[Kevin]
Hey Michelle, how you doing?

[Michelle]
I'm great, Kevin. It's good to be back.

[Kevin]
It is amazing to be back. I know right now it's like a beautiful summer day. I mean, this episode probably won't come on until the autumn, so it's kind of nice to remember there are summer days, and there are nice, warm, beautiful days out there.

Honest.

[Michelle]
There have been some hot ones lately, too.

[Kevin]
Oh yeah, tell me about it. And I'm digging it.

[Michelle]
Oh my God, are we talking about the weather now?

[Kevin]
We are. We are such Canadians, because every Canadian talks about the weather.

[Michelle]
I know.

[Kevin]
Sorry, that's my fault. I brought it up.

[Michelle]
It's a defining characteristic of a Canadian.

[Kevin]
It is, exactly. So we have just absolutely defined us. If anyone was in doubt, we are clearly Canadians.

So, welcome back to Nutrition for Noobs. I'm Kevin.

[Michelle]
I'm Michelle.

[Kevin]
So, last episode, we learned a bit about why we should consider removing milk and dairy products from our diets. Michelle went through a whole lot, and I think she's going to give a little bit of a summary. If you've missed it, or if it's been a while since you've heard that episode.

If you haven't heard it at all, I would suggest it probably would make more sense to go back and listen to that episode first, just because it'll put everything in a bit more context. So, the next question becomes, well, now what? If you want me to remove milk, what do I replace it with?

Because let's face it, we use dairy in so many ways. From coffee and tea, to grilled cheese sandwiches, to lasagna, to putting yogurt in a smoothie. So today we're going to talk a little bit about the various plant-based beverages that are out there.

And before we begin, I just want to make a quick note. Milk boards are getting more vigilant about clamping down on non-dairy beverages calling themselves the M word. So while we will try to honor that, if we accidentally call a milk-based beverage the M word, we apologize ahead of time, and please don't hold it against us.

So, Michelle, what do you think about plant-based beverages?

[Michelle]
Yeah, I'm not concerned about that. I'll call them plant milk.

[Kevin]
Okay, I'm more concerned. I live with a lawyer, so I'm more concerned about that.

[Michelle]
Oh, yes, of course you do.

[Kevin]
You're not afraid of the milk board.

[Michelle]
I am not afraid of the milk board. I'm sure they don't know who I am.

[Kevin]
Well, they might after this.

[Michelle]
Oh, I'm sorry to contradict you right off the bat.

[Kevin]
I'm used to it.

[Michelle]
Please go back and listen to the other episode, but let me just point out a couple of things. So, first of all, we actually don't require any milk except for our mother's milk at the beginning of life. And after weaning from our mother's breast, science has proven without question that humans have no dietary requirement, which is why we saw the changes that we saw with Canada's Food Guide in 2019, that it doesn't confer any benefit, and in the case of a number of populations, it actually can confer some harm.

Potentially, it's the most common food allergy for humans, especially among infants and children. It's associated with some of the most severe reactions. Bottom line, we just don't all have the enzymes required to digest this protein.

Now, there is actually one other nugget. Can I add a new nugget this week to this, to the milk conversation? Because it sets us up for another great reason as to why we should look for an alternative.

Are you ready for this one, Kevin?

[Kevin]
I'm always open to new nuggets.

[Michelle]
So anyone that is already sort of socialized to this space of animal milk versus plant-based milks, one of the concerns about dairy is, people may have heard of this, are pus levels. Now, it sounds very dramatic. It's not actually as bad as it sounds.

However, it is of concern.

[Kevin]
It sounds pretty nasty, if you ask me. I'm glad I had my lunch already. Do we have to put a warning before this discussion about people with queasy stomachs?

[Michelle]
And just full disclosure, I mean, I was searching around to kind of see what evidence there was of this. And there's actually quite a lot. But you will.

It's fairly difficult to find the information that the Canadian milk board and the American milk boards do a really, really good job of controlling the message on the Internet.

[Kevin]
I can't imagine why.

[Michelle]
You will actually see this, you know, very bold statements. There is no pus in milk. And according to the Milk Marketing Board of Canada and the United States, they don't actually measure pus because it doesn't exist in milk.

But they do measure something called somatic cell count. So it's really interesting that they don't really lie. They're just sort of not telling the entire truth.

So somatic cell count, and I'll just call it SCC, it makes total sense that that's the metric that they're measuring, because it's that's the metric that would determine if the cows are infected with mastitis and therefore have infected udders. And this is where sort of the problem begins. So I found a really useful piece of literature from the UK, from their Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

So it seems to be, you know, a very reputable board with their government. And they explain this as follows. The somatic cell count or SCC is a main indicator of milk quality.

