Which Plant Milk Is the Best For You?

Which Plant Milk Is the Best For You?

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Plant-based milks offer similar nutrients to dairy while needing less resources to produce, and the data is fairly well-documented. So why is the debate of the best type of milk still a thing?

The main argument one would have for cow's milk would be its nutritional profile; while plant-based milk offer similar amounts of calcium and vitamin D, they don't come close to the protein for those.

Either way, I was hesitant to post this; I think redundancy is annoying, and I didn't want to put out yet anther cow milk vs oat milk bar graph. And yet I did.


Which Plant Milk Is the Best For You?

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Source: Our World in Data

Just browsing through the graphs, you can tell that that dairy milk uses a lot more resources than the plant-based milks. Discounting dairy, the rest of the milks are pretty mix-and-match depending on the factor; rice milk came out as a strong contender in a few of these categories; too bad nobody really drinks rice milk (graph).

Still, if your goal is to reduce your environmental impact through consumption, switching away from dairy is pretty much enough. After that, the returns are diminishing, and your energy is better poised doing something else.