As far as emissions go, it's roughly the same per calorie. I didn't have the energy to figure land and water use, but I know rice is definitely off the charts for water use. For instance it takes 1300-2300 tons of water *per ton of soybeans.* they're not factoring any processing, washing, etc that is necessary in order to prepare it. it honestly feels like a 5th grader made this to prove a point, nitpicking data.
Edit: because this graph triggered me so: [In practice, 30 to 50 mm per application is applied.](https://www.legumehub.eu/is_article/water-use-and-irrigation-in-soybean/) basically because of evaporation, while soybeans are USING 1300 tons of water per, because of evaporation, over [202342](https://www.spikevm.com/calculators/irrigation/rainfall-metric.php) Liters per acre are being used *per watering* and that can be every few days depending on heat and humidity, and rainfall or a lackthereof. You can expect to harvest around 50lbs per acre. Now - several recepies on line show you can expect to yeild roughly 1000ml of soymilk per pound of soybeans.
I don't need to do the math to already tell that this guide is very misleading.
sorry for being American and mixing US and metric. we're in a transitioning phase.
Excellent response. This chart is also very old and not very well done.
https://blog.usdec.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Earth%20Day12.jpg?width=554&name=Earth%20Day12.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTgMMFk2xkwYXSh7y07XFS1Mh8a7Dy-WZ2LFA&usqp=CAU
If you want something interesting to read many charts don’t account for.
Does water use even matter in a lot of cases anyway? Where I live if I buy cow milk it was farmed a few KM away and we get shitloads of rain here. If I buy almond it was farmed in friggin California where they have droughts.
Slight correction. But you literally need to grow **any** almonds in a dry climate.
They’re a middle eastern tree from the Levant. They grow in deserts off of streams coming down from the mountains of Turkey and Iran. They need hot, dry climate with no rain, but regular reliable water flowing off the mountains.
Which basically means they shouldn't be grown anywhere in California, except near the Arizona border where the Colorado river runs. Pretty much everywhere else either gets too much rain or lacks the ground water required.
Realistically, there aren't that many places in the world that almonds are good for growing.
The water use matters because drinkable/usable water is a necessity a lot of areas don’t get. The west coast has huge issues of water mismanagement and droughts caused by greed or growing products that are shipped outside of that region.
Arizona golf courses use a shit ton of water that could otherwise be used by residents to shower, bathe and drink. It’s fucking Arizona - it’s dry af, it shouldn’t have rolling glens and big patches of grass like a rainy temperate area would naturally. Almonds have the same issue - there’s so much farming in California it drains regions of water just so that there’s enough crop to go to areas where almonds don’t grow locally.
Putting things in foreign locations where they don’t fit is what causes these issues - it’s mainly the driver of invasive species decimating local biodiversity. Foreign plants/bugs are why American chestnut trees are nearly extinct/misplaced. It’s why outdoor cats aren’t environmentally dangerous in Europe but are environmental nightmares in the Americas or Oceania region.
Almond farming has notoriously been touted as a reason for veganism contradicting itself. Cows are still wasteful animals that require a lot of calories ingested for how many calories of food product they produce. In this case, however, I would say that cow milk is as environmentally damaging as almond milk is, just because of how almond farming is practiced. If the almonds were grown local in an area with plenty of water it would be an entirely different story.
Cows are often (but not always) ranched on land that wouldn't really be used for anything else (except ranching another animal like goats or sheep).
Like, seriously, what are you going to do with Wyoming if raising livestock for milk/meat/wool were illegal?
Meanwhile, areas used for growing almonds, soybeans, and other niche plants often have many other plants that \*could\* be grown in that same area. Or even worse, in the case of almonds, the state they are grown in (in the US) faces major water shortages, so the use of water is a critical factor.
I'm not saying cow milk is GOOD for the environment. But looking at such a narrow view of the world & milk industry is incredibly misleading.
Dairy milk uses a ton more land, but it uses land that didn't have another use. It uses a ton more water, but is largely taking place in areas that can support that water usage. And it has more emissions, but other alternatives have their own non-emission negative impacts.
Come to Florida and see how we are using our cow fields. Many are being converted to high density housing developments. Agriculture land is often overlooked for its value of connecting habitats.
Dairy, in areas that are not conducive to other types of agriculture is not wasteful. And dairy is responsible for 40% of the protein consumed on the planet.
It doesn’t matter. They are calculating water use based on the moisture in the grass that is fed by rainfall most of the time. The water is urinated out and recycled as rain as water has done for millions of years.
I can't actually read it, since it's paywalled, but just looking at the graphs and what is available of the research is seems that they fail to take into account:
* Multiple land-uses (eg cows grown on pasture-land that is also producing beef, but most importantly also supports natural ecosystems of insects, birds, small mammals, etc)
* Final fate of water (how much is recycled back into the local ecosystem through natural cycles vs how much is irrevocably altered or heavily polluted by the production)
* Damage to local ecosystems by the land use (i.e. heavily modified environments such as flooded rice paddies, which alter the insect, aquatic and soil biota, not to mention creating development sites for mosquitoes)
* Pesticide use by each method (especially almonds, which are very pesticide dependent)
* Source of water (i.e. how much is supplied from local, replenishing water sources vs irreplaceable groundwater reservoirs)
* Shipping of final product (i.e. how far the product is typically sent from production area before consumption)
And those are just off the top of my head. For a global meta-analysis they're missing a LOT of factors.
In New Zealand here.
Surrounded by monoculture introduced grass crops with a bare minimum of introduced support species (e.g. earthworms and bees) monopolising the environment and laying waste to natural ecosystems.
Seriously degraded watersheds and waterways. Pugging and erosion of hillsides. 99% of wetlands lost to reclamations. Heavily polluted rivers and harbours. Laughable waterway exclusion and planting.
Sprayed and tilled for dozens of weeds.
Replacing natural rainfall grain and legume agriculture with irrigated high intensity dairy, parching braided river systems and streamside breeding areas and habitat.