And the majority of somatic cells are leukocytes, which are white blood cells, which become present in increasing numbers in milk, usually as an immune response to mastitis or mastitis causing pathogen. And there's a small number of other, you know, epithelial cells, which are another type of, you know, sort of lining, which are milk producing cells that are shed from the inside of the udder when an infection occurs. So that's why this is an important metric.

And it's used by, you know, milk production globally in order to monitor whether or not milk is safe to drink. Now, the trouble comes in for us, Kevin, when different countries set that threshold differently. So the best one is the UK, as a matter of fact, that they say that an individual cow SCC, you know, number of number of cells per mils in the milk of 100,000 or less indicates an uninfected cow.

So if that SCC count is below 100,000, then they say, cool, it's all good. It's very, very insignificant. It's safe to drink.

And there's no significant production loss due to subclinical mastitis.

[Kevin]
OK.

[Michelle]
And they go further to say that a threshold of 200,000 would determine whether or not a cow is in fact infected with mastitis. Therefore, in the UK, they don't allow more than 200,000 count of SCC in their dairy. OK, so Canada, however, our threshold is double that.

Our threshold is 400,000 individual cells per milliliter.

[Kevin]
Oh, that's nice.

[Michelle]
And in the United States, our neighbors to the south of us, it's double that.

[Kevin]
Oh, 800.

[Michelle]
Almost double, 750,000. So the national maximum of the US is 750,000 per milliliter per farm for domestic sales. And so, yeah, and only 400,000 for exports.

So they're a little bit kinder when they're shipping their milk out.

[Kevin]
Oh, that's nice. They keep the bad stuff for, you know, the locals.

[Michelle]
So, I mean, that's kind of alarming. Now, we also don't, there's more I can say about this, but I don't want to gross everyone out.

[Kevin]
No, thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you.

On behalf of the entire listening audience, thank you, Michelle.

[Michelle]
So to be clear, what the marketing boards are saying and promoting on their websites is technically true. Somatic cells in themselves are not pus, but they are an indication. They are the only indication in milk as to whether or not the cow is infected with mastitis, which in fact would produce pus.

So the net effect of this is that it's a natural part of the animal's defense system. You know, so a bit of this, you know, would be natural. The trouble is that when they're measuring this, it's the nature of the industry and how milk is produced.

And there are these huge factory farm operations. And even if you have healthy cows, the less healthy cows, like it's all in there, right?

[Kevin]
Of course.

[Michelle]
So they're measuring it on mass and there's no way to separate the more healthy.

[Kevin]
The healthy producers versus the, right, right.

[Michelle]
From the others. And what it amounts to, according to nutritionfacts.org and Michael Greger, the fantastic website that he has, which is all kinds of evidence based information. And he says that he goes out and does this so that folks like us don't have to.

That it amounts to a very, very small amount. It ends up being like basically a per glass of milk, a drop of pus is in every glass of milk, at least for us. But it would be more right in the United States and it will be it will be less in the UK.

But I ask you this question. If you have a glass of milk on the counter and somebody drops some pus into it, like, do you want to drink that?

[Kevin]
Mmm, tasty.

[Michelle]
Oh, wait a minute. There's one more anecdote I found that is just so gross. I have to mention it.

[Kevin]
Oh, goody. Thanks, I think.

[Michelle]
So this leads us to then what does that mean for cheese and for yogurt, which are technically concentrated dairy? You're now getting like concentrated mess. Well, it turns out they've done studies on cheese and cheese that has higher SEC counts actually tastes different.

Like you can taste it.

[Kevin]
Oh, so it's enough to actually impact the flavor. And if it's significant enough to impact the flavor, then presumably that's more than you necessarily want.

[Michelle]
So so this is this is another reason on top of all the other stuff that we shared in our in our bigger milk episode that, you know, there is absolutely no pus in plant milk.

[Kevin]
Plant pus.

[Michelle]
And that might be reason enough for some people.

[Kevin]
All right. It's certainly reason enough to turn everyone's stomach. Thank you, Michelle.

I can count on you for that.

[Michelle]
I love grossing you out so much. Okay.

[Kevin]
I love science. Science is really gross. Let's talk about alternatives.

You've presented the problem very well.

[Michelle]
You weren't expecting that one, were you?

[Kevin]
I was not expecting. As I say, I'm very glad that I had my lunch already. Thank you very much.

