It's been interesting watching the reactionary rally against dairy over the last 10 years. Watching laypeople with zero scientific background write editorials on nutrition-adjacent topics is always a great workout of patience.
One of the more bewildering things I see is comparison of mammalian milks to plant milks... despite the two not being even remotely comparable. Plant 'milks' are just going through a lot of effort to take generally decent foodstuff (oats, nuts, etc.) and watering them down, massively reducing the nutritional density and content. The macro and micro content of things like oat milk, cashew milk, and so on are next to water because that's basically what they are. They're made by leeching a tiny amount of these legumes and grains into water, often artificially fortified with one or two vitamins. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to compare the nutritional profile of cashews with that of cashew milk and that of cows milk.
> But that talking point masks the reality that milk is only so convenient and affordable because the USDA, with taxpayer dollars, has made it so through intensive, sustained investments.
This is a really weird assertion to make when dairy has been a massively important staple of advanced societies for thousands of years, and continues to be in places like rural India, Turkey, Central Asia, and more. It's also not necessarily off-base, but that's because it holds true for all foodstuffs in the modern US. Because of how large our societies have gotten, the affordability of goods is directly tied to intentional prioritization of their supply chains by the organizational arm of society (government.)
One of the more bewildering things I see is comparison of mammalian milks to plant milks... despite the two not being even remotely comparable. Plant 'milks' are just going through a lot of effort to take generally decent foodstuff (oats, nuts, etc.) and watering them down, massively reducing the nutritional density and content. The macro and micro content of things like oat milk, cashew milk, and so on are next to water because that's basically what they are. They're made by leeching a tiny amount of these legumes and grains into water, often artificially fortified with one or two vitamins. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to compare the nutritional profile of cashews with that of cashew milk and that of cows milk.
> But that talking point masks the reality that milk is only so convenient and affordable because the USDA, with taxpayer dollars, has made it so through intensive, sustained investments.
This is a really weird assertion to make when dairy has been a massively important staple of advanced societies for thousands of years, and continues to be in places like rural India, Turkey, Central Asia, and more. It's also not necessarily off-base, but that's because it holds true for all foodstuffs in the modern US. Because of how large our societies have gotten, the affordability of goods is directly tied to intentional prioritization of their supply chains by the organizational arm of society (government.)