Milk–this widely common, seemingly unproblematic drink–has become the subject of recent controversy.
In this episode, we’ll look into the war on milk, why people stopped drinking it, and the future of the dairy industry.
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about milk.
[00:00:26] Now, it might sound like a relatively uncontroversial subject.
[00:00:30] After all, every mammal in the world produces milk, you most probably drank your mother’s milk as a baby, you might put milk in your cereal in the morning.
[00:00:39] Perhaps you’re even sipping a cappuccino or a cup of milky tea at this very moment.
[00:00:45] But milk has gone from something innocent, something that governments literally gave children for free and encouraged parents to provide for their children, to something of a bogeyman, an outcast, with calls for the sale of milk to be banned.
[00:01:02] So that’s what we are going to be exploring in this episode, the war on milk.
[00:01:07] Let me start this episode with a perhaps polarising question: do you drink milk?
[00:01:16] If I had transported myself back in a time machine to perhaps any period of history and asked someone this question, they would most likely have been slightly confused.
[00:01:28] Going back as far as 8,000 BC, 10,000 years ago, there is evidence of humans drinking milk from animals - cows, goats, sheep, reindeer, horses, you name it.
[00:01:41] After all, every mammal produces milk, it’s nutritious, it tastes pretty good, or at least many people think it tastes nice enough, and it’s easy to collect - all you need is a mammal that produces it.
[00:01:56] And a quick biological point here. Cows, goats, sheep, and of course humans, need to become pregnant and give birth in order to produce milk.
[00:02:06] You probably knew that already, but it’s important to clarify early on, as it will become more relevant later.
[00:02:14] So, back to early milk drinking, and me asking someone 100, 500, or even 5,000 years ago if they drank milk, or consumed dairy products.
[00:02:26] Odds are that they would have said “yes, of course. We keep cows or sheep, we milk them, we drink the milk, we make butter and cheese, of course we do, why wouldn’t we?”
[00:02:40] And as for the countries where milk wasn’t consumed, this was generally for health reasons - around 90% of people of East Asian descent have lactose intolerance, so consuming dairy products makes them feel ill.
[00:02:55] But for anyone who wasn’t lactose intolerant, and who had access to cows, sheep and goats, milk and dairy products were somewhat of a staple. Milk is full of vitamins, and it was almost literally available on tap.
[00:03:11] A bit of squeezing of your cow’s udders and ta-da, you had a nice cup of nourishing, warm fresh milk.
[00:03:20] And with time, the process of producing milk went from a localised one, where farmers produced enough milk for their immediate family or their village, to larger dairy farms with lots of cows whose milk would be transported and sold all over the country, all over the world even.
[00:03:38] Fast forward to today, the dairy industry is estimated to be worth anything from 500 to 900 billion dollars, with something in the region of 250 million dairy cows in the world.
[00:03:53] And here’s a fun but useless fact that I calculated for you - if you lined up every dairy cow in the world nose to tail, that line would stretch around the world 17 times.
[00:04:06] The point is, the dairy industry is huge. Billions of people drink milk every day, and there is evidence of people drinking milk for over 10 thousand years now.
[00:04:19] So, what’s changed?
[00:04:21] Well, let me read you some headlines from the past few years.
[00:04:26] “12 Reasons to Stop Drinking Cow’s Milk”.
[00:04:30] “Hate To Break It To You, But Drinking Milk Is Not Okay”
[00:04:35] “Only Psychopaths Drink Milk”
[00:04:39] OK, that last one was from a film critic’s article on how only psychopaths drink milk in movies, but you get the point.
[00:04:47] There has never been a greater backlash against this drink than in the 21st century.
[00:04:55] If you’re a sworn “no milk” person, you’ll no doubt know all of the reasons for this already. Even if you chug down litres of milk every day, you will probably be aware of some of them, but it’s worth naming them here, so we’re all on the same page.
[00:05:12] The reasons that people have stopped drinking milk can be split broadly into three categories:
[00:05:17] Environmental, ethical, and health.
[00:05:21] To expand on these briefly, the dairy industry is responsible for around 3.6% of global carbon emissions. Cows burp and fart, they release methane from their mouths and their bottoms, and this isn’t good news for the environment.
[00:05:39] By drinking milk you support the dairy industry, which is responsible for going on 4% of global carbon emissions. So, if you stop drinking milk and replace it with a plant-based alternative, so the argument goes, you will reduce your carbon footprint.
