Like milk - really?
"I would have thought 'nut water' would be a more normal thing to call it. Not an actual milk, because milk is milk." Lismore dairy farmer
The picture on the left was one of those 'healthy' ads in the latest Coles magazine. I think it might be Jennifer Hawkins, but I'm not really up with model celebrities. She's an ambassador for the parent company - Freedom Foods, anyway, so I'm guessing it's her. So drink Like Milk and you will look like her.
Like Milk is a product that is new to Coles and possibly to Australia, so I decided to investigate. After all it's a bit intriguing to make milk out of peas is it not? For that's what it is - pea milk if you will. But because of the product's name I also decided to do a brief rundown on all the other milk substitutes that seem to be proliferating on the supermarket aisles. Though probably each of them deserves a post all of its own. So don't expect much other than a list of them.
If you go to the Like Milk webpage this is what you see. Simple, clear, plain even, earth friendly colours. A tiny bit classy I guess. And it's a clever name. The crucial thing is the slogan [but different]. For this is absolutely not milk. And neither are any of those other 'alternative' milks that you find in the food aisles of your local supermarket. And there are heaps of them - most of them from some kind of nut, but also from cereals, and legumes - like the peas - which, incidentally are yellow, not green.
I suppose the most well-known are soy and almond. I'm not sure that coconut milk counts as that, to me as an ignorant onlooker anyway, is a quite different product that is not pretending to be milk in any way. But there is oat, rice, macadamia, hemp, cashew and even quinoa. And now there is pea - which, of course claims to be the best.
Are they good substitutes for milk and why would you want one anyway? Well I suppose the answer to the second question is easiest - lactose intolerance being the main one. I saw one claim that said that 70% of us are lactose intolerant, which I think is nonsense. I do know a couple of people who are genuinely lactose intolerant, but that's it. Or else it's just plain dislike. As a child I disliked milk so much that I couldn't drink it without throwing up - or wanting to. I would force my school bottle of milk down without throwing up, out of duty I suppose. I should have thrown it all up. Every morning was torture and I would take so long to drink it that I would miss most of playtime. I was not lactose intolerant because I could consume other dairy products, or rice pudding, which is made with milk. I just didn't like it.
I think there are other medical conditions which would prevent you drinking it too. There are also ethical concerns - cows being treated badly. But I would have thought that dairy didn't really attract those concerns - though what do I know? Yes the cows are herded into great big barns and attached to machines, but they don't seem to mind, and the rest of the time they are just out in the fields. Am I wrong? There are, it is true, concerns about the environment. Cows, as we know, produce a lot of methane and also trample the ground and need a lot of food. Not that cows are the only animal producers of milk, but I guess there are similar concerns around them too. Overall though, milk is almost a complete food. It's every baby's first and second food - first from mum and then from the cow - here in the Western world anyway. Milk is milk and these other products are not. And at least the EU has legislated that they cannot be called milk, although apparently the law has proved to be difficult to enforce.
The alternative products are really just water with something ground up in them.
Plant-based milk substitutes are essentially suspensions of dissolved and disintegrated plant material and extracts in water. Homogenization and thermal treatments are used to improve the suspension and stability of the product." Meagan Bridges, University of Virginia
And indeed you can make your own.
“The best way to ensure the highest quality dairy-free milk without additives is to make it yourself. All you need is a high-powered blender and sieve or cheesecloth.” Abigail Hopkins
Taste wise anyway. But you won't be able to add all those extra things that make it more like milk and nutritionally valuable. So are these other products a good substitute?
"[The] majority of these milk alternatives lack nutritional balance when compared to bovine milk, however they contain functionally active components with health promoting properties which attracts health conscious consumers." Journal of Food Science and Technology
They do get over this by adding things - mostly calcium, various B vitamins, vitamin D and some minerals. One article I read said that they also added various oils to help the mix emulsify and stay together. And sugar of course. Like Milk claims that its final product is actually better than milk:
I gather that in the US these alternative 'milks' are making big inroads into the milk drinking community, but not so much here. We seem to be more loyal to our dairy farmers - particularly after the Murray-Goulburn saga. Maybe here we are more into all those different 'real' milks - the A2 milk, etc. Frighteningly I also saw this:
" A few years ago, a poll conducted by the educational charity Leaf (Linking Environment and Farming) found that four in 10 young adults surveyed failed to realise that milk came from a dairy cow, with 7% thinking it came from wheat."
And I foolishly didn't add the source to that statement. Sorry. I hope that the survey was conducted in the uneducated slums of an American city somewhere. I find it so hard to believe otherwise. Surely all those childhood stories of farms and their animals would have taught children that milk came from cows.
But back to Like Milk. I think it's new to Australia and is made by Australia's Own Organic, which is in turn part of the Freedom Foods Group.
In America 'pea milk' is bigger with one company patenting its process as we speak. What I would say is that it would have to be really good for me to buy it. It costs $4.00 a litre at Coles. Woolworths does not stock it as yet. Other milk alternatives seem to be cheaper - well some of them - hovering around the $3.00 mark - still more costly than milk. So personally I think you would have to have a really good reason to buy them. Not healthy, not cheap and probably not good tasting. Though soy lattes are becoming fashionable. Oh and Australia's Own Organic have a bet both ways - they are big into real milk too.