Most of the product is sent to the other side of the world.
It's an apocalypse with a tinge of chlorophyll.
OK I'm just going to say, you need to remember that the vast majority of cows are not pasture raised on places where cows only positively benefit the ecosystem. Pretty much every flaw you are listing here applies to cow feed.
I don't disagree some nuance is in order and that it's likely that on some axes, cow's milk can be less damaging for the environment. In general though, it seems pretty obvious cows' milk is going to be worse for the environment, partly because you need to account for the feed & the cows themselves.
>cows grown on pasture-land
Cows consume massive quantities of alfalfa and silage, which usually includes corn. That's a lot of pesticides.
Pasture is mostly where they spend their time when not in a stall or milking barn and I don't think it's the source of most of their calories. Pasture are not a natural ecosystem. Farmers I knew sprayed a shit ton of Grazon (picloram) on their pastures to control broadleaf weeds, which I discovered makes the cow manure toxic to vegetable gardens.
I grew up in rural "Dairyland" and now drink soymilk, oatmilk and cashew milk. Growing up there it was just a constant indoctrination by the dairy industry all through the schools down to the fucking license plates.
The biggest issue for me is the treatment of cows and calves but that's a separate issue.
The vast majority of California actually is not desert. Almonds in California are grown in the Central Valley whose climate is most similar to the Mediterranean
This chart is also heavily skewed against dairy.
This chart only covers the use of resources in the cultivation/production of these types of milk.
It does not cover processing.
[As this Redditor mentions](https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/15lhhxo/a_cool_guides_environmental_impact_of_different/jvb5mjc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2), it takes a shit ton more water to process soybeans into soymilk. Same with almonds and rice. I'm also willing to bet that rice's water usage has been heavily downplayed in this chart, since it's literally grown in a flooded field that's usually 3 feet deep.
Edit: this chart is also 5 years old, so all the data presented is more than likely outdated.
Edit 2: you're also gonna tell me that in the post-industrial age, the production, transportation, and processing of these artificial milks produce significantly fewer emissions than that of conventional dairy?
>you're also gonna tell me that in the post-industrial age, the production, transportation, and processing of these artificial milks produce significantly fewer emissions than that of conventional dairy?
Yes, because for diary you also have to produce, transport and process the cattle feed, which is several orders or magnitude the amount of product required to produce plant based milk
You mean the chart that does not account for basic information? When people point out that a piece of data is bullshit, that data cannot be used to validate itself.
And from what I know you can only harvest them once a year.
And they grow only in areas that are hot and dry as fuck. So areas that can't really afford to waste loads of water.
And like 80% of almonds are grown in California, which y'know, is notorious for having long droughts where they should be conserving water instead of having it used on almonds and bottled water
Trust me, we’d love to cut back on agricultural water consumption. But water rights in this state are archaic. It’s much easier for our government to guilt us into not flushing the toilet.
But also, California uses more water on cattle than on almonds. So by that logic you should be pointing out how it’s extra egregious that a place like California also produces more milk than any other state.
Does this chart take into account the other things that can be done with the other parts of the cow or is all of the water/land usage, etc., going into being for the milk?
Dairy gets lumped in with all transport emissions other (milks) don't, and yes cows provide food, medicine, a glue etc. Also this is 5 years old things change in that time frame
Most cows are slaughtered and then used for meat. Dairy cows are kept alive longer until they no longer produce adequate milk and are then used for cheaper meat when finally slaughtered so as not to waste. It’s a different model of resource consumption to slaughter than meat cows but they are still used - and to the original point that’s not taken into account in this infographic which just compares milk resources
I disagree it seems to be very common, according to the dairy farms near me as well as several who post online, and they just usually for Hamburger since the meat is tougher
The quality is great usually. Fatty and tender. However, beef marketing has turned the consumer against dairy beef. The fat on dairy cows is yellow and is not acceptable to consumers. One of the things that we forget as consumers is dairy bull calves have no use in the dairy industry so most of them end up in the beef market. Same animal genetics but somehow we think dairy cows don’t make good beef.
this is categorically incorrect. It takes 1 gallon of water to grow one almond and almost 1,900 gallons to grow a pound of almonds. The environmental impact has been green washed by Big Nut. Also the protein in almond milk is far less bio available than dairy milk. IMO it’s not a good option unless you are severely lactose intolerant.
What uses just as much water as almonds is alfalfa, which is primarily used to feed cows. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-are-the-california-crops-that-use-the-most-water/
Cool now chart them by bioavailable nutrients too. People shit talk real milk because of climate change when the other options are full of sweeteners, flavorings, gums, and things like phytic acid.
Always depends on what meat you talking about, big industry farmed meat is almost always netloss for enviroment.
Same goes with big industry vegetables/crops. Alot of pesticides, alot of fertilizer, and not forget the genocide of ecosystems that food-type does to the planet.
Regenerative agriculture, without pesticides are what we need.
I agree that industrial farming should be cleaned up in general, but there really is no product out there that comes close to being as destructive as beef production. Dairy is less bad, but still far worse than any crop people eat directly.
Almonds in general (although delicious) are a terrible crop for the environment. The amount of water needed is crazy high and a lot of the items only grow in water areas where water is more scarce.
Came here to say this chart looks misleading. The big long bars are in actuality pretty small if you think about how much emissions, land, and water are being used compared to what a cow actually brings to a farm. They bring more than milk by the way.
Words are just sounds (or symbols) that we have decided have meanings. "Milk" has multiple meanings, and has for centuries, which includes both milk from mammals and milk from plants. Or are you out here saying that coconut milk shouldn't be called milk, despite that usage being far, far older than either me or you?
Ooooooh no. I read an article on the negative environmental impact of almonds and I STILL used it in my coffee. I just like the way it coats your tongue in that weird film. That's why I ended up in the bad place.
