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The truth about organic milk: cows are suffering on even the most “humane” dairy farms (www.theatlantic.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I am also simultaneously asking myself if prices for oatmilk are fair. Where I live the cheapest option is 1€ for a liter. But if you ever made oatmilk by yourself, you know how cheap it is do do it at home. I know I'm just lazy as f*, so I am not doing it and therefore should not rant. But I am really curious what's behind this pricing, other than higher tax than on milk.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Logistics. It's just oat water but it comes from far away. Just make it yourself.

You would make your own oatmeal, right? Who tf would buy premade oatmeal with the water already in it? If a few people start doing it themselves, they will drop the price of the ready-made stuff.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I've done this before and it is very simple, but you do need a blender. It works in a pinch but I'd much rather just buy a carton of it.

The problem I've found is that it's very tricky to filter properly. If you don't filter it at all then you end up with a grainy product, but it's far too thick to go through something like a coffee filter without clogging it up so you need to use cheesecloth.

Another problem is storage. Making it in small quantities as you need it is fine as long as you're ok with it being room temperature, but if you want to make enough to keep in the fridge then the oats are going to begin to separate from the water almost immediately unless you add an emulsifier.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

There's a couple reasons behind this:

Economies of scale. Oatmilk is not nearly as big of a market and therefore tends to be more expensive per gallon
Dairy subsidies. Dairy farmers can be pretty heavily subsidized, depending on the country, making the milk artificially cheap
Marketing. Oatmilk is mostly consumed by upper middle class (sub)urban folks who have enough disposable income to worry about things like animal welfare and the environment, and thus are willing to pay a premium for eco-friendly products. Companies know this so a lot of oatmilk is positioned and priced as a premium product.

In a way it's sort of disgusting that capitalism is exploiting your desire to save the planet for extra profits, however that's how it is generally designed to operate: nothing happens unless there is a profit to be made from it.