America Is Drowning in Milk Nobody Wants

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-17/america-is-drowning-in-milk-nobody-wants

by lxm • 8 years ago

95 146 8 years ago

For decades, yogurt was runny and high in sugar. “Then Chobani comes onto the scene and changes the idea of what yogurt can be.”

Um...

Plain yogurt from Chobani: serving size 150g, of which 15g sugar. ( https://www.chobani.com/products/greek/plain/non-fat-plain/ )

Cookies-and-cream flavored yogurt from Yoplait: serving size 170g, of which 19g sugar. (All yogurt in the same product line has the same amount of sugar, but it's more fun to quote it for cookies-and-cream. https://www.yoplait.com/product/regular-original-cookies-cre... )

Chobani didn't change the idea that yogurt is high in sugar. What was that comment about?

credit_guy• 8 years ago

There's a chance that is lactose, which, per the FDA [1] counts as sugar for nutrition labelling purposes.

[1] https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/interactivenutritionf...

[2]https://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/johannah-sakimura-nut...

masklinn3• 8 years ago

There's a chance that is lactose, which, per the FDA [1] counts as sugar for nutrition labelling purposes.

I'd expect most sugar in yogurt to not be lactose: part of the point and advantage of yogurt and other fermented dairy (and they're commonly consumed in places with low to no lactase persistence) is the cultures break down much of the milk's lactose into simpler sugars. In fact, the chobani nutrition section quotes 6g carbs, 4g sugars, less than 5% lactose.

More to the point, unsweetened yogurt should contain about the same sugar ratio as milk (4~6% by weight on average), >10% (the yoplait one) is way above the upper end and indicates added sugars. GP misread the chobani's nutrition label though, they quote 6g carbs (4g sugars) per 5.3oz (150g) not 15g.

lern_too_spel• 8 years ago

15g protein. Only 4g sugar.

empath75• 8 years ago

I think you read that wrong. It doesn’t have 15g of sugar.

Greek yogurt is regular yogurt that has been strained— the whey that they discard has a lot of the sugar content. Its closer to a soft cheese than a traditional yogurt.

grenoire• 8 years ago

Traditional? You must realise that Greek yoghurt is the closest you can get to the historical origins of it.

DanBC• 8 years ago

What's the amount of added sugar?

masklinn3• 8 years ago

None in the chobani (GP misread the nutrition information, it lists 6g carbs of which 4g sugars), a ton in the yoplait (sugars is the second ingredient in the list).

masklinn3• 8 years ago

Plain yogurt from Chobani: serving size 150g, of which 15g sugar. ( https://www.chobani.com/products/greek/plain/non-fat-plain/ )

Not sure where you've read that, the page lists 6g carbs (4g sugars), roughly in line with cow milk.

Cookies-and-cream flavored yogurt from Yoplait: serving size 170g, of which 19g sugar.

"Sugars" is literally the second ingredient in the list, right behind low-fat milk.

torstenvl• 8 years ago

Please cite your sources accurately. The Yoplait has more than four times the amount of sugar as the Chobani, almost twice the calories, and less than half the protein.

    Total Fat       0g 0%
      Saturated Fat 0g 0%
      Trans Fat     0g
    -
    Cholesterol   10mg 3%
    Potassium    210mg 6%
    Sodium        55mg 2%
    Total Carbs     6g 2%
      Dietary Fiber 0g 0%
      Sugars        4g
    -
    Protein        15g

mratzloff• 8 years ago

I'm sure with falling prices the market will correct itself.

I was going to make a snarky comment about US dairy subsidies, but aside from a billion dollar giveaway in 2009, those are almost nothing today. $370,000 in 2017.

lprubin2• 8 years ago

It sounds like these dairy subsidies fluctuate greatly.

In 2016, the dairy industry asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for a staggering $150 million to buy their excess cheese. A spokesperson for the National Farmers Union said they were disappointed to receive “only” $20 million. [0]

And according to this 600 page Canadian report, indirect subsidies are also a huge factor and contribute to 73 percent of producer returns coming from subsidies. [1]

The American government contributed around $22.2 billion in direct and indirect subsidies to the dairy sector in 2015.

[0] https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/377406-dairy-...