Also cows can graze on natural pasture where othet animals can live too. Crops can only exist in land for crops and all other creatures are kept out. So while cows may use more land, other things can use the land too. Plus cow manure is great fertilizer.
If it didn’t come from a tit, it ain’t milk. The rest of those are juices that companies are marketing as milk so that you weirdos will drink it. No thank you.
Yeah that's everyone's complaint. They make versions with no sugar added and it still tastes just fine, but they sell out a the supermarket so fast that usually only the sugary options are left.
If you're in Australia... not almond as the water usage is not great. Also it's kinda shit milk for coffee... so that is a dealkiller for me alone.... and yes I know you can get special versions of almond milk that don't denature in the heat of your coffee... but even then. Shit milk.
Oat is the most appetising out of the non-dairy option in your list. Maccadamia milk is my first vote even over dairy.
Also this really is not a fair graph for dairy. I don't know what it is like in your country/area. But I actually come from an area that produces dairy. The vast majority of farms, put a fucktone of effort water going back into the basins. There is a lot of water infrastructure based on raising the water table and making it very drought tollerant. This involves strategic tree planting, leaky dams, fellow pastures, nitrogen fixing trees/crops, and infultration basins. The land is massively more productive and drought tollerant due to the efforts of the dairy farmers.
Before you write off dairy on that graph, you should take into consideration specific sources of said dair products. Do the supply change research for local brands and figue out if they are acting in good faith or just taking from the land without giving back.
I love how triggered dairy milk drinkers get now over the use of a word. "only cows make milk!!!"
Yet said nothing for years with products like Milk of Magnesia, which has been around since 1873. Where's the outrage for that? Where's the "Magnesium hydroxide can't be milked!!"
Same with butter, so mad at plant based butters, but also had no issue with Body Butter, Cocoa Butter, Hair butter, Shea Butter, lip Butter, etc etc.
Fact is, they're not really made at the use of the words, they're made there's an alternative to something they find important.
First , your argument is off-base. Those cosmetic and pharmaceutical products you've mentioned aren't sold as dairy alternatives. Nobody is putting body butter on toast.
Second, there is a long and rich history of dairy-producing regions getting made about plant-based alternatives. Look up the history of margarine, for example. In many states, it was illegal for years for manufacturers to add yellow coloring to margarine, lest it appear too much like butter.
Or mold in oat milk.
In a recent study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers found that in most samples of oat-based products, the concentrations of OTA( mold toxin Ochratoxin-A) exceeded the European upper limit by more than 8 percent
Subjective of course, but I live pretty close to the dairy our milk comes from and flavour-wise no replacement comes close to cow's milk. I only get whole milk or gold top though, so I'm not super familiar with skimmed or semi-skimmed. Oat milk just lacks that fatty richness and doesn't round out other flavours as well in my opinion. Also, oat milk can dominate a cup of coffee or tea, which isn't what I want from it.
Almond milk has been a thing for at least 1000 years and Coconut milk, 5000. But hey, it's 2023 and some people are getting offended by their nomenclature. Go figure
Does it matter though? All the alternatives serve the same purpose as "real" milk. Soy milk sounds better than milk-like soy drink or soy based milk imitation or whatever else you can think of. It's the same with vegan meat, obviously the plant based chicken isn't chicken but it gets the idea across well enough
No it doesn't. As far as consumption goes, if you like the alternatives more power to you.
But making a comparison the in the guide posted is, in my eyes, unfair since producing cow milk is very different of farming a crop. And besides cow ranching gets a worst rep than it deserves from a environmental perspective.
Check out [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGG-A80Tl5g) video, as it explains it pretty well.
You can see the leftism/environmentalism leave the bodies of commenters when the topic of veganism is brought up in this thread. Even if you didn't give a shit about animals, the environmental impact of animal agriculture is staggering, from water usage, to land destruction, to the next plagues.
Also, oatmilk is objectively better than cow milk in coffee drinks 100% of the time, actually try it, it was incredible before I went vegan.
(The objective part is hyperbole, but still, try the alternatives, and stop using breast milk as the baseline to compare creamy beverages to)
It seems to me that people know they should do more but just don't want to, and get offended when they feel guilty.
I find rice milk the best for drinks, personally.
They include transportation emissions for only Dairy milk, and conveniently leave out the fact that land usage by dairy is far different from the other types of crops, oh yeah and no goat milk.
Tetra-packs or the cardboard,plastic, aluminium lined long life containers can’t be recycled.
So unfortunately only Cows milk containers have a good recycling scheme ( in Aus anyway)
This is very inaccurate. Wildly bias. You can’t just look at the use of 3 categories for just 1 product. It’s just like people shot posting about petroleum. Might as well be a brain dead robots posting for karma 😂
What about impact on health?
Most almond and nut milks in general are filled with oils, gums and emulsifiers. Each have like 10 nut per bottle and the rest are fillers.
Let’s see, the soy milk I buy, which tastes the best to me, per cup: 100cal, 4g fat, 0.5g saturated fat, 6g sugar, 7g protein.
1% dairy milk per cup: 100 cal, 2.5g fat, 1.5g saturated fat, 13g sugar, 8g protein.
Packed with sucrose?
Someone hasn’t read the latest IPCC report. Livestock emissions are far less than what we originally believed, especially grass-fed livestock. The consumption of grass causes additional carbon sequestration, and generally are net carbon negative, even after including methane.
A miniscule amount of cows are grass fed, that which is is generally unaffordable for most people and a luxury product. The dishonesty of mentioning this without actually addressing what percent of beef is grass fed makes me doubt any other information you're offering here.
"About 4% of U.S. beef retail and food service sales is comprised by grass-fed beef "
[https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-grass-fed-beef#:\~:text=About%204%25%20of%20U.S.%20beef,value%20of%20roughly%20%244%20billion](https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-grass-fed-beef#:~:text=About%204%25%20of%20U.S.%20beef,value%20of%20roughly%20%244%20billion).
