My Milkshake
Damn right, it's better than yours.
Don’t get all triggered by the title. It’s a song lyric. Great song. Terrible message. Irrelevant here because this post is about MILK!
Actually it’s about the differences between dairy milk and plant milks, and the differences between the plant milks themselves. We’re measuring impact in five areas:
Land Use: How much land does it take to produce a single glass of milk?
Freshwater Use: How much water has to be pumped from the earth to make a single glass of milk?
Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide—the three main contributors to climate change.
Eutrophication: This is when nutritents from fertilizers and manure (it has to go somewhere) end up in bodies of water, gobbling up all the oxygen until they cause a “dead zone” or hypoxic zone, where there isn’t enough oxygen to sustain life. Nothing lives in these zones.
Health: What does ingesting this product do inside our bodies?
Here are the results on the first four points:
<iframe src="https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/environmental-footprint-milks" loading="lazy" style="width: 100%; height: 600px; border: 0px none;"></iframe>We can see here, that there are vast differences between the environmental impact of dairy milk, and every plant milk there is. The soy and oat products are the least harmful, and the rice products look quite harmful in three of the four areas, including eutrophication, which we’ll discuss further. And the almond milk is pretty rough on water use. Soy would be about the least harmful.
Why Land Use is Important
When we talk about “land use” we are talking about the clearcutting and burning of forests and rainforests to make room for more crops to feed more cattle. We’re talking about the terraforming of our planet, really. We’re tearing nature down and re-building it in a way that (for the moment) supports our hunger for meat and dairy.
These forests not only house vast and varied species of insects, animals, microscopic beings, plants, and trees, they also remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere, and produce oxygen so that we can breathe. The forests are the lungs of the planet. If they stop breathing, we stop breathing.
But plants use land too!
Yes, they do. About 2% of the land currently used to grow crops for people and cattle combined, could feed the entire world. 2%!
Just think what we could do with the rest. Replant the forests. Nurture the rainforest in hopes they’ll re-expand into the areas we burned. Rainforests can’t just be replanted—they’re too complex. They create their own weather. Only nature can make one. Maybe if we just leave her alone, she will.
Freshwater Use
We have already taken so much water from the Earth that it has impacted the planet’s tilt measurably. This is from a study published in the science journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Earth's pole has drifted toward 64.16°E at a speed of 4.36 cm/yr during 1993–2010 due to groundwater depletion and resulting sea level rise
Including groundwater depletion effects, the estimated drift of Earth's rotational pole agrees remarkably well with observations (Seo et al.)
Did you get that? We have sucked so much water out of the earth that its tilt has changed by 2.6 inches. If that doesn’t concern you, I don’t know what will.
Recently, water crises due to lack of clean water have been cropping up like never before. All-out water emergencies have hit Houston, Jackson MS, South Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, Honolulu, Vegas, Baltimore, and Benton Harbor MI, to name a few. (Alfonseca)
Right now, ongoing, Saudi Arabia is so desperate for water that they are pumping it out of the ground under Arizona. People’s property is sinking, physically sinking, about 3 feet so far as the ground water is sucked out from under it. (“MSN”)
And our rush to build chip factories all over the US is taking more. Just the one planned for my neck of the woods will use 46 million gallons of water per day, which they plan to pump from Lake Ontario. Half of it will be recycled. The Syracuse Post Standard ran an article equating this much water use to about a cup of water per day from an olympic sized swimming pool.
But the problem is there are lots of others sucking a cup or so a day from that lake too, all around it. Finding an accurate accounting is difficult. But there’s already a pipleline from the lake into Oswego, and another on the Canadian side. I imagine anywhere a city is near the lakeshore, there’s water being pumped out. And that’s going to add up.
We as a species are using water faster than the earth and the rains can replenish it. And 70% of our global freshwater use is for animal agriculture. (Handley)
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
The planet is getting warmer. The world understands now that the burning of fossil fuels is putting Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere, and more and more people understand that the cutting of trees prevents the earth from cleaning the air and producing oxygen.