[1] https://www.realagriculture.com/2018/02/u-s-dairy-subsidies-...

kylek• 8 years ago

If you're interested in this you can dig deeper at https://farm.ewg.org

Symbiote• 8 years ago

The first graph, "New York's Shrinking Dairy Herd Starts To Grow Again", has a Y-axis starting at 610,000 and a maximum of about 627,000. I expect Bloomberg to represent a 2.5% change more honestly.

tmoertel• 8 years ago

It's common in financial publications, and in other publications with numerically literate audiences, to focus statistical graphics on the region of interest (except in bar charts, in which bars are expected to sit on a baseline of zero). For example, stock charts, one of the most common plots in financial publications, follow this practice:

http://google.com/search?q=GOOG

srgpqt• 8 years ago

Excess milk? Make cheese curds and sell poutine. Never understood why it hasn’t caught on much in the USA.

alexkavon2• 8 years ago

I’m actually surprised as well. Totally a match for the American diet. Meanwhile in Alphabet City, NYC a restaurant sells it for $20 a pop.

It might have more to do with the image of poutine. It’s gravy, cheese, and fries, it looks messy and unhealthy. I’m not sure about the messy part (forks maybe), but sprinkle some chives on top (mostly for color) and most people will be fooled.

yostrovs3• 8 years ago

They're called chili cheese fries. And they're popular here and there.

paulgb• 8 years ago

Meanwhile in Alphabet City, NYC a restaurant sells it for $20 a pop.

Brindle Room, right? I've only had their burgers, but Mile End also has poutine for $9 and I can confirm that it is authentic enough for this Canadian.

yellowapple2• 8 years ago

"it looks messy and unhealthy"

Lots of popular foods in American cuisine are messy and unhealthy. Nor sure how that'd be a problem for poutine.

The actual answer to the question of "why ain't poutine more popular south of Canada?" is because it sounds French (which - unless that Frenchiness is tied to being from Louisiana - typically implies something fancy and expensive). It needs better marketing.

nickik• 8 years ago

The government used to have tons of cheese that they gave out. But there were multiple dangerous cheese fires.

stephengillie4• 8 years ago

I've been saying this for years. Fries with gravy and cheese is delicious, and cheese fries are already popular in America. Big chains like McD and BK sell poutine in Canada, so why haven't they experimented in an American city with many Canadian tourists, like Bellingham?

JoeAltmaier2• 8 years ago

I can get it three places in my local Iowa town

dawnerd• 8 years ago

Just give me cheap cheese curds period. I can demolish a bag in a siting no prob. They’re just stupid expensive unless I drive to Tillamook, and even then they’re a bit spends.

johan_larson• 8 years ago

Cultures change. When I was growing up, we had a class of milk with lunch and dinner, and often ate cereal for breakfast with milk. We don't do that any more. We still sometimes eat cereal with milk for breakfast, but the glasses of milk with lunch and dinner are gone, replaced by carbonated water, apple juice, or wine. Repeat that times a hundred million people, and it's no wonder dairy farmers are hurting.

jacob019• 8 years ago

China is a massive consumer of dried milk powder. I wonder if the trump tariffs have anything to do with the changing demand for US milk.

Taniwha• 8 years ago

Bound to be, but also some competitors on the international market like New Zealand (which has no government price supports or subsidies), have free trade agreements with China.

If you become insular and erect tariff walls people play where there are none and they make more money.

The real problem is govt price supports, often brought in to tide people over for a year, once people start to depend on them they really stop working, you get stuck with inefficient industries when people should be growing something else, or simply be in another business. When NZ cut all farm subsidies back in the 80s farmers formed farmer cooperatives, in the dairy industry they now own most of the back end milk processing infrastructure, they're big enough that they are big players on the world markets, and the profits go back to their owners

douglaswlance• 8 years ago

We just opened up the Canadian market.

1over1372• 8 years ago

(Not sure who 'we' is but,) in the recent renegotiation of NAFTA, Canada did surrender some additional access to their domestic dairy market. The USA was demanding 100% access, but got only a couple of % more. But CETA, CPTPP, and USMCA combined get only 10% total of the total Canadian market.

Basically, Canada prefers to have its supply management system, and the USA prefers have its massive subsidies.

