1372: Milk | Skeptical Sunday

1372: Milk | Skeptical Sunday

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer, and researcher Jessica Wynn. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

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Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today we're talking about milk, something I thought I understood actually, but you know, cow, white, cereal, occasional mustache, done. And then one day a bunch of other milks, air quotes milks, showed up on the shelf, many of which don't come from cows and all of which claim to be healthier, better for the planet, and morally superior to classic cow's milk.

Meanwhile, half of America's dairy farms have disappeared, the industry is fighting the FDA over the definition of the word milk, and somehow what you pour into your coffee now says something about who you are. It's a culture war in your coffee. So how do we really know which milk to drink, from health to environment to what even counts as milk these days?

It's a bit milky. Joining, joining me to dip into the creamy culture of coffee's best friend is writer and researcher Jessica Wynn. So Jess, this is near and dear to my heart because I was in New York a couple weeks ago and I went to get [00:02:00] coffee, and they're like, "What kind of milk did you want in there?"

And I was like, "Oh, this is no longer the, you know, 2%, skim, whole question." I mean, this is... There's a, there's a smorgasbord of options. And I said, "Which should I choose?" And it was Brooklyn, right? So the barista was like, "Well, regular milk, you know, the factory farming." They hand you a pamphlet. Yeah, it was like...

A- And meanwhile my coffee's getting cold and she's telling me about factory farming, and then she's like, "Well, but oat milk," which, you know, I thought was kind of like the legit one, first of all doesn't taste that good in coffee in my opinion only. And then she's like, "Oh, but actually it's really bad because it uses a lot of water or something like that."

And I'm like, "Soy milk?" And she's like, "Fine, as long as you're not worried about your hormones," which I obviously am because, you know, who isn't? So I was like, "You know what? Black coffee it is." And she gave me a look like I was some kind of barbarian, and I paid my $17 for my Brooklyn coffee and left. Um, but Je- Jess, let's start simple.

What is milk? What is it? Again, this would've been an easy question a few years ago, but now I think I [00:03:00] got you.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, and I think that barista is a perfect example of all the misinformation we get from social media and things. But-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Jessica Wynn: you know, dairy milk, it's arguably the most structurally complex liquid we consume. It's a colloidal dispersion, you know, an oil and water emulsion.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Jessica Wynn: So it's these spherical nanoparticles, these tiny protein calcium clusters, and they're suspended alongside fat globules in water. And the fat globules alone have a three-layer membrane structure.

Jordan Harbinger: This sounds very futuristic for something that is not futuristic whatsoever. Okay, so the fat globules in my 2% have a three-layer membrane.

And I thought I was just having a snack over here. Apparently I'm drinking... It's, I'm drinking space age material- ... over here.

Jessica Wynn: It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. They're just nerdy words, you know? Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Facts.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, but it's not far off that it's a little space [00:04:00] age-y when you get under the microscope.

But what matters here is the composition. So dairy milk is roughly 87% water, and then 4% to 5% lactose, 3% to 4% fat, and 3% protein. And that protein, especially casein, is what makes dairy nutritionally unique.

Jordan Harbinger: So if dairy is unique, is cow milk actually the best animal milk?

Jessica Wynn: Uh, well, not necessarily. So sheep milk has almost twice the protein and significantly more calcium than cow's milk, although that doesn't hold true across every single sheep breed.

Every mammal species evolved milk for its own babies, so they're all slightly different nutritional packages, but casein is the protein that is found in every animal milk. So casein micelles are so stable they don't break down when you boil milk, right? So that's why milk doesn't clump when you heat it.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. I thought [00:05:00] that was kind of a physics- That's interesting. I thought, so like an egg, when it gets even slightly warm, starts to turn white and gets the clumps in there, and milk doesn't do that. That's g- Why, why don't we drink sheep milk then? Maybe there's less of it. I mean, some people

Jessica Wynn: do.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Well, some people do, yeah, but they're, like, the herders in Mongolia or something. I mean- Right. ... why don't we generally do that? I guess that's something I'll, I'll look up later because it, twice the protein, count me in. Although people didn't really care about protein until five minutes ago in the span, you know, human history, right?

We didn't really think about

Jessica Wynn: it. It seems like that. It's a good marketing thing, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. I drink these protein shakes that are milk, and like you said, it's 87% water. I think what they do is they just filter out a ton of the water, and it's only sli- It, let's say it's twice as thick as regular milk, so you barely notice it.

It just slightly thick milk. And they probably add a little bit of whey, but it, it's almost just, like, slightly thick milk, and it's got 42 grams of protein in whatever, 10 ounces, which is crazy, right? That's, like, the most you can ab- absorb from muscle building at, at once maybe.

Jessica Wynn: I wonder [00:06:00] if we'll get to the point, like with laundry detergent, you know, it's mostly water.

Now you can buy those sheets.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: I mean

Jordan Harbinger: That's what we

Jessica Wynn: have. Maybe someday we'll just get, like-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ... like- I'm just going to chew on a Tide Pod of protein. Right. And, and I'll be set for the day. Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: Less dishes, I guess.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. All

Jessica Wynn: right. But, you know, I mean, milk is 400 million years of evolution here.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Wow. Okay. How does the FDA define milk? Uh, that fancy paragraph above or what?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, so the FDA states milk is, and this is a quote from their website, is the lacteal secretion practically free from colostrum obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.

