The Jordan Harbinger Show - 1372: Milk | Skeptical Sunday

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

Oat, almond, soy, dairy—the milk aisle is a culture war in your coffee. But what's best? Jessica Wynn brings all the truth to the yard on Skeptical Sunday!Welcome to Skeptical Sunday, a special edition of The Jordan Harbinger Show where Jordan and a guest break down a topic that you may have never thought about, open things up, and debunk common misconceptions. This time around, we’re joined by writer and researcher Jessica Wynn!Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1372On This Week's Skeptical Sunday:On nutrition, dairy still wins — about eight grams of high-quality protein per cup versus one to two for most oat milks, plus it's the cheapest protein you can pour. Switching to plant milk to feel healthier can quietly cost you the very nutrition you assumed tagged along.The viral "gallons per almond" stat is engineered outrage — framed per nut, never per glass, and never beside dairy. Full life-cycle studies show dairy actually uses more total water and carries the biggest footprint of all. When a scary stat trends as an industry loses share, ask who funded it.Branding, not merit, decides what's in your cup — soy and pea rival dairy on protein, and hemp and pea are the cleanest options environmentally, yet all three barely sell. Pea milk's real handicap is its name. The market rewards the familiar and coffee-friendly, not the nutritionally best.The war over the word "milk" is mostly theater — the DAIRY PRIDE Act has stalled since 2017 because the FDA's own focus groups found nobody confuses oat milk with cow's milk. It was never about deception. It's about protecting the billions in market share dairy lost fair and square.There's no single "right" milk, only the one that fits your priority. Want nutrition? Soy or pea. Environment? Oat, pea, or hemp. Best latte? Oat or macadamia. Digest dairy fine? Enjoy it. For kids under five, ask a pediatrician, not a barista. Consistency beats purity.Connect with Jordan on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. If you have something you'd like us to tackle here on Skeptical Sunday, drop Jordan a line at [e-mail] and let him know!Connect with Jessica Wynn at Instagram (and Instagram!), and subscribe to her newsletters: Between the Lines and Where the Shadows Linger!And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors: SimpliSafe: 50% off + 1st month free: simplisafe.com/jordanChime: Open an account in two minutes: chime.com/jhsZipRecruiter: Learn more at ziprecruiter.com/jordanConciergeMD: 20% off all services/memberships: conciergemdla.com/jordan, code JORDANSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Jessica Wynn. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers. On Sundays, though, we have Skeptical Sunday. We're a rotating, Sunday. We're a rotating, guest co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic such as circumcision sovereign citizens diet supplements the lottery crystal healing diet pills energy drinks and more if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show i suggest our episode starter packs these are collections of some of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation psychology disinformation crime and cults and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show just visit jordan harbinger slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started.

Today we're talking about milk, something I thought I understood, actually, but, you know, cow, white, cereal, occasional mustache, done. And then one day a bunch of other milks, air quotes, milks, showed up on the shelf, many of which don't come from cows, and all of which claim to be healthier, better for the planet, and morally superior to classic cows' milk. Meanwhile, half of America's dairy farms have disappeared. The industry is fighting the FDA over the definition of the word milk. and somehow what you pour into your coffee now says something about who you are.

It's a culture war in your coffee. So how do we really know which milk to drink from health to environment to what even counts as milk these days? It's a bit milky. Joining me to dip into the creamy culture of coffee's best friend is writer and researcher Jessica Winn. So, Jess, this is near and dear to my heart because I was in New York a couple weeks ago and I went to get coffee and they're like, what kind of milk did you want in there?

And I was like, oh, this is no longer the, you know, 2% skim hole question. I mean, this is, there's a smorgas board of options. And I said, which should I choose? And it was Brooklyn, right? So the barista was like, well, regular milk, you know, the factory farming. Yeah. It was like, meanwhile, my coffee is getting cold and she's telling me about factory farming. And then she's like, well, but oat milk, which, you know, I thought was kind of like the legit one.

First of all, it doesn't taste that good in coffee, my opinion only. And then she's like, oh, but actually it's really bad. because it uses a lot of water or something like that. I'm like, soy milk, and she's like, fine, as long as you're not worried about your hormones, which I obviously am, because, you know, who isn't? So I was like, you know what? Black coffee, it is. And she gave me a look like I was some kind of barbarian, and I paid my $17 for my Brooklyn

coffee and left. But just, let's start simple. What is milk? What is it? Again, this would have been an easy question a few years ago, but now I think I got you. Yeah, and I think that barista is a problem. perfect example of all the misinformation we get from social media and things. But, you know, dairy milk, it's arguably the most structurally complex liquid we consume. It's a colloidal dispersion,

you know, an oil and water emulsion. Okay. So it's these spherical nanoparticles, these tiny protein calcium clusters, and they're suspended alongside fat globules in water. And the fat globules, alone have a three-layer membrane structure. This sounds very futuristic for something that is not futuristic whatsoever. Okay, so the fat globules and my 2% have a three-layer membrane. And I thought I was just having a snack over here. Apparently, I'm drinking space-age material over here. It sounds a lot more complicated than it is.

They're just nerdy words, you know? Yeah, facts. I mean, but it's not far off that it's a little space-agey when you get under the microscope. But what matters here is the composition. So dairy milk is roughly 87% water. And then 4 to 5% lactose, 3 to 4% fat, and 3% protein. And that protein, especially casein, is what makes dairy nutritionally unique. So if dairy is unique, is cow milk actually the best animal milk?

Well, not necessarily. So sheep milk has almost twice the protein and significantly more calcium than cow's milk. Although that doesn't hold true across every single sheep breed. Every mammal species evolved milk for its own babies. So they're all slightly different nutritional packages. But casein is the protein that is found in every animal milk. So Casey and my cells are so stable, they don't break down when you boil milk, right? So that's why milk doesn't clump when you heat it.

Oh, okay. I thought that was kind of a physics. That's interesting. So like an egg when it gets even slightly warm, starts to turn white and gets the clumps in there and milk doesn't do it. That's cool. Why don't we drink sheep milk then? Maybe there's less of it. Yeah.

Well, some people do. Yeah. But they're like herders in Mongolia or something. I mean, why don't we generally do that? I guess that's something I'll look up later because twice the protein, count me in. Although people didn't really care about protein until five minutes ago. in the, you know, human history, right? We didn't really think about it.

It seems like that. It's a good marketing thing, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I drink these protein shakes that are milk. And like you said, it's 87% water. I think what they do is they just filter out a ton of the water. And it's only, let's say it's twice as thick as regular milk. So you barely notice it.

It's just slightly thick milk. And they probably add a little bit away, but it's almost just like slightly thick milk. And it's got 42 grams of protein and whatever 10 ounces, which is crazy. Right? That's like the most you can absorb for muscle building at once, maybe. I wonder if we'll get to the point, like, with laundry detergent, you know, it's mostly water. Now you can buy those sheets.

Yeah, that's what we have. Someday we'll just get like. Yeah, I'm just going to chew on a tide pot of protein. And I'll be set for the day. Yeah. Less dishes, I guess. Yeah. All right.

You know, I mean, milk is 400 million years of evolution here. Yeah. Wow. Okay. How does the FDA define milk, that fancy paragraph above, or what? Yeah. So the FDA states milk is, and this is a quote from their website, is the lacteal secretion practically free from colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows. Poetry. But wait, only cows. So the FDA, they never met a goat, I guess. The FDA works in mysterious ways, right? So yes, goat milk has also been consumed for thousands of years and is still the primary dairy milk in many parts of the world. But the FDA here, the definition, it's not describing every kind of milk. It's defining what can legally be labeled as milk in the United States. And if it's anything other than a cow, like a goat, sheep, even a yak, you know, the label, has to say so. Only cow's milk gets to be called just milk. And there are all kinds of milk

types at the store, right? There's almost like a new trendy milk every other week, something I haven't even heard of. Right. It seems like it. I mean, you mentioned earlier, you know, oat milk just kind of appeared. And it didn't really seem appetizing at first mentioned to a lot of people, but, you know, now look at how normalized it is. Yeah, it's serious. It's like I blinked and oat milk was everywhere. Because I remember, I used to love it. I actually don't like it at all now. I don't know what happened there, but I used to order Oatley, and I had to buy it it from, you know, when you can't find your weird specialty thing that you want, so you have to call a warehouse that only sells a pallet of it at one time? I had to buy that. A milkshed.