BareNakedCoder• 8 years ago

Canadian here. Although my personal politics tends to be CENTRE-right (note the capitalization) and favouring market forces, I do see some merit in supply management to avoid the extreme pain being experienced by the American dairy farmers mentioned in the article. Yes, we mostly do prefer supply management, paid for by dairy consumers, than massive subsidies, paid for by all taxpayers and leading to wasted output.

For details, read Wikipedia [0]. Some quotes:

- High (tariffs) are only placed on imports above the quota, not on all the dairy products sold to Canada.

- Canada's milk quota system is butterfat-based so the highest TRQ is on butter at 298.5%.

- By 2018 the United States's quantitative (tariff) threshold for the import of milk products is 3% and Canada's is 10%.

- designed to prevent shortages and surpluses, to ensure farmers a fair rate of return and Canadian consumer access to a high-quality, stable, and secure supply of these sensitive products.

Mr T, in his incendiary speeches to his tribe, was selective with his facts. The 300% tariff does not apply to all dairy; only butter and only when exceeding USA's quota (Canadian farmers who exceed their quota cannot sell at all). The threats and beatings delivered by Mr T's negotiators did "open up" the Canadian dairy market a little, but supply management is still intact and "diversification" is now on the minds of many Canadians.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_management_(Canada)

ars• 8 years ago

and the USA prefers have its massive subsidies.

There are no dairy subsidies in the US right now.

gerbilly• 8 years ago

This must be why the US wants to force Canada to get rid of it's milk supply management system.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1254398531823

lucidguppy• 8 years ago

Stop breeding milk cows...

stephengillie4• 8 years ago

A supply side solution to a weakening demand? That's just logical enough to work.

jaclaz• 8 years ago

... or start making more buttons ...

http://plastiquarian.com/?page_id=14228

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galalith

m_mueller3• 8 years ago

Switzerland has had the exact same problem due to heavy dairy subsidies. Besides scaling back on subsidies, Fondue and Raclette was pushed heavily in marketing, which is probably why these are staples of Swiss food nowadays. I'm sometimes asking myself whether tabletop style Raclette couldn't be popular in the US. How strong is America's distaste for cooking food at the table (I'm just going by Lost in Translation here)?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette

rco8786• 8 years ago

Not at all. We consider it something of a luxury, in fact. (Cooking food at the table)

toweringgoat• 8 years ago

So much this. The average Swiss person eats Fondue 1x per year, similarly Raclette.

sjg007• 8 years ago

It was big in the 70s. I enjoy cheese fondue and raclette.

stephengillie4• 8 years ago

Is this why Costco stores have so much cheap Jarlsberg Swiss?

dagw• 8 years ago

Jarlsberg Swiss

??? Jarlsberg is a region in Norway not Switzerland?

cr1895• 8 years ago

That might actually be made in Ohio.

bipson2• 8 years ago

Same thing in Austria, at least until a few years ago.

Farmers still complain over falling milk prices, and that they cannot survive. Yet the market is still saturated, milk was literally drained down the gutter regularly, every milk product is incredibly cheap IMO, considering how it is produced (although there was a butter shortage and a price "spike" last year).

Subsidies (and even worse EU wide subsidies) seem to do more damage than good in the long run.

the_mitsuhiko2• 8 years ago

Subsidies (and even worse EU wide subsidies) seem to do more damage than good in the long run.

It’s important to understand why they are there. There are not there because states are scared of food instability. Austria for instance tracks how much of the daily food intake it can produce locally and there are yearly goals to make it 100% self sustainable.

If that goal is still important as EU member I can’t answer but it’s still a goal.

kageneko• 8 years ago

Like all things involving subsidies and the economy, there is an amazing Planet Money episode on this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/05/02/607787950/epis...

m_mueller3• 8 years ago

Yep, I also kept thinking about that episode.

mynegation2• 8 years ago

“Dairy farmers are free-market guys—they don’t want to be told how much to produce,”

Sounds like a contradiction - if no one else, free-market will tell you how much to produce. Does not look like farmers are listening.

Matticus_Rex• 8 years ago

And don't we have price floors for milk in the US? In a free market the price would just keep dropping, which can't happen here, so you just get a glut.

mynegation2• 8 years ago

Do you? Article says that subsidies to milk farmers are virtually non-existent these days and they dump the excess milk.

setr• 8 years ago

At some point, the cost to package & bring the milk to the store will exceed the price of selling the milk, so you’ll hit a price floor regardless.