[00:05:57] Secondly, for ethical reasons, reasons around animal cruelty. While 500 years ago a cow might have had a relatively happy life in the countryside, life as a modern dairy cow is not so pleasant. Cows are artificially inseminated, they are forced to become pregnant against their will. They give birth, and immediately their calf is taken away, never to be seen again, and typically killed for its meat within months. Gone are the days of roaming grassy pastures for most 21st century dairy cows; their days, their lives even, are spent standing next to each other in cramped indoor sheds. It’s cruel for the mother and for its baby.
[00:06:46] And finally, health. While the benefits of milk, its high levels of vitamins and so on, while milk was for years something that governments and parents would promote as a good thing to drink, some modern studies have concluded that milk can be problematic. It has been linked to everything from cancer to skin conditions.
[00:07:09] So, milk, once the symbol of nourishment and goodness, a drink that is mentioned no fewer than 48 times in the Bible, is becoming increasingly unfashionable, especially with younger consumers.
[00:07:25] If one report from 2022 is to be believed half of Gen Z is ashamed, too embarrassed, to drink milk in public.
[00:07:35] What’s more, the business of producing milk is not a particularly good business. Dairy farmers are constantly hammered on price by large supermarkets; they simply can’t make much money selling milk anymore, because their costs have risen so fast, and they can’t charge any more.
[00:07:54] For milk’s critics, no doubt this is fantastic news, as it’s yet another reason to consign milk to the history books.
[00:08:04] But there is a real human cost. Farmers already have a higher suicide rate than every other type of job, with American farmers twice as likely to kill themselves than people in any other profession. And dairy farmers are particularly susceptible, given that they have always operated on very low profit margins.
[00:08:27] One dairy cooperative in the United States even went so far as to send its members a leaflet with a list of suicide prevention hotlines - that is how bad it has got.
[00:08:40] Dairy farmers are literally killing themselves because the future is so bleak.
[00:08:46] On the flip side of all of this, however, is a growing group of passionate milk drinkers, people who are committed to going back to nature and drinking pure, raw cow milk.
[00:08:58] Quick side note, the milk that you or I might find in a supermarket has not come straight from a cow’s udder. It has been processed, pasteurised, harmful bacteria removed and the fat levels adjusted.
[00:09:13] Raw milk, on the other hand, is exactly that, it’s raw, it hasn’t been processed or changed in any way.
[00:09:22] Most governments, in fact, have restrictions on raw milk, precisely because it can be harmful.
[00:09:28] It’s actually illegal, banned, in some states in the United States.
[00:09:33] In the UK, it’s completely illegal in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Northern Ireland it’s illegal to sell it in supermarkets or highstreet shops, but not illegal to sell directly to a consumer.
[00:09:47] In other words, you can buy it directly from a farmer but you can’t buy it at a supermarket.
[00:09:54] And, like anything that is illegal or semi illegal, this often adds to its attraction, its intrigue. The number of people searching online for “raw milk” has tripled since 2004, and more and more people are being drawn to this pure, unadulterated, and in some cases illegal, type of milk.
[00:10:18] Why, you might ask?
[00:10:20] Well, proponents of raw milk share some of the same health concerns as critics of “normal” milk, that it is pumped full of additives and preservatives and not very good for you.
[00:10:33] But while many critics of normal milk suggest drinking plant-based alternatives - oat milk, almond milk, soy milk and so on - proponents of raw milk have exactly the same health issues with these plant-based milks, these “alternative” milks.
[00:10:50] Drinks like oat milk often have very high sugar content and use rapeseed oils, and lack many of the nutrients that come with raw milk and, to a lesser extent, processed milk.
[00:11:03] And, according to the author of a book called The Great Plant-Based Con, the environmental arguments for switching to plant-based milks over cow-based milk are not as strong as most people think.
[00:11:17] In fact, according to the book’s author, if you measure greenhouse gas emissions based on nutrients, not on calories, oat milk is actually three times worse for the planet than cow milk.
[00:11:32] Or to put it another way, on a per calorie basis oat milk is better for the environment. But because it has so few nutrients compared to cow milk, on a per nutrient basis it is considerably worse for the environment.
[00:11:50] Raw milk, according to its most ardent proponents, its greatest supporters, is the answer, and there is a growing corner of the internet where raw milk fans will espouse its benefits and tell everyone that they should ditch processed milk and milk alternatives, instead going to the source, pure, unadulterated cow’s milk.
[00:12:14] You’ll see health and fitness influencers on social media talking about how they drink a pint of raw milk every day. Even Liver King, who you might remember from our mini-series a few weeks ago on Great American Con Artists, you can find videos of him chugging down litres of raw milk, telling people how great it is and how they need to avoid any kind of processed drinks.
[00:12:39] It’s still a relatively niche, a small, group of people, these raw-milk enthusiasts, and raw milk is still illegal in much of the world, but its fans and advocates are passionate and growing in number.