Jordan Harbinger: Poetry. But wait, only cows. So the FDA, they never met a goat, I guess, have they?

Jessica Wynn: The FDA works in mysterious ways, right? So yes, goat milk has also been consumed for thousands [00:07:00] of years and is still the primary dairy milk in many parts of the world. But the FDA here, the definition, it's not describing every kind of milk. It's defining what can legally be labeled as milk in the United States.

And if it's anything other than a cow, like a goat, sheep, even a yak, you know, the label has to say so. Only cow's milk gets to be called just milk.

Jordan Harbinger: And there are all kinds of milk types at the store, right? There's almost, like, a new trendy milk every other week, something I haven't even heard of.

Jessica Wynn: Right. It seems like it.

I mean, you mentioned earlier, you know, oat milk just kind of appeared and it-

Jordan Harbinger: Yes ...

Jessica Wynn: it didn't really seem appetizing at first mention to a lot of people, but, you know, now look at how normalized it is.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it, it's serious- It's like I blinked and oat milk was everywhere. Because I remember I used to love it.

I actually don't like it at all now. I don't know what happened there. But I used to order Oatly, and I had to buy it from... You know when you can't find your weird specialty thing that you [00:08:00] want, so you have to call a warehouse that only sells a pallet of it at one time? I had to do that. They built

Jessica Wynn: a shed, a milk shed.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah. I had to... This is, like, 2016 or something like that. I remember I was like, "I want Oatly that they have at coffee shops." And Jen did her amazing thing that she does, and she goes, "Here's the problem. They only sell it in commercial quantities where there's a minimum order quantity." So we, like, did a thing with the coffee shop nearby where we were like, "Are you going to order your six pallets of Oatly?

Because I'll take, like, one of them." And they were like, "Okay, weirdo." So we had a pallet of oat milk in my garage for basically until the shelf life was like, "Hey, bro, we're done here."

Jessica Wynn: Oh, no, you were the weird oat milk guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, we were the weird oat milk... And now I'm like, "Oat milk? No, I will never drink that ag- I just, I can't stand it."

I think I'm oat milked out. But anyway, oat milk was everywhere n- and that was pushed at every coffee shop. But now there's all kinds of bizarre niche nut milks and whatnot.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, for sure. I mean, oat milk was invented in Sweden [00:09:00] in the 1990s by a food scientist named Rickard Östé at Lund University. And his idea was really simple, create something for lactose intolerant people that has a similar consistency to milk.

And that stayed niche for decades. That's why it was hard for you to buy it just for the house. But then between 2018 and 2019, somewhere in there United States sales grew by roughly 700%.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, maybe they, that's because they let you buy it not by the pallet at a- Yeah. ... to the truckload literally at the time.

Because it was- It was because of you ... yeah, 20- It w- it was right around before and when I had a kid, so it was 2018 or 2019 I had to buy a pallet, and then it was like l- after that you could just get it at the store like a normal person. And then of course they didn't want it anymore, but wow 700% growth in one year.

Why did, did everyone become lactose intolerant at the same time? I don't understand.

Jessica Wynn: No, but three things [00:10:00] happened at the same time. So coffee shops realized oat milk steamed and foamed better than most plant-based alternatives. Consumers were becoming more interested in sustainable foods. And Oatly marketed it less like a dietary substitute and more like this cool lifestyle brand, you know.

Oat milk didn't just become available, it became really fashionable.

Jordan Harbinger: That is very true. See also Brooklyn barista, right? Put it in a matte carton, hire a trendy good graphic designer, you can make oat milk cool. What a world. Dumbasses like me buy it by the pallet. It, it's a thing.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, branding's powerful.

And the overall plant-based milk market was worth over $17 billion in 2018- Holy

Jordan Harbinger: cow ...

Jessica Wynn: which is impressive. Well,

Jordan Harbinger: no pun intended. That's crazy. $17 billion in just plant... Not dairy, not milk, plant-based milk. So that's a absolute... Well, [00:11:00] literally tons and tons and tons of oat and soy milk. Just tons and tons.

Jessica Wynn: Well, that's before oat milk was on all the shelves.

So by 2023, 15% of all US milk sales were plant-based. And oat milk's taste, texture, and just the timing of it, it just perfectly placed it as like the top cow.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, okay. That was udderly unnecessary. So why, why oat and not almond, soy, coconut? I forgot about coconut. They've been around so much longer, so h- why did oat trend harder?

It's

Jessica Wynn: just-

Jordan Harbinger: Faster ...

Jessica Wynn: coffee performance. You know, soy milk curdles or separates in hot acidic coffee.

Jordan Harbinger: It is yucky when that happens, isn't it?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. As... The formulation just doesn't work. And then almond milk is really thin. It is thin. It's, it's, it doesn't really change the color of the coffee.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. It doesn't...

