Alternative Milks — Pullback Podcast

In this episode, Kristen and Kyla tackle the question on every millennial’s mind: will I be sent to the Bad Place for drinking almond milk? TL;DL: no. Topics: alternative milks and their amazing rise; the alt-milk OGs; and which alt-milk is best for people, animals, and planet. We also provide amateur-tips on making your own alternative milk, so you can avoid our mistakes. No dogs were milked in the making of this episode.

Alternative Milks Research Note

Episode Transcript

KRISTEN: Welcome to pullback, I'm KRISTEN and I'm here with KYLA

KYLA: Hello!

KRISTEN: Trying to be a good person can be an overwhelming thing in our complex global marketplace. In this podcast we try to make it a little easier by looking at the details behind consumer movements, product labels, and ethical lifestyles. Each episode we challenge ourselves to try something new in ethical consumption. Then we tell you what we learned, fuck ups and all. This episode we're looking at alternative milks. So, we'll start by explaining what alternative milks are, and then we'll talk about the challenges we did. And finally, we'll talk about what you might wanna think about when you're choosing an alternative milk. So cool, should we get started Kyla?

KYLA: Yes, everything you said and also more. Let's do this. Okay, so yeah, I think you did a lot of the research here, I was tempted to just let you do ALL of the research and then I would be the lovable comic relief on this episode but oh my god is it easy to fall down a rabbit hole on the milks topic

KRISTEN: Yes

KYLA: Holy smokes, so I'll let you get started and then I'm gonna chime in with stupid questions as we go along.

KRISTEN: Perfect, so alternative milks are milk and milk products that are made from plants. They are also sometimes called vegan milk, plant milk or non-dairy milks. And uh, some have used the shortened form "alt-milk" because everything has to have an alt now I think [laughs]. So, we may refer to it that way as well because it's a little faster. So, the market for alternative milks is growing rapidly around the world, uh, American non-dairy milk sales increased by a whopping 61% um in the last 5 years according to market research, so, really quickly moving area they're becoming much more popular -

KYLA: I know I'm drinking a lot more

KRISTEN: Yeah, me too! Uhm and you can find them a lot more easily now, like all the big coffee chains have at least one alternative milk, usually a couple. Do you mostly use it in like cafes? Or where are you using alternative milks.

KYLA: Oh Kristen, I'm not fancy enough to go to cafes ever, [laughs]

KRISTEN: [laughs]ha Ok, just me being too bougie to function

KYLA: Well and when I do - maybe I'm too bougie 'cause when I go to cafes, I just drink my tea without milk [laughs]

KRISTEN: Ooo

KYLA: I'm like black please, uh, so when I have my alternative milks I'm buying them and using them in oatmeal [laughs].

KRISTEN: Nice, love it. So, the most popular alternative milks are almond and soy milk. Uhm in 2018 they had about 80% of the market share, so, they're kind of dominant. And of the two, soy milk was sort of the OG non-dairy milk. It was first sold in the United States in the 1950's so it's been around for a really long time. Have you had soy milk? Or what's your alternative milk of choice?

KYLA: Well I'm a big fan of oat milk, when I was living (KRISTEN: Love it) in the UK I started drinking Oatly and I was like this has changed my life it tastes so good (KRISTEN: yes). But I can't find it now that I'm back in Canada. Which has made me deeply sad.

KRISTEN: Yes, Oatly I don't know if it doesn't exist in Canada yet, or whether it does but it's just sort of only in a few places, but, we'll talk a lot about them

KYLA: Yeah I haven't checked the local whole foods yet, I've spent the last - so I only just got back to Canada and I've spent a lot of my time hanging out in Salmon Arm BC, which does not have a lot of selection, I'll be honest, although it is gorgeous. And now that I'm in Vancouver I'm gonna go on a little bit of a hunt but the last time I bought some alternative milk I just went ahead and bought like a cheap rice milk.

KRISTEN: Fair enough yeah, and I think I have never actually purchased oat milk itself, although I have used it in cafes. But the alternative milks I've bought before are soy milk and almond milk, so, just being that traditional marketplace person

KYLA: I mean I've tried soy milk and I think I'm not a huge fan of the taste - I mean you get used to it, but I just never really, I never really loved it the way I've fallen for oat milk. That cheesy way [laughs].

KRISTEN: Yes, as we've mentioned, soy milk/almond milk are sort of the bigger ones, the new entrant to the market is oat milk, and, we're not sort of the only people that have jumped on the oat milk train it's actually a really rising member of the market and it looks like it may actually become the go-to alternative milk in a few years if the trends keep continuing

KYLA: I mean it swept me off my feet [laughs]

KRISTEN: Yes [laughs] Kyla's in love. Uh, so, there are lots of other alternative milks though, so; pecan, cashew, quinoa, hazelnut, rice, coconut, pea, like there are zillions of others. Lots of different alt-milks you can make.

KYLA: What I discovered is that you can actually make milk out of anything! I learned that doing this episode of this podcast, it turns out that not only is it really easy, but you can basically make it out of anything. And I was like "oh, who knew!"

KRISTEN: Can you soak it and blend it? You can make an alternative milk out of it. So, the alternative milk market is really growing, so it reached 18.5 billion dollars in the US in 2018 and it's expected to basically double by 2024 which is I think pretty impressive, so, but, for me anyway it was really surprising to find this out: I have thought that the alternative milk trend was really being driven by western countries so Europe and North America, but it's actually the fastest growing demand is in Asia-Pacific and uh Kyla I think you know a bit about that from your travels right?

KYLA: No! I wish that I had learned this while I was travelling it would make me seem so much smarter. I learned this on this episode, I was looking up kind of like the health benefits of obviously dairy milk vs alternative milks, and I found in the United States National Library of Medicine website that approximately, like, 65% of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy, and this varies wildly depending on your ethnicity so, northern Europeans have a way easier time statistically then East-Asians for example like I think like 90 or 95% of northern Europeans can drink dairy milk but it's like 10% of east-Asians can drink it and not get sick so, I didn't know that statistic that you said earlier but I am not at all surprised that Asian markets would be getting on the alternative milk train since normal milk makes their tummies hurt.

KRISTEN: But I think you had told me just informally in our friendship that you saw a lot of alternative milks when you were in Asia, that's like, am I mis-remembering that or?