[00:12:54] So this is the curious state of milk in 2023.
[00:12:59] On the one hand there are milk’s biggest critics, people who point to the environmental, ethical and health dangers of drinking milk and eating dairy, people who are almost literally waging war on milk.
[00:13:14] On the other side of the spectrum you have the raw milk proponents, people who will often travel hundreds of kilometres to buy raw milk directly from a farmer, people who are super passionate about raw milk and encourage everyone they meet to try it.
[00:13:31] And stuck in the middle you have “traditional” milk, or normal processed milk I should say. It’s under attack from both sides. You have dairy farmers being squeezed on price by supermarkets, you have younger consumers deciding to not drink cow’s milk, and you have increasing costs of production.
[00:13:53] Given all of this, it’s hardly surprising that the future for dairy farmers is somewhat bleak, with some reports going as far as to say that the dairy industry in the United States could be obsolete by the year 2030, it could simply not exist.
[00:14:11] But is there light at the end of the tunnel, what could come next for the dairy industry and for milk?
[00:14:19] There is extensive work and investment going into reducing the carbon footprint of cows, giving them probiotics to stop them emitting so much methane, running the farms in a more environmentally friendly way, and doing what can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of the dairy industry, while still keeping cows front and centre.
[00:14:41] And one potential future has cows being removed from the milk-production altogether via something called “precision fermentation”, which allows milk to be produced without the environmental or ethical problems of producing milk from cows.
[00:14:57] It’s still prohibitively expensive, it's too costly to mass produce milk in this way, but it’s claimed that by 2035 "precise fermentation" will be a cheaper way to produce milk, thereby putting cows out of business.
[00:15:16] And there are also plenty of hair-raising headlines about alternative types of milk, including one that even claimed that milk could be made from cockroaches, which I certainly don’t particularly like the sound of.
[00:15:30] So, as to the future of milk, while in the short term dairy farmers are being squeezed from all sides, with seemingly little support, there are still billions of people who drink milk and consume dairy products every single day.
[00:15:47] Whatever your personal views about milk, the fact that it is so popular is, in some ways, a little strange.
[00:15:56] Firstly, humans are the only species on earth that drinks the milk of another animal.
[00:16:03] Plenty of other animals eat other animals, or other plants, but none drink the milk of another animal.
[00:16:11] And secondly, humans are the only mammals that continue to drink milk into adulthood - no other adult mammals do it.
[00:16:19] Strange it might be, but it is very popular.
[00:16:24] We humans have been drinking milk for 10,000 years, as a species we have developed quite the thirst for it.
[00:16:32] Who knows whether we’ll still be doing it in 10,000, 1,000, 100 or even 10 years from now.
[00:16:42] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the war on milk.
[00:16:47] I hope it's been an interesting one and that whether you are a avowed vegan and anti-milk crusader, or if you get through litres of milk every day, well I hope you've learnt something new.
[00:16:59] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:03] Do you drink milk? If so, what milk do you drink, plant based, supermarket processed milk, or raw milk?
[00:17:11] Has your consumption of dairy products and of milk changed over time?
[00:17:16] Where do you think the dairy industry will be in 10 years time?
[00:17:20] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:24] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:31] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:36] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about milk.
[00:00:26] Now, it might sound like a relatively uncontroversial subject.
[00:00:30] After all, every mammal in the world produces milk, you most probably drank your mother’s milk as a baby, you might put milk in your cereal in the morning.
[00:00:39] Perhaps you’re even sipping a cappuccino or a cup of milky tea at this very moment.
[00:00:45] But milk has gone from something innocent, something that governments literally gave children for free and encouraged parents to provide for their children, to something of a bogeyman, an outcast, with calls for the sale of milk to be banned.
[00:01:02] So that’s what we are going to be exploring in this episode, the war on milk.
[00:01:07] Let me start this episode with a perhaps polarising question: do you drink milk?
[00:01:16] If I had transported myself back in a time machine to perhaps any period of history and asked someone this question, they would most likely have been slightly confused.
[00:01:28] Going back as far as 8,000 BC, 10,000 years ago, there is evidence of humans drinking milk from animals - cows, goats, sheep, reindeer, horses, you name it.
[00:01:41] After all, every mammal produces milk, it’s nutritious, it tastes pretty good, or at least many people think it tastes nice enough, and it’s easy to collect - all you need is a mammal that produces it.
[00:01:56] And a quick biological point here. Cows, goats, sheep, and of course humans, need to become pregnant and give birth in order to produce milk.
[00:02:06] You probably knew that already, but it’s important to clarify early on, as it will become more relevant later.