It feel like it doesn't really do what it's supposed to do until you add too much, and then you have too much. This tracks.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. And then oat milk, turns out it doesn't split, and it steams into that [00:12:00] creamy, silky foam people expect from dairy. And the environmental story that they pushed on us is that it was cleaner than almonds and soybeans.

So the taste and the look plus the narrative, that wins markets.

Jordan Harbinger: Walk me through how oat milk is actually made because the cartons say, "Hey, it's just oats and water." And I'm like, "Okay, but I've put oats in other things and it- they don't just dissolve and turn uniform." Right, it's just

Jessica Wynn: mush.

Jordan Harbinger: So what's going on?

Jessica Wynn: Ew, imagine putting oatmeal in your coffee.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Well, yeah, have you ever had muesli? It's kind of more

Jessica Wynn: common

Jordan Harbinger: in Europe.

Jessica Wynn: Oh, yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah, yeah. But, like, yeah, the, it doesn't... Th- the whole point is the oats kind of stick around for... you can do overnight oats where you put them in milk and that you leave them for 12 or 24 hours and it's still oats.

Like, they're still intact and chewy.

Jessica Wynn: You can still tell, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. So there's... What else is going on here?

Jessica Wynn: So for the milk, the process is to mill the oats and then mix it with water, and then they do something called enzymatic hydrolysis.

Jordan Harbinger: That [00:13:00] is not wholesome breakfast beverage language. So what does that mean?

Jessica Wynn: It's just adding an enzyme, and it's called alpha-amylase. So it breaks the starch in the oats into simpler sugars, glucose and maltose, and this keeps it from turning into paste, and it creates sweetness without added sugar.

Jordan Harbinger: So the sweetness comes from a by-product of an industrial process.

Jessica Wynn: Correct. And then it's filtered, homogenized, and usually blended with oils and emulsifiers for texture.

Jordan Harbinger: That part doesn't make it onto the carton, but th- that makes sense, because oats don't really have fat, so you've got to figure that whole thing out.

Jessica Wynn: Exactly. Unlike almonds or soybeans, oats don't contain enough fat to make something milk-like on their own, so the fat structure has to be built in. The globules we mentioned for dairy milk, that's exactly what gives oat milk its creamy texture, and they're actually constructed from water, sunflower oil, emulsifiers, and [00:14:00] other little additives by the manufacturers.

Jordan Harbinger: So I'm drinking oat water with engineered fat.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, welcome to food science.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: And to be fair, I'd note that pasteurized, homogenized dairy, it's also heavily processed and engineered.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's true. It's not like, oh, one's natural and the other one's just chemicals, which is kind of what you hear about from when people are competing in the space.

Like, "Hey, this is just, you know, straight from the cow, and then we boil out the, all the infections and stuff, and the d- uh, antibiotics." Yeah, but, like, the, th- each side is trying to be like, "Ours is more natural," and it's like, nah, you're processing the crap out of all of this stuff, and probably thankfully so, rightfully so.

So what is the difference compared to... I've seen fermented oat milk at the store. That's got to taste revolting, although I haven't tried it, so I'm curious.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, it's a terrible name. Yes. But it's nutritionally interesting. So if you ferment oat milk with probiotic strains like lactobacillus and bifidobacterium, you [00:15:00] improve digestibility and micronutrient bioavailability.

So the B vitamins increase, the beta-glucan, which is a cholesterol-lowering fiber, that stays intact, and antioxidants become more usable.

Jordan Harbinger: So the solution to oat milk's nutritional gaps is to let bacteria kind of pre-game it? And th- that's what yogurt and kefir are, right? Dairy, letting microbes do some of the work first, and then it's supposed to be, like, really good for you.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, absolutely. You know, fermentation is ancient processing, and sometimes processing improves food. I mean, don't get me wrong, sometimes processing is just a way to make junk more marketable, but sometimes it's genuinely useful, like turning milk into a food more people can tolerate. So with fermented oat milk, you keep the fiber, you gain the probiotics, and you improve the bioavailability.

That science is genuinely exciting. The market just hasn't caught up because nobody's figured out how [00:16:00] to make fermented oat milk sound appetizing to a mass audience.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I'll workshop that. Pre-digested by helpful microbes for your convenience. So fermented oat milk is basically oat yogurt that you can drink.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, in spirit, sure. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: So nutritional comparison, dairy versus oat, no marketing nonsense, who wins on this? I

Jessica Wynn: mean, it depends entirely on what you're measuring. So on protein, dairy wins. It's not even close. Cow's milk has about eight grams of protein per cup versus one to two for most oat milks. And the protein quality really matters.

So the DIAAS, which you'll see on labels, is the digestible indispensable amino acid score, which measures how usable the protein actually is, and that runs between 123 to 144 for dairy, and then 57 to 67 for oats. So not even understanding really what [00:17:00] those numbers are representing, you can see it's double, at least.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Jessica Wynn: So oats are deficient in lysine, which is an essential amino acid your body just can't synthesize.

Jordan Harbinger: Too bad they can't just add that in there. Right. Because then... I don't know. Maybe that doesn't even help. So people switching from dairy to oat milk thinking they're getting equivalent protein are not getting equivalent protein.

