Drinking Cows Milk Is Not Cool Anymore

Do you still drink cow's milk? Full fat? Semi-skimmed? If you answered yes, you won’t be allowed to sit next to me in the canteen for breakfast I’m afraid.

Over the past two years, I’ve noticed it’s not cool to drink cow’s milk anymore. More and more people around me have announced they made the magic cut months or weeks ago and they haven’t looked back including myself. I’ve stopped adding dairy milk to my cereal but I’m still working hard on cutting out dairy products as a whole.

Why has the number of people cutting out cow's milk risen over the past few years? I can assure you it’s probably for a good number of reasons, one of which is due to the rising trend in vegetarianism and vegan diets and the interest in consuming plant-based foods.

My friends told me there was a documentary that looked at how cow’s milk was made and apparently none of it was a pretty sight. I think it was called The Milk System on Nextflix which investigates the dairy industry around the world.

PETA publishes 12 reasons why we need to stop drinking cow’s milk and here are a few of them:

Cows are often pumped full of antibiotics to keep them alive and produce milk in filthy factory farm conditions. We can thank this rampant overuse of them for the surge in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

A single serving of milk can contain as much as 24 mg of heart-harming cholesterol.

A single serving of full-fat milk can contain more than 20 percent of the recommended daily allowance of saturated fat.

Consumption of all types of dairy “products” was linked to an increased prevalence and severity of acne in both boys and girls.

For some reason, the harming and distress of cows has not been mentioned which I think is a very important point.

What alternatives do we have instead of cow’s milk? Well, there are actually four main kinds of milk which I’ve noticed many more people are drinking.

Oat Milk

My personal favorite, it’s absolutely delicious. Oat milk is plant-based milk that is 100% whole grain, filled with fiber, plant-based protein, B vitamins, and minerals, including iron, calcium, and magnesium. It also contains fewer calories and fat than cow’s milk and we don’t need to pump oats full of antibiotics to keep them fresh…

Soy Milk

Another plant-based milk is soy milk, which I personally haven’t got round to trying, made from soybeans. This beverage contains even fewer calories and fat in comparison to oat milk.

Coconut Milk

Personally, I think coconut is disgusting (even though I just made a coconut curry earlier) and so coconut milk must be Devil Juice.

Unlike the previous two kinds of milk, coconut milk is high-calorie as 93% of its calories come from fat. 240 grams of coconut milk is 552 calories. So if you like a big bowl of cereal for breakfast and dinner, you’re consuming a lot of calories! Still better than cow’s milk.

Almond milk

My second favorite type of milk. Actually, I tried almond milk by accident when my friend was making a protein shake for me and I had noticed how sweet it was. Unfortunately, I didn’t stick to it for long and went back to cow’s milk, but I still highly recommend it to others.

One of the downsides of almond milk is that it’s not nearly as nutritious as cow's milk. So if you’re big on calcium, almond milk is certainly not for you. A second downside is that it’s not actually made from whole almonds as they are greatly watered down and filtered out to make the creamy milk texture.

Nonetheless, it’s currently the second most popular plant-based milk in the United States.

One of the major benefits of all four kinds of milk above is that it’s possible for you to make them yourself at home.

Supermarkets won’t stop stocking cow’s milk any time soon, but if for any reason they did, I promise you you’ll thank them for it. However, it is to be noted that the sales of cow’s milk are declining with 2,550 fewer licensed dairy operations in 2020 than in 2019 so be prepared for the media to scare everyone into panic buying milk soon.

I don’t want to see farmers go out of a job, but it’s time society realise that we don’t need to be harassing cows every two minutes by either killing them for beef or drinking their milk.