Science Vs - Soy, Almond, Oat Milks: Are They Udder Bull?

Episode Date: October 4, 2018

Moooove over, dairy milk: the alternative milk craze is here. But are they more than just a frothy fad? To find out which is best for the planet, we speak to environmental researcher Joseph Poore. Check out the transcript right here: http://bit.ly/2P3H6c9 Selected references: Joseph’s study which has a comparison of soy and dairy milk, and his database which includes all his raw data and references Systematic review of greenhouse gases for different foods and drinks (see table 9 for milks)Lots of studies here on the water footprint of different crops and animal productsA report comparing the environmental impacts of almond, oat, rice, soy and dairy milksCredits: This episode was produced by Meryl Horn with help from Wendy Zukerman, along with Rose Rimler and Odelia Rubin. Our senior producer is Kaitlyn Sawrey. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. For this episode we also spoke to Adrian Williams, Niels Jungbluth, Frank Mitloehner, and Adam Drewnowski.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. Like, what is this thing we call time? Why does altruism exist? And where is Jan Eleven? I'm here, astrophysicist and co-host, ready for anything. That's right. I'm bringing in the A-team. So brace yourselves.

Get ready to learn. I'm Jan Eleven. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is... Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology, and what do they think?

I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet Media. This is the show that pits facts against froth. On today's mini episode, milks. Last week, we looked at veganism and it got us thinking about all these different kinds of vegan milks out there.

I mean, it's become an ordeal just to order coffee. If you're not going for dairy, there's soy, almond, rice, oat, macadamia, cashews and even hemp milk. These milks claim to be better for the environment than good old-fashioned dairy, and they are really catching on. Sales of these alternative milks have more than doubled in the last decade. In fact, this alternative milk craze has gotten so big that the FDA recently stepped in to question whether we should call them milks at all. After all, almonds don't lactate. That's utterly ridiculous.

Now, rather than curds and whey in on that debate, we are going to call all these alternative milks schmilks. And today, we're going to tackle their claim that they are great for the environment. And we found the perfect scientist to help answer this question. And we schmilked him for all he's worth. My name's Joseph Poore, P-O-O-R-E. Is that, you know, related to the fact that you study milk? Because you pour milk? No.

I think too many puns. Moving on. If you just listened to our episode on veganism, you'll remember Joseph. He's a researcher at the University of Oxford. And his team created this huge database filled with info on how different milk farms affect the environment. He just published a paper that looked at dairy and soy milk,

and then we asked him to also pull the numbers from his database on three other popular schmilks, oat, rice and almond. And by the way, his database has a lot of farms. There is about 7,800 farmers who produce rice, 150 oat farmers and about 200 farmers who produce nuts. Altogether, the data you're about to hear is from 10,000 farms from around the world. This is the biggest study that we could find on the topic. So when it comes to the environment,

if you look at dairy milk, almonds, soy, oat and rice, who's doing the most harm here? Which is the worst? The worst on every indicator is dairy milk. Yeah, while different farms do different things, on average, schmilks, all the schmilks, eat dairy. And this shouldn't come as a shock because last week we mentioned that eating meat and animal products is typically worse for the environment than going vegan. But what we didn't say is that milk is a big part of the reason why. So, for example, making dairy products like milk, it uses a ton of land.

Now, globally, dairy cows graze 830 million hectares of land. So that's an area the size of Brazil. Oh my gosh. Yeah, it is. It's shocking, isn't it? It's just a huge amount of land just to provide milk and milk products. Joseph found that globally, it takes on average nine times more land to make a glass of dairy milk than any of the other schmilks. But if you dig deeper into this schmilk world, it becomes pretty clear that all these schmilks

have their own environmental problems. So we're going to take a look at almond, rice, soy and oat milk, one by one, to figure out how environmentally friendly they really are. And let's start with almond milk. You might have heard that making it uses a ton of water. And Joseph found this is actually true. Almonds, you have to irrigate them. And given that almost all of America's almonds are produced in California,

where there's tremendous pressure on water resources, almond probably does rank worst. Another worldwide study found that almonds can take at least four times more water to grow than rice, oats or soybeans. So now we know almond milk's Achilles heel, water. Next up, rice. Now it uses a lot of water too, but where it flopped was greenhouse gases. In Joseph's study, producing rice milk emitted the most greenhouse gases, although not by much. And that's because of this really surprising thing that happens when you grow rice in paddies.

So to grow rice, you typically need to flood it, and in the flood water, the bacteria create methane. That's right. Innocent looking rice has a dirty little secret. Bacteria and other microorganisms that burp out methane live in the soil where rice is grown. And when the fields are flooded, these bacteria go crazy and end up pumping out more and more methane. And all that flooding leads to another big issue for rice. Fertiliser that's applied to crops can run off the land and enter water bodies. When the water runs off the paddy, it can take fertiliser with it, spreading it into the environment.

This has happened in one of China's largest lakes and it wreaked havoc on the natural ecosystem. And while lots of crops have this runoff problem, Joseph found that making rice milk creates about three times more fertilizer runoff than any of our other schmilks. Okay, so that leaves soy and oat. What's their vice? Turns out, it's land. Joseph found that to make a glass of these schmilks, on average, you need to use more land than almond or rice. And some soy is grown in the Amazon, which means we could be cutting down rainforest to get our milk. So with all these things to consider, almond milk guzzling water, rice milk burping out greenhouse

gases, soy and oat milk eating up land, which is the best schmilk if you want to save the environment? So who's the winner? Would I... Yeah, that's the sound of Joseph really not wanting to choose. Because he says... I think you're pulling at straws. I think they're all so... They're all such low impacts compared to dairy milk. You know, if we chose to change to any of them, it would generally be beneficial.

I can't give it to you. Sorry, I can't give you a clear winner. OK, so Joseph doesn't want to pick one schmilk to rule them all because even though they all have their environmental vices, dairy, he says, is just so much worse. It produces more greenhouse gas emissions, uses more water and more land than all the schmilks. And Joseph says that these problems with dairy,

they can really add up. To make his point, he gave us a kind of extreme example and crunched the numbers on what would happen if everyone in the world switched from dairy to soy. He said it would save half a billion hectares of land, almost a billion tonnes of greenhouse gases and just heaps of water. It would save 250 kilometres cubed of irrigation water a year. So that's the same as if everybody in the world stopped having showers or baths for

a year. Oh my gosh. It's so funny because in New York, it just almost feels like this silly little thing. Like now people go, I just don't know what milk to pick. And then when you hear those numbers, I don't know. I'm just thinking like, this is actually serious. It's really serious. They are very surprising numbers. Switching to plant-based milks does appear to be a positive thing for the planet. So when it comes to the environment,

it's not utterly ridiculous to reach for these schmilks. That's science versus milks. Schmilks. This episode was produced by Meryl Horne, with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, along with Rose Rimler and Odelia Rubin. Our senior producer is Caitlin Sorey. We're edited by Blythe Terrell.

Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mix and sound design by Emma Munger. Music written by Emma Munger and Bobby Lord. For this episode, we also spoke to Adrian Williams, Niels Jungbloth, Frank Mitlohner and Adam Drunowski. Thank you so much for your input. Next week, we're tackling gentrification. Is it really that bad?

Every time I move to a neighbourhood, gentrification seems to find it and I end up getting kicked out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.