Oh, yeah. I had to, this is like 2016 or something like that. I remember I was like, I want Oatley that they have at coffee shops, and Jen did her amazing thing that she does, and she goes, here's the problem. They only sell it in commercial quantities where there's a minimum order quantity. So we did a thing with a coffee shop nearby where we were like, are you going to order your six pallets of Oatley? Because I'll take like one of them. And they were like, okay, weirdo. So we had a palette of oat milk in my garage for basically until the shelf life was like, hey, bro, we're done here. Oh no, you were the weird oat milk guy. Yeah, we were the weird oat milk. And now I'm like, oat milk, no, I will never drink that. I just, I can't stand. I think I'm oat milked out.

But anyway, oat milk was everywhere, and that was pushed at every coffee shop. But now there's all kinds of bizarre niche nut milks and whatnot. Yeah, for sure. I mean, oat milk was invented in Sweden in the 1990s by a food scientist named Ricard Osti at Lund University. And his idea was really simple. Create something for lactose intolerant people that has a similar consistency to milk. And that stayed niche for decades.

That's why it was hard for you to buy it just for the house. But then between 2018 and 2019, somewhere in there, United States sales grew by roughly 700%. Oh, maybe that's because they let you buy it not by the pallet to the truckload, literally, at the time. It was because it was right around before and when I had a kid. So it was 28 or 2019, I had to buy a palette. And then it was like after that, you could just get it at the store like a normal person. And then, of course, they didn't want it anymore. But, wow, 700% growth in one year.

Why did everyone become lactose intolerant at the same time? I don't understand. No, but three things happened at the same time. So coffee shops realized oat milk steamed and foamed better than most plant-based alternatives. Consumers were becoming more interested in sustainable foods. and Oatley marketed it less like a dietary substitute and more like this cool lifestyle brand. You know, oat milk didn't just become available.

It became really fashionable. That is very true. I see also Brooklyn Burista, right? Put it in a matte carton, hire a trendy, good graphic designer. You can make oatmeal cool. What a world. Dumbasses like me, buy the palate. It's a thing.

Yeah, branding's powerful. And the overall plant-based milk market was worth over $17 billion in 2018, which is impressive. No pun intended. That's crazy. $17 billion in just plant, not dairy, not milk, plant-based milk. So that's an absolute, well, literally tons and tons and tons of oat and soy milk, just tons and tons. Well, that's before oat milk was on all the shelves. So by 2023, 15% of all U.S. milk sales were plant-based.

And oat milk's taste, texture, and just the timing of it, it just perfectly placed it as, like, the top cow. Yeah, okay. That was utterly unnecessary. So why oat and not almond, soy, coconut? I forgot about coconut. They've been around so much longer. So why did oat trend harder? It's just coffee performance.

You know, soy milk curdles or separates in hot. acidic coffee. It is yucky when that happens, isn't it? Yeah. The formulation just doesn't work. And then almond milk is really thin. It is thin. It doesn't really change the color of the coffee. That's right. It doesn't feel like it doesn't really do what it's supposed to do until you add too much and then you have too much. This tracks. Yeah. And then oat milk turns out it doesn't split and it steams into that creamy, silky foam people expect from dairy. And the environmental story that they pushed on us is that it was

cleaner than almonds and soybeans. So the taste and the look plus the narrative that wins markets. Walk me through how oat milk is actually made because the carton say, hey, it's just oats and water. And I'm like, okay, but I've put oats in other things and they don't just dissolve

into a uniform. So what's going on? Imagine putting oatmeal in your coffee. Yeah. Well, have you ever had Musley? It's kind of more common in Europe. But like, yeah, yeah. It doesn't The whole point is the oats kind of stick around. You could do overnight oats where you put them in milk and that you leave them for 12 or 24 hours

and that's still oats. Like they're still intact and chewy. Still tell. Right. So what else is going on here? So for the milk, the process is to mill the oats and then mix it with water. And then they do something called enzymatic hydrolysis.

That is not wholesome breakfast beverage language. So what does that mean? It's just adding an enzyme. and it's called alpha amylase. So it breaks the starch and the oats into simpler sugars, glucose, and maltose. And this keeps it from turning into paste and it creates sweetness without added sugar.

So the sweetness comes from a byproduct of an industrial process. Correct. And then it's filtered, homogenized, and usually blended with oils and emulsifiers for texture. That part doesn't make it onto the carton, but that makes sense

because oats don't really have fat, so you've got to figure that whole thing out. Exactly. Unlike almonds or soybeans, oats don't contain enough fat to make something milk-like on their own. So the fat structure has to be built in. The globules we mentioned for dairy milk, that's exactly what gives oat milk its creamy texture. And they're actually constructed from water, sunflower oil, emulsifiers, and other little additives by the manufacturers. So I'm drinking oat water with engineered fat. Yeah, I mean, welcome to food science. Yeah. And to be fair, I'd note that pasteurized, homogenized dairy, it's also heavily processed and engineered.

Yeah, that's true. It's not like, oh, one's natural and the other one's just chemicals, which is kind of what you hear about from when people are competing in the space. Like, hey, this is just, you know, straight from the cow and then we boil out the infections and stuff in the antibiotics. Yeah, but like each side is trying to be like ours is more natural and it's like, nah, you're processing the crap out of all of this stuff and probably thankfully so, rightfully so.

So what is the difference compared to I've seen fermented oat milk at the store? That's got to taste revolting, although I haven't tried it. Yeah, it's a terrible name, but it's nutritionally interesting. So if you ferment oat milk with probiotic strains like lactobacillus and bipedobacterium, you improve digestibility and micronutrient bioavailability. So the B vitamins increase, the beta glucan, which is a cholesterol lowering fiber, that stays intact and antioxidants become more usable. So the solution to oat milk's nutritional gaps is to let bacteria kind of pregame it.

And that's what yogurt and kaffir are, right? Dairy letting microbes do some of the work first and then it's supposed to be like really good for you. Yeah, absolutely. You know, fermentation is ancient processing, and sometimes processing improves food. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes processing is just a way to make junk more marketable, but sometimes it's genuinely useful, like turning milk into a food more people can tolerate. So with fermented oat milk, you keep the fiber, you gain the probiotics, and you improve the bioavailability. That science is genuinely exciting. The market just hasn't caught up. because nobody's figured out how to make fermented oat milk sound appetizing to a mass audience. Yeah, I'll workshop that predigested by helpful microbes for your convenience. So fermented oat milk is basically oat yogurt that you can drink. I mean, in spirit, sure, yeah. So nutritional comparison, dairy versus oat, no marketing nonsense.

Who wins on this? I mean, it depends entirely on what you're measuring. So on protein, dairy wins. It's not even close. cow's milk has about eight grams of protein per cup versus one to two for most oat milks. And the protein quality really matters. So the DIAAS, which you'll see on labels, is the digestible, indispensable amino acid score, which measures how usable the protein actually is.

And that runs between 123 to 144 for dairy, and then 57 to 67 to 67. for oats. So not even understanding really what those numbers are representing. You can see it's double at least. Okay. So oats are deficient in lysine, which is an essential amino acid. Your body just can't synthesize. Too bad they can't just add that in there. Right. I don't know. Maybe that doesn't even help. So people switching from dairy to oat milk thinking they're getting equivalent protein are not getting equivalent protein. No, no. They'll have to go elsewhere for protein. But Oat milk does have genuine strengths. So the beta-glucan, that soluble dietary fiber we mentioned, that has strong clinical evidence for LDL reduction at meaningful intake levels. So most of the strongest

trials used oat bran or concentrated beta-glucan rather than oat milk itself. But a smaller set of studies on oat milk specifically found that roughly three-quarters of a liter of oat milk daily for five weeks, meaningfully reduces your LDL cholesterol. I mean, that's real. Yeah. And oat milk's also higher in vitamin E, potassium, and iron. It's lower and saturated fat. It has no cholesterol.

And it can be higher in other micronutrients, depending on the manufacturer and the fortification. Do get any calcium from oat milk? I know from commercials in the 80s that milk is loaded with calcium, and that's important. Yeah, right. I mean, it's complicated. So oats can contain compounds.

that bind to calcium and block absorption. So even when fortified, bioavailability is definitely lower than dairy, where casein enhances absorption. So the calcium is there technically. You just, your body's not going to use it as efficiently. So oat milk, not great for growing kids or whatever instead of regular milk. It's not appropriate as a complete milk replacement. So pediatric groups, they caution parents.

who want to raise their kids dairy-free, that protein quality and calcium are especially important for kids. So they need to do really deliberate planning. The protein quality, amino acid profile, calcium content, none of it is adequate for early childhood development, which is fine if you understand you need to supply those things from other foods. So this is a conversation parents need to have with a pediatrician, not with some random barista. Yeah, I guess some people see the word milk and just assume it, yeah, it's the same thing. It's made out of different stuff. So is it different with the OG milk replacement, alternate milk, whatever you want to call it, soy milk, is that better?

