milk and soy milk have not only been made for centuries, but also called something like “milk” where they were consumed (e.g. India, China, Thailand, etc.)
ETA: The Mahābhārata, a book dating back to 400BCE, refers to making rice milk. So...
Different how? It's definitely no less "milk" than cow's or sheep's or goat's milk. As a substance it's definitely as much "milk" as it can possibly be.
Why would you assume drinking milk from a different order of mammal is good for you? And why would you assume that because we have been consuming an item for millennia that it is good for you?
That's literally how you could assume it's good for you but there are also plenty of studies that support the assumption. Plenty show that low-fat or non-fat yogurt and milk are "good" for you.
Humans have been milking everything they can get their hands on since prehistoric times. There are a number of reasons to not eat/drink those things (taste, vegan, intolerance, etc) but that doesn't suddenly make yogurt, milk, and cheese "bad" for you.
I disagree that plant based milks are overly processed or that, with fortification, the nutritional profile is significantly different than ethically sourced cow’s milk.
I can agree that _some brands_ suffer the problems you mention, but other brands that are easy to find don’t differ significantly in nutrition profile or calorie density from cow’s milk. Unsweetened Oatly for instance matches up very well, with the most significant detractor being a bit less protein per serving than similar cow’s milk (but also the benefit of fewer calories per serving).
I do agree that plant based milks are often more expensive though.
A lot of them are fortified with nutrients that are lacking from a vegan diet, i.e. B12, D, etc. I don't think the nutrients in them are meant for most people but are meant for a certain demographic who consumes this product.
but, there is no harm in getting an extra b12 dose for meat consumers as well! plant-based milks are not meant only for plant-eaters (to put it simply) they are of course meant for everyone
How? My aunt has a cow(a single one) that lives next to her house, has access to a pasture nearby, and by literally any definition you could pick it lives as happy life as a cow can do(unless you subscribe to the idea that no animals should be ever kept by humans, but I am not convinced that would lead to a measurably better life for the cow). It produces a lot of milk that my aunt uses for herself and her neighbours take some of it as well. How is that not "ethical consumption of cow milk"?
I'm definitely not a farmer, but it is my understanding that for a cow to keep giving milk, it needs to give birth once a year. You cannot keep all those calves around, so they go to the slaughterhouse. That means that in an indirect way, the production of cow milk forces calves to be slaughtered.
It depends on where you place things on the moral scale.
For example for the cow to lactate, it needs to be inseminated. Every 4 years I think. When the calf is born it's taken away from the mother. Does a cow mother suffer emotionally from having their baby taken away?
Cows are sociable animals so a single cow would probably feel lonely?
I don't have the answers. It seems like research uncovers more and more human-like emotions associated to animals so it doesn't seem completely out of question. Humans also have a tendency to objectify things so they can shut off empathy.
There is a rare practice where you (for example) separate them just for the night and milk the cow in the morning. During the day, the calf will take the milk. Yes, you lose a lot of the milk that way, but apparently your vet bill also goes down because the calf will be healthier.
Another option is to pool several calves to one cow and foster them for more natural suckling behaviour. This is a bit more common.
Interestingly, apparently cows can choose to either give the milk or not which makes the logistics more complicated.
I can currently only find sources in German for this though ('muttergebundene Kälberaufzucht' / 'ammengebundene Kälberaufzucht').
It depends on your moral values which can be different.
If you skip the simplification vegans are using to justify eating plants (they don't scream and run away when we're trying to eat them) you hardly can eat anything ethically.
Plants lack nerves or a central nervous system or the ability to directly react to their circumstances, at somepoint you have to draw a line somewhere and most draw the line there. Regardless, if you really believe that plants feel pain, you're killing a lot more of them by raising animals for dairy and meat.
Industrial plant agriculture kills and displaces untold numbers of small ground mammals. Thus the urban vegan doesn't get to pretend they have clean hands.