And I had no dairy at my lunch, so even better. So let's talk about plant based beverages and some of the alternatives out there for what people can do. Because as I mentioned, like we use milk or dairy like in so many different places and recipes and baking and cooking and this and that and the other.

And it's tough to find a solution or tough to find a viable alternative. So talk about that a bit, please.

[Michelle]
Yeah. Well, I don't know that it's tough so much as that people are confused by it. It used to be tough.

But now you can now it's almost confusing because there's so many so many options on the shelves.

[Kevin]
That's what I meant, actually, in terms of I mean, let me I'll share a little tiny story with you. Sure. Since I'm in the voice industry, I stopped drinking milk when I went full time and professional simply because one byproduct of drinking milk that I was made aware of through blogs and, you know, online sites for the voiceover community was it stimulates the production of phlegm.

[Michelle]
That's right.

[Kevin]
Phlegm is the enemy of the throat because when you clear your throat, you cause damage to your vocal cords in a very microscopic way. And so the less phlegm, the better, because you're not clearing your throat as often. Not to bore everyone with the mechanics of my job.

But anyways, as you know, Michelle, I love my coffee and every morning I had granola and yogurt. So I found it tough for me to find an alternative that tasted good with my coffee, didn't add a flavor I didn't want with my coffee, gave me that same texture and consistency I'm looking for, etc., etc. Because, as you just mentioned, like there really are so many options now, which is a good thing, but it's also a little bit of a bad thing, I find, because too much choice stops people from making a decision.

So I'm hoping that maybe we can help people make a decision on trying out some options, trying out some alternatives that they can feel comfortable with.

[Michelle]
Absolutely. So we went through quite a bit of education on this at my shop, the tea lounge, because we serve lattes, tea lattes, coffee lattes, and such. And they're very, very popular for a good reason, because they're very delicious.

And we, of course, make them healthier than you might get in a chain cafe. But we had to do some experimentation. And some of that was based on taste.

And some of it was based on the environmental or ethical issues related to the production of plant milks, and then, you know, the obvious health issues. So I'll take you through a little bit of that. And I think I touched on the three main reasons, the three main concerns to try plant milk.

Some people, some people actually don't even like the taste of dairy. And they would have chosen a plant milk because they simply like it better. There's the obvious health issues and the things that we've already talked about in the previous episode, and some environmental consideration.

There's the lactose issue that we talked about, and the milk intolerance and allergy might be a reason, it might be inflammatory reasons. It might be somebody already has inflammatory bowel disease. Milk is very aggravating to that.

And if they have inflammatory bowel syndromes, they can't have milk at all. There may be concerns just environmentally with antibiotic levels and hormones and pesticides and things like that. And they simply, you know, just may favor a more plant forward diet and lifestyle.

And they're looking for that reason. Or they may have concerns about the environment, about land use and about, you know, factory farming and ethical concerns.

[Kevin]
And I just want to add water use as well to that environmental because some crops are certainly more water intensive or potential land use in terms of clear cutting for certain crops.

[Michelle]
Absolutely. So all of that went into, you know, my sort of list of things that I was looking at when I was evaluating different plant milks. And we certainly haven't tried them all, but we looked at the ones that are easiest for us from a supply chain perspective.

And then what's kind of up and coming, what's happening in the industry. So let me just start with a little study. And this was kind of quoted in The Guardian in January of 2020.

There was a 2018 study that they talked about in this 2020 article by researchers at the University of Oxford showing that producing one glass of dairy milk results in almost three times more greenhouse gas emissions than any of the plant based milks. Wow. And it consumes nine times more land than any other milk alternative.

So if you eliminate all of the health stuff and you just go on environment alone, dairy is a very, very taxing product on the planet. And some of the reasons for this is that, you know, land is required to pasture cows and grow all of their feed. That's really a very big part of that land use is the feed grown to support that industry.

And that also animals belch out methane.

[Kevin]
Don't forget the cow farts. Poor little cows and their farts. I shouldn't be picking on the cow farts.

I love that word. Cow fart. We've gone there.

We've gone there. I'm sorry. We've gone there.

We had to.

[Michelle]
I'm so sorry, folks. I'm sorry. I apologize for my friend.

Okay.

[Kevin]
You'll be apologizing a lot for me. Okay.

[Michelle]
So but yeah, and then there's all of that good stuff that we talked about. So let me first I think maybe a lot of people don't even know how plant milk's made in the first place. Like, how do you get how do you get milk out of a nut?

[Kevin]
Me, me. I don't understand.

[Michelle]
So there's basically sort of five parts to this. So first you get your raw materials. So we can make these types of alternatives from nuts, from grains, from legumes or from seeds.