Well, soy milk is the nutritional gold standard of plant-based milks. So it's the only plant-based milk that genuinely rivals dairy on protein quality. There's about eight grams of complete protein per cup, and it includes all nine essential amino acids. It's naturally rich in potassium. It's often fortified with calcium, vitamin D, B12, all things people who are dairy-free need. And it's the best for someone who just can't or won't drink dairy. It seems like it's fallen out of fashion, though, compared to oat milk and almond milk. You just don't hear about it anymore. I know for sure. I mean, it's dropped from about 25% of the plant milk market to about 10%. And there's two reasons for this. First, the taste.

Some people find it chalky, particularly in coffee. And then second, there's this whole phytoestrogen controversy. So soy contains compounds called isoflavones that can weakly mimic estrogen in the body. That led to years of rumors that drinking soy milk would lower testosterone to make men more feminine or even cause breast growth. This is, I just want everybody to know this is ridiculous. I remember researching this because, you know, fitness stuff. And you have to drink so much. So you'd have to drink like an totally ungodly amount of soy milk, really.

And you'd also have to be eating tons of tofu and maybe if you were super vegan and only ate soy products, you could run into some sort of thing with this. But like if you're just throwing this in your coffee. Super vegan. Yeah. The worst superhero. The worst kind. Yeah.

The lamest superhero. Sorry, vegans, I'm just kidding. But if you're throwing this in your coffee or you're having a couple glasses a day, you're not growing boobs off of this. Sure, but the dairy industry certainly didn't discourage those fears. And they even pushed the narrative that cow milk is good, soy milk is girly. And a lot of people trust that. They don't do their own research. But study after study has found that moderate soy consumption, it doesn't have feminizing

effects in men. It might even provide cardiovascular benefits. So the science has moved on, but unfortunately, the reputation and cultural fear did not. That must be where the, right, the insults, soy boy. So it's like, oh, you're just really soft or, you know, emotional. So soy lost the popularity contest despite being the nutritional heavyweight. Interesting. Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the irony is, like you said, it's just outrageous amounts of soy. You'd have to be. consuming to see even a little hormonal effect. The Harvard School of Public Health, they say moderate soy consumption is 100% safe.

Wow. And like I said, multiple studies do. Much of this episode is water, marketing, and questionable additives. Speaking of which, I'm going to go grab a glass of that because I'm better than you. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Simply Safe. Most home security systems react after the damage is already happening, after the window breaks,

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You know, it's funny, you'll get a guy who injects anabolic steroids, and then you order soy for your milk for your coffee, and he's like, dude, be careful. That's going to mess up your hormones. And I'm like, hey, man, you're growing boobs without soy. I don't know if you should be warning me about my morning coffee over here. Maybe handle your weird nipples that have been growing, that are an extra inch long. since you started cycling on with whatever it is you're taking. Anyway, so soy milk is probably the nutritional benchmark,

but almond milk was the king of nut milks before oat milk, and then the internet suddenly declared an ecological crime of some, and unfortunately I played a part in that, I think, oops, because I think we did an episode on almonds and just, you know, raked him over the coals. Yeah, again, I mean, it's the dairy industry coming after these alternatives. So almond milk had about 76,

percent of the plant-based market at its peak. And then big dairy put out this successful smear campaign. Yes, almonds requires significant amounts of water. A commonly cited figure is around three to four gallons per almond. I see. So that sounds catastrophic coming from a California standpoint. It sounds catastrophic because it's framed per almond, not per glass, not per liter, not per gram of protein, and not compared to dairy. So most almond milk is about 2% almonds, which means the water embedded in a serving is far lower than multiplying three gallons by whatever number you imagine in your latte. And here's what rarely travels with that viral statistic. Dairy production also requires substantial water, not just for the cows to drink,

but for irrigating the feed crops. So when research, run full life cycle analysis, dairy always 100% of the time uses more total water per liter than almond milk. Wow. Okay. So why does everybody always pick on almonds and how much water they are using? I mean, because the optics are brutal, but optics are not the same as comparative data. So sure, almonds are a thirsty crop and around 80% of the world's almonds are grown here in drought-prone California. And as plant-based milk started taking meaningful market share, environmental critiques of specific alternatives became politically and economically useful. Big dairy is a really powerful lobby. So the water statistic isn't fake. It's just

manipulated to demonize almond milk, basically. Dairy has really good PR. If we did a campaign about dairy's water usage, it would be way worse than what almonds do. So in competitive markets, There's incomplete statistics that travel faster than nuanced ones. You know, look, almond milk's not environmentally perfect. No crop is. It's more water-intensive than pee or oat milk. I mean, that part's real. But framing almond milk as uniquely irresponsible while treating dairy as environmentally neutral,

it's just not supported by the data. So if you compare greenhouse gases, land use, and total water footprint, dairy remains the most resource intensive option. Wow. So the real story is not that almonds are villains. It's that milk is a multi-billion dollar publicity machine. For the record, I'm now back to Team Dairy. Like, I just drink tons of milk.

Which is fine. Yeah. I like me as milk. I don't know. And I need the protein. And it's like, it's really hard to get elsewhere, unless you're going to eat a ton of chicken, which, like, is that better?

I don't really think so. Then you're really worrying about the source of your protein. Yeah. Chickens are treated, I mean, this goes along with your factory farming, but I mean, they're just treated like you couldn't treat a living thing worse if you tried. I don't know, maybe. Back to dairy. If you see, yeah, if you see an environmental statistic that goes viral right when a category threatens an incumbent industry, it's worth asking who's funding that infographic that's popping up in your feed. Because almond milk is still over 70% of plant-based milk sales because people like how it tastes in their coffee. Okay, so if almond is the environmental controversy, what's coconut thing? I, you know, I actually do like coconut milk, but it's disgusting in coffee. I don't put in my coffee. Do they even offer that at cafes?

I can't imagine. They do, yeah, around here they do. And I'm thinking, what weirdo orders that? It's like dropping an egg in your coffee. It's so strange. Yeah, yeah, they must waste a lot. But coconut milk's really different. So the carton version, not the canned coconut milk, that's the only,

plant milk genuinely high and saturated fat. So there's about four grams per cup. That's really close to whole dairy. I'm not sure where you're going with this. Is saturated fat good for you? I thought it was not good for you. I mean, there's an ongoing debate about whether coconuts, medium chain triglycerides, behave differently in the body than saturated animal fat. And the evidence is really mixed. I can't find a concrete definitive answer on it. So if you're swissue. Switching milks for heart health reasons, coconut milk, probably not the best choice. I see. Yeah, but I guess if you're vegan, you don't eat any animal products at all, maybe you need some saturated fat and coconut milk is a place to get, okay. So is coconut milk

allergen free? Because I feel like I've heard that before. So better if you have a soy or nut allergy, you can go with coconut milk. I guess people like that have unique concerns. Coconut milk is just so complicated. It means technically coconut is classified as a tree nut by the FDA, but most people with tree nut allergies, they tolerate it. And flavor-wise, it's so good in curries. It can be really good in smoothies and desserts and coffee, though. No, thank you. So it's a delicious specialty product pretending to be a milk substitute, in my opinion. Rice milk is another one that I feel like used to be, it had a five-minute in the sunshine kind of moment. I don't see that anywhere anymore. I forgot it existed, actually, until this episode.

I know it'll be like pushed back on the shelf at the market or something. I'm like thinking who buys this? What is this even for? I mean, now we're getting into these niche milks. So they're not trying to beat dairy and accommodate everyone. They're trying to solve specific problems. And rice milk is like this forgotten middle milk child or something. Indeed, yeah. But it's the most hypoallergenic option.

So there's no soy, there's no nuts, there's no gluten. That's its niche. but nutritionally it's pretty weak. There's almost no protein. It has the highest carbohydrates of the plant milks. And anyone who's had it knows it's bizarrely thin. But the big problem with it, though, is that rice absorbs more arsenic from soil than other grains. Oh, no.

Okay. I mean, don't be scared about that. Yeah, is that one of those if you eat 10,000 tons of it in a year? Exactly. You'll get arsenic poisoning. Like, it's like the soy thing. Right. There's also arsenic in apple seeds and cherry pits and things, you know, but.

Yeah. So, but if it's a staple in your house, it's just best to pace yourself. I thought there was cyanide in apple seeds. Is that what it is, not arsenic? I don't know. There's something that if you ate a million of them, they would kill you. Yeah. Okay.