KYLA: No probably you're just giving me a lot more credit, I probably noticed it and just, made no connection whatsoever. But yeah I did see a lot of alternative milks, certainly it's very popular in the UK, but even when I was in China I did see quite a few milk-alternatives but I - again - thank you for giving me credit for putting 2 and 2 together.

KRISTEN: Fair enough, fair enough. As we've sort of mentioned, ethical concerns aren't really the only reason that alternative milks are taking off. Health concerns, and the inability to digest cow milk are two really big reasons that are driving it. Having said that though, sustainability is a top reason that people are starting to move towards alternative milks now as well, and another reason of course uhm, going back to sort of the OG soy milk market is uh, vegans, right? Or, people who are sort of aspirationally moving toward a plant based lifestyle even if they may not be fully vegetarian or fully vegan.

KYLA: Yeah what I love about this new trend is that you can find alternative milks in like the trendy places of the supermarket, whereas before you had to go down the dusty sort of (KRISTEN: the hippy aisle) creepy, yeah, the aisle where there's like one light bulb blinking, and nobody goes down there except for really old people and hipsters. (KRISTEN: yes) Now you can find alternative milks, you know, in the freezer with normal milk.

KRISTEN: Yeah it's great. So some major alt-milk brands that you might have sort of recognized before, you might have seen in the store, so Silk is an American company, it actually self describes as one of the OG's of dairy-free, which I think is cute but, is maybe proof that the term "OG" has become way too mainstream. So, silk has been producing soy milk since 1996 and at least in North America you can find their non-dairy milk in most supermarkets. One super interesting thing is they're no longer just soy milk, they do almond milk, oat milk, coconut milk, cashew milk, all kinds of things like that. So they're sort of recognizing that there is this broader suite of alt-milks that people are moving into. Gosh, when I say alt milk I just.. I don't know, anyway.

KYLA: Well when I was listening to another podcast, and I wish I could give them credit so I might have to cut this because I can't remember the name, they called them shmilks, which delighted me. (KRISTEN: "Shmilks) [both laugh].

KYLA: Hey future Kyla here, just popping in to say that was from an episode of Science Vs by Gimlet Media, I will link to it and Kristen, you're gonna love it! It's absolutely full of puns

KRISTEN: Oh man, so, another thing that - uhm - another brand that you might recognize is almond breeze. So they're made by Blue Diamond Almonds, which is actually a California based almond cooperative founded in 1910 that just sort of moved into almond milks because they recognized the market, so it's not just hippies that made a lot of money. And then, rice dream is another sort of long standing alternative milk brand, and it's from an American Organize and Natural products company called Hayne Celestial (?) so they're really sort of a big, broader brand and rice dream is one of their products. Uhm, some newer entrants you might recognize in the market, the first one is Oatly (KYLA: Yay!) Kyla's favorite.

KYLA: I love how hip their branding is. They're really catering to like millennials, and I appreciate that.

KRISTEN: Me too, as a millennial I love it

KYLA: They're just so funny, they have so many good jokes on their packaging and I'm like, yes please, you are dialing right into what makes me want to spend money with you, so I'm falling right - they've got me in the palm of their hands. Whoever does their marketing is a genius

KRISTEN: Absolutely crushing it. So, Oatly is a really big one, Califia Farms (?) they're a California company that makes almond based dairy alternatives so they make not only milk, but also cold-brew coffee. And that's kind of a trend I've noticed as well, as somebody that frequents whole foods (see, I'm too bougie to function). But, you can, definitely if you look in their sort of drinks aisle and you're where the kombucha is they always have the sort of ne, cold brew with alternative milks. Or like, elixirs with alternative milks. It's not just the milk itself anymore, it's also like fancy 8 dollar drinks with it as well. So, they're big. There's another California brand called New-Barn organics that you might have seen. An American Pea-milk company called Ripple Foods. Then there's a UK brand that's starting to be big in the alternative milk market called Innocent (?) so they were a smoothie company and they recently started making alternative milks. If you've been in an MNS in the UK you've definitely seen Innocent Smoothies.

KYLA: I definitely have. Although I don't know, I can't remember if I've tried it. I think if, maybe they make yogurt and I've tried their yogurt. But I could be completely mistaken, I can not remember.

KRISTEN: Mm, I've never had an alternative yogurt, maybe we'll have another episode on that. Or I'll just real fuck up making yogurt.

KYLA: Oh boy, yea, ooo, I think I accidentally made yogurt with one of my milks, but we'll get into that, in the challenge part of our episode.

KRISTEN: Uhm yeah, so I'll just go through two more companies, they are both Texan companies, so Mooala is a company that makes almond milk oat milk and banana milk. They also have a very cute logo, much like Innocent. And then the last one is "Malk" which is another Texan company, and I appreciate their name a lot. And they make nut based milks.

KYLA: I like when people lean-in to stupid names

KRISTEN: Yes [laughs]

KYLA: They're like "we're just gonna own this"

KRISTEN: And the real headline with Malk other than their stupid-but-so-bad-it's-good name is that they also make maple-pecan milk which sounds amazing, so.

KYLA: Oh, that does sound really tasty:

KRISTEN: I really wish for that particular thing that I lived in America, 'cause I would love to have myself some maple pecan milk that'd be great.

KYLA: Well hopefully this shoutout from our podcast makes them - their sales go up so much they decide to go up, like oh we're going to expand our market into Canada now thanks to pullback!

KRISTEN: That goes to all of the possible alternative milk makers, including people at home that just have blenders. Send me your alternative milk and I'll try it. So, do we wanna talk about our challenges?

KYLA: Yes, shall you go first or shall I?

KRISTEN: I think you should go first, yes. Do it

KYLA: I went a little hardcore on this one. So, we decided to surprise each other with our challenges, and, I was reading the notes that you put on the google drive, um I should probably mention at this point for anyone who doesn't already know, Kristen lives in Toronto and I live in Vancouver, so we're doing this over skype and a lot of our notes are shared via Google Drive, shout out there. So, I was looking into the notes that you had done and I was like, "wow, she's done a lot of work and I have just started." I noticed that you had written that alternative milks could be made from a bunch of different things. Grains, legumes, I don't even know how to pronounce that word, is that right "legumes"?