They're soaked in water and then they are ground up and or they are ground and then soaked. Then that results in what they call a slurry. And that slurry gets strained in order to remove any solids.

And then there there may be some additions made such as flavoring, sweetener and desired nutrients. Plant milk's just like animal milk is often fortified nowadays with vitamin D, vitamin A, calcium, DHA. Omega-3 is also popularly in some of these formulas.

And then there are thickening agents and stabilizers added. And, you know, anyone that gets their knickers in, not about that. I mean, you need to have some sort of a stabilizer or a thickener.

It's just reality because I don't think anybody is going to buy a product on the shelf that is separated and looking gross.

[Kevin]
So you just have water and powder at the bottom and nothing in between.

[Michelle]
So then we look we look for the best quality of those stabilizers and thickening agents when you're someone like me. But, you know, we we accept the reality that these are a necessary agent. And and basically any sauce you have ever eaten ever has these in them.

[Kevin]
So, of course, it's a reality. It's a reality of modern food. And and again, it's it's a little bit of the lesser of two evils.

[Michelle]
So in plant milk, what we're talking about that people will turn around the label. We're talking about locust bean gum, xanthan gum and carrageenan. And carrageenan is the one that I would personally say has, you know, presents the most potential for harm.

[Kevin]
Wasn't carrageenan the lead singer of that band back in the 80s?

[Michelle]
No. So that was the thickening agent stabilizer. And then the fifth step is final processing.

And there's a heat treatment that is used that, you know, makes sure that it's safe for consumption. It kills any microorganisms before being packaged.

[Kevin]
Which is basically the that's basically the equivalent of milk pasteurization. Right.

[Michelle]
Yeah, I guess. Yeah.

[Kevin]
More or less.

[Michelle]
Yeah.

[Kevin]
Yeah.

[Michelle]
OK. More or less. And let me just also add, I'm talking about how plant milks are made by industry.

When you want to go into a store and buy it is certainly much simpler if you want. If you have a Vitamix or a nut milk machine in your kitchen, you can do this much more simply. And then not deal with any of those stabilizer thickening agents.

You could just make it right there.

[Kevin]
Simple, however, is relative because I actually tried once. Did you? Holy crap.

It was a lot of work.

[Michelle]
Well, what were you using?

[Kevin]
I tried it with almonds and I'm sure I went online and I saw videos and maybe I wasn't doing it right. But it just seemed like a lot of work. So you have to put it and it has to strain out to this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[Michelle]
Yeah. You're using the cheesecloth and straining it out.

[Kevin]
I'm lazy. I'd rather buy it and have it done properly.

[Michelle]
Well, you know, this is the truth. This is the truth. I always say this in my flourish program that, you know, I'm a nutritionist that lives in the real world.

And if I wanted to be a purist, there's a whole lot of things that even I would do more diligently. Convenience is a factor.

[Kevin]
Yes, we live in the real world.

[Michelle]
You got to keep the main thing, the main thing. Keep your eye on the fruits, veggies, whole grains, legumes. And if you do that, a majority of your diet, then you can enjoy some of these things and enjoy the convenience of it and make your life work.

Right. So.

[Kevin]
Exactly.

[Michelle]
All right. So I'm going to start with the plant milks that, you know, in my analysis, we avoid at the tea lounge and why. OK.

[Kevin]
OK.

[Michelle]
So so the first one, you you really hit the nail on the head already. And it's very environmental. So it's almond milk we avoid.

So it is actually rated as the most unsustainable milk after dairy environmentally. There's exceptionally high water use required for irrigation in order for those almonds to yield. They think that is one of the contributors to California droughts.

Emissions from industry production are a concern. Almond farming for this industry is a monoculture. So that's contributing to soil degradation, which is a big issue.

There's contribution to bee colony collapse because they import pollinators. There's so many pollinators that are required for this industry. And then they end up being exposed to harmful chemicals, which is, you know, contributing to the decline of our our very, very sacred bee population.

And so it's a highly unsustainable form of milk. It's unfortunately, that's true because it's such a tasty one. Like almond milk is one that I personally really enjoy the taste of.

And I think a lot of people share that. But when I learned about the sustainability, we stopped using it at my store.

[Kevin]
But just to clarify, so we don't completely poop on almond's head, it is still you said that that the dairy culture was still like more than three and a half times than the worst of the worst.

[Michelle]
So, oh, yeah, dairy's still worse.

[Kevin]
Almond might be the worst of the plant based or I'll put worst in quotes of the plant base, but it's still miles ahead of dairy.