But you'd explode from the amount. I talked about this with Neil deGrasse Tyson years ago. I think it's called the LD50 or something, right? And it's like, oh, there's round up in these flavors of Ben and Jerry. ice cream or something. And he's like, your stomach and gut would explode physically from the amount that you have to eat before you got the amount of whatever chemical from Roundup could even be detected in your bloodstream, basically. And he's like, oh, and by the way, the sugar would kill you well before any of those things happen. Right. So it's like an unrealistic thing to

worry about. Yeah, it's a scary word. Yeah. They told me that Boba from bubble tea also has heavy metals in it and stuff. I'm like, well, that's kind of terrifying. Anyway, rice milk, so good in rice pudding, I suppose. Or maybe that's the buttload of butter they put in there now that I think about it. Yeah, I don't really like rice pudding. I don't know if it's the milk. Yeah. That's like one of my favorite things. But anything's good with enough butter, right? So, true. I mean, rice milk, it's good if you have allergies, but not good for texture. So the creamiest nut milk is cashew milk. I was thinking when you were researching, your Google targeted ads must be so weird doing these episodes.

And it's so funny how they change for each episode. Like you're looking for creamy nut milk. God knows what's popping up in your ads now, but it's like human trafficking, creamy nut milk, factory farming. Like their Google's got a, there's a red flag on your Google search. Oh, there's a file on me. Yeah. I've had cashew milk. It's surprisingly creamy, like you said.

and I can't help but think it's got a crap load of fat in it. Yeah, I mean, it has a higher fat content than most nut milks around 10 grams per cup, which is a lot. And that gives it this genuinely thick, creamy texture, though. It's also the lowest calorie option, which is surprising because it's low in protein and carbohydrates. There's only about one gram of each per cup. How can it be high fat and low calorie? What's that? Yeah.

I mean, the trade-off is that it's not nutritionally dense. So you're getting creaminess without much else. So unfortified cashew milk, it's low in calcium at around 14 milligrams per cup versus 482 milligrams in fortified almond milk. Okay, so it's good for sauces and lattes, but not for your bones. Yeah, exactly. So we've covered the tastiest milks. What's the most nutritious milk? The most nutritionally underrated plant-based milk is pea milk.

And the biggest thing working against it is the name. The fact that it's called pea milk? Yeah, I have questions starting with why would you name it that? I mean, I get it, but come on. I mean, nutritionally, it's really excellent. It's made from yellow split peas, not the green peas you're imagining. Oh, yeah, okay. And then they're ground into flour.

The protein's extracted, and then that's mixed with water, sunflower oil, and several different kinds of vitamins. And the result has eight grams of protein per cup, which equals soy milk. And the protein is, it's a complete protein, and it's lower in carbohydrates than oat or rice milk. I don't love that they're dumping a bunch of sunflower oil in there, although I don't really know if that might not make a difference, but it just sounds kind of gross and possibly not super good for you.

Are peas high in calcium? Because isn't that what we want from our milk sometimes? It's often fortified with more calcium than dairymen. like 50% more. And it's also friendly to people with nut, soy, and gluten allergies. And nobody buys it because it's called pea milk. Got it. Branding matters.

They need to hire that Oatley graphic designer, I guess. That's right. Yeah. So the leading company that makes pea milk is called Ripple, and it avoids the word P on the front label. So does that mean that people buy hemp milk more because they think it'll get them high? I mean, is that, I know there's hemp milk, which I was weirded out by, honestly. Yeah, if that's why they're buying it, they're going to be pretty disappointed.

So hemp milk is made from hold hemp seeds. So I guess technically there are trace amounts of THC, but the content is far too low to have any psychoactive effect. So why buy hemp milk? Because it's actually a really solid milk. It naturally contains omega-3 fatty acids. It has about five grams of protein per cup. And environmentally, it's one of the better option. The problem isn't the milk.

It's that most people associate the word hemp with marijuana. Yeah, so hemp milk also has an image problem. Yeah, right. I mean, and markets reward familiar, affordable, and coffee-compatible milks. And hemp milk isn't really any of those. Same with, like, macadamia milk. Macadamia milk. That feels aspirational.

That's a milk that requires a lifestyle. But I see that popping up at the store. That's got to be super expensive. It is. And it's probably the best tasting of what they call luxury milk. Okay. I know. What a world.

It's rich. It's buttery. It's actually really great in coffee because it's high in mono-unsaturated fats. Plus, it's really low in calories. But the downside is simple. It's expensive. And it doesn't offer much protein. So you're really paying for texture, not any kind of nutrition.

I see. Okay. So it's the Rolls Royce of nut milks. Looks great. Doesn't carry much. Exactly. And if you're supplementing protein elsewhere and want the best latte texture, go from macadamia milk. It's great. But if you're drinking milk for nutrition, it's definitely not the right choice. I see. Okay. Man, so many milks. We've gone through every plant milk imaginable, but let's zoom out because when we say milk, people probably actually think dairy after all. Of course. I mean, remember, every mammal produced milk to nourish their young.

In fact, the name mammal comes from the Latin word mama, meaning breast. So there are standards like cow, sheep, and goat, but other animal milks are out there. You know, start looking on the shelves for camel milk. It's becoming this niche health product because it's naturally higher in vitamin C and lower in saturated fat than cow's milk. It's also an essential source of dairy in parts of the world where cows simply don't thrive or exist. Camel milk might be a hard sell to Americans who only see camels at the zoo and don't really think of them as farm animals. Yeah, I mean, that might be true at first,

but a camel milk latte, that would probably sell, honestly. You might be able to pull it off, sure. I mean, we tend to think cow's milk is normal because that's what we grew up with. But what's, you know, quote unquote normal, it depends on where you live. So goat and sheep are died. stateery staples in much of the Mediterranean and Middle East. And camel milk is really common across parts of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. There's actually mares milk, which is traditionally fermented into a drink called Kumis in Central Asia. And even yak milk is important in Tibet and Mongolia. So cow's milk dominates because cows produce enormous volumes efficiently, not because they're the only mammals making milk worth drinking.

I see. And people look at the dairy aisle and assume nothing's really changed. This is like a permanent untouchable thing. So is it? Yeah. I mean, well, in 1999, the United States had over 87,000 dairy farms. And by 2019, before oat milk became this household word, that number of dairy farms dropped more than half. It became closer to 34,000. So that's a huge difference in 20 years, but also opens up the market for all different kinds of animal milks. Yeah, wow. Okay, so half of the dairy farms in America disappeared.

Yeah, and per cow milk production rose dramatically. So the industry consolidated into these large industrial operations that could achieve major cost efficiencies. And new technology makes large farms, dramatically more efficient, but it's too expensive for small farms to adopt. So they shut down, you know, they either sold out or they went under. And this was all pre-COVID. What was happening at the dairy farms in 2019? So right before COVID, there were structural failures. So Dean Foods and Borden, which are two of the biggest dairy farm names, they both filed for bankruptcy. I don't know if they saw the writing on the wall, but Dean Foods filed in November 2019.

and Borden filed in January 2020. So when I grew up, being told milk was this wholesome, stable American institution, that was all just marketing BS from Big Dairy or something like that, or what? At the time, the institution was stable. It's just the business wasn't. So it had quietly been fracturing for, you know, over two decades. While Got Milk ads were playing on my TV and in magazines, which still existed, nonstop. And those were in my brain.

I mean, that marketing campaign, is legendary. And if you were a celebrity that was anybody, you had one of those. Oh, absolutely. But before we get to the marketing campaign, you know, when COVID hit, it stress test the system that was not built to pivot. And a huge share of the dairy demand flows through food service, restaurants, schools, cafeterias. So those lockdowns halted all of that overnight. And producers were left sitting on surplus. They can't rerout. fast enough. And in April 2020, right when the pandemic started, millions of gallons of milk were literally dumped because processing and distribution just couldn't absorb it, especially

in Wisconsin and New York, the major cheese states. So farmers were just pouring milk on the ground? I mean, what do you even do with it? Pretty much, the demand didn't disappear. It just moved. So instead of restaurants and cafes buying, you know, these pallets of milk, grocery stores suddenly couldn't keep it on the shelves. They needed more. And the dairy industry was built for one kind of distribution system, but just overnight, it needed a completely different one. Every milk has a downside. Dairy has methane. Almond has water used. Oat has people who won't shut up about drinking oat milk. Anyway, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by ZipRecruiter. Time is the one resource we can never make more of. That's why I'm always looking for ways to

optimize my day. I use tools that help me expedite emails, do my calls while I'm walking. Those extra minutes add up, and I'd rather spend that time with family. We all have our own time-saving hacks for everyday life. But if you're a business owner, how can you save time hiring? ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested qualified candidates first, so you save time by meeting the right people faster. And right now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Jordan. ZipRecruiter's powerful matching technology finds qualified candidates quickly. Candidates can even tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job. That means less time sorting through people who aren't the right fit and more time speaking with

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We've got a subreddit if you want to discuss the show with other show fans or even with us, me and Gabriel are in there. That's the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. See you there. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. So dairy was being dumped and shelves were empty in the same country at the same time. That's not a supply problem. That's a distribution system failure.

