Why potato milk may be the most sustainable option | Hacker News Reader

Why potato milk may be the most sustainable option

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9 pointsbarbazoo16 comments

All these milk alternatives have have rapeseed oil, canola oil, sunflower oil, soy, etc. There is the school of thought(Ray Pete, et al) that PUFA's and in the quantities Americans consume them are causing inflammation, obesity, and chronic decease. Some believe that it's not even HFCS/Sugar causing the obesity epidemic in America but Vegetable oils. They put this shit in everything so no thanks, the little milk I use for coffee, baking/cooking is Grass Fed Organic cows milk.

Obesity and metabolic syndrome, anyway, are reliably pegged to sugar and lack of fiber. But that does not exonerate vegetable oils.

There's a brand called Malk sold at Whole Foods which is just water and almonds.

You can also make your own nut milks by using a masticating juicer.

Yeah, drink enough almond milk, and you too can develop kidney stones!

Welcome to the club. This is my second time through.

Cows and goats etc turn sunlight we can't directly eat, the useless shrubbery, into great milk. The lactose intolerant can have cheap enzymes or cheeses.

Milking a potato doesn't sound like much fun, honestly. At least the cows are affectionate.

> Cows and goats etc turn sunlight we can't directly eat, the useless shrubbery, into great milk.

They can eat useless shrubbery (or more importantly, shrubbery grown on otherwise useless land), but for the most part they are fed on crops that humans could eat or that are grown on land that could grow human-edible crops instead.

Not so sure about that. Cows eat a ton of grass. That's typically grown between other crops, or on marginal land.

Cows can eat lots of grass. But they have to be turned loose to eat it, not penned in a feedlot.

The milk cartons that say "grass-fed", at a price premium, ought to hint something to you.

BTW, "pasture-raised" on dairy and egg cartons is a totally meaningless, thus deliberately misleading designation. As is "cholesterol-free".

That depends where you live. Some areas (ie New Zealand) have a a much higher percentage of cows spending time outside and getting their feed from grass.

Right. Sorry for assuming U.S. circumstances. We actually have milk sold in supermarkets labeled "grass-fed" and costing up to twice as much as the "regular" milk. I sometimes forget how weird the U.S. is.

In normal places, grass is the cheapest thing to feed cows on. So, I buy all my cheese and butter from Europe and New Zealand.

In the US, in order to compete with dairies feeding cows massively federally subsidized corn, they have to label normal milk as "grass-fed". The cows fed corn have to also be fed antibiotics, because eating just corn makes them sick. And, of course, the corn is grown with copious pesticides. Cows are also fed cottonseed meal, which also makes them sick. Cotton is grown with pesticides not allowed on food crops, for reasons.

U.S. corn production is so heavily subsidized, they had to start turning it into sugar, and then pumping that into practically all food, to try to use it up. The Feds further subsidize turning it into alcohol, and require refiners to add that to all the gasoline.

Archer Daniels Midland is the main beneficiary of the alcohol subsidy.

Yep, all cow milk in Ireland is grass fed, they don't even bother putting it on the label as it's assumed... Just wish pork and chicken were the same story... (They're not free range as a rule here)

Nope. Hay.

Hay is a grass.

...and they're fed it in a feedlot. The entire point of 'making hay'

Cows in US feedlots are not, as a rule, only or even mostly fed hay.

It's strange to read about the proteins in potatoes. Googling a bit, I found that almonds have 20% proteins, soy 10% and potatoes 1%.

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