A pasture-fed cow kills approximately zero of the same.
Assuming your ethics give equal treatment to all mammals, the rural hobby farmer comes out far, far ahead of the urban vegan.
Cite your sources. This is a statement made by many without evidence.
Sure, if we all had a cow and two acres and lived in a temperature environment where the animals could graze all year, we could have milk after the cow has had a calf. But who impregnated her? And what are you doing with the calf because it needs two acres of grazing pasture too. And then who impregnates her next year and what do you do with that calf? Another two acres? What about the harsh winter or summer? You're going to need to supplement with extra hay. Off to the agricultural supply who... ah crap, they farm. Farming kills fuzzy animals! Now we're terrible again!
Cows, like all mammals, aren't unending milk supply systems. They dry up because they lactate for a reason. Your imaginary hobby farm is an unsustainable system.
Source: I have a grazing pasture and grazing animals.
Is rural hobby farming a massively scalable lifestyle? Would it still be less detrimental to the environment if everyone was doing it? I can’t imagine how much land, forests, wild animals that would displace.
That's a great point! The pain rule seems a little arbitrary to me. Pain evolved only in some life forms for which it was beneficiary. It doesn't seem to make killing them more problematic than life forms which can't feel pain. It's only our emotions which react to pain and thus it seems worse.
There's also no such thing as an ethical person. Somewhere on the economic scale, in any country, a person's happiness is derived from another's suffering. Africa's cocoa farming. Sugar cane farming and production. Foxconn treatment of workers on cellphones and other goods. Clothing and shoe worker treatment in China and Vietnam. Slave labor use in cobalt mining.
But yea. I mean, let's gang up on cow farmers instead.
I prefer almond milk and have been drinking it for 5+ years now. Luckily most stores carry their own brand of Almond milk now which usually costs 25% less than Almond Breeze or a similar brand.
This style of "gotcha" holier-than-thou bad-faith arguments frustrates me. One doesn't need to go from being a straight omnivore to a Level 5 vegan that doesn't eat anything with a shadow for changing a diet in large part being a good thing.
Perfect is the enemy of the good in our line of work, what makes diet any different? One should strive to do the best they can within their location, health, dietary framework and ethical choices. It's as simple as that.
Almond milk requires a lot of water to produce but it still take significantly less water to produce than cow milk. Even if you take into account the potential for meat (which is ridiculous because milling cows aren't typical steaks), the amount water used to sustain a cow (through drinking and watering plants) is huge.
If your options are cow vs almond and you want to choose the lesser of evils and only care about the negatives of the almond (water) it's still less evil than cow milk.
Cow's milk is so processed that it needs to be refortified with vitamin D because it was destroyed in the process and the calcium would be useless without the added vitamin D.
Huh? That’s not true at all. Vitamin D was added to milk as a part of public health policy to prevent rickets since milk consumption was near universal.[1]
Ok, I admit, saying it gets destroyed was a poor choice of words. But from your article:
>> Although milk as it comes from the cow is a poor source of vitamin D, fortified milk is considered an excellent source, especially because of its calcium content. Other foods considered good dietary sources of vitamin D are relatively rare but do include fatty fish, eggs and liver. Vitamin D is a fat-soluble vitamin.
As for the "destroyed" part of my comment, I meant that both it and vitamin A are fat soluble. So when you "skim" the milk, you lose lots of the vitamins. You lose so much, that vitamin A has to be re-added. Again from your article:
>> As skim and lower fat milks became popular, the reduction of vitamin A levels with fat reduction became an issue since whole milk was considered a good source of vitamin A.
TL;DR - I should've said vitamin A but got lazy/greedy. Vitamin D, while subject to the same problem as vitamin A, is added as refurb explains.
Peer-reviewed sources please? I'd love for this to be true, I can show this to anyone who brings up the "but what about all the vitamin D you're missing?" argument.
Burying the lead here... I’m sure that had an outsized impact on them.