I remember trying to buy milk during COVID. And you'd see these people walking around with carts with 12 gallons of milk and you couldn't even get one. And I'm like, hey, manager, you need to limit this. I have babies and this guy bought 12. You know he's dumping eight of those out at the end of like the two weeks. And sure enough, I went back there in the manager a couple weeks later. I saw him and I go, hey man, you know, is COVID crazy over?

And he's like, now we're on to toilet paper. Remember that whole thing? And I said, yeah. And he goes, by the way, you were right. He's like, our dumpster has tons of people coming to buy milk again. And they'll leave like six gallons of milk that are expired just next to the dumpster. He's like, there's a hundred gallons of milk in the dumpster. We were all just out of our minds.

Yeah. And I was like, hey, man, maybe limit it to even something crazy, like four gallons of milk for a large family. You've got people buying 16 gallons of milk at a time. You don't think they're panic buying? Like, this is not normal. Right. And the system just wasn't calibrated for a split between food service and retail. And it just didn't pivot fast enough. And, you know, the balance just completely shattered. Yeah, it's weird. During that time, I went to a bar and I was chatting up the Lebanese bartender. And he's like, what can I get you? After like a chatting with him, And I go, this is weird, but I really need a glass of milk for my baby.

And he goes, I got you. And he just gave me the milk. And I was like, I would love to come back for a drink, but I can't. I got to drive back. And he's like, don't worry about it. And then I went the next day and got a drink. And he's like, do you want milk with that? And I was like, actually, yes, I do.

I need it. Yeah, because I couldn't buy it. That's so smart, though. Yeah. Well, bars always have some milk, right, for their drinks. And it doesn't get used super fast because it's a bar. And, you know, when you put milk in. a white rush it. It's a splash of hole. So I was just like, this guy's got two gallons of milk

sitting back there for sure. And he's like, I have plenty of milk. If you need any, just come in and see me. You don't have to buy a drink. He was so kind. And I remember being like this Lebanese bartender is saving my life right now because my kids, they won't sleep at the time. They wouldn't sleep without milk. I hope he lasted. Did his bar last? Yeah, yeah. It was a hotel bar. So he was all right. Yeah, I wasn't rolling into like some dive that was closed for COVID. It was a hotel and they were open. I don't know how that was allowed, but whatever. Who cares? Getting your back alley milk? Yeah, getting my back alley milk. He would fill the bottle himself, right? Because he's like, not going to give me a carton of milk. He's like, he didn't give me the bottle. He's a

bartender pouring a glass of milk for my kid into a bottle. I wish I had a video because it was quite funny. He did it with like a little flare. Like he'd raise the milk up really high and let it splash into the bottle. Like, what's that movie with Tom Cruise where he's juggling? Cocktail. Cocktail. Yeah, exactly. hilarious what a great guy that was okay so dairy was being dumped shells are empty at the same time distribution issue you're right they couldn't pivot fast enough but i want to pause on the farmers because the political conversation about dairy it tends to flip between big corporate villain and wholesome family farm and anytime i cover this i get dairy farmers who email me and they're like

hey i'm a 33 year old dairy farmer this is a family business why you got a crap all over it and i'm like Oh, I'm pretty sure that I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the faceless corporation with 10,000 cows that makes Highway 5 smell for 100 miles. But neither sort of wholesome family farm or corporate villain, neither of that captures what actually happened to real people with the whole dairy consolidation thing. Yeah, of course. I mean, the consolidation story is just genuinely complicated. So these large industrial dairies, they survived and expanded. but the small farms got squeezed out and not because of your podcasts, you know?

And then COVID hit the remaining small and mid-sized operations the hardest, but some of them did something remarkable. So the dairy farmers of America bought $15,000 of milk in upstate New York, specifically to donate to local residents rather than dump it. So in Syracuse, they held a drive-thru milk giveaway, way. Over 8,000 gallons were distributed to low-income families. That's pretty cool. So that's not a PR stunt. That's people who grew up farming deciding to feed their neighbors. That's pretty darn cool. I like hearing that. Some people did good things during the pandemic, and it created direct relationships

between producers and consumers that hadn't existed in the modern food system. So the farmer driving milk to a food bank, it's a very different story than Dean Foods lobbying Congress, Right. Same industry, completely different realities, yeah. And then going back to how the industry works and just gets into communities, you know, you mentioned the Got Milk campaigns. I mean, that was America being sold milk by just the most successful ad campaign that ever was created. Oh, yeah. The Got Milk ads, like I said, those were everywhere. Every celebrity had one. It was at every magazine. It was all over TV. So it was on billboards. How do you dominate the culture and still lose the industry? That's confusing to me. I think my brother had a Got Milk T-shirt.

Yeah, but it was probably one of those pervy ones where it was like, what's her name from Baywatch was on there? But yeah, I mean, it completely dominated the culture. So it started in 1993 when Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners, which was an ad company, they created the original Got Milk campaign for the California Milk processor board. And the key insight was don't sell milk, sell the anxiety of not having milk. in the very first commercial you guys might remember this it was directed by Michael Bay

The explosions guy It follows a guy who knows the answer to a radio trivia contest was about Alexander Hamilton But he can't say it Because his mouth is full of peanut butter And he's out of milk Oh yeah

He loses the like radio prize Because he's doing that And like he's saying it over and over And they're like Sir, yeah, yeah, that's deprivation marketing, man. If they'd just waited for COVID, they could have been like, you're going to die if you don't got milk. They didn't work on another level. So the campaign recognized that people almost never drink milk by itself.

They drink it with cereal, cookies, and peanut butter. So it wasn't selling milk. It was selling milk as the thing that completes other foods. So milk's entire marketing strategy is, you need me because your cookies are Lonely, basically. Oh, God. Yeah, the thought of lonely cookies. That's so sad, right?

Indeed. Yeah. But then that campaign went national. So Milk Pep, which is the milk processor education program, which is this Washington, D.C. based nonprofit. It's funded by U.S. milk companies to boost milk consumption. That's what launched the celebrity milk mustache ads in 1995. They were photographed by Annie Leibovitz.

and eventually folded the California Got Milk logo into those ads. So between the two campaigns, Americans were seeing milk advertising constantly. And at its height, more than 80% of Americans saw a milk ad at least once a day, over 300 celebrities posed with milk mustaches, and the campaign just became so ubiquitous, it triggered a Supreme Court case about how the hell it was. funded. I kind of want to pull on that thread, but I also kind of don't. That's crazy, because I was going to say that must have cost like a billion dollars or something, because it was everywhere,

but also if you want the entire cast of friends to pose for your guy, I mean, that's, that alone is millions of dollars per person. Exactly. Right, to do that, I would imagine. So even that ad alone. Oh, yeah, it was the, it was the biggest celebrities. And then you got to put it on 5,000 billboards across the United States and or on television and or in magazine. You have to pay for each one of those. And that stuff adds up fast. I mean, when they use my voice for stuff, I get paid an amount of money where I go, I didn't even do any extra work.

And they're like, oh, it's a licensing fee and a talent fee. And I'm nobody. So if you're somebody who's really famous and it's like, oh, they're using your voice for this, you're making tens of millions of dollars potentially off of just the usage rights for something like that. Anyway, so it's an expensive campaign. and that all those partners at that ad firm are fantastically wealthy just based off of that one campaign, I'm sure. And still, though, consumption dropped sharply with milk.

Twenty years of the most recognized ad campaign in history in the decline continued. So it basically didn't work. Right. I mean, because it was a marketing solution to a structural problem. So the Got Milk campaign could slow the decline, but it couldn't reverse the fact that dietary habits were shifting. So alternatives were gaining ground and the industry wasn't adapting its actual product strategy.

And now the dairy industry has almost no meaningful social media presence. I mean, when's the last time you saw a milk ad? I don't even see ads, right? Because I don't watch TV and I buy the YouTube that doesn't have ads on it so I don't have to watch a Lexus ad if I'm watching an interview with somebody.

I just don't see that many ads. Anything I use, I use a premium version so I don't have to see ads. Netflix, Reddit, whatever it is, right? Sure, but even billboards, when you're driving down the street. Oh, true. The wildest thing. This is Silicon Valley.