What people don’t understand is that even if we stopped using every trace of fuel, gas, kerosene, coal, wood, everything this very moment, the gasses in our atmosphere would not begin to dissipate for at least 100 years. We can’t reduce it. We can only stop increasing it, but we haven’t. Every drop of fossil fuel we burn is adding to it.
Methane is a far more deadly greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It warms the planet faster than CO2. But it also has a shorter lifespan. Methane put into the atmosphere today will only last there about 12 years. (C2ES) If we could stop putting excess methane out there, we could reduce it from the atmosphere almost immediately, in the grand scheme of things. Twelve years!
Some methane comes from the decomposition of plants, from swamps, from all of us just breathing—about 40%. The other 60% is from animal agriculture and fossil fuel production. Stopping those things could make a huge difference, in a hurry!
The fastest way to slow global warming is to stop raising animals as commodities.
Dead Zones and Feces
The residents of earth will be producing 5 BILLION TONS OF FECES per year by 2030 at the current rates of increase. Farmed animals produce 120 times more waste than humans, (Barwick) so the vast majority of those tons of shit are coming from pigs, cows, and chickens, and quite a bit from fish and other farmed animals. And none of that waste is treated. It’s quite literally taken out and thrown on the ground.
Have you ever seen a farm whose “ground” didn’t have a creek, stream or river running through it? I haven’t. And those streams are, just by geology, always downhill. The water creates the valley, it’s the low point that carves the ground.
So the farmer “spreads the shit” using a “shit-spreader” that flings manure willy nilly as he drives his tractor across the fields. This fertilizes the ground so the crops will grow, true enough. To a point. Too much nitrogen will cook the crops. Soupy manure drips from the shit-spreader onto the road when the farmer pulls it from one field to another with his tractor.
So that’s a little over 4 million tons from people and 4.96 BILLION from animals.
It’s too big a number. To wrap my head around it, a billion is a thousand millions. A million, a thousand times over. So that man TONS of poop from the animals we eat, is just being spread around on the ground, and rinsed by rainfall right into the nearest creek.
The creeks run to the rivers, and the rivers feed lakes and resevoirs (yes, drinking water) along the way. In the middle of the country where all the factory farms are, the runoff finds the Mississippi, and hitches a ride straight down to the Gulf of Mexico, where the dead zone it creates has elminated all life in an area of thousands of square miles.
On the coasts, the creaks and streams flow into the Atlantic and the Pacific. In 2021, half of the coastal waters from northern California to Canada were devoid of oxygen and life. The east coast hypoxic zones are directly linkes to chicken and egg farms.
So not only are we using too much water, we’re polluting the water we have.
Finally, Health
Cow’s Milk
We already know from the studies of T. Colin Campbell and others, that casien, a protein found in all dairy products, turns on mutated cancer genes. If you have the mutation and you consume enough dairy it will absolutely turn the gene on. It did in 100% of the poor little lab animals tested. This held true if the protein accounts for more than 5% of your total calories. At 5% and less, the genes remain dormant. At 20% they turn on. (The current USDA upper limit is 35%, which flies in the face of this known and accepted science. That’s malpractice.)
5% Casein is the equivalent of 100 calories per day on a 2000 calorie/day eating routine. 100 calories of milk is about 2/3rds cup milk or less than 1 ounce of cheddar cheese. It’s almost none, in other words. (Drinking low fat milk just increases the proportion of the calories that come from protein, so that doesn’t give you more.)
Besides, cow’s milk can contain up to 180 million pus cells per 8 oz glass, according to the FDA. (That doesn’t mean it does. It also doesn’t mean it doesn’t.)
What about bone health?
Countries with the highest amounts of dairy in their diets, also have the highest rates of osteoporosis. This might be because the inflammatory and deleterious affects of dairy overwhelm any benefit its calcium might bring.
Watch this video about the effects of dairy on our bodies, increasing the risk of death from all causes among those who drink it. Increases the risk of bone fractures too!