Jessica Wynn: No, no. They'll have to go elsewhere for protein, but oat milk does have genuine strengths. So the beta-glucan, that soluble dietary fiber we mentioned, that has strong clinical evidence for LDL reduction at meaningful intake levels. So most of the strongest trials used oat bran or concentrated beta-glucan rather than oat milk itself.

But a smaller set of studies on oat milk specifically found that roughly three-quarters of a liter of oat milk daily for five weeks meaningfully reduces your LDL cholesterol. I mean, that's real.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: And oat milk's also higher [00:18:00] in vitamin E, potassium, and iron. It's lower in saturated fat. It has no cholesterol, and it can be higher in other micronutrients depending on the manufacturer and the fortification.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you get any calcium from oat milk? I know from commercials in the '80s that milk is loaded with calcium, and that's important.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Right. I mean, it's complicated. So oats contain compounds that bind to calcium and block absorption. So even when fortified, bioavailability is definitely lower than dairy, where casein enhances absorption.

So the calcium is there technically, you just... Your body's not going to use it as efficiently.

Jordan Harbinger: So oat milk, not great for growing kids or whatever instead of regular milk.

Jessica Wynn: It's not appropriate as a complete milk replacement. So pediatric groups, they caution parents who want to raise their kids dairy-free that protein quality and calcium are especially important for [00:19:00] kids, so they need to do really deliberate planning.

The protein quality, amino acid profile, calcium content, none of it is adequate for early childhood development. Which is fine if you understand you need to supply those things from other foods. So this is a conversation parents need to have with a pediatrician, not with some random barista.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Yeah. I guess some people see the word milk and just assume it, yeah, it's provi- it's the same thing, just made out of different stuff.

So it's... Is it different with the OG, uh, milk replacement, alternate milk, whatever you want to call it, is soy milk? Is that better?

Jessica Wynn: Well, soy milk is the nutritional gold standard of plant-based milks. So it's the only plant-based milk that genuinely rivals dairy on protein quality. There's about eight grams of complete protein per cup, and it includes all nine essential amino acids.

It's naturally rich in potassium. It's often fortified with calcium, vitamin D, B12, [00:20:00] all things people who are dairy-free need. And it's the best for someone who just can't or won't drink dairy.

Jordan Harbinger: It seems like it's fallen out of fashion, though, compared to oat milk and almond milk. You just don't hear about it anymore.

Jessica Wynn: I know, for sure. I mean, it's dropped from about 25% of the plant milk market to about 10%, and there's two reasons for this. First, the taste. Some people find it chalky, particularly in coffee. And then second, there's this whole phytoestrogen controversy. So soy contains compounds called isoflavones that can weakly mimic estrogen in the body.

That led to years of rumors that drinking soy milk would lower testosterone- Yeah ... make men more feminine, or even cause breast growth. This is r- I just want everybody to know this is ridiculous. I

Jordan Harbinger: remember researching this a, because you know, fitness stuff, and I, you have to drink so much soy. You'd have to drink, like, an [00:21:00] un- totally ungodly amount of soy milk, really, and you'd ha- also have to be eating tons of tofu, and ma- like, vega- maybe if you were super vegan and only ate soy products, you could run into some sort of thing with this.

But, like, if you're just throwing this in your coffee-

Jessica Wynn: Super vegan.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: The worst superhero.

Jordan Harbinger: The worst kind, yeah. The, the, the lamest superhero. Um, sorry vegans, I'm just kidding. But if you're throwing this in your coffee or you're having a couple glasses a day, it's, it, you're not growing boobs off of this.

Su-

Jessica Wynn: sure. But the dairy industry certainly didn't discourage those fears, and they even pushed the narrative that cow milk is good, soy milk is girly, and a lot of people trust that. They don't do their own research. But study after study has found that moderate soy consumption, it doesn't have feminizing effects in men.

It might even provide cardiovascular benefits. So the science has moved on, but unfortunately, the reputation and [00:22:00] cultural fear did not.

Jordan Harbinger: That must be where the, right, the insult soy boy. So it's like, oh, you're just really soft or, you know, emotional. So soy lost the popularity contest despite being the nutritional heavyweight.

Interesting.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the irony is, like you said, it's just outrageous amounts of soy you'd have to be consuming to see even a little hormonal effect. The Harvard School of Public Health, they say moderate soy consumption is 100% safe, and- Wow ... like I said, multiple studies do.

Jordan Harbinger: Much of this episode is water, marketing, and questionable additives.

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Jordan Harbinger: Don't forget about our newsletter, Wee Bit Wiser. It's almost every Wednesday. It's a two-minute read, very practical. Jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. I mean, it was clear for me looking this up years ago, uh, maybe there's more info now, but all these bodybuilder guys panicking over a splash of soy milk in their coffee were clearly concerned.

It, you know, it's funny, you'll get a guy who injects anabolic steroids, and then you order soy for your milk for your coffee, and he's like, "Dude, be careful. That's going to mess up your hormones." And I'm like, "Hey, man, you're growing boobs without soy. I don't know if you should be warning me about my morning coffee over here.

Maybe handle your weird nipples that have been growing, that have- are an extra inch long since you started cycling on with whatever it is you're taking." Anyway, uh, so soy milk soy milk is probably the nutritional benchmark, but almond milk was the king of nut milks before oat milk, and then the internet suddenly declared it an ecological crime of some...