And it becomes the same issue: you now can’t sell the excess milk but you still have all the production facilities. So you store it in your buffer and hold onto production, and eventually if you end up overflowing the buffer, you’ll have no choice but to drop production (which is expensive to bring back up, so highly avoidable)

sciurus• 8 years ago

It seems that we don't currently have a milk price floor in the US, although farmers are lobbying for one.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2018/05/01/ame...

pjc502• 8 years ago

No, absent collision and when you have fixed costs, in a free market any individual producer ends up producing as much as possible. The market regulates production by people going out of business entirely.

This is why the EU built a complex production management system.

daveFNbuck2• 8 years ago

When I go to the doughnut shop at the end of the day, why are they almost out of doughnuts? It would be possible to produce a lot more doughnuts than that.

wyattpeak• 8 years ago

That might be how the free market is explained to a tenth grader, but it's not remotely the full picture.

- Do you spend on production or ramp up marketing instead?

- Do projections support taking out a loan to expand future production?

- Do you have other products where your capital would be better directed?

- Is there a point where marginal cost exceeds sale price?

The list of further considerations is endless. Nobody is just blindly producing as much as possible.

TangoTrotFox• 8 years ago

This does not even consider basic supply and demand. You can sell 100 widgets for $1 a piece, or 20 widgets for $10 a piece. You're going sell 20 widgets. In real life Apple is the most obvious example here. They choose to sell their products at an extremely high markup which limits the number that are purchased, but thanks to that markup they end up making far more profit per item than most other comparable companies.

Nasrudith2• 8 years ago

There should be a major asterisk - as long as it remains profitable. If producing more causes the price to go down the margins get worse they won't do more work to earn less. Many prices aren't fixed but per quantity.

homonculus1• 8 years ago

I wouldn't expect Bloomberg to represent anything honestly.

dragontamer2• 8 years ago

I wouldn't read Washington Post for technology: I read it for politics. I don't read Bloomberg for technology news, I read it for investment news.

Well, there's certainly a problem with Bloomberg's technology / cyber-attack division. But Bloomberg as a whole is one of the better investment newspapers. IMO, Bloomberg probably should just stop writing about cyber-attacks. They're clearly incompetent at that and its causing people to lose trust in the greater newspaper.

But I won't go to Ars Technica to read about insider Washington politics. Its a matter of recognizing what these papers are "good" in.

lostmsu• 8 years ago

Haven't you seen that idea, that you might know some media sucks in tech, but think is ok in other stuff, because you are an expert in tech, but not in that other stuff? E.g. Bloomberg might suck in everything, but you'd only see a problem with tech.

dang• 8 years ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18268036 and marked it off-topic.

travisgriggs• 8 years ago

Didn’t read the article. Just saw the “Bloomberg” in parentheses and thought “ah some reporter at Bloomberg is trying to get his yearly bonus by moving the dairy market.”

Which is irrational and silly. But it’s amazing the way something like the controversy around “The Big Hack” brews suspicion.

coldtea• 8 years ago

Which is irrational and silly.

Not really irrational. Half of what's published is PR in one form or another.

stephengillie4• 8 years ago

Chobani is mentioned so many times that this must be paid for by that company. The article is a dress that barely covers an advertisement's bare bottom.

dmritard96• 8 years ago

Surprised there was no mention of non dairy milk. Almond, soy and others have all taken over much of the aisles, has to leave a mark I would imagi ne.

JoeAltmaier2• 8 years ago

Hm. Not in Iowa. I see them on their one shelf in the grocery Wall of Dairy. Cows milk has 6 cases.

lprubin2• 8 years ago

An estimated $2.11 billion U.S. sales. I would think that has to impact milk sales. [0]

In their market research of consumers, the same article found that many people are intentionally consuming less dairy.

...nearly one in five (19%) Americans claims to be consuming less dairy for health reasons.

[0]http://www.nutritionaloutlook.com/article/us-non-dairy-milk-...

lozenge• 8 years ago

Keep in mind it often has a much longer shelf life so the shelf space is not a good measure.* Also, my local store has milk cart shelves on wheels that can be restocked much faster than fixed shelves.

