The Fall Of Milk & The Rise Of Soywalker: The Next Front On Changing The Way We Live

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Milk’s reputation as a healthy food is under threat from anxieties about bovine antibiotics, animal cruelty and the industry’s environmental impact, as well as increased diagnosis of lactose intolerance. Teenagers now consider cow’s milk less healthy than plant milk alternatives, a development the former chairman of Dairy UK, David Dobbin, called “a demographic time bomb”.

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“Consumers are really not sure about the dairy industry,” Caroline Roux, a dairy analyst at Mintel, told me. “They’re not convinced these products are good for them any more.”

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It’s the inevitable culmination of today’s anxious eating culture: we’ve gone from buying foods on the merits of their ingredients, to buying them on the basis of what’s left out.

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Plant milks received a boost from their association with clean eating, a craze that has also had the effect of linking dairy with negative health issues. Clean eating, advocated by a fresh-skinned, glossy crop of wellness bloggers and Instagram celebrities, argued for the elimination of any foods deemed overly processed, allergenic, or otherwise “unnatural”: gluten, caffeine, meat and dairy. Its proponents blamed lactose intolerance as the cause of a range of ailments, including acne, eczema, lethargy, joint pain and a variety of digestive issues. And, as the clean eaters warned their readers off dairy, they sent them into the willing arms of plant milk startups. A steady supply of attractive millennial influencers filled their Instagram feeds with appetising shots of peanut-milk Thai curries and gluten-free beetroot bread. (According to industry analysts, one of the keys to the plant-based trend is that it looks appetising on Instagram.) The clean eaters did what years of vegan campaigning never could. Suddenly, giving up milk wasn’t just a health issue. It was part of living your best and most beautiful life.

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But the plant milk boom is, as one entrepreneur told me, “way bigger than just switching your milk”. To converts, almond and oat milk are the next wave in a fundamental shift towards a more conscious, sustainable way of living.

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“There’s a lot of people discovering dairy intolerances and gluten intolerances and that kind of stuff, but actually I think what you’re looking at is much more intolerance to the life we’ve been living,” said Arbib.

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The internet has given animal rights activists new reach. Search for “dairy” on YouTube and you will be assaulted by videos with titles like Dairy Is Scary (5m views), which depicts in graphic detail the suffering of dairy cows. Netflix, too, has provided previously untapped audiences for documentaries like Cowspiracy and What the Health. Besides the ill-treatment of animals, evidence has mounted that the dairy industry is catastrophic for the environment. Animal agriculture contributes more greenhouse gases than aviation, shipping and road vehicles combined. One recent study led by Oxford University claimed that observing a vegetarian or vegan diet is the single most effective way to reduce your own environmental footprint.

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“We are here to spread a philosophy about a way of being, one which is much more harmonious and symbiotic with nature,” Tamara Arbib, the founder of London-based coconut drinks company Rebel Kitchen

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Of course, the change to non-dairy alternatives is a healthy choice, for not only consumers but also our planet. According to a study out of the University of Oxford, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with producing a glass of dairy milk is about three times more than any of the examined dairy alternatives (for the study, researchers included rice milk, soy milk, oat milk, and almond milk). Similarly, when they looked into how much land use and water use is involved, dairy milk required the most land and water as well.

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Every nutritionist I spoke to emphasised that milk is no less healthy than it’s ever been; in fact, it’s never been safer. “From a scientific perspective, the data that suggests milk is a bad food just doesn’t exist,” said Savaiano. “It has a lot of nutrients in it. It’s a great source of calcium, it’s a great source of protein, it’s a good source of riboflavin and potassium. So you can’t make the argument it’s not a nutritious food.” Nor could any health professional I spoke to point to any data showing a confirmed rise in diagnosed lactose intolerance, though most agreed that cases of self-diagnosis are rising.

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According to the Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), the sales of milk dropped about $1.1 billion last year; 2018 closed with net sales totaling $13.6 billion, compared to 2017’s $14.7 billion.

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In 2017, the market size of dairy alternatives was estimated to be around $11.9 billion, with experts predicting that the number could swell to more than $34 billion by 2024 (and, honestly, if you saw how the world — or at least NYC — handled Oatly’s oat milk shortage, well… you’d understand why these numbers aren’t exactly hard to believe).

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As Dr. Adrian Camilleri — a consumer psychologist at the University of Technology Sydney, who is also an affiliate member of Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions —explained to the BBC, people are generally aware of the environmental impact that dairy has, a belief that, considering last year’s dairy sales, may be changing. “The greenhouse gas emissions from milk are about 30 times higher than what people estimate,” Dr. Camilleri said. “I suspect that most consumers underestimate the greenhouse gas emissions saved by switching from dairy milk to plant-based milk such as soy milk.”

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Oatly’s growth hasn’t been without controversy. In 2015, the Swedish milk industry sued it, claiming its ad slogan “Like milk, but made for humans” unfairly denigrated cow’s milk. Oatly lost, but Petersson and Schoolcraft continue to use the slogan outside Sweden. “The line implies what everyone already knows. Milk is produced by cows for the benefit of baby cows,” said Schoolcraft.

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Trade groups for the dairy industry are fighting to get the Food and Drug Administration to prevent non-dairy options from using the term “milk” on labels. The Ninth Circuit court, however, disagreed and ruled in 2018 that almond milk is unlikely to be confused with dairy milk.

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