And [00:26:00] unfortunately, I played a part in that, I think. Oops, because I think we did an episode on almonds and just, you know, raked them over the coals.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Again, I mean, it's the dairy industry coming after these alternatives. So almond milk had about 76% of the plant-based market at its peak, and then big dairy put out this successful smear campaign.

Yes, almonds require significant amounts of water. A commonly cited figure is around three to four gallons per almond.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So that sounds catastrophic coming from a California standpoint.

Jessica Wynn: It sounds catastrophic because it's framed per almond, not per glass, not per liter, not per gram of protein, and not compared to dairy.

So most almond milk is about 2% almonds, which means the water embedded in a serving is far lower than multiplying three gallons by whatever number you imagine in your latte. And here's what rarely travels [00:27:00] with that viral statistic. Dairy production also requires substantial water. Not just for the cows to drink, but for irrigating the feed crops.

So when researchers run full life cycle analysis, dairy always, 100% of the time, uses more total water per liter than almond milk.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, okay. So why does everybody always pick on almonds and how much water they are using? I

Jessica Wynn: mean, because the optics are brutal, but optics are not the same as comparative data.

So sure, almonds are a thirsty crop, and around 80% of the world's almonds are grown here in drought-prone California. And as plant-based milk started taking meaningful market share, environmental critiques of specific alternatives became politically and economically useful. Big dairy is a really powerful lobby.

Jordan Harbinger: So the water statistic isn't fake, it's just manipulated to demonize almond milk, basically?

Jessica Wynn: Dairy has really good PR. If we did a [00:28:00] campaign about dairy's water usage, it would be way worse than what almonds do. So in competitive markets, there's incomplete statistics that travel faster than nuanced ones.

You know, look, almond milk's not environmentally perfect. No crop is. It's more water-intensive than pea or oat milk. I mean, that part's real. But framing almond milk as uniquely irresponsible while treating dairy as environmentally neutral, it's just not supported by the data. So if you compare greenhouse gases, land use, and total water footprint, dairy remains the most resource-intensive option.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow, so the real story is not that almonds are villains, it's that milk is a multi-billion-dollar publicity machine. For the record, I'm s- I'm now back to Team Dairy. Like, I just drink tons of milk.

Jessica Wynn: Which is fine,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah. Yeah. I like me some milk. I don't know, and I need the protein, and it's like, it's really hard to get elsewhere, unless you're going to eat a ton of chicken, which, like, is that [00:29:00] better?

I don't really think so.

Jessica Wynn: Right. Then you're really worrying about the source of your protein, but-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, chickens are treated... I mean, this goes along with your factory farming ep- but, I mean, they're just treated like y- you couldn't treat a living thing worse if you tried. I don't know, maybe. Back to dairy.

If

Jessica Wynn: you see yeah, if you see an environmental statistic that goes viral right when a category threatens an incumbent industry, it's worth asking who's funding that infographic that's popping up in your feed. Because almond milk is still over 70% of plant-based milk sales because people like how it tastes in their coffee.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so if almond is the environmental controversy, what's coconut's thing? I, you know, I actually do like coconut milk, but it's disgusting in coffee. I don't put it in my coffee.

Jessica Wynn: Do they even offer that at cafes? I can't imagine.

Jordan Harbinger: They do, yeah. Around here they do, and I'm thinking, "What weirdo orders that?"

It's such a bizz- it's like dropping an egg in your coffee. It's so strange.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, yeah. They must waste a lot, but-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Jessica Wynn: coconut milk's really [00:30:00] different. So the carton version, not the canned coconut milk, that's the only plant milk genuinely high in saturated fat. So there's about four grams per cup. That's really close to whole dairy.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm not sure where you're going with this. Is saturated fat good for you? I thought it was not good for you.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, there's an ongoing debate about whether coconut's medium chain triglycerides behave differently in the body than saturated animal fat, and the evidence is really mixed. I can't find a concrete, definitive answer on it.

So if you're switching milks for heart health reasons, coconut milk, probably not the best choice.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Yeah, but I guess if you're vegan and you don't eat any animal products at all, maybe you need some saturated fat, and coconut milk is the place to go. Okay. So is coconut milk allergen-free? Because I, I feel like I've heard that before.

So better if you have a soy or nut allergy, you can go with coconut milk. I guess people like that have unique concerns.

Jessica Wynn: Coconut milk is just so [00:31:00] complicated. I mean, technically coconut is classified as a tree nut by the FDA, but most people with tree nut allergies, they tolerate it. And flavor-wise, it's so good in curries.

It can be really good in smoothies and desserts. In coffee, though, no thank you.

Jordan Harbinger: So it's a delicious specialty product pretending to be a milk substitute, in my opinion. Rice milk is another one that I feel like used to be... It had a five-minute in the sunshine kind of moment. I don't see that anywhere anymore.

I forgot it existed, actually, until this episode.

