Non-Dairy Milk Alternatives Are Experiencing A 'Holy Cow!' Moment

A decade ago (even more recently in some places), coffee shops had, at most, one non-dairy milk alternative, and it was usually soy. Other alternatives existed, but if you wanted them, you probably had to haul to the nearest health food store.
Things have certainly changed. Nowadays, a trendy coffee shop might offer soy, rice, oat, almond, or coconut milks – or a choice of the above. You can even get almond milk at Dunkin’ Donuts (alongside a Beyond Meat breakfast sandwich), which proudly brands itself as the everyman’s coffee chain.
The global dairy alternative market was estimated at a value of $11.9 billion as of 2017, and its rapid growth has gotten the attention of those in the food industry, as has its profitability – plant-based dairy alternatives are displaying 6% better returns than traditional dairy products. Consumers are driving this trend: In Britain, for example, 25% of people are choosing plant based milks - with figures being as high as 33% for the young adults market (16-24 year olds).
Meanwhile, dairy milk consumption has been on the decline for decades, with each generation drinking less milk than its predecessor. Part of the cause for this, as some, like Sarah Baird at Eater has proposed, is due to changes in culinary tastes. We’re eating food from far more diverse origins than what our grandparents grew up eating, and milk just doesn’t really go as well with it.
And for all the other uses we normally have for dairy, the plant-based alternatives are swooping in. Apart from changing tastes and consumers’ willingness to try new foods, there are a couple of major reasons for this swap: ethics and nutrition.
Modern research has cast serious doubts on the health halo once held by milk. After years of ad campaigns teaching the public that milk builds strong bones, a more recent long-term study has suggested that high levels of milk consumption actually increase rates of bone fracture and mortality. The Harvard University T. Chan School of Public Health reports that various components of dairy may be responsible for higher rates of ovarian and prostate cancers. The high saturated fat content of dairy can raise levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol and may put people at greater risk of heart disease.
And of course, lactose intolerance is responsible for immediate drawbacks to dairy consumption in a huge portion of the population – the U.S. National Library of Medicine estimates that 65% of people are unable or less able to digest lactose after infancy, and that percentage is higher among some minority racial and ethnic groups.
One area where the benefits of ditching dairy have proven to be especially beneficial is in the world of professional sports. 'Milk results in mucus production, which can inhibit our breathing and cause inflammation, leading to prolonged recovery cycles,' explains 2012 Olympic silver medalist Dotsie Bausch, who runs the nonprofit Switch4Good, an advocacy organization working to mainstream plant-based fuel as an alternative to dairy. 'By consuming dairy products as a means of recovery fuel,' she continues, 'an athlete’s acute inflammation and oxidative stress can become chronic, leading to prolonged recovery, muscle fatigue, damage to our cells, and risk for chronic diseases.' So on top of the countless ethical problems inherent in milk, unless you are a baby cow, dairy may not be a health food.
For those merely trying to watch their weight, swapping dairy for its plant-based alternatives can be an easy way to cut back on calories. A typical cup of unsweetened almond milk contains about 30 calories, whereas a cup of skim milk has almost three times that, at 86 calories. That amount can add up when you consider all the milk you put in your coffee, breakfast cereal, and dinner recipes.
But in addition to the real and potential health drawbacks of dairy consumption, ethical and environmental concerns are playing a greater role than ever in the way people feed themselves. Documentaries like Eating Animals and news media are making people more and more aware that the idyllic image of peaceful dairy cows living happy lives on wide-open, rolling pastures is seldom the reality. Animal cruelty on factory farms consists of such horrific processes as tail docking, constant impregnation, and indoor confinement. Not to mention the fact that male calves of dairy cows are slaughtered for veal, and the overworked heifers are usually slaughtered around 5 years of age, just a quarter of their natural 20-year lifespan – a real concern for vegetarians who abstain from meat, but not dairy.
And on top of worrying about standard industry practices, cases of illegal abuse come up in the news cycle periodically, the most recent example being Indiana dairy producer Fair Oaks Farms. Undercover footage captured at the farm depicted employees throwing, dragging, and stomping on live cows, among other abuses. And the market responded: the Fairlife dairy brand, which is supplied by Fair Oaks, has been pulled from shelves in some stores around the Midwest in response to consumer outrage about the investigation’s discoveries.
There’s one more reason people are jumping ship from dairy to plant-based alternatives. In the face of the climate crisis, it can’t be ignored that the impact of animal agriculture raises a number of issues for sustainability. Considering the fact that meat and dairy together use 83% of the world’s farmland and produce 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions while supplying only 18% of calories and 37% of protein consumed by humans, a group of researchers at Oxford concluded last year that 'A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,' as lead researcher Joseph Poore told The Guardian. The study even found that the most sustainable meat and dairy operations still had a bigger environmental impact than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal operations.
So with all of these factors in concert, dairy milk is taking the hit – and trying to strike back. The Dairy Farmers of America reported in drop in sales of over $1 billion from 2017 to 2018. The dairy industry seems to be perceiving this reality with some amount of panic, if their snarky ad campaigns and attempts to ban dairy alternatives from calling their products 'milk' and 'butter' are any indication.
It’s no wonder that with the increasing popularity of non-dairy milk products and the significant drawbacks of industrial animal agriculture, entrepreneurs are putting their money on various new alternatives. Oat milk brand Oatly, a favorite of baristas for its ability to foam similarly to dairy milk, famously encountered a shortage when demand began to exceed supply, leading the brand to construct a new factory in New Jersey (but not before fans started selling each other cartons for $200 a pop on Amazon). As reported by Deena Shanker and Niclas Rolander in Bloomberg, Oatly’s sales were about $110 million in 2018, up from $68 million a year earlier, and expect double that, about $230 million, for 2019.
Califia Farms was originally a juice brand but has since expanded into selling plant milks, yogurts, creamers, and other products made from a variety of different plant sources. They’re hedging their bets on consumer interest in ethical choice in an even bigger way – sustainability is one of the company’s lead talking points, and its marketing materials boast of the company’s efforts to go the extra mile in producing their plant milks (particularly almond, a high-irrigation crop) more sustainably. In doing so, they’re reaching not just the plant-curious consumer, but the ones with significant environmental literacy who are thinking carefully about the supply chain of their food.
Macadamia nut-based milk producer milkadamia, which is celebrating World Plant Milk Day on August 22nd with its special '14 Reasons Why Moo Is Moot' social media campaign, is yet another one of the latest entries into the fast-growing plant-based milk category. CEO of milkadamia Jim Richards recently said that 'We’ve positioned our product to be very palatable to dairy milk drinkers.'
But for those who really, really don’t want to let go of the original, Berkely-based food tech startup Perfect Day has developed a microbe-derived milk simulacrum that can be cultured into various dairy products like yogurts and cheeses – and the company has raised over $60 million so far from investors. Last month, the company released a limited supply of its new vegan ice-cream, but sold out almost immediately (despite the fact three pints cost a whopping $60).
From high tech startups like these to the plethora of new and old plant-based dairy brands you can already find on shelves, the numbers are behind non-dairy products. It’s an exciting market that investors and entrepreneurs are eager to get in on, and so far, they’re just trailing consumer interest and milking it for all it is worth.