[00:02:14] So, back to early milk drinking, and me asking someone 100, 500, or even 5,000 years ago if they drank milk, or consumed dairy products.
[00:02:26] Odds are that they would have said “yes, of course. We keep cows or sheep, we milk them, we drink the milk, we make butter and cheese, of course we do, why wouldn’t we?”
[00:02:40] And as for the countries where milk wasn’t consumed, this was generally for health reasons - around 90% of people of East Asian descent have lactose intolerance, so consuming dairy products makes them feel ill.
[00:02:55] But for anyone who wasn’t lactose intolerant, and who had access to cows, sheep and goats, milk and dairy products were somewhat of a staple. Milk is full of vitamins, and it was almost literally available on tap.
[00:03:11] A bit of squeezing of your cow’s udders and ta-da, you had a nice cup of nourishing, warm fresh milk.
[00:03:20] And with time, the process of producing milk went from a localised one, where farmers produced enough milk for their immediate family or their village, to larger dairy farms with lots of cows whose milk would be transported and sold all over the country, all over the world even.
[00:03:38] Fast forward to today, the dairy industry is estimated to be worth anything from 500 to 900 billion dollars, with something in the region of 250 million dairy cows in the world.
[00:03:53] And here’s a fun but useless fact that I calculated for you - if you lined up every dairy cow in the world nose to tail, that line would stretch around the world 17 times.
[00:04:06] The point is, the dairy industry is huge. Billions of people drink milk every day, and there is evidence of people drinking milk for over 10 thousand years now.
[00:04:19] So, what’s changed?
[00:04:21] Well, let me read you some headlines from the past few years.
[00:04:26] “12 Reasons to Stop Drinking Cow’s Milk”.
[00:04:30] “Hate To Break It To You, But Drinking Milk Is Not Okay”
[00:04:35] “Only Psychopaths Drink Milk”
[00:04:39] OK, that last one was from a film critic’s article on how only psychopaths drink milk in movies, but you get the point.
[00:04:47] There has never been a greater backlash against this drink than in the 21st century.
[00:04:55] If you’re a sworn “no milk” person, you’ll no doubt know all of the reasons for this already. Even if you chug down litres of milk every day, you will probably be aware of some of them, but it’s worth naming them here, so we’re all on the same page.
[00:05:12] The reasons that people have stopped drinking milk can be split broadly into three categories:
[00:05:17] Environmental, ethical, and health.
[00:05:21] To expand on these briefly, the dairy industry is responsible for around 3.6% of global carbon emissions. Cows burp and fart, they release methane from their mouths and their bottoms, and this isn’t good news for the environment.
[00:05:39] By drinking milk you support the dairy industry, which is responsible for going on 4% of global carbon emissions. So, if you stop drinking milk and replace it with a plant-based alternative, so the argument goes, you will reduce your carbon footprint.
[00:05:57] Secondly, for ethical reasons, reasons around animal cruelty. While 500 years ago a cow might have had a relatively happy life in the countryside, life as a modern dairy cow is not so pleasant. Cows are artificially inseminated, they are forced to become pregnant against their will. They give birth, and immediately their calf is taken away, never to be seen again, and typically killed for its meat within months. Gone are the days of roaming grassy pastures for most 21st century dairy cows; their days, their lives even, are spent standing next to each other in cramped indoor sheds. It’s cruel for the mother and for its baby.
[00:06:46] And finally, health. While the benefits of milk, its high levels of vitamins and so on, while milk was for years something that governments and parents would promote as a good thing to drink, some modern studies have concluded that milk can be problematic. It has been linked to everything from cancer to skin conditions.
[00:07:09] So, milk, once the symbol of nourishment and goodness, a drink that is mentioned no fewer than 48 times in the Bible, is becoming increasingly unfashionable, especially with younger consumers.
[00:07:25] If one report from 2022 is to be believed half of Gen Z is ashamed, too embarrassed, to drink milk in public.
[00:07:35] What’s more, the business of producing milk is not a particularly good business. Dairy farmers are constantly hammered on price by large supermarkets; they simply can’t make much money selling milk anymore, because their costs have risen so fast, and they can’t charge any more.
[00:07:54] For milk’s critics, no doubt this is fantastic news, as it’s yet another reason to consign milk to the history books.
[00:08:04] But there is a real human cost. Farmers already have a higher suicide rate than every other type of job, with American farmers twice as likely to kill themselves than people in any other profession. And dairy farmers are particularly susceptible, given that they have always operated on very low profit margins.
[00:08:27] One dairy cooperative in the United States even went so far as to send its members a leaflet with a list of suicide prevention hotlines - that is how bad it has got.
[00:08:40] Dairy farmers are literally killing themselves because the future is so bleak.