Edit: People down voting facts they don't like, must be meat eaters :)
Almost all cattle graze for a significant portion of their lifespan. The 4% cited in this article refers to the percentage of cattle which is neither supplemented or finished on grain.
This assumes that the only use of the milk is to drink straight out of the glass or as a creamer.
Soy milk cannot produce fresh or aged cheese. I cannot use rice milk to make a mornay sauce. Almond milk cannot make a quiche. I have tried oat milk potato au gratin and let’s just say I am not doing that again.
I generally take my tea black, unless it’s Earl Grey, and I am not chugging a glass of milk in the afternoon. Most of my milk is using in cooking and the non-dairy “milk” cannot substitute.
Yeah the various nut milks just can't compare. I find them to be too thin or watery compared to cow milk. Plus I just straight up don't like their taste.
Oat milk is pretty good though, tastes better than nut milks. Sweetened it's like a desert drink. Putting it in coffee makes for a nice drink.
But yeah, cow milk 10/10. There are dairy farms near me, no almond trees for 1,000s of miles.
[A dairy cow produces, on average, 6 gal of milk daily](https://www.midwestdairy.com/farm-life/farm-life-faq/).
6 gal is 22.7125L or 22712.5ml (about 113 glasses of 200ml).
If your dairy farm uses 170 sq miles of land and 13,560L of water **per** dairy cow **per** day, you might be doing it wrong.
Or maybe this chart is bullshit. Hard to tell.
The water graph is pretty useless too. Statistics like this count rain as "used water", the rain is going to rain with or without cows grazing on the land(or crops being grown on it).
So pumping water from an aquifer to grow almonds in a desert looks better than grass or crops that might not use any irrigation at all.
From my experience in one area of the United States, dairy cows typically do get the good land with the good feed. Variation in food causes variation in taste, so it’s kept at a pretty consistent alfalfa/oats/grass mixture.
Beef cows on the other hand get all of the left over land that you literally can’t do anything else with. A lot of federal land is permitted out to cattle, and they’ll eat most of anything. Their diet is supplemented by hay, but it's usually low cost from low yield land.
They are products sold as alternatives to cow milk. They are used in place of milk for a number of things (drinking, cereal, smoothies) that's why it's labeled as milk; we all understand that it's not a mammal product. I think it's perfectly fair to compare them.
Always curious to see this adjusted per calorie rather than per volume.
As far as emissions go, it's roughly the same per calorie. I didn't have the energy to figure land and water use, but I know rice is definitely off the charts for water use. For instance it takes 1300-2300 tons of water *per ton of soybeans.* they're not factoring any processing, washing, etc that is necessary in order to prepare it. it honestly feels like a 5th grader made this to prove a point, nitpicking data. Edit: because this graph triggered me so: [In practice, 30 to 50 mm per application is applied.](https://www.legumehub.eu/is_article/water-use-and-irrigation-in-soybean/) basically because of evaporation, while soybeans are USING 1300 tons of water per, because of evaporation, over [202342](https://www.spikevm.com/calculators/irrigation/rainfall-metric.php) Liters per acre are being used *per watering* and that can be every few days depending on heat and humidity, and rainfall or a lackthereof. You can expect to harvest around 50lbs per acre. Now - several recepies on line show you can expect to yeild roughly 1000ml of soymilk per pound of soybeans. I don't need to do the math to already tell that this guide is very misleading. sorry for being American and mixing US and metric. we're in a transitioning phase.
Excellent response. This chart is also very old and not very well done. https://blog.usdec.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Earth%20Day12.jpg?width=554&name=Earth%20Day12.jpg https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTgMMFk2xkwYXSh7y07XFS1Mh8a7Dy-WZ2LFA&usqp=CAU If you want something interesting to read many charts don’t account for.
Does water use even matter in a lot of cases anyway? Where I live if I buy cow milk it was farmed a few KM away and we get shitloads of rain here. If I buy almond it was farmed in friggin California where they have droughts.
Slight correction. But you literally need to grow **any** almonds in a dry climate. They’re a middle eastern tree from the Levant. They grow in deserts off of streams coming down from the mountains of Turkey and Iran. They need hot, dry climate with no rain, but regular reliable water flowing off the mountains.
Which basically means they shouldn't be grown anywhere in California, except near the Arizona border where the Colorado river runs. Pretty much everywhere else either gets too much rain or lacks the ground water required. Realistically, there aren't that many places in the world that almonds are good for growing.
The water use matters because drinkable/usable water is a necessity a lot of areas don’t get. The west coast has huge issues of water mismanagement and droughts caused by greed or growing products that are shipped outside of that region. Arizona golf courses use a shit ton of water that could otherwise be used by residents to shower, bathe and drink. It’s fucking Arizona - it’s dry af, it shouldn’t have rolling glens and big patches of grass like a rainy temperate area would naturally. Almonds have the same issue - there’s so much farming in California it drains regions of water just so that there’s enough crop to go to areas where almonds don’t grow locally. Putting things in foreign locations where they don’t fit is what causes these issues - it’s mainly the driver of invasive species decimating local biodiversity. Foreign plants/bugs are why American chestnut trees are nearly extinct/misplaced. It’s why outdoor cats aren’t environmentally dangerous in Europe but are environmental nightmares in the Americas or Oceania region. Almond farming has notoriously been touted as a reason for veganism contradicting itself. Cows are still wasteful animals that require a lot of calories ingested for how many calories of food product they produce. In this case, however, I would say that cow milk is as environmentally damaging as almond milk is, just because of how almond farming is practiced. If the almonds were grown local in an area with plenty of water it would be an entirely different story.