KRISTEN: I think so, ya

KYLA: Ok great, if you're not correcting me then I'm gonna keep going with it. Seeds, nuts, and just miscellaneous which is what I put coconut under.

KRISTEN: [laughs] "miscellaneous"

KYLA: Well coconut - k this was a whole rabbit whole. I seriously fell down this whole thing where I was like "does coconut fall under fruit, nut, or seed" and the answer is, it qualifies as all three. So, coconut is my miscellaneous section. So I went ahead and made -

KRISTEN: It's really the omni-alt-milk

KYLA: Truly. So I went ahead and made milk from every category. 'Cause I just felt like going all out. And also because I just came back to Canada, I missed bulk-barn so badly that I was like, "let's do a big bulk-barn shop, just to treat myself". Something else I also considered doing for this challenge was, my dog just had puppies, and I was like "oh, can you milk a dog?" And the answer was "yes, but don't". For several reasons; one, it's super gross, two, the puppies don't like it and three, the mom really doesn't like it. I don't know this from experience, I did not try to milk my dog. But I did google it, so google history is gonna think I'm really weird

KRISTEN: You're gonna get some weird ads

KYLA: I sure am! so I didn't follow any recipes exactly, I checked out multiple top google results and blogs for each one and I've gone ahead and kind of put my own spin on each of the recipes. I went to do chick-pea first, and that's when I realized you have to soak chicKristeneas overnight. I turned around to do my pumpkin seeds and, same thing. So I was soaking the pumpkin seeds and the chicKristeneas and I decided to check on the others, and yeah it turns out you have to soak a lot of the stuff. So I was like oh already this challenge is a little more difficult than I thought it was. I put the pumpkin seeds and the chicKristeneas and the cashews to soak, and I went ahead and did my barley oat milk first.

KRISTEN: Nice

KYLA: And the reason that you gotta soak them is because theirs like a little bit of acid on the outside of them that can hurt your tummy. It's called Phytic (?) acid and I might be saying that wrong, I hope our scientists correct me, but I went ahead and soaked them 'cause I was like ooo I don't want to hurt my sensitive tummy. Barley oats, right, here we go, deep Googling revealed I bought rolled barley eats instead of hulled or pearl barley, and I guess I'm making porridge instead of milk. But I went ahead and did it anyway, I followed an oat milk recipe, which was literally just 1 cup of oats to 3 or 4 cups of water. Except, oat milk recipes are for whole oats, so like I said I basically made porridge, my bad. It just made it more difficult to milk through the cheese cloth, you-know-what-I-mean? It was just really difficult to do with my flat barley. I also had to blend it like 3 times, I kept straining it through the cheese cloth and thinking "hmm this seems really watery". And then, doing it again, so I actually made it really thick by accident. It came out, like, which is fine actually, I used it in my oatmeal for the next few days and it was a really nice flavor, but I don't know if I would just drink it straight. My dad put some in his coffee, y'know shout out to him, thanks for doing that dad. He thought it was fine at first, and then he was like "mm, actually no" which is how he felt about my cashew milk too in the end. True hero, yah, he's a 100% carnivore, like he would never switch to vegetarian or veganism, but you know, shout out to him, he'll try it. We went to A&W and I made him try the beyond meat burger-

KRISTEN: It's nice of your dad to try though

KYLA: Yep! He took one bite and then he passed it over to me 'cause I said that if he didn't like it I'd eat it

KRISTEN: Supportive dad

KYLA: So my barley milk turned out ok. Then the next one I did was my coconut milk, and when you type in the phrase "coconut milk recipe" it does not give recipes for making coconut milk, it gives recipes for using coconut milk in, like cookies and stuff. So, I had to type - like, I had to do some really specific google searching but I ended up finding something basically workable? I mean basically I took the coconut flakes that I bought and blended them with water and strained them through a cheese cloth

KRISTEN: Sure

KYLA: all of the other recipes that I looked at kind of like, implied that that would work, and it did and it was really tasty, and I would say this was one of my favorites, except that - and I think that maybe you know what happened here - but I had no idea what to expect, the next day, the - like - I don't know, solid part of, none of it was solid, it was blended completely smooth, but then the next day the top part of my milk was rock hard, and the bottom part was like water. So, I accidentally made cheese? I don't know.

KRISTEN: Do you buy coconut milk ever?

KYLA: No, I buy coconut water.

KRISTEN: 'Cause that's exactly what happens in the cans you have to like shake it

KYLA: Ooo, see and I had no idea, so I was like "why?" so I just ate some of the chunky bits 'cause I was like "oh I've made coconut cheese", and it was not so bad. I remixed it up and then I tried to turn it into ice cream, and that did not go super well. I kind of turned it into like a bit of a shaved ice, sort of situation.

KRISTEN: That's nice, still sounds refreshing

KYLA: Yeah it was okay, I mean it was basically - I put so much sugar in it that it was definitely edible, but, it wasn't what I was hoping for. If I did it again there are a couple things I would change but overall, you know what, it was a cool learning experience. for my pumpkin seed milk I put in a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg to kind of like give it a pumpkin spice sort of thing.

KRISTEN: Love it

KYLA: I also read a couple of recipes that were like "you don't need to strain this one, it can just be thick like a smoothie". False.

KRISTEN: I don't believe that at all

KYLA: Nope. False. It was extremely pulpy.

KRISTEN: Lies

KYLA: I had to eat a lot of that one with a spoon, it was gross. I don't know if maybe I blended it for 20 minutes it would have made a difference? But it was very much, like, there was chunks of pumpkin seed in my milk, and I would recommend blending it like uh -straining it, if that's what you're looking for. But you know what I didn't mind it, if you like your milk chewy, this is the one.

KRISTEN: Who doesn't like their milk chewy?

KYLA: And then yeah I think I gave a little bit of a shout out to the cashew milk, dad didn't love it in his coffee, but for the ones that I was drinking straight this was my favorite. I put a little bit of honey and vanilla in it so, I could just have a glass of that

KRISTEN: Mmm, sounds nice

KYLA: It was ok, yeah it went nicely in my oatmeal as well. I drink mostly water, so I don't just sit down and have a glass of milk very often

KRISTEN: Yeah, me neither

KYLA: But if you're wanting something, yeah sometimes I want something thick, so, if I was doing that the cashew milk - which is probably why the nut milk that's popular right now, what's it called? What's the famous nut milk?