All the billboards are like, is your AI 401C compatible? That's what I thought. And I'm like, I never understand what I'm reading or anything. Yeah. And it's just like a weird graphic or a meme. The wild thing about those campaigns, too, was that it was just for milk. It's not like one specific farm or brand, which always, you know, what do you think about is so weird, but, you know, they won the 20th century with those ads, but they showed up to the 21st

century with essentially a print campaign. They needed milk cryptocurrency, milk coin. I think there's an assumption that people switching to oat milk or any of these alternatives are making a rational, well-considered, nutritionally informed decision. I suspect that's not what's happening at all, right? You just ask a barista, and she's like, all the cool kids drink oat milk now, and you're like, do it. It's almost never purely nutritional. So people switch for a cluster. reasons. There's health conditions, there's environmental values. There's a lot of identity and social signaling and all of that. Often all four combined. So start us with the legitimate health stuff. So nearly 70% of the global adult population has some degree of reduced ability to digest

lactose. In East Asian populations, it's as high as 70 to 100% who just can't tolerate it. And these are people for whom dairy genuinely causes discomfort. For them switching to a plant-based alternative, that's not an identity statement. It's relief, right? And the emergence of palatable alternatives has genuinely improved quality of life for a significant portion of humanity. That part of the story is real. And before oat milk, what did they do? They suffered through it. You know, they took lactose supplements or they just gave up eating cereal or putting milk in their coffee. So if lactose is the issue, why isn't the answer just lactose-free milk? I mean, that's such a great question.

For a lot of people, it is the cleanest solution. There is lactose-free dairy, and it's still dairy. It's got the same protein, same calcium, same overall nutrition. It's just treated with lactase, so the lactose is already broken down. So nutritionally, it's basically milk, but partially predigested. Exactly. And for many people, it solves the problem, without switching to plant-based.

So plant-based isn't the solution. It's just a solution. And lactose-free milk is kind of the boring one that works. So what are the environmental motivations for this? Well, that's increasingly the primary driver for younger consumers. So overall, the environmental case for plant-based milks over dairy, it's pretty strong, but they aren't all created equal. So O and P milk are the cleanest environmental options because they're,

They use relatively little water and produce low greenhouse gas emissions. Soy also scores pretty well, though in some regions it's associated with deforestation. Almond milk has a much larger water footprint like we discussed. And coconut milk actually uses relatively little water, but it's often shipped long distances and raises concerns about biodiversity and labor practices in some producing countries. And cashew milk has similar concerns because the nuts are labor intensive to process, and they're often sourced from regions with documented worker safety issues. Okay. And the less flattering reasons that people switch are what? Identity is the one. Oat milk in your coffee, it became this cultural signal. It said something about who you are. It gave the impression you were health conscious and environmentally aware, maybe a little ahead of the curve.

Sure. buying pallets from your local cafe or whatever people were doing. But brands like Oatley, they really leaned into that. And they weren't just selling oat milk. They were selling the kind of person who drinks oat milk. For sure. Yeah, I mean, that product became a badge. And the dairy industry's response to losing the culture war wasn't to win it back.

I mean, essentially. What about people on the other side? People who tried oat milk or almond milk once made a face, never went back. I mean, I tried it a lot of times. and I was on that train, and now I'm just like, no, I just want regular milk. I want regular protein. I don't eat anything fancy. Yeah, I mean, also it has to do with the same diet doesn't work for us our entire lives.

So you should listen to your body of what you want and go back to things that you didn't use to eat or, you know, whatever. It's okay to go back and forth. But there's a documented psychological phenomenon called food neophobia, which is a fear of novel foods. This is real. Okay. And it's measurable. And it's particularly strong around foods that replace something familiar. So when you substitute almond milk for dairy and cereal, the experience is objectively different.

It's thinner with a subtle nuttiness that some people might find pleasant, but others just don't. And when you put oat milk in hot coffee, it can be sweeter and more viscous than expected. So these aren't imaginary complaints from people. So people aren't wrong that it tastes different because it does? Yeah, of course they're not wrong. And some oat milks have a genuine technical problem called off flavor, which is an undesirable taste caused by oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids. I've definitely tasted this before where you're like, is this bad? Is this rancid? And it's, you smell it and it's like, it kind of seems fine. But then you taste it and you're like, this is disgusting. And some people are just more sensitive to it. Like, we all know people who can eat cilantro because it tastes like soap. I mean, our taste buds are all so different. So some people detect.

that. And the industry uses cold plasma treatment, pulsed electric fields, and high pressure processing to reduce those off flavors. But no manufacturer has completely solved the problem across every product. So when someone says oat milk tastes weird, they might not be being difficult. There might be something actually chemically wrong with that specific product. Again, I've definitely tasted this. What is this nonsense in here? They have the sensitivity to detect it. So with specific products that can absolutely happen, and not all plant-based milks are equal within their categories. So the variation between brands is significant, particularly for oat and almond.

What does the research say actually moves people and keeps them moved? You know, what actually changes minds? It's taste consistently, right? The primary driver of sustained switching is that the product is good enough to prefer or at least not miss the original. And climate messaging, like I said, moves younger consumers, but it generates backlash among others. Nutritional messaging moves almost nobody, which is unfortunate because... Yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm like, I want, just give me the one with the protein and the complete amino acid profile. I don't need, ain't nobody got time for that. Ain't nobody got time for that.

Right, exactly. And that's unfortunate because that's where the actual complexity lives. So lead with the taste, not the lecture. Yeah. I mean, that's essentially what the consumer behavior literature says. Companies that make products, people genuinely enjoy because of its taste and the texture and the color, they tend to outperform companies that rely mostly on marketing and meaning. So you can get to 15% market share strictly on identity. And getting further probably requires that the product is actually better. Does that hold true across the board, or is that mostly adults? Children generally prefer dairy. So familiarity wins at that age, and preference for plant-based alternatives tends to be way lower in younger children, which matters because parents choosing plant-based options need to be much more deliberate about nutritional compensation than adults do.

Let's talk about what might be the dumbest fight in American regulatory history, which is whether you are legally allowed to call oat milk milk. Yeah. So when environmental comparisons stop working, industries don't just compete on product, right? They compete on language. And that brings us to the word milk. The dairy industry has been attempting since 2017 to get Congress to ban the use of the term milk on any non-dairy product. The bill is called the Dairy Pride Act. Oh, wow. Dairy Pride. They named a milk labeling bill, Dairy Pride. They named a milk labeling bill, dairy product. What is that stand for? It is an acronym. Of course it is. It stands for defending against imitation and replacements of yogurts, milk, and cheese to promote regular intake of dairy every day. They worked backwards from an acronym to justify federal food policy.

E stands for every day. That's that, okay, well, that's not even grammatically correct now that I think about it. And this is a piece of federal legislation. It has been introduced every time Congress rewrites the Farm Bill, which is this massive piece of legislation that governs U.S. agriculture and food policy. And that's been in play since 2017, but it still hasn't passed. Maybe because their mascot is a cow holding a rainbow flag. No, why hasn't it passed? Gay milk.

Gay milk. That would sell. That would sell. Yeah. The FDA actually looked at this rigorously. They held consumer focus groups, and the focus groups confirmed unambiguously that Americans do not confuse plant-based milk with cows' milk, right? We're not that dumb. Many consumers buy plant-based alternatives, specifically because they are not milk.

There is no consumer deception happening, and legally the government can only restrict commercial speech if it has a compelling interest, typically to prevent consumer deception. So without deception, the legal case collapses. The federal government spent money on focus groups to determine whether Americans know that almonds don't lactate. That's not the official framing, but yeah. And I think we should be proud of that. Thank goodness. Absolutely. A long time ago, there was a Sibsids episode where they're in school and complaining about budget cuts and Bart picks up a cart and a milk and he's like, oh, this isn't even milk and it's mock, M-A-L-L-K. now there's a brand called Malk on the shelves,

which is kind of this subtle, like, fuck you to the big dairy. Jeez, yeah. Hey, it's not called milk. Yeah, oh, man. And the FDA is also noted that consumers genuinely struggle to compare nutritional content between plant-based and dairy products at a glance. So there is a real labeling problem, just not the problem the dairy industry is raising.