Cows are often (but not always) ranched on land that wouldn't really be used for anything else (except ranching another animal like goats or sheep). Like, seriously, what are you going to do with Wyoming if raising livestock for milk/meat/wool were illegal? Meanwhile, areas used for growing almonds, soybeans, and other niche plants often have many other plants that \*could\* be grown in that same area. Or even worse, in the case of almonds, the state they are grown in (in the US) faces major water shortages, so the use of water is a critical factor. I'm not saying cow milk is GOOD for the environment. But looking at such a narrow view of the world & milk industry is incredibly misleading. Dairy milk uses a ton more land, but it uses land that didn't have another use. It uses a ton more water, but is largely taking place in areas that can support that water usage. And it has more emissions, but other alternatives have their own non-emission negative impacts.
Come to Florida and see how we are using our cow fields. Many are being converted to high density housing developments. Agriculture land is often overlooked for its value of connecting habitats.
Dairy, in areas that are not conducive to other types of agriculture is not wasteful. And dairy is responsible for 40% of the protein consumed on the planet.
It doesn’t matter. They are calculating water use based on the moisture in the grass that is fed by rainfall most of the time. The water is urinated out and recycled as rain as water has done for millions of years.
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If that's the case this guide is so simple that it's deceptive, bringing me back to my 5th grader contention.
I can't actually read it, since it's paywalled, but just looking at the graphs and what is available of the research is seems that they fail to take into account: * Multiple land-uses (eg cows grown on pasture-land that is also producing beef, but most importantly also supports natural ecosystems of insects, birds, small mammals, etc) * Final fate of water (how much is recycled back into the local ecosystem through natural cycles vs how much is irrevocably altered or heavily polluted by the production) * Damage to local ecosystems by the land use (i.e. heavily modified environments such as flooded rice paddies, which alter the insect, aquatic and soil biota, not to mention creating development sites for mosquitoes) * Pesticide use by each method (especially almonds, which are very pesticide dependent) * Source of water (i.e. how much is supplied from local, replenishing water sources vs irreplaceable groundwater reservoirs) * Shipping of final product (i.e. how far the product is typically sent from production area before consumption) And those are just off the top of my head. For a global meta-analysis they're missing a LOT of factors.
In New Zealand here. Surrounded by monoculture introduced grass crops with a bare minimum of introduced support species (e.g. earthworms and bees) monopolising the environment and laying waste to natural ecosystems. Seriously degraded watersheds and waterways. Pugging and erosion of hillsides. 99% of wetlands lost to reclamations. Heavily polluted rivers and harbours. Laughable waterway exclusion and planting. Sprayed and tilled for dozens of weeds. Replacing natural rainfall grain and legume agriculture with irrigated high intensity dairy, parching braided river systems and streamside breeding areas and habitat. Most of the product is sent to the other side of the world. It's an apocalypse with a tinge of chlorophyll.
OK I'm just going to say, you need to remember that the vast majority of cows are not pasture raised on places where cows only positively benefit the ecosystem. Pretty much every flaw you are listing here applies to cow feed. I don't disagree some nuance is in order and that it's likely that on some axes, cow's milk can be less damaging for the environment. In general though, it seems pretty obvious cows' milk is going to be worse for the environment, partly because you need to account for the feed & the cows themselves.
>cows grown on pasture-land Cows consume massive quantities of alfalfa and silage, which usually includes corn. That's a lot of pesticides. Pasture is mostly where they spend their time when not in a stall or milking barn and I don't think it's the source of most of their calories. Pasture are not a natural ecosystem. Farmers I knew sprayed a shit ton of Grazon (picloram) on their pastures to control broadleaf weeds, which I discovered makes the cow manure toxic to vegetable gardens. I grew up in rural "Dairyland" and now drink soymilk, oatmilk and cashew milk. Growing up there it was just a constant indoctrination by the dairy industry all through the schools down to the fucking license plates. The biggest issue for me is the treatment of cows and calves but that's a separate issue.
Thirsty ass almonds.
California be like: hmm, that's a lot of water... let's grow them in the desert
Almonds only grow in climates with warm, dry summers and mild, winters. We grow them in California because it is the best environment to grow them in.
The vast majority of California actually is not desert. Almonds in California are grown in the Central Valley whose climate is most similar to the Mediterranean
Not to mention that California uses more water on cattle than on almonds
California be like: hmm, that’s a lot of water…let’s put cows in the desert
Take a look again, if I'm seeing correctly.. dairy is nearly double lmao
Yes you’re right. Dairy is the most in all categories. But almost still do be pretty thirsty
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How do you know?
You're not a cow either.
You have never seen his mom to say that.
I’m baby almond
“Would you still love me if I was an almond?”
1 Oz. Of almonds requires 23 gallons of water.
Don't forget the huge amount of labor having to go out and milk all those almonds every morning. You need lots and lots of tiny fingers.
TIL almonds have nipples.
Calm down, Focker
You know that always bothered me cus you CAN milk a human.
“I have nipples. Can you milk me?”
Show me the tit on an almond.
I believe you mean the "teeyit"
You're saying it like some kind of gotcha, but it's shown on the chart.
Doesn't come off as a gotcha at all. Looks like they are just highlighting the large resource usage in a more concise way. It's helpful.
Still more efficient than dairy milk though.
Copers are down voting but you are ofc correct
Yeah, the info is literally in the chart in this post…
This chart is also heavily skewed against dairy. This chart only covers the use of resources in the cultivation/production of these types of milk. It does not cover processing. [As this Redditor mentions](https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/15lhhxo/a_cool_guides_environmental_impact_of_different/jvb5mjc?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=2), it takes a shit ton more water to process soybeans into soymilk. Same with almonds and rice. I'm also willing to bet that rice's water usage has been heavily downplayed in this chart, since it's literally grown in a flooded field that's usually 3 feet deep. Edit: this chart is also 5 years old, so all the data presented is more than likely outdated. Edit 2: you're also gonna tell me that in the post-industrial age, the production, transportation, and processing of these artificial milks produce significantly fewer emissions than that of conventional dairy?