KRISTEN: Oh, almond milk?

KYLA: Yes! That's probably why almond milk is so popular. Listeners, I just woke up/ Finally, the last one. This, was, an unmitigated disaster. This was the chicKristenea milk.

KRISTEN: Oh yes

KYLA: I remembered at the end that I hate chicKristeneas. I kinda forgot, and then I was making it, and I smelled it, and I was like "oh yeah, I am not a fan of chicKristenea, but I've gone too far now." I kept straining them through the cheesecloth and it kept just being so thick it was like mashed potatoes, it was so, I was like "dad, what do we do with this? Can we turn it into a sauce or something?" and he was like, "maybe?", but it was just, there was so much of it, and it was just so much trouble and I really didn't want to eat it. It was so - I did try it, and I tried mixing it with different stuff. I put powdered chocolate in one batch, just to see. No - that made it so much worse. Don't do that. It made it so much worse. I googled whether dogs can eat chicKristeneas and answer was yes, so we tried to give like some of the plain chicKristenea stew that I made to the dogs, and they were like "nah", so I'll be honest the chicKristenea milk went, in, the bin, sorry.

KRISTEN: fair enough

KYLA: So that was my challenge, I would say, limited success? What did you end up doing?

KRISTEN: I make oat milk a lot of the time actually, I usually about once a week

KYLA: If I had known that I should have asked you to like, help me

KRISTEN: No no, part of the fun is trying new things I think. I had already made oat milk in the past, so maybe I'll give everybody my recipe 'cause it usually comes out pretty well. The challenge that I did actually was trying to make cashew cheese, so, we'll talk about that a little bit. But first just for the oat milk, I always find, so I'm going a bit based on this food blogger that I follow, her name is Cookie and Kate, but I have made a few modifications to the recipe so if you check out her recipe it's perfectly great, but I've just changed the process in the way that I think works for me a little bit. So basically, you start with just rolled oats, however much you decide to put in you just have to know to add twice as much water, so I usually go with a cup of oats and just soak that for, you only really need 15 minutes, but usually I'll do it while I'm cooking something else so I'll just leave it for 15 minutes to an hour. Whatever's convenient for me. Then after that you drain it through a strainer, and rinse it quickly and then you just put the oats into a blender, add twice as much water, so if you did one cup of oats, two cups of water. And then I usually add just a little bit of salt, cinnamon and maple syrup. I just find that that combination of things makes it taste better, but you could in theory add like, you're saying honey and vanilla, and that also sounds great. Pretty much anything that'll taste good in an oatmeal will taste good in an oat milk, I think that's a good rule of thumb. Then you just blend it all together. I usually blend it for about a minute, sometimes a little bit longer, but basically until it looks smooth. Then you just strain it through a fine mesh strainer. I find that easier to work with than a cheese cloth - so that may have been where some of your issues -

KYLA: Yeah, cheese cloth I did not care for, I'll be honest, it was not - I was like, I hate this, what else am I gonna use this cheese cloth for 'cause I am never using it again. And then I found a really good one the next time I went to Bulk Barn that was like a bag, and I was like this would be so much easier than this flat cloth I've been trying - it was awful, Kristen, I can't tell you what a mess my kitchen was.

KRISTEN: Yeah, so if you just have like a fine mesh strainer that's actually so much easier, because it all just collects in the basket. So, I usually strain it twice or three times actually, so I'll just strain it, and then you get like most of the silt out the first time, so it'll go through easily the second time. And then basically I just want it to just pour through and then I know I'm done straining, and then it just goes into a mason jar or whatever and you just have to shake it before you use it. I find that it usually comes out pretty well, so, oat milk you can make pretty easily. I think it's probably the easiest of the alternative milks to make from home and it's also pretty cheap. So, would recommend.

KYLA: Other than pumpkin seed, which you don't need to strain at all apparently.

KRISTEN: But yes, I also tried something new for this challenge, and that was trying to make vegan cheese, which I had never consumed before let alone made. So, I was in for a bit of a surprise, uh, so I looked online and I tried to find the easiest vegan cheese recipe, because there are some that have a whole bunch of ingredients to, I don't know, to constitute the cheese that I just didn't recognize, there were these long ingredients that I knew would be hard to find in a grocery store, so I was a little intimidated by that. But I eventually found a recipe for herbed cashew cheese from a vegan blogger called Blissful Basil, and it involved all ingredients that I recognized, so I thought "I'll go with this one". Like when you're making alternative milks, making alternative cheese starts with soaking a thing. So, in this case I was soaking cashews, and I soaked them for a pretty long time, I think the recipe said at least 4 hours, I think I soaked it for 5 hours. I wanted to give myself an extra one-hour window just in case. And then basically you just blend it in a food processor for a really long time. So, the recipe called for you to blend it with a few other things, nutritional yeast, or “nooch” as people call it

KYLA: Oh, I don’t care for that nickname

KRISTEN: Nooch? Nooch-nooch!

KYLA: Oh no, oh boy was that a bad hockey reference that you just did?

KRISTEN: No no, people actually do call it nooch.

KYLA: Oh I thought you were making fun of Nuge like Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, like “NOOJ!”

KRISTEN: Oh that would be a very Edmonton joke, we’re both from Edmonton and neither of us live there. And he is like a b-list hockey player on that team

KYLA: B-list? Please. I wouldn’t put him as..

KRISTEN: Oh I’m sorry he’s on the Oilers so he’s A-list but just because they’re terrible.