[Michelle]
Yeah. You know what? That's a really good point.

That's a really good point.

[Kevin]
I just don't want to alienate anyone who loves their almond milk. I don't want to alienate them and say, oh, I'm unsubscribing. I want to make sure that it's put in that real world context.

[Michelle]
I wanted to agree with you on that, because, you know, if your first step away from dairy is almond milk and that's the one that you like the best, then you're certainly doing much better. The other thing that happens with microbiome conversion, when you do make these changes in your diet, your taste buds will change when you give it time. So you may like start out liking the almond milk and kind of shunning the other ones.

But after you've enjoyed that for a while and you've gotten all of those microbes out of your system that were sort of dairy supportive, you might find that you enjoy some others as well.

[Kevin]
So another quick story time on that, on my journey.

[Michelle]
OK, I love story time.

[Kevin]
So again, well, I've just found that this is fairly like close to my heart because I have gone through this process and I'm waiting to hear when you hit the milk that I like. And I'm scared of where it's going to lie in this ranking.

[Michelle]
OK.

[Kevin]
I do find that, you know, I've been now doing my milk alternative for a couple of years now, several years. And a few weeks ago I was on vacation and it was, you know, in small cottage country and, you know, fairly rustic, read old fashioned, small town. And they only had milk for coffee.

And of course, I need my coffee. So I so I had milk in my coffee. And to your point, I didn't actually like the flavor of it anymore.

Like I, I sincerely it tasted off. And it wasn't that the milk was off. It wasn't the milk had too much SCC in it that I'm aware of.

But it's just but it's just that my taste buds have actually changed or my gut biome or something has changed so that I actually don't enjoy dairy in my coffee anymore. And I found that absolutely fascinating and and kind of bizarre. And it kind of brought everything back to like, oh, it does actually change over time.

[Michelle]
Isn't that amazing?

[Kevin]
I would expect that taste is taste is taste. And, you know, broccoli tastes like this and almonds taste like that. But it does actually evolve and what you like and dislike.

I guess, you know, you don't like things as a kid and you like it as an adult. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this. But it is fascinating to me.

Anyway, sorry, enough of the story time.

[Michelle]
No, that's true. And you know what? It's amazing.

And it is a thing. So that's thank you for sharing that, because I think that provides a nice insight and some hope for some of our listeners that even if you you don't love it when you're first trying it, remember that your taste buds are a result of your current diet and that when you make some of these shifts, even small ones, it can really have that profound impact.

[Kevin]
It does shift over time. OK, so what's number negative two?

[Michelle]
So the next one, the next one, the next one we avoid is rice milk. And, you know, I remember a time when that was really the only plant alternative that was really easy to find. And it's because rice milk and rice pablums and things like that are prevalent on the industry for, you know, your young baby.

Right. But here, this will terrify you if you've ever given this to your child. Rice is widely studied, including rice milk and for issues with arsenic.

[Kevin]
I've heard of that.

[Michelle]
Yeah. You know, I first became aware of it from another one of my besties. Shout out to Dr. Debra Kyle, leading toxicologist in the United States.

[Kevin]
Debra, Debra.

[Michelle]
Hey, Deb. She was the first one to tell me because she was involved in some of this research at one point in her career, I believe. But so she was telling me about the issues with arsenic in rice.

And but environmentally, we have concern as well. Extremely high greenhouse gas emissions from that industry, higher than almond milk, actually. It's just that almond milk, when you look at the whole picture, rice is also a water hog, second only to almond milk and heavy, heavy use of fertilizers that, you know, are damaging waterways.

So but you know what, if I'm honest, like it's good riddance to rice milk. It doesn't taste that good anyway.

[Kevin]
It doesn't. I don't want to I don't want to come down on rice milk, but it really tastes gross. Anyways, next, your third, your third least favorite choice.

[Michelle]
So the next one we were using at the tea lounge as an alternative to almond milk was cashew milk. And we avoid that now, too, because it turns out that it has similar environmental concerns to almonds. It's only about 12 percent less or I guess more friendly to the environment than almonds.

There are I think the reason is that there's lower yields from cashew farming. So there's lower yields, there's greater land use. And it is now another monoculture that is starting to wreak havoc as it increases in popularity.

It also requires bee pollination in order to produce fruits. It's not quite as bad as a contributor to colony collapse as almonds. But, you know, I guess when you add all of this up, it's not good.

In addition to the other things we're doing to the poor bees. And there are some this was the ticker for me. There are some ethical issues in some of the origins that are predominant as cashew milk producers in terms of child labor.