[00:08:46] On the flip side of all of this, however, is a growing group of passionate milk drinkers, people who are committed to going back to nature and drinking pure, raw cow milk.
[00:08:58] Quick side note, the milk that you or I might find in a supermarket has not come straight from a cow’s udder. It has been processed, pasteurised, harmful bacteria removed and the fat levels adjusted.
[00:09:13] Raw milk, on the other hand, is exactly that, it’s raw, it hasn’t been processed or changed in any way.
[00:09:22] Most governments, in fact, have restrictions on raw milk, precisely because it can be harmful.
[00:09:28] It’s actually illegal, banned, in some states in the United States.
[00:09:33] In the UK, it’s completely illegal in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Northern Ireland it’s illegal to sell it in supermarkets or highstreet shops, but not illegal to sell directly to a consumer.
[00:09:47] In other words, you can buy it directly from a farmer but you can’t buy it at a supermarket.
[00:09:54] And, like anything that is illegal or semi illegal, this often adds to its attraction, its intrigue. The number of people searching online for “raw milk” has tripled since 2004, and more and more people are being drawn to this pure, unadulterated, and in some cases illegal, type of milk.
[00:10:18] Why, you might ask?
[00:10:20] Well, proponents of raw milk share some of the same health concerns as critics of “normal” milk, that it is pumped full of additives and preservatives and not very good for you.
[00:10:33] But while many critics of normal milk suggest drinking plant-based alternatives - oat milk, almond milk, soy milk and so on - proponents of raw milk have exactly the same health issues with these plant-based milks, these “alternative” milks.
[00:10:50] Drinks like oat milk often have very high sugar content and use rapeseed oils, and lack many of the nutrients that come with raw milk and, to a lesser extent, processed milk.
[00:11:03] And, according to the author of a book called The Great Plant-Based Con, the environmental arguments for switching to plant-based milks over cow-based milk are not as strong as most people think.
[00:11:17] In fact, according to the book’s author, if you measure greenhouse gas emissions based on nutrients, not on calories, oat milk is actually three times worse for the planet than cow milk.
[00:11:32] Or to put it another way, on a per calorie basis oat milk is better for the environment. But because it has so few nutrients compared to cow milk, on a per nutrient basis it is considerably worse for the environment.
[00:11:50] Raw milk, according to its most ardent proponents, its greatest supporters, is the answer, and there is a growing corner of the internet where raw milk fans will espouse its benefits and tell everyone that they should ditch processed milk and milk alternatives, instead going to the source, pure, unadulterated cow’s milk.
[00:12:14] You’ll see health and fitness influencers on social media talking about how they drink a pint of raw milk every day. Even Liver King, who you might remember from our mini-series a few weeks ago on Great American Con Artists, you can find videos of him chugging down litres of raw milk, telling people how great it is and how they need to avoid any kind of processed drinks.
[00:12:39] It’s still a relatively niche, a small, group of people, these raw-milk enthusiasts, and raw milk is still illegal in much of the world, but its fans and advocates are passionate and growing in number.
[00:12:54] So this is the curious state of milk in 2023.
[00:12:59] On the one hand there are milk’s biggest critics, people who point to the environmental, ethical and health dangers of drinking milk and eating dairy, people who are almost literally waging war on milk.
[00:13:14] On the other side of the spectrum you have the raw milk proponents, people who will often travel hundreds of kilometres to buy raw milk directly from a farmer, people who are super passionate about raw milk and encourage everyone they meet to try it.
[00:13:31] And stuck in the middle you have “traditional” milk, or normal processed milk I should say. It’s under attack from both sides. You have dairy farmers being squeezed on price by supermarkets, you have younger consumers deciding to not drink cow’s milk, and you have increasing costs of production.
[00:13:53] Given all of this, it’s hardly surprising that the future for dairy farmers is somewhat bleak, with some reports going as far as to say that the dairy industry in the United States could be obsolete by the year 2030, it could simply not exist.
[00:14:11] But is there light at the end of the tunnel, what could come next for the dairy industry and for milk?
[00:14:19] There is extensive work and investment going into reducing the carbon footprint of cows, giving them probiotics to stop them emitting so much methane, running the farms in a more environmentally friendly way, and doing what can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of the dairy industry, while still keeping cows front and centre.
[00:14:41] And one potential future has cows being removed from the milk-production altogether via something called “precision fermentation”, which allows milk to be produced without the environmental or ethical problems of producing milk from cows.
[00:14:57] It’s still prohibitively expensive, it's too costly to mass produce milk in this way, but it’s claimed that by 2035 "precise fermentation" will be a cheaper way to produce milk, thereby putting cows out of business.