Tip: the same non dairy milk can be found a smidgen cheaper non refrigerated

rsynnott• 8 years ago

I’ve never seen it on sale refrigerated, really. It’s generally shelf stable; why would you bother?

ksec• 8 years ago

They could have export more milk, UHT, Cream Cheese, Butter etc.

Instead they won't interested. They won't interested in completing against EU, AUS, New Zealand's dairy products. I doubt they will lose any money if they were priced competitively against it, they are just likely to have less profit margins.

Actually that is not a totally fair assessment, since a few of them did complete on price, but their quality won't as good. And they blame it on their international sales staff, which has since changed hands multiple times.

P.S Those companies do not include any Multinational like Nestle USA, Danone, and Kraft Heinz.

andy_ppp• 8 years ago

This made me think of this incredible piece of art by Mishka Henner that I saw in Edinburgh at the Scottish National Gallery: https://mishkahenner.com/Feedlots

jacobush2• 8 years ago

what is that?

saganus2• 8 years ago

Massive cattle farms according to the text below the pictures.

stevenwoo3• 8 years ago

Prior to slaughter, most large scale farming of animals has a finishing step where the animals are confined to limit movement to fatten them up. In and Out has said it was limiting their expansion eastward to Texas because they did not want to freeze their beef, probably not coincidentally cattle feedlots range from California to Texas, north to Colorado, that I have seen personally.

stevenwoo3• 8 years ago

If you live in California, you can smell the feedlots for miles near Coalinga/Harris Ranch on I-5 while driving between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and when cattle are visible, it appears much denser than that photograph, but that may be sample bias where the cows just like to get closer to the fence for some reason, need a drone to have a better idea.

Waterluvian3• 8 years ago

I had a thought the other day. Did we convince people that fat was bad, and then used that to water down milk so that from one harvest we could sell more watery milk and other dairy fat products?

orev2• 8 years ago

Removing fat from milk does not make it “watered down”, it’s just not as rich in fat. If you’re trying to say there’s some kind of collusion going on between milk producers and other makers of high-fat foods — do you really think any of the industrial food companies care at all that people would exceed their RDA of fat?

newnewpdro• 8 years ago

They skimmed the fat so it could be sold as cheese and other dairy products, yes. Americans basically didn't even reduce their dairy fat intake, they just increased how much $$ they were spending on it across more dairy products.

danso• 8 years ago

Planet Money recently had a great episode about "Big Government Cheese", which covered the Carter administration's proposal to subsidize milk, which created a milk surplus so big that it had to create a bureaucracy to grade and store cheese, and then eventually, to repackage and give it away:

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

DUFFIN: By the early 1980s, the dairy support program was costing taxpayers around $2 billion a year. The government was buying 1 in every 4 pounds of the country's cheddar cheese. They actually had to rent out space in multiple caves. At one point, the government was storing two pounds of cheese for every single American citizen.

ccvannorman• 8 years ago

I found this article unreadable as Bloomberg's relentless assault (of ads) on my eyes nearly gave me a seizure. Note to self: Don't read Bloomberg.

mrfusion• 8 years ago

What about turning milk into a biofuel? Can yeast grow in milk and produce alcohol?

Something12343• 8 years ago

I would love to see biofuel done with surplus milk. It's full of excess fat, so it shouldn't be too hard to convert it to biodiesel or candles.

I have heard of vodka made from milk[1]. I would really like to try that one. There's also milk beers[2]. Although I don't like the taste of them.

[1] https://www.blackcow.co.uk/

[2] http://allaboutbeer.com/article/milk-stout-2/

1over1372• 8 years ago

If the Earth's cows were a country, they'd be the #3 GHG emitter. Making milk to make fuel would be horribly inefficient and detrimental to the environment. We simply need less cows.

orev2• 8 years ago

Seems like that would be awfully inefficient. We use oil (fertilizer) to grow corn and soybeans, which we then feed to cows, which then convert it to milk. Each step in the process reduces the efficiency. Why not just use the oil for fuel? Or convert the corn the ethanol if that type of oil is not useful as fuel? The efficiency of ethanol is already in question due to the use of corn.

Something12343• 8 years ago

It could be a way to use the excess or that milk which is about to spoil. There's a large amount of fat left over from the production of skim milk. This fat usually gets turned into cheese, that's why pizzas are more cheesy than in the past.

pkaye• 8 years ago

I can imagine cars powered by butterfat with butter sputtering out of the exhaust.

wgerard• 8 years ago

I'm curious how much of this is because of demographic trends in America--Lactose intolerance for adults is relatively common among everyone except northern europeans.