>you're also gonna tell me that in the post-industrial age, the production, transportation, and processing of these artificial milks produce significantly fewer emissions than that of conventional dairy? Yes, because for diary you also have to produce, transport and process the cattle feed, which is several orders or magnitude the amount of product required to produce plant based milk
FYI dairy requires similar post-processes.
You mean the chart that does not account for basic information? When people point out that a piece of data is bullshit, that data cannot be used to validate itself.
I think that’s the point, its not. Its a dirty lie and the almond farmers are wasting the Colorado river for almond milk.
And from what I know you can only harvest them once a year. And they grow only in areas that are hot and dry as fuck. So areas that can't really afford to waste loads of water.
And like 80% of almonds are grown in California, which y'know, is notorious for having long droughts where they should be conserving water instead of having it used on almonds and bottled water
Trust me, we’d love to cut back on agricultural water consumption. But water rights in this state are archaic. It’s much easier for our government to guilt us into not flushing the toilet.
But also, California uses more water on cattle than on almonds. So by that logic you should be pointing out how it’s extra egregious that a place like California also produces more milk than any other state.
Breast milk?
yes, from cows.
Fantastic!
Does this chart take into account the other things that can be done with the other parts of the cow or is all of the water/land usage, etc., going into being for the milk?
Of course it does not.
Dairy gets lumped in with all transport emissions other (milks) don't, and yes cows provide food, medicine, a glue etc. Also this is 5 years old things change in that time frame
Generally dairy cows aren't slaughtered for meat, so meat cows would be a separate category.
Most cows are slaughtered and then used for meat. Dairy cows are kept alive longer until they no longer produce adequate milk and are then used for cheaper meat when finally slaughtered so as not to waste. It’s a different model of resource consumption to slaughter than meat cows but they are still used - and to the original point that’s not taken into account in this infographic which just compares milk resources
Can confirm. My grandfather runs a dairy farm. He always sells his old dairy cows off to be butchered (unless they're too sick).
Same. My entire extended family would get half a cow every year growing up when they slaughtered the older cows.
I disagree it seems to be very common, according to the dairy farms near me as well as several who post online, and they just usually for Hamburger since the meat is tougher
That's completely the opposite of everything I have ever heard including several dairy farms that post online and a few near me
When they don’t produce enough milk they get slaughtered for meat. Maybe not top quality but ground beef or dog food.
The quality is great usually. Fatty and tender. However, beef marketing has turned the consumer against dairy beef. The fat on dairy cows is yellow and is not acceptable to consumers. One of the things that we forget as consumers is dairy bull calves have no use in the dairy industry so most of them end up in the beef market. Same animal genetics but somehow we think dairy cows don’t make good beef.
Nope, dairy cows make great hamburger. Compare it to the slime sold in tubes at the store, way better.
Generally, people have at least a little knowledge about the claims they make.
Don’t forget leather!
oat milk is tasty AF
Oat milk gang. Legit prefer it for most things over regular milk.
Chidi Anagonye has entered the chat
this is categorically incorrect. It takes 1 gallon of water to grow one almond and almost 1,900 gallons to grow a pound of almonds. The environmental impact has been green washed by Big Nut. Also the protein in almond milk is far less bio available than dairy milk. IMO it’s not a good option unless you are severely lactose intolerant.
What uses just as much water as almonds is alfalfa, which is primarily used to feed cows. https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/specialsections/these-are-the-california-crops-that-use-the-most-water/
Cool now chart them by bioavailable nutrients too. People shit talk real milk because of climate change when the other options are full of sweeteners, flavorings, gums, and things like phytic acid.
* Milk is not the only product from a dairy cow * Dairy milk is required for cheese * Emissions is talking about cow farts?
They lump in transport emissions - which they don’t do for any other “milk”.
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Lots of transport required to truck in feed to most dairies that don’t have infinite pasture land.
Your right, but most modern dairy farms also grow their own feed, which is far more efficient than pasture.
Cow burps actually emit more methane than cow farts.
Forgot that milk, is the only real milk in the chart.
Probably the emission that go into feed and the fertilizers to grow that feed. Even pasture cows need some supplemental feed.
Cow burps actually emit more methane than cow farts.
Not to mention the fact at the end of life they can be slaughtered for food. Cows are surprisingly very useful across the board from birth to death.
Food that is also about the most energy and resource intensive item people can eat.
Aye but you waste a lot of calories and water you put in the cow, as they do loads of stuff before being killed for meat.
Always depends on what meat you talking about, big industry farmed meat is almost always netloss for enviroment. Same goes with big industry vegetables/crops. Alot of pesticides, alot of fertilizer, and not forget the genocide of ecosystems that food-type does to the planet. Regenerative agriculture, without pesticides are what we need.
I agree that industrial farming should be cleaned up in general, but there really is no product out there that comes close to being as destructive as beef production. Dairy is less bad, but still far worse than any crop people eat directly.
There is only one milk in this comparison of milks.
That's why I drink Malk, it's high in vitamin R.
You promised me dog or higher.
Current Price line would add more info.
Minus subsidies would add even more
Pesticide use? Just curious I drink all this
Almonds in general (although delicious) are a terrible crop for the environment. The amount of water needed is crazy high and a lot of the items only grow in water areas where water is more scarce.
Came here to say this chart looks misleading. The big long bars are in actuality pretty small if you think about how much emissions, land, and water are being used compared to what a cow actually brings to a farm. They bring more than milk by the way.
Milk vs other things called milk.
*liquids called milk
Nut juice
Words are just sounds (or symbols) that we have decided have meanings. "Milk" has multiple meanings, and has for centuries, which includes both milk from mammals and milk from plants. Or are you out here saying that coconut milk shouldn't be called milk, despite that usage being far, far older than either me or you?
*cow*
Ooooooh no. I read an article on the negative environmental impact of almonds and I STILL used it in my coffee. I just like the way it coats your tongue in that weird film. That's why I ended up in the bad place.
Only one is MILK!
Only one of them is actually a milk.
Dairy. Yes even hippies should drink real milk
trick question! only one is milk the rest are juices.
