A splash of milk from pastures new
Soya, almond and oat are on the rise, but are they greener than dairy, asks Sue Quinn
Remember when drinking milk was simple? When a glass of the white stuff epitomised wholesomeness and good health, and the only choice was between a silver top and a red top? Times sure have changed.
A stroll down the supermarket aisle or a glance at a coffee shop menu illustrates the point. There’s a vast array of plant milks to choose from, from pea and hemp right through to coconut and rice. Yesterday was even World Plant Milk Day (what, you didn’t know?), founded to celebrate and promote dairy alternatives.
Plant milks are nothing new, of course. My mother was picking cartons of soya milk off the dusty shelves of a health food shop for my dairy-allergic brother decades ago. But due to the rising popularity of veganism (driven mainly by environmental concerns, according to the Vegan Society), and the growing belief that dairy somehow isn’t good for us, our thirst for plant milk now seems unquenchable.
Sales of alternative milks have soared by 74 per cent over the past four years and the nation now slurps its way through £433 million worth of the stuff every year, according to Kantar Worldpanel. The most popular plant milk is soya; as a nation we drank 105 million litres of it last year. But rival oat is hot on its tail, with sales rising by an incredible 100 per cent over the past 12 months.
It’s tempting to assume the growing popularity of veganism explains why we’re losing our taste for cow’s milk, but only one per cent of the British population is vegan, and they can’t account for the
361 million litres of plant milk consumed in the UK last year.
According to Mintel research, young consumers concerned about their health and the environment are driving the trend. A 2019 survey revealed that 23 per cent of Brits had consumed plant milk in the previous three months, while 33 per cent of 16-24 year olds had done so. Around 37 per cent of that age group said they had reduced their dairy intake for health reasons, while a similar proportion said they believed dairy farming damaged the environment – perhaps because the sustainability issues are increasingly in the news.
However, last week a study by Nottingham University hit the headlines. The authors had calculated that drinking milk from cows in Britain used 11 times less soya than consuming milk made from soya beans. In other words, the study said, milk produced from dairy cows fed on diets containing soya bean meal is more sustainable than making milk from soya beans. This was significant for the planet, the authors stated, because forests, notably in the Amazon, are being destroyed to make way for soya bean production.
The Sustainable Food Trust claimed the report was evidence that vegans and others who bought milk substitutes “would do better to switch to milk from cows, and especially cows traditionally grazed on grass, if they want to save the planet”.
Confused? Professor Sarah Bridle, whose new book, Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air, is published on Sept 3 (UIT Cambridge, £19.99 paperback; free as eBook), says consumers have every reason to be baffled. In her book she sets out the environmental impacts of different foods and drinks to simplify a complex and multilayered issue. Prof Bridle says just because a glass of cow’s milk might involve fewer soya beans than a glass of soya milk, that doesn’t mean it’s more sustainable: there are many other factors involved. “In terms of climate change, the best dairy milk is generally worse than the worst soya milk,” she says. In fact, producing a glass of plant milk generally results in less than half the carbon emissions of dairy milk. This is because cows belch lots of methane into the air as they digest their food. A powerful greenhouse gas, methane traps heat in the earth’s atmosphere and causes the planet to warm up.
The environmental impact of splashing milk in our tea might not seem significant, but nothing could be further from the truth, Prof Bridle says. Adding one tablespoon of dairy milk to a brew causes more carbon emissions than boiling the water or producing the tea itself, she explains. Drinking a milk-laden café latte, meanwhile, causes more than 10 times those emissions. Given the 2.25 billion cups of coffee consumed globally each day, most of them with milk, that’s an enormous amount of greenhouse gas.
So, if drinking plant milk is better for the environment than dairy, which
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More and more people are choosing to go dairy-free alternative is the greenest option? Prof Bridle says it’s impossible to say, because there are so many variables. A study by Oxford University in 2018 found some alternative milks were better than others in terms of carbon emissions, the land required for crops and the water needed to grow them. But the differences were small.
In fact, Prof Bridle says the most environmental damage is caused by packaging, transportation and refrigeration of plant milks – things consumers aren’t able to measure. That’s why she wants to see labels on food and drink stating their greenhouse emissions.
“Given the lack of information on the relative environmental impacts of different plant milks, we should focus our efforts on encouraging food producers to get accredited environmental impact information for their products,” she says.
Of course, there are other considerations when choosing plant milks. How do they stack up against dairy, and each other, in terms of nutrition? “No plant milk can offer the same matrix of nutrients that dairy can, but soya milk contains higher levels of protein than the milks which are made from nuts, rice, or oats,” says consultant dietitian Sophie Medlin.
Certain brands of plant milk come fortified with all the essential nutrients found in dairy, which can help consumers avoid vitamin and mineral deficiencies.