Would especially explain the decline in liquid milk consumption (and also part of the popularity of greek yogurt, which is pretty low in lactose content).

burfog• 8 years ago

everyone except

1. northwestern Europeans, centered around Belgium

2. The Maasai tribe, of Kenya and Tanzania

Animats• 8 years ago

The US dairy industry and the USDA have a large operation to promote cheese. With everything. Over half of Dunkin' Donuts offerings now include cheese, and they are rebranding to "Dunkin". Cheese filled tacos are now a thing.

I recently chewed out a restaurant manager of a "natural" and "green" restaurant when they started putting cheese on a piece of plain salmon on top of fresh greens. That's a chef problem - they have to add something to justify being paid more than McDonalds.

gurumeditations• 8 years ago

You yelled at a restaurant manager for putting cheese on your salmon? Wow.

novaRom• 8 years ago

I found accidentally many of my digestive problems gone just after I stopped consuming milk-based products for a week. I wonder now how and why our diet has evolved in that way.

stevenwoo3• 8 years ago

The ability to digest milk's lactose in adults is only retained in some Northern European and African (notably cattle raising cultures like the Maasai) descendants who traditionally drank milk as adults. It's genetic AFAIK.

ChuckMcM• 8 years ago

There have been dairy issues since forever.

It works like this, if you just let the market decide then a few big dairy producers will drive all of the other dairies out of business and the only milk products on the market will be of lower quality than they are today. If you prop up the market with subsidies and minimum prices you force the cost of milk to rise and natural economics causes people to substitute something else that is less expensive. But if the subsidies are paid to the farmers, and not to the consumers, the farmers keep producing milk products even when the market doesn't want them at the price they are producing them.

Places that would like dairy products outside the US are already protecting their own dairy farmers and so they are tariffing the heck out of milk (see the Canadian discussion as part of the USMCA proposal).

Many dairy products are perishable with a short life although a big chunk of my uncle's dairy output ended up as non-fat dry milk. This makes it harder to store over periods of lower demand, and cows produce at a fairly constant rate whether you like it or not. Supply management is tough.

Milk and cheese would be a good candidate for a basic income sort of scheme. Where everyone would be issued milk and cheese vouchers every month that could be exchanged for milk and cheese at the local package milk store. People who didn't want their coupons could give them to people who did. That would create a 'base layer' of milk production and consumption that would keep dairies around but take milk and cheese out of the cost of living equation. I'm sure there are other reasons why this is impractical but the whole problem is fairly intractable as it is without putting farms out of business.

EDIT: One interesting thing would be to tie the price of sugared drinks to the price of milk. So it wouldn't be cheaper to give your kids soda than milk. Again, impractical but it is a challenging problem.

JumpCrisscross2• 8 years ago

Milk and cheese would be a good candidate for a basic income sort of scheme

Why milk? Vegetables make more sense.

Milk is not a necessary foodstuff. Creating labelling standards for high-quality milk and letting the market do its job would be the most-reasonable outcome.

barrkel2• 8 years ago

That's a universal argument for industrializing all food production. No food is a necessary foodstuff. It does not follow that all our food should be industrially produced.

(Free market food production will end up industrially produced, because that's how you minimize costs and maximize profits. I, for one, don't want to live in a country like that and will vote for laws that help prevent it happening.)

xyzzyz3• 8 years ago

Vegetables aren’t necessary either. Historically, humans (at least in Europe) consumed much more more milk than vegetables, deriving probably an order of magnitude more calories from dairy than from vegetables, because you could get more calories from an acre of cattle pasture than from an acre of grains fiels, and an order of magnitude more than from vegetables. Milk is also more nutritionally valuable, containing carbs, protein, and fat in very good proportion compared to vegetables. This is no surprise, since milk literally is produced by cows to be consumed by calves as their sole food.

I don’t think basic milk vouchers is a good idea, but basic veggies is even worse.

honestlyidk• 8 years ago

you are completely steering the conversation away from what the original topic is. Its not like the post you replied to came out of no where with "I think milk and cheese is best". Most notably lactose intolerance which is not uncommon.