[00:15:16] And there are also plenty of hair-raising headlines about alternative types of milk, including one that even claimed that milk could be made from cockroaches, which I certainly don’t particularly like the sound of.
[00:15:30] So, as to the future of milk, while in the short term dairy farmers are being squeezed from all sides, with seemingly little support, there are still billions of people who drink milk and consume dairy products every single day.
[00:15:47] Whatever your personal views about milk, the fact that it is so popular is, in some ways, a little strange.
[00:15:56] Firstly, humans are the only species on earth that drinks the milk of another animal.
[00:16:03] Plenty of other animals eat other animals, or other plants, but none drink the milk of another animal.
[00:16:11] And secondly, humans are the only mammals that continue to drink milk into adulthood - no other adult mammals do it.
[00:16:19] Strange it might be, but it is very popular.
[00:16:24] We humans have been drinking milk for 10,000 years, as a species we have developed quite the thirst for it.
[00:16:32] Who knows whether we’ll still be doing it in 10,000, 1,000, 100 or even 10 years from now.
[00:16:42] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the war on milk.
[00:16:47] I hope it's been an interesting one and that whether you are a avowed vegan and anti-milk crusader, or if you get through litres of milk every day, well I hope you've learnt something new.
[00:16:59] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:03] Do you drink milk? If so, what milk do you drink, plant based, supermarket processed milk, or raw milk?
[00:17:11] Has your consumption of dairy products and of milk changed over time?
[00:17:16] Where do you think the dairy industry will be in 10 years time?
[00:17:20] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:24] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:31] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:36] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:05] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about milk.
[00:00:26] Now, it might sound like a relatively uncontroversial subject.
[00:00:30] After all, every mammal in the world produces milk, you most probably drank your mother’s milk as a baby, you might put milk in your cereal in the morning.
[00:00:39] Perhaps you’re even sipping a cappuccino or a cup of milky tea at this very moment.
[00:00:45] But milk has gone from something innocent, something that governments literally gave children for free and encouraged parents to provide for their children, to something of a bogeyman, an outcast, with calls for the sale of milk to be banned.
[00:01:02] So that’s what we are going to be exploring in this episode, the war on milk.
[00:01:07] Let me start this episode with a perhaps polarising question: do you drink milk?
[00:01:16] If I had transported myself back in a time machine to perhaps any period of history and asked someone this question, they would most likely have been slightly confused.
[00:01:28] Going back as far as 8,000 BC, 10,000 years ago, there is evidence of humans drinking milk from animals - cows, goats, sheep, reindeer, horses, you name it.
[00:01:41] After all, every mammal produces milk, it’s nutritious, it tastes pretty good, or at least many people think it tastes nice enough, and it’s easy to collect - all you need is a mammal that produces it.
[00:01:56] And a quick biological point here. Cows, goats, sheep, and of course humans, need to become pregnant and give birth in order to produce milk.
[00:02:06] You probably knew that already, but it’s important to clarify early on, as it will become more relevant later.
[00:02:14] So, back to early milk drinking, and me asking someone 100, 500, or even 5,000 years ago if they drank milk, or consumed dairy products.
[00:02:26] Odds are that they would have said “yes, of course. We keep cows or sheep, we milk them, we drink the milk, we make butter and cheese, of course we do, why wouldn’t we?”
[00:02:40] And as for the countries where milk wasn’t consumed, this was generally for health reasons - around 90% of people of East Asian descent have lactose intolerance, so consuming dairy products makes them feel ill.
[00:02:55] But for anyone who wasn’t lactose intolerant, and who had access to cows, sheep and goats, milk and dairy products were somewhat of a staple. Milk is full of vitamins, and it was almost literally available on tap.
[00:03:11] A bit of squeezing of your cow’s udders and ta-da, you had a nice cup of nourishing, warm fresh milk.
[00:03:20] And with time, the process of producing milk went from a localised one, where farmers produced enough milk for their immediate family or their village, to larger dairy farms with lots of cows whose milk would be transported and sold all over the country, all over the world even.
[00:03:38] Fast forward to today, the dairy industry is estimated to be worth anything from 500 to 900 billion dollars, with something in the region of 250 million dairy cows in the world.
[00:03:53] And here’s a fun but useless fact that I calculated for you - if you lined up every dairy cow in the world nose to tail, that line would stretch around the world 17 times.
[00:04:06] The point is, the dairy industry is huge. Billions of people drink milk every day, and there is evidence of people drinking milk for over 10 thousand years now.
[00:04:19] So, what’s changed?
[00:04:21] Well, let me read you some headlines from the past few years.
[00:04:26] “12 Reasons to Stop Drinking Cow’s Milk”.