Soy Milk
Because it’s made from soybeans, soy milk is extremely good for us. I remember a time when people who’d had estrogen related breast cancers shouldn’t eat soy, because it contianed phytoestrogens. It took only a little research to turn that theory upside down. Soy and soy products actuall REDUCE the risk of breast cancer recurrence in those who’ve had it. (Zeratsky)
It’s also been shown to reduce symptoms of menopause and perimenopause by up to 80% (but you have to consume a lot of it.) (“Soy Phytoestrogens for Menopausal Symptoms”)
Tofu, made from whole soybeans and minimallly processed, has all 9 essential amino acids, but then, so do all plants in various amounts. Soy has a similar distribution of them to meat, however, so it’s considered a “complete protein.” (Ditto for lentils.)
Calcium from Soy milk is absorbed at nearly the same efficiency as calcium from dairy.
Almond or Oat Milk
No almond milk for those with nut allergies!
Let’s face it, you are not getting a lot of almonds in almond milk, or a lot of oats in oat milk. But you’re getting enough to provide some fiber, which is great, and most are fortified with calcium and vitamin E. There a little fat, but it’s good fat, that’s healthy for you.
However, almond milk has so few almonds that it brings very little nutritional benefits, unless you get brands that are fortified with extra nutrients.
Oat milk is better for the planet than almond as it uses less water. It also contains double the carbs of dairy milk, which is a very good thing. It has a naturally sweet taste, and brings a natural hit of folate.
Avoid Coconut Milk
It just has too much saturated fat. When you eat coconut, you get the fat, but it’s combined with all the other components of the coconut, especially the fiber. Many of these parts seem to counteract the negative effects of the coconut fat. Some are anti-inflammatory and cancel out the fat’s inflammatory affects. Fiber wraps it up and speeds it through our systems, so we absorbe less of the fat along the way. It’s a whole system. This is why “whole” is the most important word in whole food, plant-based.
Rice Milk
This one has a high glycemic index— it can spike your blood sugar. It has a low nutrient content. It is however, the least likely to produce an allergic reaction. So if you just need an ingredient for a recipe or to wet your cereal or tame your coffee, this can work.
DIY your plant-milk
On the other hand, there are a ton of nut-milk (my husband will never stop giggling over that term) making machines on the market, and I have friends who swear by them. I plan to get one myself. This one is low-priced with excellent reviews and makes milk from multiple different ingredients.
Enjoy!
Alfonseca, Kiara. “Map: Where Ongoing Water Crises Are Happening in the US Right Now.” ABC News, 9 Sept. 2022, abcnews.go.com/US/map-ongoing-water-crises-happening-us-now/story?id=89454219.
Barwick, Emily Moran. “The Public Health Crisis of Animal Waste - Our Global Poo Problem.” Bite Size Vegan, 4 May 2022, bitesizevegan.org/the-public-health-crisis-of-animal-waste-our-global-poo-problem/.
C2ES. “Main Greenhouse Gases | Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.” Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, 6 June 2019, www.c2es.org/content/main-greenhouse-gases/.
Handley, Eskarina. “The Devastating Water Footprint of Animal Agriculture.” Open Access Government, 11 July 2023, www.openaccessgovernment.org/devastating-water-footprint-animal-agriculture/163485/.
“MSN.” Www.msn.com, www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/arizona-communiwww.google.comies-sink-after-saudi-arabia-pumps-water-out-of-the-state-it-s-horrific/ar-BB1iSPVb. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.
Seo, Ki-Weon, et al. “Drift of Earth’s Pole Confirms Groundwater Depletion as a Significant Contributor to Global Sea Level Rise 1993–2010.” Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 50, no. 12, June 2023, https://doi.org/10.1029/2023gl103509.
“Soy Phytoestrogens for Menopausal Symptoms.” NutritionFacts.org, 24 Aug. 2021, nutritionfacts.org/blog/soy-phytoestrogens-for-menopausal-symptoms/. Accessed 30 Mar. 2024.
Zeratsky, Katherine. “Does Soy Affect Breast Cancer Risk?” Mayo Clinic, 2018, www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/soy-breast-cancer-risk/faq-20120377.