[Kevin]
Oh, OK.

[Michelle]
And that's mainly from from India, according to the data I was looking at. So that kind of took cashew milk wouldn't be a popular choice for us at all. We took it off of our menu because there are other great alternatives.

Another one that we have tried is coconut milk. And I think that, you know, we're kind of getting into where if we found it difficult to find one of our other milks, we would go back to coconut milk. But coconut farming and this is not just milk.

There's a lot of this with all kinds of, you know, coconut products, massive deforestation, tropical rainforests are destroyed in order to increase coconut palm groves for coconut milk and other byproducts. Workers in these countries typically, you know, it's questionable whether they are getting a living wage. It can be as, you know, less than a dollar a day in origins like the Philippines or India or Indonesia.

So it's not quite as bad as the ones that we mentioned above. But it's we try to avoid this. Now, you know, it's tough, though, because when you talk about coconut, coconut is a very popular substitute for a lot of other things that I used to enjoy dairy based.

We use coconut yogurt, for example, and there isn't really other than soy. There really isn't another substitute for that. And sometimes people have soy allergies.

So I think it's useful to bring our listeners back to what you already pointed out, Kevin, that we're kind of talking about this as a continuum. And no matter how we slice it, I'm kind of giving you the rank and file of which I did my process of elimination. But it's still, if you're using any one of these, still going to be better than the dairy industry at the end of the day.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
But, you know, we do try to be very conscious about our choices. And you can't reach perfection necessarily, but you do the best that you can.

[Kevin]
OK, so what's next after coconut milk?

[Michelle]
OK, so on to the next one. The next one, according to an Oxford study, soy milk is one of the most sustainable plant milks. It also happens to be the highest in protein for people that are worried about that of all of the plant milks.

[Kevin]
But as we learned in previous episode, an episode or two back, you don't need to worry about that. But anyways, I digress.

[Michelle]
You don't need to worry about that. But if you are, if you are, let's say let's give people the benefit of the doubt. Let's say that you are, you know, an endurance athlete and you're intensely working out and you're trying to build muscle mass and you are really needing to be mindful of the amount of protein in your diet.

You're going to get the highest of that from soy milk, more actually than cow's milk even, believe it or not. There's more. There is it's higher protein content in soy milk.

[Kevin]
Hooray for soy.

[Michelle]
Yeah. And it's soy milk is full of phytoestrogens. And that's very, very different than animal estrogens.

There there was a smear campaign by industry at one point in the 90s that got everybody all scared of soy. But it's actually the opposite. Phytoestrogens are extremely cancer protective.

And especially breast cancer, they actually fit, phytoestrogens will fit in that receptor site and they will actually block all of those other harmful estrogens that can be cancer promoting. So that's a good reason to choose soy milk if that's a concern, because it's going to be very, very cancer protective. Organic and non-GMO soy milk is made from organic soybeans that are typically grown in the US and Canada.

I know that people get really worried about choosing soy, about whether or not they're getting a GMO soy. So if it's organic, it's obviously GMO. But I think the other part of that is generally speaking, what I've become aware of is that if the soy is being produced for human consumption, it's non-GMO.

[Kevin]
OK.

[Michelle]
Really, all of that GMO soy that we are worried about is produced for animal agriculture, animal consumption. And it's byproducts of that soy production that ends up in the really cheap processed foods. So when you're reading a food label, then, yeah, you really do kind of want to look for, in my opinion, non-GMO soy called out.

But, you know, back to the other, the kind of the carrageenan argument, if you see soy less than a label, I'm like, I'm not going to be that worried about it because it's usually like a tiny, tiny, tiny, minuscule amount.

[Kevin]
We're still living in the real world.

[Michelle]
Yeah. How much, how much processed food are you eating? That's really a bigger concern.

[Kevin]
Right.

[Michelle]
But I've learned that you really don't need to be worried about soy milk ever being non-GMO. Right. OK, even even if it doesn't necessarily say so, which I think all of them do because because it's such a deterrent for consumers.

[Kevin]
Right. Of course. Of course.

[Michelle]
OK, the next one, our very favorite that we use at the tea lounge is oat milk.

[Kevin]
Yay. I win. I win.

[Michelle]
That's my choice. Was that your choice? I'm glad to hear that.

It's highly, highly, highly sustainable. Oat milk industry, the lowest water use of all of the plant milks. It is the fastest growing segment of plant milk in the United States.

We don't have a metric for Canada, so I have to use the United States. And 50 to 90 percent of global oat production is used for animal feed. Therefore, there's a huge global acreage potentiality to shift as global diets move more towards healthier, more sustainable, more plant forward.