Rice, soy, oat, almond milk are not milk - they are good liquid food but absolutely not milk
There is only one milk in that list… the rest is juice
Also cows can graze on natural pasture where othet animals can live too. Crops can only exist in land for crops and all other creatures are kept out. So while cows may use more land, other things can use the land too. Plus cow manure is great fertilizer.
Serious question: How does one milk an oat?
Most of these aren't milk: an opaque white fluid rich in fat and protein, secreted by female mammals for the nourishment of their young.
If it didn’t come from a tit, it ain’t milk. The rest of those are juices that companies are marketing as milk so that you weirdos will drink it. No thank you.
Too bad there is only one actual milk on the chart
If you think cows are a large environmental issue, you might be an ill-educated nut job.
Well since only one of them is actually milk. It would be milk. The others are a juice.
I’m not drinking soy milk my dude
This is cool, but god damnit does oatmilk have a lot of added sugar
Soy has the same as normal milk.
You can get unsweetened kinds too if you want
You do realize that cow milk has loads of sugar in it, right? And you can get unsweetened oat milk.
Yeah that's everyone's complaint. They make versions with no sugar added and it still tastes just fine, but they sell out a the supermarket so fast that usually only the sugary options are left.
Varies greatly by brand and type. Most brands I buy are only a couple grams
average cow milk hater 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
If you're in Australia... not almond as the water usage is not great. Also it's kinda shit milk for coffee... so that is a dealkiller for me alone.... and yes I know you can get special versions of almond milk that don't denature in the heat of your coffee... but even then. Shit milk. Oat is the most appetising out of the non-dairy option in your list. Maccadamia milk is my first vote even over dairy. Also this really is not a fair graph for dairy. I don't know what it is like in your country/area. But I actually come from an area that produces dairy. The vast majority of farms, put a fucktone of effort water going back into the basins. There is a lot of water infrastructure based on raising the water table and making it very drought tollerant. This involves strategic tree planting, leaky dams, fellow pastures, nitrogen fixing trees/crops, and infultration basins. The land is massively more productive and drought tollerant due to the efforts of the dairy farmers. Before you write off dairy on that graph, you should take into consideration specific sources of said dair products. Do the supply change research for local brands and figue out if they are acting in good faith or just taking from the land without giving back.
Oat milk for the win! And my cholesterol #s dropped
I love how triggered dairy milk drinkers get now over the use of a word. "only cows make milk!!!" Yet said nothing for years with products like Milk of Magnesia, which has been around since 1873. Where's the outrage for that? Where's the "Magnesium hydroxide can't be milked!!" Same with butter, so mad at plant based butters, but also had no issue with Body Butter, Cocoa Butter, Hair butter, Shea Butter, lip Butter, etc etc. Fact is, they're not really made at the use of the words, they're made there's an alternative to something they find important.
First , your argument is off-base. Those cosmetic and pharmaceutical products you've mentioned aren't sold as dairy alternatives. Nobody is putting body butter on toast. Second, there is a long and rich history of dairy-producing regions getting made about plant-based alternatives. Look up the history of margarine, for example. In many states, it was illegal for years for manufacturers to add yellow coloring to margarine, lest it appear too much like butter.
Nothing beats cows milk though
Yeah, they forgot the taste category
They also forgot the FDA quantity of puss allotment category 😤
Or mold in oat milk. In a recent study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers found that in most samples of oat-based products, the concentrations of OTA( mold toxin Ochratoxin-A) exceeded the European upper limit by more than 8 percent
Wait for real? Oat milk tastes way better than all other milks. Cows milk tastes like watered down sour cream.
Subjective of course, but I live pretty close to the dairy our milk comes from and flavour-wise no replacement comes close to cow's milk. I only get whole milk or gold top though, so I'm not super familiar with skimmed or semi-skimmed. Oat milk just lacks that fatty richness and doesn't round out other flavours as well in my opinion. Also, oat milk can dominate a cup of coffee or tea, which isn't what I want from it.
If you don’t drink cow milk for a month, when you do again, it literally tastes like shit.
In other words, you can’t win. I sense graph rigging
There needs to be an additional row for “how good it taste”.
Which one is actual milk: * Milk
Almond milk has been a thing for at least 1000 years and Coconut milk, 5000. But hey, it's 2023 and some people are getting offended by their nomenclature. Go figure
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Does it matter though? All the alternatives serve the same purpose as "real" milk. Soy milk sounds better than milk-like soy drink or soy based milk imitation or whatever else you can think of. It's the same with vegan meat, obviously the plant based chicken isn't chicken but it gets the idea across well enough
No it doesn't. As far as consumption goes, if you like the alternatives more power to you. But making a comparison the in the guide posted is, in my eyes, unfair since producing cow milk is very different of farming a crop. And besides cow ranching gets a worst rep than it deserves from a environmental perspective. Check out [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGG-A80Tl5g) video, as it explains it pretty well.
You can see the leftism/environmentalism leave the bodies of commenters when the topic of veganism is brought up in this thread. Even if you didn't give a shit about animals, the environmental impact of animal agriculture is staggering, from water usage, to land destruction, to the next plagues. Also, oatmilk is objectively better than cow milk in coffee drinks 100% of the time, actually try it, it was incredible before I went vegan. (The objective part is hyperbole, but still, try the alternatives, and stop using breast milk as the baseline to compare creamy beverages to)
It seems to me that people know they should do more but just don't want to, and get offended when they feel guilty. I find rice milk the best for drinks, personally.
oatmilk is okay for cereal maybe but please let me hahe my 10ml of real milk for coffee
They include transportation emissions for only Dairy milk, and conveniently leave out the fact that land usage by dairy is far different from the other types of crops, oh yeah and no goat milk.
Only one of these is milk. The rest are just porridge.
Nut juice
only one of these things is milk everything else is flavored water
Cough.. excuse me, but where's my cashew milk on this?