KYLA: Credit where it’s due

KRISTEN: Don’t @ me listeners

KYLA: You can @ me I still cheer for the oilers, so like, every time I go to a Canucks game where the oilers are playing you know I’ll be wearing my jersey. Ok so after that little aside

KRISTEN: So after you blend it with “nooch” and also some other things; salt, pepper, lemon, garlic, that kind of thing, then you just blend it for like a long fucking time. I didn’t want to burn out the motor on my blender, so, I did like one-minute batches four different times, and at the end, it basically says like keep blending it for a long time until it starts to form a creamy texture which, never happened for me exactly, but the texture started to look a little like a grainy goat’s cheese basically. And I figured, eh this is probably as close as it’s gonna get. So, once that was done you then basically just mix it with a bunch of chopped herbs. And then, it basically it just looks a lot like an herb goat cheese. Doesn’t really hold its structure. Like you wouldn’t have a wheel of it, but if you put it in a container, it’s a nice spread of bread. So, then I tasted it, I tried it on its own and did taste a lot like cheese but it was a little bit less like unctuous than cheese usually is and it was a little bit sweeter and tangier. So, I found that slightly off-putting on its own, perhaps just ‘cause what I’m used to I don’t know. Maybe if you’ve been vegan for many years, I’m only vegetarian so I do still eat cheese fairly regularly. Maybe if you’ve been vegan for many years it proximates it enough that it’s not off-putting. For me, I wouldn’t eat it on its own, but like putting it on crackers or on bread, I tried it with some bread and that was – that was perfectly fine, and then, the recipe also comes with this tomato-jam recipe. The tomato Jam was fuckin’ aces. It was really good. And it paired really nicely with the cheese, like, because you’re expecting so much sweetness from the jam the sweetness of the cheese isn’t off-putting at all it just tasted like you were having cheese and tomatoes. Very much recommending that. The other thing they had that was like optional in this recipe was straining it overnight in a cheesecloth in the fridge. I did that, but it did not do anything to tighten up the texture. Like I had it suspended in a bowl in this cheesecloth and the next day the bowl was totally dry and the cheese felt exactly the same so, I’m not sure you need to do it for this recipe. But yeah, that was my alt-cheese experience.

KYLA: Nice, nice. I appreciate that you went – like, you’ve been doing oat milk for so long that my challenge was like, baby steps for you. You’re like, I’m going to go ahead and make cheese. That’s pretty cool I like it.

KRISTEN: You made so many alternative milks though, I’ve never even tried really any of the ones you did

KYLA: with varying success

KRISTEN: I just buy canned coconut milk like a chump. So, do we want to talk about the ethical considerations of different alternative milks?

KYLA: Yes, which one is best Kristen, please tell me

KRISTEN: So we, one of the things we wanted to do with this podcast is to – not when we’re talking about different ethical issues – not limit ourselves to just one value, so a lot of times you’ll think about something like an alternative milk and it’s just, “ok which one uses less water,” or uhm

KYLA: Which ones healthiest?

KRISTEN: yeah, so what we wanted to do was to sort of look at all of the different possible values and to see well, what information is there that says, points us in one direction or another and then people can use that to match it to their particular values, which I think for everybody is slightly different. So, we’re, because we focus on ethics, we won’t talk too much about health, but that has been a really big discussion when people are debating alternative milks versus dairy milks

KYLA: That’s all I can find online, like, all people wanna talk about when I’m looking at like okay, rice milk versus almond milk, nobody’s talking about you know, which one uses less land, or has better farmer’s rights. It’s always oh, well which one’s healthier? And when you go into the store, it’s well first of all, it’s nice to make your own stuff, but it’s also nice to walk into a store and buy something that’s been fortified with b12 right, so -

KRISTEN: Yes, that’s true.

KYLA: If you’re a vegetarian or a vegan

KRISTEN: As someone with a B12 deficiency.

KYLA: So, you gotta, so I would say that when you’re looking at health it really comes down to, whether or not you want certain vitamins over others, or if you want to make it yourself and you don’t need the fortification, which frankly I am a fan of, I would say that’s as far as the health debate really needs to go for us.

KRISTEN: Yeah and the other thing is like, so if, dairy milk is a huge part of your diet, it might be worth looking into the nutritional differences between alternative milks because they are not all equal, but, if you’re like, I think a lot of people and you use milk a little bit in a smoothie or a coffee, it’s not really a large enough part of your diet so it probably doesn’t matter that much to be honest. Having said that there are certain alternative milks that have like more protein or not, and if you buy fortified ones, you can get that extra benefit if that’s what you’re looking for so like, I don’t know there’s lot of information online. Very easily google it, so do not worry. But let’s talk about ethics then. So the first set of values is animal welfare, and this is more or less straight forward because all of the alternative milks we’re talking about are plant based. But it’s important to note that that doesn’t necessarily mean that alternative milks are vegan, because some may use honey or other animal-based substances to flavor or sweeten the alternative milk. So it’s important to also check that if veganism is really important to you. So usually, the company’s website will tell you whether their products are vegan or not. But on animal welfare really, it’s just, is it, does it have animals in it? No? Then that’s probably pretty good for animal welfare. Vegans all know this already.

KYLA: I mean, in every category I’m pretty sure that the alternative milks are going to beat out dairy milks, so, when it comes to ethics, no matter what you’re doing if you’re having one of the alternatives it’s going to be better than having a dairy milk. Honey’s not something that I feel really bad about maybe we’ll do an episode on that one day.

KRISTEN: Yeah, and I think it does depend on like how the like, the how the bees are harvested. Harvested is the word you use, but anyway, yeah we’ll talk about that in another episode maybe.

KYLA: Yeah we’ll do a whole episode on honey maybe

KRISTEN: Beeees

KRISTEN: Okay, so environment is another big one as we mentioned at the beginning, sustainability is one of the big drivers of the alternative milk industry, but it’s important to note that assessing environmental impact is complicated and you can’t just use one single indicator to get a holistic impression of what’s environmentally best. Also depending on what is important to you, you might come down more strongly on certain environmental values than others. So, what we want to do is to talk about a few of the common environmental indicators that there is information about in terms of alternative milks. So, the ones we looked at were land use, water use, emissions, and energy intensity. So generally speaking, dairy milk fares poorly on all of these environmental criteria when compared to alternative milks, so already by choosing any alternative milk you are usually doing better. But when you’re looking between different alternative milks there actually are quite a lot of differences and it’s not so straight forward all the time. So, let’s talk about land use. Cultivating a crop takes land, and that means diverting land use from other purposes. So, some people might remember, over the summer when the amazon rainforest was burning, a lot of that was due to slash and burn tactics that had to do with agricultural production, especially livestock raising. So, land use is a big contributor to deforestation and climate change because it essentially requires converting the existing ecosystem, so forest or wetlands, and those are usually carbon sinks so they take in carbon, and then instead you are then producing something that creates carbon, so it’s bad for climate change. There can also be social justice issues, so for example if agricultural land pushes people out of their communities, and agricultural land use is a big challenge in part because of its scale, so fact that I came across is that agriculture covers about 40% of the world’s land area so almost half of the land on the planet is going to growing crops or animals. So that’s pretty big. So if you’re concerned about environmental issues, it’s best to support an alternative milk that requires relatively less land to grow. And on land use, all four of the mainstream non-dairy milks do pretty well, they’re all substantially better than dairy. And the four main non-dairy milks which are rice milk, soy milk, oat milk and almond milk all require relatively similar amounts of land to produce, so, oat and soy milk use slightly more land than rice and almond milk but it’s not a big difference. There have also been some recent reports about deforestation and the displacement of indigenous peoples as a result of soy farming, so that’s a big concern but it’s also important to keep in mind that about 90% of soy bean crops actually go into animal feed, so most of the land displacement that’s coming from soy is actually consumed indirectly in the form of chicken, pork, beef, farmed fish, eggs and dairy so if you are concerned about land displacement from soy, first cut out those things from your diet, because that’s where most of the soy is coming from.