Jessica Wynn: I know it'll be, like, pushed back on the shelf at the market or something. Right. So- I'm

Jordan Harbinger: like thinking, "Who buys this?" "What is this even for?" I

Jessica Wynn: mean, now we're getting into these niche milks. So they're not trying to beat dairy and accommodate everyone.

They're trying to solve specific problems. And rice milk is like this forgotten middle milk child or something. Indeed,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah.

Jessica Wynn: But it's the most hypoallergenic option. So there's no soy. There's no nuts. There's no gluten. That's its niche. [00:32:00] But nutritionally, it's pretty weak. There's almost no protein. It has the highest carbohydrates of the plant milks, and anyone who's had it knows it's bizarrely thin.

But the big problem with it, though, is that rice absorbs more arsenic from soil than other grains. Oh. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: no. Okay.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, don't be scared about that because that's what- Yeah, is that

Jordan Harbinger: one of those if you eat 10,000 tons of it in a year- Exactly. I mean- ... you'll get arsenic poisoning? Like, it's like the soy thing.

Jessica Wynn: Right. There's also arsenic in apple seeds and cherry pits and things, you know? But-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Jessica Wynn: so but if it's a staple in your house, it's just best to pace yourself.

Jordan Harbinger: I thought there was cyanide in apple seeds. It's arsenic? Is

Jessica Wynn: that what it is, not arsenic?

Jordan Harbinger: I don't know. There's something that if you ate- Something

Jessica Wynn: weird.

Jordan Harbinger: a million of them, it would kill you. Yeah. Okay. But you'd explode from the amount. The, I talked about this with Neil deGrasse Tyson years ago. I think it's called the LD50 or something, right? And it's like, "Oh, uh, there's Roundup in these flavors of Ben & Jerry's ice cream," or [00:33:00] something. And he's like, "Your stomach and gut would explode physically-

from the amount that you have to eat before you got the amount of whatever chemical from Roundup could even be detected in your bloodstream basically." And he's like, "Oh, and by the way, the sugar would kill you well before any of those things happen," right? So it's like an unrealistic thing to worry about.

Yeah, just

Jessica Wynn: a scary word, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they told me that boba from bubble tea also has heavy metals in it and stuff, and I'm like, "Well, that's kind of terrifying." Anyway, rice milk, so good in rice pudding I suppose, or maybe that's the buttload of butter they put in there now that I think about it. I

Jessica Wynn: don't- Yeah, I don't really like rice pudding.

I don't know if it's the milk or- Oh my gosh, I love

Jordan Harbinger: it.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Oh, it's like one

Jordan Harbinger: of my favorite things. I

Jessica Wynn: mean,

Jordan Harbinger: but anything's

Jessica Wynn: good with enough butter, right? So-

Jordan Harbinger: True ...

Jessica Wynn: I mean, rice milk, it's good if you have allergies, but not- Yeah ... good for texture. So the creamiest nut milk is cashew milk.

Jordan Harbinger: I was thinking, when you were researching, your Google targeted ads must be [00:34:00] so weird-

Jessica Wynn: doing these episodes. And it's so funny how they change for each episode, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Like, you're, you're looking for creamy nut milk. God knows what's popping up in your ads now, but it's like human trafficking, creamy nut milk, factory farming. Like, the- they're... Google's got a, there's a red flag on your Google search history.

Oh,

Jessica Wynn: there's a file on me,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah. Yeah. Um, I've had cashew milk. It's surprisingly creamy, like you said, and I h- can't help but think it's got a crapload of fat in it.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, it has a higher fat content than most nut milks, around 10 grams per cup, which is a lot, and that gives it this genuinely thick, creamy texture though.

It's also the lowest calorie option, which is surprising, because it's low in protein and carbohydrates. There's only about one gram of each per cup.

Jordan Harbinger: How can it be high fat and low calorie? What's that?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, the trade-off is that it's not nutritionally dense, [00:35:00] so you're getting creaminess without much else.

So unfortified cashew milk, it's low in calcium at around 14 milligrams per cup- Versus 482 milligrams in fortified almond milk.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so it's good for sauces and lattes, but not for your bones.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: So we've covered the tastiest milks. What's the most nutritious milk?

Jessica Wynn: The most nutritionally underrated plant-based milk is pea milk, and the biggest thing working against it is the name.

Jordan Harbinger: The fact that it's called pea milk? Yeah. I have questions, starting with why would you name it that? I mean, I get it, but come on.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, nutritionally, it's really excellent. It's made from yellow split peas, not the green peas you're imagining. Oh. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: okay.

Jessica Wynn: And then they're ground into flour, the protein's extracted, and then that's mixed with water, sunflower oil, and several different kinds of vitamins.

And the result has eight grams of protein per cup, which [00:36:00] equals soy milk, and the protein is... It's a complete protein, and it's lower in carbohydrates than oat or rice milk.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't love that they're dumping a bunch of sunflower oil in there, although I don't really know if that might not make a difference.

But it just sounds kind of gross and possibly not super good for you. Are peas high in calcium? Because isn't that what we want from our milk sometimes?

Jessica Wynn: It's often fortified with more calcium than dairy milk, like 50% more, and it's also friendly to people with nut, soy, and gluten allergies.

Jordan Harbinger: And nobody buys it because it's called pea milk.