We could easily shift that production away from producing it for animal agriculture and producing it for humans.

[Kevin]
Producing it for my coffee in the morning. Yes.

[Michelle]
It's all about you, Kevin.

[Kevin]
It is all about me and my coffee habit. Exactly.

[Michelle]
So I think that's just that's kind of one of the things that I really love about it is like, you know, as we look for potentiality to shift things, right, because that's always the big question, we could lead to, you know, a much more regenerative sort of way of eating, if you will, and help be with our tiny little consumption things. Your coffee can actually contribute to planetary health. So, yes, and help to restore carbon sinks, those important carbon sinks on the planet.

So, again, you're going to do better if you choose organic and non-GMO brands. Are you by any chance using a barista formula for your?

[Kevin]
No, because I find that barista formulas always are sweet and I don't like I never put sugar in my coffee.

[Michelle]
Yeah. OK, good. So we looked at the barista formulas because other colleagues in the industry were saying, oh, you need to use barista milk for your lattes.

They're so much better. They have a better froth. And I looked into that.

And what I found was that the barista formulas have oil. So barista versions of oat milk, almond milk and soy milk all contain added vegetable oil such as canola. And it's because of the added vegetable oil that they have this great froth.

But see, again, this is an unnecessary and undesirable saturated fat when we are consuming these barista formulas. So, I mean, if you ask me, soy has an incredible froth, oat has a great froth, not as not as much as soy milk. It has all of our customers are very, very happy with that.

Right. So and I think that's also one of the reasons why we don't have the coconut milk. Coconut milk makes a great tasting latte and it's got an OK froth, but it's not fabulous.

Now, there's one other milk that we have traditionally used at the at the tea lounge, but we can't find it anymore, at least not affordably, macadamia milk, which is which is really sad because a lot of our customers really, really loved the taste of macadamia milk. It comes from macadamia trees. So environmentally, there are fewer mechanical and chemical inputs over the farming of other types of plant milks, and it's simply made by gathering raw macadamia chips and turning them into a paste and then to a milk.

OK, it's it's very sustainable, you know, great respect for soil. The shell pieces actually even become part of biochar used to fertilize the macadamia trees. So a bit of a circular economy there.

And the trees also, in terms of, you know, the agriculture, they tend to bind rather than tear up soil. OK, so so like so they don't have the same soil impact, minimal irrigation and fertilization and very non-GMO. So I don't know why it disappeared as an option where we can buy bulk as a restaurant.

And I looked in the grocery stores, it's super expensive now. So it's kind of made it, you know, you know, not a viable milk for us to use in the cafe. Now, there's some other ones that are available, you know, hemp milk was really super popular among the hippies in the 70s.

And, you know, flax and hemp are still milks that are becoming more and more available. I don't tend to really like the taste of them as much. But, you know, as stuff comes out, we'll continue to try them.

I'm always willing to have my mind changed, as I told you in my first episode. Right. They are less popular, so they're farmed less.

And for that reason, they're more expensive, as we've touched on. You know, it's really demand that drives the supply and price point. Right.

So those are, though, by the way, the hemp and the plant milk, the flax milks are more environmentally friendly simply because it's such small scale farming. The up and comer, though, the up and coming milk, the one that I'm watching and I'm waiting for it to become more widely available so that it's feasible for the cafe.

[Kevin]
The 20 to 1 long shot that's rounding the clubhouse turn.

[Michelle]
Do you have any guess, any guesses as to which one I'm going to mention?

[Kevin]
I'm trying to think of what else I've seen that hazelnut. I'm trying to think of nuts, hazelnut, peanut milk. Oh, no.

Pea milk. Pea milk. Oh, I have heard of that.

[Michelle]
Like PEA milk.

[Kevin]
Yeah. I'm not going there. OK, I thought about it for a millisecond.

I'm not going there.

[Michelle]
So PEA milk made from yellow split peas is is showing up to potentially be the best of all of the environmental alternatives. It's growing in popularity and it's also looking like kind of like oat milk. It's probably going to be very inexpensive to farm.

And yeah, so I'm watching that one for sure. OK, so I want to tell you one more thing, like I was pretty pleased with my choices when I I then kind of looked up a couple of sources to see how all of the plant milks stacked up against one another for environmental sustainability, as we've been talking about, and but also human health. So I think we just recap the environmental stability.