The dairy industry is fighting. almonds over the word milk. Imagine losing market share to something that doesn't even have nipples. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. All of the deals discounts and ways to support this podcast are searchable and clickable on our website at Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Yeah, so here's what kills me is the International Dairy Foods Association which represents dairy companies is not even lobbying for dairy pride,

which is their, so their own trade group is not even lobbying for... Because some of their member companies have launched plant-based milk lines. Oh. You know, I mean, the industry is not monolithic. The loudest voices against plant-based labeling are the companies most threatened

by plant-based products. So some dairy companies read the market and decided, if you can't beat them, sell them an oat latte. That actually makes sense. Dairy is fighting a war against plant-based milk while some of big dairy is actually selling plant-based milk. Just follow the trends. Why go this whole legal rigmarole? Just come up with your own brand. It's probably cheaper. Welcome to corporate strategy. I mean, here's the biggest

pattern. When industries lose market share, they don't just compete on product. Like I said, they compete on regulation and litigation. And the dairy industry has challenged plant-based labeling for years. The dairy price. Act, that's just one attempt. There have been many lawsuits targeting marketing claims, particularly around environmental comparisons. Milk v. Milk. Yeah, right. And Oatley, for example, has faced lawsuits over some of its environmental marketing claims. Some came from consumer groups, others from competitors challenging how the company advertised its climate benefits. Some of those cases were dismissed. Others ended with

Oatley agreeing to change or clarify parts of its marketing. So this is not about almonds lactating. It's about market share. Exactly. Now that plant-based milk has reached 15% of U.S. sales, I mean, that's billions of dollars. The dairy industry stands to lose. So at this point, lawsuits aren't just about labels. They're about protecting the market share. So the war is partially theater. Corporate strategy often is, right? So is this just an American fight or are people arguing about what counts as milk everywhere. Like in the UK, is it? What's the controversy? Right. I mean, the UK. The controversy. The controversy. Yeah. The UK Supreme Court ruled Oatley cannot use the phrase post-milk generation on packaging, which was part of its cool label.

I feel like that should have been fair game. Post-milk generation? I know. It's cool. Now they're basically saying, no, you can't say that because it is milk. Food labeling is, I think we talked about this in an episode is way stricter in the UK. Yeah. And way stricter than the U.S. But meanwhile, soy milk has been called soy milk since at least medieval times. And the term predates the modern dairy industry's feelings about it. I see. So the label debate is essentially no impact on consumer behavior. People who buy oat milk, they know what they're buying. Surprise, surprise. They know it's not milk. Yeah, they know. I mean, it's a fight about words between industries while consumers have already voted with their wallets.

Let's talk about the Make America Healthy, again, folks are Maha movement, and it's pushed to put whole milk back in schools. What's the argument there? I disagree with a lot of stuff from that group, but this is one thing where I'm like, fine, put whole milk back. I feed my kids that. It's generally good for them. The argument is that whole milk tastes better, and because it's richer and crevier,

kids may be more willing to drink it. It's also more satiating, and some researchers argue the push toward low-fat dairy. went too far, which I also agree with. I agree with that. I mean, I've got to get my kids calories. I'm not giving them skim milk because there's no reason for that. They were already not eating enough, which I guess is, you know, not maybe the problem with every American kid, but like, why are we punishing healthy kids? Fats never been the problem. I think that's another misunderstanding. Sugar is our problem. Exactly. Yeah. So, okay, so this all sounds pretty reasonable. Put some regular fat milk back in, low fat dairy push went too far. What's the catch?

Well, because saturated fat still matters for cardiovascular risk, and kids already show early markers of cardio metabolic problems, which is terrifying. That's terrible, yeah. I don't know if that's coming just from milk, but so you get a policy tension, you know, fight chronic disease while adding a reliable saturated fat source back into daily school meals. I'm not a doctor and I'm spitballing here, but I'm going to guess the kids don't have cardio-metabolic problems because of milk. It's because they're eating McDonald's five times a week, a lot of kids. And way less active. And they're not moving around and they're eating chicken nuggets instead of actual food and stuff. And I'm guilty of some of this myself because my kids like it's easier. But I don't feed them five days a week of that. But yeah, I don't know. Wouldn't be, that's really scary. So the real debate isn't moral. It's a trade-off. And then they bring in ultra-processed foods, like you said, with load of sugar or whatever, which sounds simple until you look close. Ultra-processed? That's a broad category. We've talked about it on other episodes. And some products in it are genuinely harmful. Some are fortified staples that improve public health outcomes. So the question isn't processed or not. It's we need to be asking processed into what? And oat milk is awkward here because it's processed but not automatically bad. And that's the whole problem. The label is not really the verdict. The category is much more complicated than people think. So there was one large Harvard study that found some animal-based foods were associated with a 44% increased risk of type 2 diabetes, while some ultra-processed breakfast cereals were associated with a 22% reduced risk.

It doesn't mean sugary cereal is a health food. It means ultra-processed isn't a nutrition. verdict by itself. You have to look at the actual food. And ironically, oat milk, which we've established as quite processed, could be caught by such a definition. Potentially, yeah. The question of what constitutes an ultra-processed food needs to be kept entirely separate from the question of which ultra-processed foods are harmful. So not everything in the ultra-processed category is equivalent. Do we even need dairy? I mean, this is well beyond the scope of the episode, but Like, biologically, do we need that?

You know, some people are like, you don't need to eat vegetables at all. And it's like, just eat meat. Those are probably quacks and cooks. But do we need dairy at all? Like, do you have to have it? Humans do not biologically require dairy. Every nutrient in cow's milk, the calcium, protein, vitamin D can all be obtained from other sources. That's why it's okay to be a vegan.

But what dairy provides is convenience and, efficiency. So removing it requires deliberate nutritional planning. It's not a risk if you do it thoughtfully, but it's a risk if you just stop drinking milk and assume you're covered. That goes for all plant-based milks, which are, they vary enormously in their nutritional completeness. What about breast milk? That's the one milk humans are, you know, designed to drink. Yeah, would you drink a breast milk latte? I'd have to be reassured that it was safe, right? I'm not going to end up getting whatever, or the oral clap or something like that from drinking someone else's breast milk.

I probably not. No, it's a little gross to think about. You would? Absolutely. Okay, but who's breast milk? Does that matter? Or you're just like, whatever, hey, I don't discriminate. Yeah, I wouldn't discriminate.

I mean. Wow. So some lady could just be like, hey, you want some, you're like, oh, we're out of Oatley, and this woman's like, look, my kids asleep. You want some of this? You would take that? I'd try it right from the utter.

Oh, my God. I see. I feel like we're not talking about the milk part anymore. I feel like this is now evolved into a not safe for work episode of the show. Let's get away from Mike Kings, yeah? Yeah, didn't see that coming. But as infants, you know, yeah, we drink breast milk. Human breast milk is extraordinary.

It contains immune cells, antibodies, hormones, enzymes, and specialized sugars that help feed a baby's developing microbiome. I'm like, why wouldn't I want that? It's probably the most biologically sophisticated milk on earth. It's just designed for babies, not coffee. So after infancy, we're just basically freelancing. I mean, nutritionally speaking, yes. So once we start freelancing, how do we know what to look for?

Because once you decide you're drinking dairy, there's a whole second layer of choices. You know, what are the labels on dairy milk mean, A2 milk? I got raw milk. There's grass-fed milk. What is all that stuff? The A-2 stuff. I mean, I see that everywhere now. I never noticed it before.

That has to be a new trend. But A-2 milk comes from cows that naturally produce only the A-2 form of beta-cane protein instead of what most cows produce, which is A-1 and A-2. So some people report it's easier to digest, and there's some evidence it may help a subset of people with digest. of discomfort. It's not lactose-free, so it's not a cure-all. And that's just from cows. So does that hold true for other animals' milk? Is goat milk actually different from cow's milk? I guess it has to be. It is, yeah. A goat milk has smaller fat globules and a different protein profile. So some people find it easier to digest. It's still dairy, though, and it contains lactose. So if you're lactose intolerant, that's not going to be a magic fix

either. Lactose is still lactose. So grass-fed milk isn't helping anyone's intolerance either, I guess. Is that just marketing or is there something more to that? What does that even mean? I mean, I think that is a lot of marketing, but it's just like putting natural on a lot of food products or whatever. Grass-fed milk simply refers to what the cow ate, and it's primarily grass rather than grain. And then sometimes you see like a lowercase R-capital BST on a milk label, which refers to a synthetic hormone used to increase milk production. It's still FDA approved and used by a few dairy producers. So brands like to market as RBST-free on their label. They could easily say hormone-free. And then you have the raw milk, which is simply unpasteurized milk. I don't

recommend it. So each has its own passionate supporters, though, and its critics. And you could easily spend an entire episode on any one of them. For most people, those aren't the biggest decisions. The biggest questions are, can you digest it? Does it meet your nutritional needs? Or that should be one of the questions anyway, the nutrition. And do you like the taste? And does it fit your budget and values? Health risks seem to be at the top of the debate. Every few months, I see another headline saying milk causes or prevents something. Lately, I've seen research linking dairy to Parkinson's disease? Is that true? That's questionable. It's highly debated in nutritional epidemiology. Some studies suggest epidemiological evidence associating two or more glasses daily may have

increased Parkinson's risk, but this is not a definitive causal link. It's new research and it's really active research area, but I don't know. I don't think anybody knows yet. I see. So the thing I've been drinking twice a day my whole life might be subtly bad for my brain. And this is just not common knowledge. I guess I can't worry about that kind of stuff right now. Yeah, there's plenty of worse things you're doing that are affecting your brain, Jordan. Yes. You know, and medical research takes a long time to become common knowledge. Industries that are historically good at shaping which research gets amplified tend to have an outsized influence on what becomes common knowledge. That's a sentence I'm going to think about for a long time. Oatley's brand is essentially choosing us as a moral act.

