To be considering ditching cows milk?

[incognitomum]

I've been hearing so many bad things about it lately and after drinking it, mainly in hot drinks, I'm thinking of giving it up.

Stories of pus in the milk has put me off. Plus the whole way the dairy industry is.

I need to find a decent alternative for coffee though as struggle taking it without milk.

Coconut milk lattes are delicious! I usually need a syrup in a latte if I have any other milk, but the coconut is enough to give a little flavour and sweetness.

What I haven't been able to find is a nice enough milk alternative that works in tea. Are the pp Oatly lovers using it in tea too? Maybe I would get used to it?

I use Oatly in tea. It's fine for me, but I'm not a massive tea drinker.

I don't like it on cereal though (tried Barista and standard blue version) and cannot find a good alternative for milk on cereal.

We ditched dairy a while ago. Better skin and no more tummy complaints. Cow milk is for cows not humans and it doesn't provide us with anything we can't get elsewhere. Having grown up around dairy farms I absolutely don't want to be part of that misery.

I would say soya is much nicer than Oatly in tea - I find Oatly has a slightly greasy feel to it in tea somehow. But lots of people like it so that might be just me!

@JassyRadlett However cattle are fed soya based feed in the winter in the UK. Free range dairy cows are only on pasture for around 180days of the year in the UK.

The majority of land used to grow soya is for animal feed rather than direct human consumption in the form of soya beans or soya being used as a dairy alternative.

Indeed, as I pointed out to the PP who claimed there was no deforestation in UK dairy.

Winter silage is not solely soy-based and soy levels within silage can vary wildly, and of course all soy is not created equal. My point is simply that simple numbers often mask greater complexity and can give a false sense of security or uniformity.

Pretending uniformity undermines broader valid points.

Innocent hazelnut milk is really good on cereal, I had some on honey nut shredded wheat this morning and it was lovely. It's just hazelnuts, water, rice and a little salt.

DC love chocolate alpro milk on their cereal, less than a pound in Asda.
I drink coffee with oat milk but struggling to find a good alternative for tea and I love my tea. But happy that I now just buy one small bottle of milk and it lasts 3 days.
I bought all the different types of alternatives and we all tried them and those were ones we stuck on.

When a cow has mastitis her milk is discarded and not sold for human consumption, so can people stop spreading the myth about there being blood and pus in milk?

If you are worried about what is in milk, then do some research to find out how it is actually produced; and if you want to continue to drink it buy filtered milk.

www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/dairy/dairy-industry-hits-back-at-daily-mail-milk-claims

Thank you everyone for your input. A lot for me to digest excuse the pun

I love cheese so this is another quandry. Is goats cheese any better for their young?

Small steps for now but the way calves are treated is really off putting.

Oatly barista is nice in tea - it's the only one I like. For cereal we use Koko super as it's fortified with vitamin d, iodine and calcium plus tastes delicious and fresh!

"We'd all switch to it in this house if it were more affordable. It's delicious."

You can make your own oat milk very easily for a fraction of the cost of buying it. All you need is some muslin cloth, oats and water. Works out at around 15 to 20p for a pint, depending if you use organic oats etc.

Search YouTube for tutorials, or the Guardian website recently had a how to guide as well...

If anyone is looking for an alternative that tastes very much like milk, then Rebel Mylk you can get from Ocado tastes amazing. It’s great on cereal. It’s a mix of coconut, rice and cashew. The texture is silky without being slimy (like some of the thickened milk alternatives).

Another vote for Oatly barista, great in tea, coffee, cereal, cooking etc. It's so creamy and fortified with calcium and vitamin D.

So much anthropomorphising going on here.

Bull calves are not wanted because they do not produce milk, therefore billy goats are not wanted for the same reason.

Farmers in this country are not blinkered, they are aware of how the public view them and are trying to change the way they farm. Calves are rarely slaughtered at birth.

news.arlafoods.co.uk/news/arla-calls-for-industry-to-help-support-dairy-farmers-ensure-every-calf-has-a-value

news.arlafoods.co.uk/news/arla-farmers-to-create-worlds-largest-set-of-dairy-climate-data-as-they-head-towards-carbon-net-zero-production

YANBU

I went dairy-free when I was breastfeeding and discovered that my DS had CMPA. I'm not breastfeeding any more so I have gone back to eating some food containing dairy but I have stuck to Oatly Barista instead of cow's milk.

We took DS to a children's farm that had dairy cows. I was really upset to see the calves separated from their mothers and the cows being milked by machine in very cramped spaces. It was awful and tbh I felt like an idiot for not considering it before; where did I think cow's milk came from?!

I think the experience of breastfeeding has made me feel very strongly that cow's milk should be for cows, and the same for every other animal that produces milk (including humans).

I still like cheese though However I think it is still helpful to cut down on dairy products even if you don't cut them out completely, doing something is better than doing nothing.

There are some delicious dairy free yoghurts and ice creams out there too. We like Nush almond milk yoghurt and there are a few very tasty ice creams too (Ben & Jerry's have announced new vegan flavours recently).

Unfortunately op any cheese or milk requires that the babies are taken away from the mother and either raised to do exactly the same if they're female or they are slaughtered for meat if they're male. It's a sorry state of affairs. Particularly given that here in the U.K. there are lots of dairy free alternatives.

We have oat milk for coffee but it is too strong for tea. We have rice milk for tea.

So much anthropomorphising going on here.

Nope just the realisation and acceptance that animals other than ourselves feel pain, fear and have maternal bonds. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Love Oatly Barista, but sadly not good for my health condition so had to give it up.

Summer we use oat in everything including tea we love it

the way calves are treated is really off putting

On a large scale it isn't practical to keep dairy calves with their mothers. There are disease risks and the reality of 300 calves kept on the cows while managing them as a milking herd would be very difficult.

We keep calves with the cows for 12-24 hours to allow them to have the vital colostrum, and then they are housed in groups and fed with milk, up to twelve weeks. We find leaving them together any longer creates more stress when they are separated. As someone mentioned upthread, beef calves separated from their mothers really do make a row. I can honestly say that provided they are fed and warm they are absolutely fine and the cows quickly settle back into life with their friends in the herd. As humans we have evolved to drink cows milk over thousands of years so to say it's not natural is not quite right. We try to manage our cows and calves in a way that is best for them.

We used sexed semen, so that we will only produce heifer dairy calves, which are reared to enter the herd, and the rest of the calves are Aberdeen Angus whish are reared for beef.

The dairy farms in my village certainly don’t kill male calves at birth. The bullocks are super cheeky (and move at the speed of light!) I don’t know where they go, or at what age, but they’re around for ages after calving season.

I'm a dairy farmers daughter and the stories of pus are categorically fake news.

Unfortunately in some parts of the industry bull calves are culled. It's a gripe but rose veal doesn't have a large enough consumer market in this country thanks to more fake news based on some western practices.

Tan hemp milk by good hemp is a lot creamier than nut drinks/ nut milks and works in hot drinks Sainsbury’s etc all sell it