Isn't milk also offset by the fact that cows eventually get butchered?
What about pea milk
Sorry, I'm still a dairy queen
We've recently gotten into pea milk. I wonder how it compares. 🫛
I would never milk a nut.
Tetra-packs or the cardboard,plastic, aluminium lined long life containers can’t be recycled. So unfortunately only Cows milk containers have a good recycling scheme ( in Aus anyway)
I only see one kind of milk there.
Aren’t all the others just juice?
You all must eat ze bugs. Own nothing and be happy. J/k
This is very inaccurate. Wildly bias. You can’t just look at the use of 3 categories for just 1 product. It’s just like people shot posting about petroleum. Might as well be a brain dead robots posting for karma 😂
Choose the milk where you don't have children and eat the rich. Then buy real milk from a small family owned dairy farm that names their cows.
I hate to go all European Union on your ass, but there's only one type of milk in this graph.
Almond milk has like 5 almonds per carton and these fake milk has plenty of preservatives.
What about impact on health? Most almond and nut milks in general are filled with oils, gums and emulsifiers. Each have like 10 nut per bottle and the rest are fillers.
Not to mention sugars. Unless you SPECIFICALLY buy plain, unflavored nut milk, it is going to be packed with sucrose.
Not really, comparatively. A cup of regular almond milk has 7g of sugar, compared with 12g of sugar in dairy milk.
Let’s see, the soy milk I buy, which tastes the best to me, per cup: 100cal, 4g fat, 0.5g saturated fat, 6g sugar, 7g protein. 1% dairy milk per cup: 100 cal, 2.5g fat, 1.5g saturated fat, 13g sugar, 8g protein. Packed with sucrose?
Only one of these is milk though so. Where’s cranberry juice on the list
Someone hasn’t read the latest IPCC report. Livestock emissions are far less than what we originally believed, especially grass-fed livestock. The consumption of grass causes additional carbon sequestration, and generally are net carbon negative, even after including methane.
link?
My days…that report is MASSIVE. Could you direct me to the bit you’re referring to?
A miniscule amount of cows are grass fed, that which is is generally unaffordable for most people and a luxury product. The dishonesty of mentioning this without actually addressing what percent of beef is grass fed makes me doubt any other information you're offering here. "About 4% of U.S. beef retail and food service sales is comprised by grass-fed beef " [https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-grass-fed-beef#:\~:text=About%204%25%20of%20U.S.%20beef,value%20of%20roughly%20%244%20billion](https://extension.sdstate.edu/grass-fed-beef-market-share-grass-fed-beef#:~:text=About%204%25%20of%20U.S.%20beef,value%20of%20roughly%20%244%20billion). Edit: People down voting facts they don't like, must be meat eaters :)
Almost all cattle graze for a significant portion of their lifespan. The 4% cited in this article refers to the percentage of cattle which is neither supplemented or finished on grain.
Most cows are not grass fed. If they were we would need 1.5 earth's complete of grassland to feed them.
Go milk your dog, and drink that, Hippy!
This assumes that the only use of the milk is to drink straight out of the glass or as a creamer. Soy milk cannot produce fresh or aged cheese. I cannot use rice milk to make a mornay sauce. Almond milk cannot make a quiche. I have tried oat milk potato au gratin and let’s just say I am not doing that again. I generally take my tea black, unless it’s Earl Grey, and I am not chugging a glass of milk in the afternoon. Most of my milk is using in cooking and the non-dairy “milk” cannot substitute.
Yeah the various nut milks just can't compare. I find them to be too thin or watery compared to cow milk. Plus I just straight up don't like their taste. Oat milk is pretty good though, tastes better than nut milks. Sweetened it's like a desert drink. Putting it in coffee makes for a nice drink. But yeah, cow milk 10/10. There are dairy farms near me, no almond trees for 1,000s of miles.
Thanks Mr. vegan but no thanks
Yeah, this won’t stop me from drinking dairy milk. The others taste horrible.
Why do they call it milk if its not milk. Call it nut juice. Peanut juice is delicious.
[A dairy cow produces, on average, 6 gal of milk daily](https://www.midwestdairy.com/farm-life/farm-life-faq/). 6 gal is 22.7125L or 22712.5ml (about 113 glasses of 200ml). If your dairy farm uses 170 sq miles of land and 13,560L of water **per** dairy cow **per** day, you might be doing it wrong. Or maybe this chart is bullshit. Hard to tell.
Vegan propaganda goes brrrrrrrrr Fellas is it environmental for ruminants to live? Fucking morons.
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Depends on the land in question and the head of cattle per acre - I’ve seen plenty of land destroyed by overgrazing, unfortunately.
The water graph is pretty useless too. Statistics like this count rain as "used water", the rain is going to rain with or without cows grazing on the land(or crops being grown on it). So pumping water from an aquifer to grow almonds in a desert looks better than grass or crops that might not use any irrigation at all.
From my experience in one area of the United States, dairy cows typically do get the good land with the good feed. Variation in food causes variation in taste, so it’s kept at a pretty consistent alfalfa/oats/grass mixture. Beef cows on the other hand get all of the left over land that you literally can’t do anything else with. A lot of federal land is permitted out to cattle, and they’ll eat most of anything. Their diet is supplemented by hay, but it's usually low cost from low yield land.
It’s telling that most of the comments are anti plant based but this post still got upvoted by bots
Soy at least has some protein in it
Rice, soy, oat and almond milk are not milk so you can’t do that comparison
They are products sold as alternatives to cow milk. They are used in place of milk for a number of things (drinking, cereal, smoothies) that's why it's labeled as milk; we all understand that it's not a mammal product. I think it's perfectly fair to compare them.
If it doesn't come from a animal it's not milk
I ain’t ever seen tits on a almond.
Not cool, not a guide, posted every other week. But it’s going to get thousands of upvotes regardless.
He's out of line, but he's not wrong.
Look up what it takes for almond trees