BBC did a study to compare dairy, rice, soy, oat and almond milk, and they found, as I found, that soy and oat milk were the overall net winners in terms of emissions, land use and water use, dairy being the worst and then, you know, almond milk close after that. And then there was, though, looking at the human health aspect, I think the other thing that we often criticize dairy for is saturated fat. So what does that look like in terms of the plant milks?

Because saturated fat, just to recap, these are this is something that we should be paying attention to in all aspects of our diet. But all plants do have some lipid content. So lipid is is a fat and it's necessary.

It's an essential part of the integrity of the plant. So all plants are going to have a certain amount of lipid content. And we need healthy amounts of fats for our skin and for our connective tissue and our brain.

And that's that's why I'm quick to point out in the previous episode, we can get more than enough of the fat that we require from our diet because of this inherent lipid content. We don't need to consume oils. In fact, we should be avoiding oils or minimizing them at the very least.

But when it comes to plant milks, they're not all equal in this regard. So oat and soy milk are both cholesterol free and very, very low in saturated forms of fat. Soy milk is one of very few non-dairy milks, as we said, that is comparable in protein content to a cow's milk.

But it's also very, very low in that saturated fat. And then almond milk, coconut milk are not do aren't as good for us on the saturated fat scale. So that's another kind of reason to kind of gravitate more towards oat milk or soy milk.

[Kevin]
Yay, oat milk.

[Michelle]
Yeah, so one more final anecdote for you, Kev. So if I if we kind of I talk to my staff about this when we're making some plant milk decisions and the common taste rankings of our customers, the most popular, most commonly liked milks are oat milk and the macadamia milk. When when we did offer that, like I said, we've had to pause that waiting to see why it's not as widely available as it once was, at least affordably so.

But we find that well liked by some but not others is the soy milk, the almond milk and the coconut milk. And that just comes down to a personal preference thing. I don't think that people necessarily dislike the taste of any of those.

They just like oat milk better. Right. And then the rising star, I'm told, in the barista community is pea milk, that there are a number of people that are, you know, trying pea milk and really like the taste of it.

Now, are you ready for my Ivo walks in a bar joke for you?

[Kevin]
I am so ready for your beer joke.

[Michelle]
OK, so a neutron walks into a bar. And he asks, how much for a beer? And the bartender says, for you, no charge.

[Kevin]
Oh, it took me a minute.

[Michelle]
I got you this time. Yeah, I know. Neutron, no charge.

[Kevin]
It took me a minute. It's like, oh, my God. Grade 10 chemistry.

Quick, quick. What the hell is a neutron? Oh, that's funny.

[Michelle]
I love it when you can merge walks into a bar jokes and science together. It's just a beautiful thing.

[Kevin]
Exactly. OK, well, speaking of walks into a bar joke, I'm going to maybe this is this is very topical, but I don't know if you're going to like this.

[Michelle]
OK.

[Kevin]
A couple of cups of yogurt walk into a country club. We don't serve your kind here. The bartender says.

Why not? One yogurt asks. We're cultured.

Oh, I guess it could have been coconut yogurt. I don't know.

[Michelle]
That's cute. I'm actually you know what? I haven't heard that one.

I thought I'd heard like almost all of them.

[Kevin]
I am always happy to surprise you with more ridiculous jokes. That's my that's my quest with this podcast. OK, well, this is great, as usual, Michelle, you are just a wealth of information.

And on behalf of everyone listening, thank you for doing our homework. Hey, no problem. So that we don't have to do all of this like online research, because I did this before when I was trying to figure out my milk and it drove me nuts.

If where were you back then?

[Michelle]
We it's such a fast growing segment of the food industry. I think it's something I'm going to have to continue to keep my eye on.

[Kevin]
Well, we might have to have an update in another few episodes because who knows? Pea milk might get in. There might be like who knows what other milk?

You never know. Fern milk, Brussels sprout milk.

[Michelle]
Yeah. Like I said, just keep your mind open. Be willing to have your mind changed.

And I think let's also continue to give industry an opportunity to continue to move things in in the right direction in terms of the environment and find better ways all the time.

[Kevin]
Exactly, exactly. Well, Michelle, thank you. It's been, as always, amazing chatting with you.

[Michelle]
It's my pleasure. Thank you so much.

[Kevin]
And we will be talking to you in another couple of weeks.

[Michelle]
All right.

[Kevin]
Be real, folks. Until then, take care. This has been Nutrition for Noobs.

We hope you're a bit more enlightened about how your fantastic and complicated body works with the food you put into it. If you have a question or a topic you'd like Michelle to discuss, drop us a line at n4noobs@gmail.com. That's the letter N, the number four, N-O-O-B-S at gmail.com.

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