How true is that? How does the picture change across all these different milks? If your only goal is minimizing your environmental footprint, not nutrition like we talked about before, who's the winner or what's the winner? Overall, most plant-based milks have a smaller environmental footprint than dairy. The tricky part is they all get there differently. But if I had to choose strictly based on environmental footprint. Pea and oat milk have the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, require relatively little land and water, and peas would be the winner because they have the added benefit

of naturally putting nitrogen back into the soil. Dairy has a much, much larger environmental footprint across all these measures. So if that's why you're choosing a milk, you would definitely not choose dairy. Got it. So all milks have a cat. And it just, you have to choose which one you're comfortable with.

Kind of. I mean, we've talked about all the individual tradeoffs, but the important takeaway is that none of these alternatives are environmentally perfect, but all of them improve on dairy in one way or another. Is there any milk that doesn't come with an environmental asterisk? Not really, no. I mean, hemp milk has an excellent environmental profile, too. Hemp's drought resistant.

It improves soil health. It requires very little pesticides. And the seeds are byproduct of fiber production, so there's very little additional land impact. Coconut milk, like we said, is more complicated because the coconut palms need relatively a lot of water and can store carbon. But most coconuts, they're grown so far away from the people drinking them. So that means long supply chains, labor rights concerns in some producing countries. and just less transparency about how the crops produced. I see.

Okay, so there's no perfect environmental milk. Every option comes with compromises. That makes sense. Yeah, exactly. And none of them have the environmental footprint of dairy. I just want to stress that if that's what you're going for. Because dairy requires raising methane-producing cattle, growing the feed crops, and using much, much more land and water than most plant-based

alternatives. Got it. And yet the best environmental options, hemp and pee are the ones nobody buy. Right, exactly. Which that tells you branding matters at least as much as sustainability. So you have companies like Oatley whose entire brand is built around environmental virtue, do they live up to that image at all? It is well documented that Oatley was partially funded by capital with significant environmental contradictions. And the company faced serious backlash from environmental advocates because of it.

This illustrates that brand values and corporate financial structures, they're not always the same thing. So you can buy a product for environmental reasons while a company selling it does really complicated things with your money. Yeah. So the brand and the business aren't necessarily the same thing. That actually makes sense with a lot of things like that. Of course. Yeah. Companies can sell one story while operating inside a much messier financial system. Okay. So dairy is the nutritional heavy weight. But if you're looking for the best balance of nutrition and environmental impact, you're looking at soy or pee. Yeah, that's fair. And then there's a whole political layer. Oh, geez. What starts as a conversation about what's in your coffee, you know, it quickly becomes

this fight over school lunches and food labels and environmental claims and just billions of billions of dollars in market share. We've got this maha movement pushing whole milk back in schools while pediatricians continue debating saturated fat. You've got the dairy industry trying to protect the word milk, even though most consumers don't seem to be confused by any of that. At the same time, the movement against ultra-processed foods, risks lumping together products that are genuinely nutritious with ones that aren't. Yeah, Oatley is not Cheetos.

Exactly. And even the companies selling environmental virtue aren't immune from criticism over where their ingredients come from. And while all of that is happening, some of the most nutritionally and environmentally promising options, they barely get any attention. So lost underneath the politics, the marketing and the lawsuit. are the people who actually produce our food. These farm families, many of whom survived consolidation and price crashes and even dumping milk during the pandemic because they couldn't sell it, they're probably the least represented voices in this entire conversation.

One more variable. Nobody likes to admit money. Right. It's easy to tell people to choose the best option when they can afford $6 oat milk and live somewhere that actually sells it. That's not available to everyone, yeah. Dairy is still the cheapest way to buy protein in liquid form. I mean, even I'm finding that. Like I said, I buy these protein shakes from Fair Life, and there's all kinds of criticism about the company and about milk. And it's like, okay, fine, find me 42 grams of protein shake that doesn't taste like I'm eating a piece of chalk.

And it's also so hard to keep up with. Do I have to investigate every sourced thing on an ingredient list to make my decision? I'm just not going to do it. I'm just hungry. Y'all know me. Like, I'm thirsty for knowledge. but I'm thirstier for hitting my protein macro and not spending half the day figuring out how to make that happen. Exactly, which means some of the conversation about choosing the quote unquote right milk,

it's really a conversation about who has the luxury of choosing that right milk in the first place. Yeah, so the most ethical nutrition advice is pick what you can actually sustain, you yourself, yeah. Right. Consistency beats purity for sure. What do we tell somebody who just wants to know what to put in their coffee after all this, after 90, You know, it's confusing. Back and forth, yeah. If you can digest dairy, have no ethical or environmental objections, and want the most complete nutritional package, dairy is excellent.

If your priority is nutrition, choose soy or pee. If your priority is the environment, choose oat, pee or hemp. If your priority is coffee, choose oat or macadamia. And if you have allergies, rice milk can be an option, but don't make it your only one. And if you're choosing milk for a child under five, talk to your pediatrician before taking dairy out of their diet entirely, regardless of what that barista says. But my kid loves a good affigato. Yeah. And the word milk, the word milk, are we still allowed to use it? I know. Milk is a word. And words evolve, right? Language is fluid. Ammon milk appears in English text from the middle ages. Humans have been drinking mammal and plant milks for thousands of years. And somehow, for some reason, almond milk's become this controversial one.

It's not. But if this is the hill, the dairy industry wants to die on. Yep, they'll die on it. And underneath all of it, every version of milk is, it's, like you said, 87 plus percent water. Everything else is the story that they've built around it. Yeah, milk isn't just a beverage. It's a trillion-dollar supply chain fighting over shelf space, science, and perception. Right.

So the next time you're standing in the dairy aisle, staring at 12 different kinds of of milks, just remember you're not choosing a drink. You're choosing between nutrition, taste, price, ethics, marketing, and whatever makes your coffee taste the way you like it. And of course, your identity as one of the cool kids or not, as I've found out recently. Thanks, Jess. Another thing in our food system that has been watered down. And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to meet Jordan atjordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show, all at Jordanharbinger.com deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find

Jessica on her substacks between the lines and where shadows linger. We'll link to those in the show notes. Her work is on Instagram at Never Met Jessica's. That's plural. This show is created an association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Tadasidlowskis, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. And I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer and I'm definitely not a nutritionist, a dietitian, or a doctor. Also, we try to get these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked.

Consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being or those of your kids. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today.

Maybe somebody who drinks boozy milks. They could use a little dose of this. They might be interested in spending 90 minutes learning about. why their choice is wrong. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview from Joe Loyah, a man who robbed 30 banks across California,

but says the real crime scene was his childhood, where his Pentecostal preacher father beat him over 100 times before he turned 15. For 14 months, I robbed 30 banks, sometimes several in one day. I lost all sense that my life was going to be long at all. I just wanted to grab the loot and get the hell out of dodge as fast as possible and go spend it and have fun. That was my ethos.

And so I did. Because all the crimes I did and all the violence I did. And starting with my dad, when my mother died, we received a lot of love from her and everything like that. It's just too much for him. And when he gets angry now, he gets brutal. Like, he may have socked me. He may have choked me. He may have done all those things.

Bebe with a bat. He wants us. He's using the dead language. He could kill us or I could kill myself. But this is like, it's just a tough time for me to try and process the grief myself and beyond being brutalized. I don't believe I have a future. So there's nothing inside of me like, oh, I got to protect my future. I better get a job.

I start, better start saving money for the future. None of that. Because of trauma is so intense, you're only looking at surviving the next day in front of you. You know, in fact, I'm not made for society. They have all these moralities, but they're too timid for me. I've seen past the curtain. And like I become in my heart, like the little sociopath, looking at it, like, you guys are falling for the okie-doke. And I'm not the guy who falls for the ok-doke.

I'm the guy who stabs the ok-doke and says, get the hell out of my way. I'm not buying it, right? Once upon a time, Joe Lawyer couldn't handle his emotional shit. And so now I'm a criminal. I'm a bad guy. Check out episodes 1264 and 1265 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.