Twirrim• 8 years ago

Milk and cheese would be a good candidate for a basic income sort of scheme. Where everyone would be issued milk and cheese vouchers every month that could be exchanged for milk and cheese at the local package milk store. People who didn't want their coupons could give them to people who did. That would create a 'base layer' of milk production and consumption that would keep dairies around but take milk and cheese out of the cost of living equation. I'm sure there are other reasons why this is impractical but the whole problem is fairly intractable as it is without putting farms out of business.

Been there, done that? Government Cheese! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_cheese

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/08/31/643486297/epis...

tim333• 8 years ago

Also when I moved to Ireland we got butter vouchers (pic https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6Vv4MGCYAA424H.jpg:large)

Invictus0• 8 years ago

Do farmers ever learn? Bandwagoning onto the latest food fad is the failure story that just repeats itself over and over again. Farms are firms in a perfectly competitive market: why invest oodles of capital to chase what is basically noise in the market? Why is anyone surprised when the market contracts?

hugh4life• 8 years ago

If I were the milk industry, I'd heavily promote meal replacements that use milk as a base. Especially in places where milk is cheap. I love Milk Fuel(formerly Schmilk) and I think it would be a good breakfast replacement for the masses.

http://superbodyfuel.com/shop/milk-fuel/

rootsudo2• 8 years ago

The funny part is, in Asia, Dairy is a premium. Look at Philippines for example, stagnant production since 1995-

http://www.nda.da.gov.ph/images/2017/data/Phil%20%20DAiry%20...

I'm not Filipino, but, hell I would love to manufacture milk products.

The thing that fuels it is A: local population isn't used to dairy. B: Yogurt and such are considered high premium -- a half kilo of yogurt at the store costs $5-7$, a kilo about $10, from Australia.

rootsudo2• 8 years ago

https://gain.fas.usda.gov/Recent%20GAIN%20Publications/Dairy... Better article.

plg• 8 years ago

I switched to fortified vanilla soy milk about 2 weeks ago, (from 1% milk), and holy moly what a difference. I have a big bowl of breakfast cereal and milk for breakfast, and also milk in a morning latte and a mid-day latte. Switching to soy milk:

- in 2 weeks I have lost about 5 lbs (all other food, and exercise routines, stayed the same) - I feel less bloated after breakfast and after coffee

Maybe I was dealing with a slight lactose intolerance, I dunno (is there such a things as a "slight" lactose intolerance??). Anyway, I'm not switching back.

pentae• 8 years ago

I've always avoided Soy as I read a long time ago that it contains plant based estrogen and can be a problem for men like gynecomastia. Of course, I have no idea if that's true or not but I'd rather not worry about it and just pick up Almond milk instead.

wingworks• 8 years ago

Same here, I made the switch to Almond milk about a year ago and have stopped using any "real" milk or butter as prices here in New Zealand are through the roof at the moment (e.g. 500g butter is $6.30 NZD ($4.15 USD), over double what they used to be. I have no plans to go back either, I feel great these days, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the lack of milk products.

Dylan16807• 8 years ago

It's not.

Nasrudith2• 8 years ago

Humans don't digest soy in the same way as animal models - studies found no hormonal impact on a heavy soy diet. If hormone absorption was that readily influenced digestively one should only eat meat of the same sex and athletes should be eating rocky mountain oysters and spotted hyena meat frequently as a loophole for steroids as it is just food that happens to have testerone and not drugs.

_wp3r• 8 years ago

You are certainly describing a lactose intolerance vs allergy. If you immediately presented with symptoms there was nothing slight about it, it is just an intolerance.

My household prefers lactose free milk(not necessarily Lactaid brand) over alternatives, which can also be cheaper. I would also guess that you will continue to drop weight as your digestion improves and inflammation decreases.

The best way to describe it would be that you had self inflicted IBS.

We had a child in care in our home that presented with obvious un-diagnosed lactose intolerance. After removing lactose, she dropped about 3-4% body weight in about 60 days, and then grew about 12% in height over 120-150 days. So her ability to absorb nutrients dramatically shifted after we got her off lactose. I am sure other factors contributed, but simply not having nearly constant loose stool drastically changed her health.

I am also convinced that a much larger portion of the population has difficulty in processing lactose than people think.

America Is Drowning in Milk Nobody Wants

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