politics

Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition.

Bring that complain to the producers of "oat milk" and similar products. Producing a gallon of oat milk has ingredience costs of about 20ct. You know what you are paying for it in the supermarket. Go figure who gets rich on people who are looking for "alternatives".

A lot of arguments see to be that it tastes better. I don’t want to argue subjective tastes. However, in terms of economics, the better taste would mean that there is no need to subsidize it. The market would bear the additional cost if the taste and utility of milk is there. The question posed is still relevant: why do we subsidize it? Everyone arguing how much better it is than the alternatives are just proving the point that we shouldn’t be subsidizing it.

This is too narrow. Why do we subsidize food at all? America is supposed to be free market capitalists, right? Subsidies don't fit that definition?

(in reality, farmers need some sort of support system, I believe, as do we all, but subsidies don't fit the free market capitalism narrative.)

Because cows eat corn and cornfields have more power than people in America

Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well,

That number, like all world population numbers is heavily skewed by just how many people are in China. The mutation that causes adults to continue to produce the enzyme to digest lactose is less common among those of Asian descent.

(Globally, alt-milks aren’t new on the scene—coconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, which is thousands of years old.)

...and there are medieval European recipes that call for almond milk, and tofu is made from soy milk and there are written sources referencing it roughly a thousand years old. You're right, none of these are really new on the scene, aside from maybe oat milk.

A 2021 report by industry analysts Mintec Limited and Frost Procurement Adventurer also notes that, while the inputs for dairy (such as cattle feed) for dairy are a little more expensive than typical plant-milk ingredients, plant alternatives face higher manufacturing costs.

I feel like your first paragraph completely ignored this aspect. You squeeze milk out of a cow. Nut and bean milks require grinding the stuff up with a lot of water, mixing it thoroughly, then squeezing the wet pulp through a fine filter (for small batches something like a cheesecloth) to separate the milk from the pulp.

Commercial oat milk requires further processing, because just pulping, mixing with water and straining oats does not produce anything appetizing at all.

In the United States, meanwhile, it’s a waiting game to see whether the government or corporations drive down alt-milk costs. Currently, Sumner says, plant-based milk producers operate under an assumption that “price isn’t the main thing” for their buyers—as long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But it’s going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.

That's not a bad assumption on their part - people who are deeply concerned with the emissions involved in producing their food tend to be richer, in no small part because poor folks are going to put price first, because they have to think about how food fits into their budget more.

Also cheese - you can't make cheese from plant milks. Well, you can try, but that's basically how you make tofu, and performing a similar process on other plant milks creates something closer to tofu than cheese.

Milk, cream, cheese (most of what milk ends up as), and butter, are all delicious, despite the corrupting economic and political arrangements. Is the quantity consumed appropriate? The US diet is demanding.

The article sort of glosses over the input required to grow plant-based milk products effectively at scale, and the fact they don't constantly produce like cows, the ways the crops can be destroyed and what's required to protect them. A byproduct of dairy farming is manure, often used to fertilize vegetable crops, but the nitrogen fixation used in synthetic fertilizers requires a lot of energy input as well.

I'm curious what makes milk bad for you. Could someone explain this? I understand why it is bad for the climate, but not why it's bad for human health provided you can digest lactose properly.

I'm allergic to milk, so fuck big dairy.

Because it's a relatively new competitor on the market that doesn't have the same agricultural base as dairy products which warrants subsidies aimed at keeping farmers from losing their shirts during lean seasons?