Got it.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Br- branding matters. They need to hire that Oatly graphic designer, I guess. That's

Jordan Harbinger: right. That's right.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, so the leading company of, that makes pea milk is called Ripple, and it avoids the word pea on the front label.

Jordan Harbinger: So does that mean that people buy hemp milk more because they think it'll get them high?

I mean, is that... I know there's hemp milk, which I was weirded out by, honestly.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, if that's why they're buying it, they're going to be pretty disappointed. So hemp milk is made [00:37:00] from whole hemp seeds, so I guess technically there are trace amounts of THC. But the content is far too low to have any psychoactive effect.

Jordan Harbinger: So why buy hemp milk?

Jessica Wynn: Because it's actually a really solid milk. It naturally contains omega-3 fatty acids. It has about five grams of protein per cup. And environmentally, it's one of the better options. The problem isn't the milk, it's that most people associate the word hemp with marijuana.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so hemp milk also has an image problem.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Right. I mean... And markets reward familiar, affordable, and coffee-compatible milks. And hemp milk isn't really any of those. Same with like macadamia milk.

Jordan Harbinger: Macadamia milk. That feels aspirational. That's a milk that requires a lifestyle. But it-

Jessica Wynn: Ooh la la ...

Jordan Harbinger: I see that popping up at the store. That's got to be super expensive.

Jessica Wynn: It is, yeah. And it's probably the best tasting of what they call luxury milks. [00:38:00] Okay. It's... I know. What a world. It's rich. It's buttery. It's actually really great in coffee because it's high in monounsaturated fats. Plus, it's really low in calories. But the downside is simple. It's expensive, and it doesn't offer much protein.

So you're really paying for texture, not any kind of nutrition.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay. So it's the Rolls-Royce of nut milks. Looks great, doesn't carry much.

Jessica Wynn: Exactly. And if you're supplementing protein elsewhere and want the best latte texture, go for macadamia milk. It's great. But if you're drinking milk for nutrition, it's definitely not the right choice.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay. Man, so many milks. We've gone through every plant milk imaginable, but let's zoom out because when we say milk, people probably actually think dairy, after all.

Jessica Wynn: Of course. I mean, remember, every mammal produces milk to nourish their young. In fact, the name mammal comes from the Latin word mamma, meaning breast.[00:39:00]

So there are standards like cow, sheep, and goat, but other animal milks are out there. You know, start looking on the shelves for camel milk. It's becoming this niche health product because it's naturally higher in vitamin C and lower in saturated fat than cow's milk. It's also an essential source of dairy in parts of the world where cows simply don't thrive or exist.

Jordan Harbinger: Camel milk might be a hard sell to Americans- Yeah. ... who only see camels at the zoo and don't really think of them as farm animals.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, that might be true at, at first, but a camel milk latte, that would, that would probably sell, honestly.

Jordan Harbinger: You might be able to pull it off, sure. Mm-hmm. I

Jessica Wynn: mean, we tend to think cow's milk is normal because that's what we grew up with, but what's, you know, quote-unquote, "normal," it depends on where you live.

So goat and sheep are dietary staples in much of the Mediterranean and Middle East, and camel milk is really common across parts of North [00:40:00] Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. There's actually mare's milk, which is traditionally fermented into a drink called kumis in Central Asia, and even yak milk is important in Tibet and Mongolia.

So cow's milk dominates because cows produce enormous volumes efficiently, not because they're the only mammals making milk worth drinking.

Jordan Harbinger: I see, and people look at the dairy aisle and assume nothing's really changed. Uh, this is perma- uh, like a permanent untouchable thing. So is it?

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, well, in 1999, the United States had over 87,000 dairy farms, and by 2019, before oat milk became this household word, that number of dairy farms dropped more than half.

It, it became closer to 34,000. So that's a huge difference in 20 years but also opens up the, the market for all different kinds of animal milks.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, wow. Okay. So half [00:41:00] of the dairy farms in America disappeared.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, and per cow milk production rose dramatically. So the industry consolidated into these large industrial operations that could achieve major cost efficiencies.

And new technology makes large farms dramatically more efficient, but it's too expensive for small farms to adopt, so they shut down. You know, they either sold out or they went under.

Jordan Harbinger: And this was all pre-COVID. What was happening at the dairy farms in 2019?

Jessica Wynn: So right before COVID, there were structural failures.

So Dean Foods and Borden, which are two of the biggest dairy farm names, they both filed for bankruptcy. I don't know if they saw the writing on the wall, but Dean Foods filed in November 2019, and Borden filed in January 2020.

Jordan Harbinger: So when I grew up being told milk was this wholesome, stable American institution, that was all just marketing BS from, uh, big dairy or something like that, or what?

Jessica Wynn: At the time, the institution [00:42:00] was stable. It's just the business wasn't. So it had quietly been fracturing for, you know, over two decades.

Jordan Harbinger: While Got Milk ads were playing on my TV and in magazines which still existed nonstop, and those are in my brain. I mean, that marketing campaign is legendary. The... and if you were a celebrity that was anybody, you had one of those.