KYLA: Your double soy latte isn’t making a huge difference

KRISTEN: Yeah it’s not the soy you’re consuming that’s causing that, it’s the meat that people are consuming. So land use is also connected to other environmental consequences like fertilizer runoff, which can pollute drinking water and accelerate something called eutrophication, which basically just means algal blooms if you see lakes that are covered in like, green algae or whatever. That’s often times from fertilizer runoff. So oat milk is actually an interesting alternative milk from that perspective, in terms of soil sustainability because some experts are arguing that biodiversity and crop rotations can actually help farmers to use less pesticides, so you have less runoff and you get less algal blooms. So right now the two sort of staple crops that are typically in rotation in the United States, is basically just corn and soybeans that are in that rotation, and some experts are saying if you add a third crop like oats which can be grown pretty much anywhere, that can actually introduce really big improvements for water pollution, soil erosion and crop yields. So, you know, a really big oat milk market might actually have some huge runoff benefits by changing the way that farmers are farming, so that’s kind of a cool idea. Alright, emissions. So emissions are another sort of important thing to look at from the perspective of climate change, so food production is responsible for about a quarter of all human produced greenhouse emissions. Dairy milk produces more than double the greenhouse gas emissions of it’s non-dairy counterparts per glass, so that’s according to a calculator that the BBC made based on a study by two researchers named Poore and Nemechek at Oxford University. So really, the contest is not close between dairy and alternative milk on emissions, it is much better to chose any alternative milk you will halve your emissions basically. But amongst the different non-dairy alternatives there are some minor differences, so rice milk is sort of at the high end and almond milk is at the low end, but again, like land use, these emission rates are pretty similar. There’s not a huge, huge difference. So right now is sort of , some conflicting trends but really alternative milks in any form are doing a lot better than dairy milk and there’s not a huge difference between them. But water footprint is the big differentiator.

KYLA: I was just about to say, so pick whichever one you think tastes best! I was wrong

KRISTEN: Jokes! Almond milk sucks. That’s a bit of a spoiler alert for this section, but, water footprints, water footprint basically just measures the amount of water that’s used to produce each of the goods and services that we use. So it’s an important measure to think about because a lot of our water usage comes from indirect sources, so, the water that’s used to make the things that we buy basically. And it’s especially important when we’re talking about food, because about 90% of the water that a person consumes comes from the food that they eat, or from the water that’s used to make the food they eat. So, if you’re looking at reducing your water footprint, taking shorter showers makes a difference, but the biggest difference is if you change your eating habits, actually, because most of your water footprints coming from there. So we might drink 3L of water each day, but the average water footprint for a Canadian is 6392L per day, most of that coming from your food, and the water that’s used to create it.

KYLA: That’s wild, I had no idea

KRISTEN: Yeah, a lot of water. So water footprint is a big differentiator for alternative milks, so although almond and rice milk still have a smaller water footprint than dairy, so again if you’re drinking either of those you’re still doing better than somebody that’s drinking dairy milk on the symmetric, but they are a lot thirstier than soy or oat milk. So, a single glass of almond milk requires 74L of water to produce which is more than a typical shower, and that’s because of the water intensity of the crop itself. So, almonds require 6x more water to grow than oats.

KYLA: Are they growing in a lake or something? Like, what’s, I need to go to an almond farm

KRISTEN: They’re trees actually, I’m not sure why they require so much water, I under researched clearly

KYLA: Oh, oh my god, duh, of course they’re trees. Oh my god I’m so dumb, this is what makes this podcast charming. I’m the layman, you are the academic.

KRISTEN: No this would be so boring if I was just reading, so,

KYLA: I mean maybe now is a good time to mention that Kristen is about to obtain her PhD, and I never finished my second year of university, so I can be the gateway person! And you can be the smort person.

KRISTEN: Not at all, not at all, I just did a lot of research for this one

KYLA: Almonds grow on trees, I feel like doesn't need to be like a major research

KRISTEN: I actually, you know what, I don’t know a lot about how the food I eat grows, so,

KYLA: Aw, thank you you’re so kind

KRISTEN: Well I think that’s part of the problem right, we show up at the grocery store and things are just there. And I’m like alright, take my like package of precut brussels sprouts or whatever

KYLA: Ooh or like, you can get pistachios pre-shelled now even

KRISTEN: Yeah, so like how would you know, you know? But anyway, as with a lot of environmental metrics, for water footprint it also matters a lot where the crop is produced. And that’s another thing in addition to just the general amount of water it takes to grow an almond, the place that almonds are grown also puts it on sort of the bad side of the ledger. So almonds are a water intense crop that is produced almost exclusively in California, which is a region that is at a high risk of droughts, so, that is not good. And unlike a lot of crops, so, if you have like a wheat field or whatever and there’s a really bad drought, the farmer can be like “alright, not happening this year, we’re just gonna leave this crop fallow and we’ll try again next year when there’s hopefully some water,” you can’t do that with almonds, because almonds grow on trees, and the trees will die if they don’t get water. So you have to water them even in a drought year, otherwise you’re fucked.

KYLA: Do you know how old an almond tree has to be before it can produce almonds?

