Yes, and I still somewhat prefer my full fat oat milk - it’s frothier.
But the biggest factor is why I made the switch to milk alternatives - shelf life. I’m the only person consuming the milk I buy, and I don’t always use it on a daily basis.
When I was living in a large city, I got really tired of milk that turned bad before the marked expiration date (which happens frequently when you’re picking up milk at small corner stores, it was frequently improperly stored at some point in the supply chain.)
I got really tired of the hoops I had to jump through to have fresh milk at home when I got back from my frequent travels…for some reason my milk went bad even faster if I wasn’t pouring from the carton on a daily basis, I would try to remember to transfer a cup or so to the freezer before I left, which worked as long as I didn’t want a milky beverage immediately when I got home, or I would ask my cleaning lady to restock milk a day or so before I got home, except sometimes she forgot.
The last straw was probably the time I asked a friend, who had a key to my place and was meeting me there for my late night arrival - to pick up milk AND to avoid the closest corner store, because their fridges weren’t cold enough and their milk went bad faster. He remembered the milk but bought it at the place I told him to avoid and it was bad. Then I decided I was stressing too much over fresh milk, and began to use alternatives.
/hijack/ Have you tried making your own oat milk? If so, how did it compare to the Oat Silk stuff? I’m asking because I’m sometimes tasked with making vegan mozzarella and making the oat milk is rather tedious./hijack/
Vegan cheese is sold as cheese despite not being made with mammal milk. Nobody has ever accused me of mis-labeling my products but I don’t sell to idiots. The easiest way for someone to convince me that they are an idiot is for them to expect animal products in vegan food.
I looked at the ingredients and think that I probably won’t want to try using it, though. One serving of my vegan cheese has about 200% of the recommended sodium and 40% of the fat. I’m guess using your stuff would amp that up quite a bit.
It might taste better so I could charge more…hmmmm.
Agriculture in CA uses about 40% of the water supply, lawns according to this site use 3.5-5%, which is scarcely a “drop in the bucket”. Moreover, lawns take about half of all CA landscape water use.
Annoyingly, watering restrictions around the country treat lawn watering the same as watering trees, shrubs and other ornamental plantings. Lawns can go dormant during the growing season and come back. Ornamental plantings most often die.
I sympathize with people watching their lawns go brown and in some cases die out. But like certain water-hungry crops, lawns are impractical and unwise in areas prone to drought
Absolutely true. Agriculture ALSO uses 80% of the water supply. Both of these are completely accurate and slightly misleading at the same time .
In an “average” year ~50% of water goes to the environment, ~40% to agriculture, ~10% to “urban” (i.e. non-agricultural human use). But ~80% of the water captured by humans goes to agriculture. So you’re both right, but I think in context DrDeth is slightly more right. The lawn usage is as a percent of human usage, I believe. Still I agree urban grass lawns are a luxury that probably needs to be phased out anywhere in CA where they can’t maintain themselves (which is most urban places in CA).
I’ve heard that commercial oat milk uses amylases and proteases that are hard to replicate at home, but I couldn’t tell you how the end results with and without enzymes differ.
That of course depends on what is meant by “uses”. The water allocation in CA is 50% environmental, 40% Ag, and 10% urban (residential and Business). However, by “50% environmental” they mean the amount of water which is allocated to run out to the ocean, etc, for salmon, etc etc. But of water actually USED (by people), it is 80% Ag, 10% residential, 10% industrial, etc.
Usually, but not always, the water allocation figure is used by Conservative sources, as they think that the “50% environmental” figure is all wasted. And of course, water used for AG is Good.
Government attention and media coverage about drought focuses on things individuals can do to save water. It ignores the fact that agriculture uses the most water. And the vast majority goes towards big agribusiness including growing water intensive crops like almonds and alfalfa. In California 80% of our water goes toward agriculture and 20% of that goes to tree nuts. Around two-thirds of these nuts are exported overseas, leaving massive profits for corporate titans but less water in California. Another 15% is used for alfalfa, a water-intensive crop used to feed cows on factory farms or for export.
Yet, considering that agriculture accounts for approximately 80 percent of all the water used in California, even small improvements in agricultural water use efficiency can be significant.
The 3.5 or 5% figure includes all lawns, etc, including parks, golf courses etc. So, not wrong, but …
Right. Not that the “50% environmental” is incorrect, but scientists prefer to call that “allocation” instead of “usage” .
There’s something comical (or sad, depending how you look at it) about lawn advocates trashing agriculture, which feeds people as well as providing jobs*, while keeping more land from being diverted into closely-packed housing.
A University of Utah study shows the impact of obsession with lawns in a single city - Los Angeles.
“We very rarely found trees or lawns that were water-stressed. Most landscapes in L.A. are over-watered. Plants were transpiring kind of the maximum amount that they physically could.”
“So we came up with an estimate for the whole city, which is 100 billion gallons of water in a year [or about 306,000 acre-feet], and 70 percent of that is contributed by lawns. So lawns are the majority of the landscape water use. It is a lot of water, and something like half the water used in L.A. is used in outdoor irrigation. So, yes, there’s a lot of room there to conserve.”
If one must have a lawn in drought-prone areas, there are native grasses that can be used which use much less water. By and large, though, they won’t provide the neat, close-cropped look that homeowners crave.
*before someone gets lyrical about lawn care industry employment, a lot of that involves giant corporations like Scott’s. Local landscaping jobs are another story, but at least some of them can be preserved in caring for less water-hungry landscapes.
You should check out how much more water is used by agriculture compared to urban uses. At least for urban uses, those green lawns give thousands of homeowners some pleasure, while ag (almonds in particular) benefit just a few with the majority of their crop going to highly-profitable exports. Which one is a better use of publically-funded water?
So I’m back from the grocery store where I bought some oat milk for the first time. I hope I like it. I also bought some granola breakfast cereal to go with that. The cereal features oats, honey and… almonds. Oops. Completely inadvertent.
As I said earlier, “But like certain water-hungry crops, lawns are impractical and unwise in areas prone to drought.”
Californians and others living in areas affected by frequent drought can find “pleasure” in less water-hungry landscaping. That is, if their HOAs don’t have a fit.
Agree. There is much room for improvement across the board. But I frequently hear the argument for ag “but they’re growing food!” They are, but much acerage in CA is irrigated with water from publically funded projects, with resulting crops being exported for private profit, not for putting food on your table or mine.
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