[00:04:30] “Hate To Break It To You, But Drinking Milk Is Not Okay”
[00:04:35] “Only Psychopaths Drink Milk”
[00:04:39] OK, that last one was from a film critic’s article on how only psychopaths drink milk in movies, but you get the point.
[00:04:47] There has never been a greater backlash against this drink than in the 21st century.
[00:04:55] If you’re a sworn “no milk” person, you’ll no doubt know all of the reasons for this already. Even if you chug down litres of milk every day, you will probably be aware of some of them, but it’s worth naming them here, so we’re all on the same page.
[00:05:12] The reasons that people have stopped drinking milk can be split broadly into three categories:
[00:05:17] Environmental, ethical, and health.
[00:05:21] To expand on these briefly, the dairy industry is responsible for around 3.6% of global carbon emissions. Cows burp and fart, they release methane from their mouths and their bottoms, and this isn’t good news for the environment.
[00:05:39] By drinking milk you support the dairy industry, which is responsible for going on 4% of global carbon emissions. So, if you stop drinking milk and replace it with a plant-based alternative, so the argument goes, you will reduce your carbon footprint.
[00:05:57] Secondly, for ethical reasons, reasons around animal cruelty. While 500 years ago a cow might have had a relatively happy life in the countryside, life as a modern dairy cow is not so pleasant. Cows are artificially inseminated, they are forced to become pregnant against their will. They give birth, and immediately their calf is taken away, never to be seen again, and typically killed for its meat within months. Gone are the days of roaming grassy pastures for most 21st century dairy cows; their days, their lives even, are spent standing next to each other in cramped indoor sheds. It’s cruel for the mother and for its baby.
[00:06:46] And finally, health. While the benefits of milk, its high levels of vitamins and so on, while milk was for years something that governments and parents would promote as a good thing to drink, some modern studies have concluded that milk can be problematic. It has been linked to everything from cancer to skin conditions.
[00:07:09] So, milk, once the symbol of nourishment and goodness, a drink that is mentioned no fewer than 48 times in the Bible, is becoming increasingly unfashionable, especially with younger consumers.
[00:07:25] If one report from 2022 is to be believed half of Gen Z is ashamed, too embarrassed, to drink milk in public.
[00:07:35] What’s more, the business of producing milk is not a particularly good business. Dairy farmers are constantly hammered on price by large supermarkets; they simply can’t make much money selling milk anymore, because their costs have risen so fast, and they can’t charge any more.
[00:07:54] For milk’s critics, no doubt this is fantastic news, as it’s yet another reason to consign milk to the history books.
[00:08:04] But there is a real human cost. Farmers already have a higher suicide rate than every other type of job, with American farmers twice as likely to kill themselves than people in any other profession. And dairy farmers are particularly susceptible, given that they have always operated on very low profit margins.
[00:08:27] One dairy cooperative in the United States even went so far as to send its members a leaflet with a list of suicide prevention hotlines - that is how bad it has got.
[00:08:40] Dairy farmers are literally killing themselves because the future is so bleak.
[00:08:46] On the flip side of all of this, however, is a growing group of passionate milk drinkers, people who are committed to going back to nature and drinking pure, raw cow milk.
[00:08:58] Quick side note, the milk that you or I might find in a supermarket has not come straight from a cow’s udder. It has been processed, pasteurised, harmful bacteria removed and the fat levels adjusted.
[00:09:13] Raw milk, on the other hand, is exactly that, it’s raw, it hasn’t been processed or changed in any way.
[00:09:22] Most governments, in fact, have restrictions on raw milk, precisely because it can be harmful.
[00:09:28] It’s actually illegal, banned, in some states in the United States.
[00:09:33] In the UK, it’s completely illegal in Scotland, but in England, Wales and Northern Ireland it’s illegal to sell it in supermarkets or highstreet shops, but not illegal to sell directly to a consumer.
[00:09:47] In other words, you can buy it directly from a farmer but you can’t buy it at a supermarket.
[00:09:54] And, like anything that is illegal or semi illegal, this often adds to its attraction, its intrigue. The number of people searching online for “raw milk” has tripled since 2004, and more and more people are being drawn to this pure, unadulterated, and in some cases illegal, type of milk.
[00:10:18] Why, you might ask?
[00:10:20] Well, proponents of raw milk share some of the same health concerns as critics of “normal” milk, that it is pumped full of additives and preservatives and not very good for you.
[00:10:33] But while many critics of normal milk suggest drinking plant-based alternatives - oat milk, almond milk, soy milk and so on - proponents of raw milk have exactly the same health issues with these plant-based milks, these “alternative” milks.