KRISTEN: I don’t! That’d be a fun fact though

KYLA: Yeah, ‘cause trees have to be a certain number of years old before they can even produce, so if you lose your crop and you have to start from scratch, you’ve lost a couple of years I would think. Unless, no, it’s gotta be a couple of years, ‘cause trees don’t usually start fruiting for a while, I don’t know, I say that like I know anything about tress

KRISTEN: No, that sounds right but I don’t know the specific number. Yeah, so, it’s a really big problem so you have like, here’s this water intensive crop that’s growing in a region that’s prone to droughts and you HAVE to water it in drought years. It’s, it’s not great. And the sort of contrast with oat production is pretty strong because you can grow oats in a lot of different places and they take a lot less water to grow, so, there’s sort of a really clear distinction there. I don’t know a lot about how soy grows, but it’s also less water intensive, so presumably would also be pretty good.

KYLA: I have no idea how soy grows, does it grow on bushes? Is it like a tuber? Oh my god, I don’t know where my food comes from Kristen, I need to google this stuff

KRISTEN: I don’t know, I only learned about almonds! No, but I think water footprint is sort of the big differentiator when it comes to alternative milks and it really should steer people away from almond milk. Which, if people were already sort of interested in alternative milks, they may have come across, because when almond milk first got really popular there were a lot of people being like ”alternative milks, they’re so awful because almonds take a lot of water”, which is a true point, but also like, they use less water than, does dairy milk. So if you’re just trying to use that to justify dairy milk that’s a bad argument. But if we’re looking between alternative milks, yeah, you could use soy or oat milk and even rice milk was less water intensive than almond milk.

KYLA: Which I’m surprised at, because rice needs to grow in, like, puddles.

KRISTEN: Yeah, but at least rice can grow in various different places, and places where you usually have a lot of water.

KYLA: That’s true, alright. Cool, well, okay. So what milk is the best?

KRISTEN: Oh we’ve still got more factors to think through Kyla!

KYLA: Oh my god, being ethical is hard Kristen, I feel like that’s gonna be my catchphrase. Okay, what else is there?

KRISTEN: So, the last environmental metric is energy use, unfortunately, this is not one that is commonly included in discussions on alternative milks, so we weren’t really able to find anything on the relative energy intensity of making alternative milks. Maybe in the future, that will be something people look into, but for now it can’t be a way you differentiate the environmental impacts. So, last section is labour and human rights. Which is, I think, pretty important. It is something that is quite often ignored when we talk about alternative milks so I’m not gonna have that many clear answers, but I tried to sort of do my best in researching it, so most of the information that’s out there on non-dairy milk focuses on health and environmental sustainability, it was difficult to find information on labour and human rights. Even though we do know that agricultural workers can experience some of the most difficult working conditions in the world, so this should be an important concern, there’s just a dearth
of information out there.

KYLA: Well and it’s hard, even when I was making my own stuff, it’s hard to know where is the stuff that I’m buying coming from? Like even at Bulk Barn which, I don’t know how good Bulk Barn is, I’ll probably do more research on them as we continue this podcast ‘cause I do go to them for a lot of my ingredients, but I don’t know, sometimes they’ll put like “oh this was sourced from this country,” but they don’t for everything, and I don’t know.. And even if I do know, well what brand is this? Who farmed it?

KRISTEN: Yes, it’s so hard to know. But, I mean, I’ll make a case for why you should care about labour when you’re choosing an alternative milk. So there are 1.3 billion people, which is approximately a third of the global work force, that are employed as agricultural workers, and agricultural workers are often employed informally, they’re often paid poorly, and they’re often subject to very unsafe work practices. And they are somewhat ironically amongst the most food insecure people, people that grow our food are also the most food insecure which really, I think is fucked. So, more than 170,000 agricultural workers are killed doing their jobs every year, and the risk of a fatal accident is twice as high in food production than in any other sector according to the UN special rapporteur on the right to food. So, although most of the agricultural work force is employed in developing countries, working conditions are also a concern in wealthy countries who draw on temporary for a lot of their work force. That is for sure true in both Canada and the United States.

KYLA: Well and when I was living in Australia for a year, I heard that the, Australia is a complicated one actually because, to get a second year on your working holiday you have to do 3 months of farm work essentially.

KRISTEN: Oh interesting

KYLA: Yeah, which I think, first of all it’s kind of cool because it gets people to go work out on the farms and it gives labour to farm owners, but I remember talking to a bunch of people who did it, I didn’t personally do it, one year was enough for me, sorry Australia, you’re great but I was ready for something else. The people I spoke to had such varying degrees of experiences, some people had great experiences, and it was fantastic. Some people got paid, some people didn’t get paid, some people had terrible living conditions. And I think for the most part Australia is one of the better countries for this, because they do rely on people who come to their country on working holiday visas. I don’t know, maybe they’re not, just my impression of it was that, wow, this is probably one of the better countries and people are still miserable doing this work.

KRISTEN: Yes and I know that Canada has fairly good seasonal worker programs on the books, so part of the challenge is just that temporary foreign workers don’t always know their rights, and so these laws don’t get enforced because we don’t have enough people to, that are employed to enforce the laws, so, you can have really nice labour protection on the books, but if they’re not being enforced it becomes a really big differentiator, like one farm might follow all the rules to the letter and do a really good job protecting their workers, whereas another one might just say eh, you’re going to be working overtime and I’m not going to be paying you for it. And if nobody’s checking on that and it’s a complaints-based process where you have vulnerable people that don’t know how to advocate for their rights, and maybe don’t speak the language well. That can be a big problem. And then just throw in the States, as an even bigger problem.

KYLA: And aren’t a lot of the people who work on farms often undocumented workers, so then, they wouldn’t feel comfortable reporting bad working conditions because then they would be deported.

KRISTEN: I think that’s a bigger problem in the states then it is in Canada, but I’m sure it happens here too

KYLA: I mean I don’t know, I know that it’s an issue, I’ve heard in the United States, but I guess I’m not an expert on it but that would be probably similar in Australia or any other country that’s supposed to have really good worker’s rights, if you’re employing undocumented workers, they’re not going to complain about whatever you’re doing.