[00:10:50] Drinks like oat milk often have very high sugar content and use rapeseed oils, and lack many of the nutrients that come with raw milk and, to a lesser extent, processed milk.
[00:11:03] And, according to the author of a book called The Great Plant-Based Con, the environmental arguments for switching to plant-based milks over cow-based milk are not as strong as most people think.
[00:11:17] In fact, according to the book’s author, if you measure greenhouse gas emissions based on nutrients, not on calories, oat milk is actually three times worse for the planet than cow milk.
[00:11:32] Or to put it another way, on a per calorie basis oat milk is better for the environment. But because it has so few nutrients compared to cow milk, on a per nutrient basis it is considerably worse for the environment.
[00:11:50] Raw milk, according to its most ardent proponents, its greatest supporters, is the answer, and there is a growing corner of the internet where raw milk fans will espouse its benefits and tell everyone that they should ditch processed milk and milk alternatives, instead going to the source, pure, unadulterated cow’s milk.
[00:12:14] You’ll see health and fitness influencers on social media talking about how they drink a pint of raw milk every day. Even Liver King, who you might remember from our mini-series a few weeks ago on Great American Con Artists, you can find videos of him chugging down litres of raw milk, telling people how great it is and how they need to avoid any kind of processed drinks.
[00:12:39] It’s still a relatively niche, a small, group of people, these raw-milk enthusiasts, and raw milk is still illegal in much of the world, but its fans and advocates are passionate and growing in number.
[00:12:54] So this is the curious state of milk in 2023.
[00:12:59] On the one hand there are milk’s biggest critics, people who point to the environmental, ethical and health dangers of drinking milk and eating dairy, people who are almost literally waging war on milk.
[00:13:14] On the other side of the spectrum you have the raw milk proponents, people who will often travel hundreds of kilometres to buy raw milk directly from a farmer, people who are super passionate about raw milk and encourage everyone they meet to try it.
[00:13:31] And stuck in the middle you have “traditional” milk, or normal processed milk I should say. It’s under attack from both sides. You have dairy farmers being squeezed on price by supermarkets, you have younger consumers deciding to not drink cow’s milk, and you have increasing costs of production.
[00:13:53] Given all of this, it’s hardly surprising that the future for dairy farmers is somewhat bleak, with some reports going as far as to say that the dairy industry in the United States could be obsolete by the year 2030, it could simply not exist.
[00:14:11] But is there light at the end of the tunnel, what could come next for the dairy industry and for milk?
[00:14:19] There is extensive work and investment going into reducing the carbon footprint of cows, giving them probiotics to stop them emitting so much methane, running the farms in a more environmentally friendly way, and doing what can be done to reduce the carbon footprint of the dairy industry, while still keeping cows front and centre.
[00:14:41] And one potential future has cows being removed from the milk-production altogether via something called “precision fermentation”, which allows milk to be produced without the environmental or ethical problems of producing milk from cows.
[00:14:57] It’s still prohibitively expensive, it's too costly to mass produce milk in this way, but it’s claimed that by 2035 "precise fermentation" will be a cheaper way to produce milk, thereby putting cows out of business.
[00:15:16] And there are also plenty of hair-raising headlines about alternative types of milk, including one that even claimed that milk could be made from cockroaches, which I certainly don’t particularly like the sound of.
[00:15:30] So, as to the future of milk, while in the short term dairy farmers are being squeezed from all sides, with seemingly little support, there are still billions of people who drink milk and consume dairy products every single day.
[00:15:47] Whatever your personal views about milk, the fact that it is so popular is, in some ways, a little strange.
[00:15:56] Firstly, humans are the only species on earth that drinks the milk of another animal.
[00:16:03] Plenty of other animals eat other animals, or other plants, but none drink the milk of another animal.
[00:16:11] And secondly, humans are the only mammals that continue to drink milk into adulthood - no other adult mammals do it.
[00:16:19] Strange it might be, but it is very popular.
[00:16:24] We humans have been drinking milk for 10,000 years, as a species we have developed quite the thirst for it.
[00:16:32] Who knows whether we’ll still be doing it in 10,000, 1,000, 100 or even 10 years from now.
[00:16:42] OK then, that is it for today's episode on the war on milk.
[00:16:47] I hope it's been an interesting one and that whether you are a avowed vegan and anti-milk crusader, or if you get through litres of milk every day, well I hope you've learnt something new.
[00:16:59] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:17:03] Do you drink milk? If so, what milk do you drink, plant based, supermarket processed milk, or raw milk?
[00:17:11] Has your consumption of dairy products and of milk changed over time?
[00:17:16] Where do you think the dairy industry will be in 10 years time?
[00:17:20] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:17:24] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:17:31] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:17:36] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