KRISTEN: Yeah, I mean, from what I was able to find online, and I definitely am not an expert on this issue it’s just Googling, but most of the labour concerns seem to be around how temporary foreign workers are treated so they do have some kind of status, at least in the Canadian context, in the United States absolutely, undocumented migrant workers is a huge problem and probably the largest area of concern for agricultural workers. In Canada I think it’s a lot the temporary foreign workers who just are treated like shit and don’t have recourse to know or advocate for their rights, because nobody tells them

KYLA: If anyone listening knows more about this please reach out to us, because we are curious

KRISTEN: Yes please. But anyway, generally speaking crops like almonds and oats are less labour intensive to harvest than fruits, so like, avocados, things like that. So, you don’t need as many labourers to actually be involved in the harvest. So it may mean that there’s less sort of temporary work that happens, and I had a really hard time finding out details about this though. But there’s still some significant labour concerns, and it‘s an area seems to be missing as I mentioned. One thing that I was able to find was that in 2008, workers at the Sacramento Blue Diamond Growers plant, so they’re the almond milk, one of the almond milk producers, they tried to unionize, and they were reportedly subject to intimidation by the company when they tried to do that. So union issues are also something that you have to take into consideration, and that’s, I imagine, quite brand driven. Having said that, there were some positive stories that I was able to find. Largely it was just Oatly, Oatly is awesome.

KYLA: Oatly! Oatly is krav-certified, or K R A V, I don’t know if you’re supposed to say it or spell it but, they’re produced by Swedish oat producers, who are ostensibly treated very well.

KRISTEN: Yes, so Krav is basically, it’s a third part organics standard, so, the way organics works in the European Union is different than how it works in Canada or the States, Canada and the United States have like their own national organics logos. So you can see USDA organic, or Canada certified organic whatever, you can see those logos. So, in the EU if you wanna have organic certification there are certain standards that are recognized as meeting the EU’s regulations on organics. So KRAV is a third party standard that meets EU organics regulations. It also has, which I think is pretty cool, Krav also has labour and human rights provisions in there, so they have requirements for things like adequate housing conditions for migrant workers. So if you’re eating, or you’re drinking oat milk from Oatly and you see the KRAV certification you can feel pretty good about how the workers are treated, that are supplying the oats that are made there.

KYLA: Man I hope I can find Oatly here, I’m gonna go looking for it, we might have, well we might have editing Kyla pop in over top of us here just to be like, “just uh, so everyone knows, I found Oatly at wholefoods” fingers crossed, that happens.

KYLA: Hey future Kyla here popping in to say that, tragically, Oatly does not seem to be available where I am. But I found an alternative, called “Earth’s Own” that seems like it’s going to fill the void. Its product advertising is at least as punny as Oatly’s was. So, that’s something

KRISTEN: There’s another brand I want to give a quick shout out to for labour, it’s a new brand called Rebbl, which makes plant-based elixirs. So those like those fancy 7-dollar drinks, which like, you can think that’s too bougie and not wanna buy it, but they are pretty good in terms of ethically sourcing their primary ingredients. So they don’t use a specific certification scheme but they do ensure that their workers are all paid well in their supply chain.

KYLA: And that costs money you gotta pay for that

KRISTEN: They’re trying. Yeah, exactly it’s not cheap. So, if you are sort of interested in their products, you can also feel good about the labour that goes into that. Otherwise, it’s a bit of a question mark. My educated guess is that if you’re buying like a Canadian oat, you’re probably doing okay on labour just because my, from what I understand, it’s mostly farmworkers that are Canadian, for the most part that are harvesting because you can mostly do it with machines. Having said that, if someone knows about oat production and wants to correct us on that, please do.

KYLA: And also, when you’re buying from locally sourced ingredients, I mean we didn’t have very much information on energy and emission, but, just from not having had it shipped over from Asia, you can assume you’re using less energy and emissions.

KRISTEN: Especially if you’re, if it’s from like a grid that’s more renewable based, better energy use.

KYLA: Which I think Ontario is pretty good at using renewable sources right now aren’t they?

KRISTEN: Yeah there’s a lot of hydro power in Ontario. Really, if you’re outside of Alberta your energy grid is starting to look pretty good for most Canadians.

KYLA: Woah is that some shade?!

KRISTEN: No, I mean, I understand it, if you’ve got a resource in the ground, especially one that starts really producing in the 80’s, yeah I get people like cheap power. We didn’t really know much about climate change back then. But the path dependence of the oil industry unfortunately means that it’s harder to get things like solar off the ground there, even though Alberta would be fucking great for solar energy, so they really should.

KYLA: Oh it would be so good, and wind energy I would think. But you know what we can do a whole episode on this.

KRISTEN: Anyway, back to alternative milks

KYLA: Which one’s best, which one’s best, which one’s best?

KRISTEN: So, I think for my money the winner is oat milk. It’s become the darling of non-dairy milk advocates and I think there’s pretty good reason for it. It has three times the protein of almond milk, and twice the fiber. It uses less water, it grows in more places, if it becomes a staple crop, which you would need a lot more people to drink oat milk than they do for that to happen, but if it did there would be benefits for agriculture, just in terms of crop rotations. I’m pro oat milk.

KYLA: Alright. Oat milk it is!

KRISTEN: Plus it tastes really good.

KYLA: It does, it tastes so good, I like it so much better than almond milk and soy milk, which for a long time were the only options. And now I can drink my delicious oat milk. If I can find it, I couldn’t find any in Salmon Arm.

KRISTEN: Shocker

KYLA: I just got to Vancouver like a couple days ago, so maybe today after we’re done recording I’ll head out and see if I can’t hunt something down

KRISTEN: If you go to literally any café in Vancouver they will have it, I can tell you

KYLA: Fantastic, I love it, okay. Well, is that the end of our episode?

KRISTEN: Yeah I think so.

KYLA: Our call to action is everybody go out and buy some oat milk so that they start producing more of it, and also, you can contact us at our twitter handles, we’re @pullbacKristenodcast or what’s your twitter handle?

KRISTEN: I’m @kristenpue

KYLA: Yeah so @ her if you have something to say about the oilers

KRISTEN: Don’t @ me

KYLA: Please do, you can contact us as well on Instagram @pullbacKristenodcast, thanks for listening guys! If you liked this than share it with your friends, subscribe and like us on iTunes. Thank you!

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KYLA: Oh yeah! Are we gonna, do you wanna be like Madonna and we don’t have last names?

KRISTEN: Alright, I’m not cool enough to do Madonna.

KYLA: Okay [laughter fades out]