Jessica Wynn: Oh, absolutely. But before we get to the marketing campaign, you know, when COVID hit, it stress-test the system that was not built to pivot, and a huge share of the dairy demand flows through food service, restaurants, schools, cafeterias. So those lockdowns halted all of that overnight, and producers were left sitting on surplus they can't reroute fast enough.

And in April 2020, right when the pandemic started, millions of gallons of milk were literally dumped because processing and distribution just couldn't absorb it, especially in Wisconsin and New [00:43:00] York, the major cheese states.

Jordan Harbinger: So farmers were just pouring milk on the ground? I mean, what do you even do with it?

Jessica Wynn: Pretty much. The demand didn't disappear. It just moved. So instead of restaurants and cafes buying, you know, these pallets of milk, grocery stores suddenly couldn't keep it on the shelves. They needed more, and the dairy industry was built for one kind of distribution system, but just overnight it needed a completely different one.

Jordan Harbinger: Every milk has a downside. Dairy has methane. Almond has water use. Oat has people who won't shut up about drinking oat milk. Anyway, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by ZipRecruiter. Time is the one resource we can never make more of. That's why I'm always looking for ways to optimize my day.

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Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by ConciergeMD. We're pretty good about maintaining the important things in our lives. We service our cars, update our technology, fix things around the house before they become expensive disasters. But with our health, it's easy to wait until something feels wrong before taking a closer look.

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Me and Gabriel are in there. That's the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. See you there. Now, back to Skeptical Sunday. So dairy was being dumped and shelves were empty in the same country at the same time. That's not a supply problem, that's a distribution system failure. I remember buying, trying to buy milk during COVID, and you'd see these people walking around with carts with 12 gallons of milk, and you couldn't even get one.

And I'm like, "Hey, manager, you need to limit this. I have babies, and this guy bought 12. You know he's dumping eight of those out at the end of, like, the two weeks." And j- sure enough, I re- went back there, and the manager, a couple weeks later, I saw him and I go, "Hey, man, uh, you know, c- is COVID crazy over?" And he's like, "Now we're onto toilet paper."

Remember that whole thing? And I said, "Yeah." And he goes, "By the way, you were right." He's like, "Our dumpster h- has tons of people coming to buy milk again, and they'll leave, like, six gallons of milk that are expired just next to the dumpster." He's like, "There's [00:47:00] 100 gallons of milk in the dumpster."

Jessica Wynn: We were all just out of our minds.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, and I was like, "Hey, man, maybe limit it to even something crazy like four gallons of milk for a large family. You've got people buying 16 gallons of milk at a time. You don't think they're panic buying? Like, this is not normal."

Jessica Wynn: Right? And the system just wasn't calibrated for a split between food service and retail, and it just didn't pivot fast enough. And, you know, the balance just completely shattered

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

It's weird. I, I... During that time, I went to a bar and I was chatting up the Lebanese bartender, and he's like, "What can I get you?" After like chatting with him, and I go, "This is weird, but I really need a glass of milk for my baby." And he goes, "I got you," and he just gave me the milk. I w- And he- I was like, "I, I would love to come back for a drink, but I can't.

I've got to drive back." And he's like, "Don't worry about it." And, and then I went the next day and got a drink, and he's like, "Do you want milk with that?" And I was like, "Actually, yes, I do. I need it." Yeah, because I

Jessica Wynn: couldn't buy it. That's so smart, though. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Well, [00:48:00] bars always have some milk, right, for their drinks, and it doesn't get used super fast because it's a bar, and y- you know, when you put milk in a White Russian, it's a splash a whole.

So I was just like, this guy's got two gallons of milk sitting back there, for sure. And he, he's like, "I got plenty of milk. If you need any, just come in and see me. You don't have to buy a drink." He was so kind. Right. He's... A- and I remember being like, this Lebanese bartender is saving my life right now, because my kids, they won't sleep.

At the time, they wouldn't sleep without milk.

Jessica Wynn: I hope he lasted. Did his bar last?

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, yeah, yeah. It was a hotel bar, so he was all right. Oh, cool. Uh, yeah, I wasn't rolling into like some dive that was closed for COVID. It was a hotel, and they were open. I don't know how that was allowed, but whatever. Who cares?

Jessica Wynn: Getting your back alley milk.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, getting my back alley milk. He would fill the bottle himself, right? Because he's like not going to give me a carton of milk. He's like, "Give me the bottle." And of course he's a bartender pouring, pouring a glass of milk for my kid, uh, into a bottle. I wish I had a video because it was quite funny.

He did it with like a little flair, like he would raise the milk up really high and let it splash into the bottle. Like, uh, what's that, uh, movie with [00:49:00] Tom Cruise where he's juggling- Cocktail. Cocktail. Yeah, exactly.

Jessica Wynn: Hilarious.

Jordan Harbinger: Um, z- what a n- what a great guy that was. Okay, so dairy was being dumped. Shelves are empty at the same time.

Distribution issue. You're right, they couldn't pivot fast enough. But I want to pause on the farmers because the political conversation about dairy, it tends to flip between y- big corporate villain and wholesome family farm, and any time I cover this, I get dairy farmers who email me and they're like, "Hey, I'm a 33-year-old dairy farmer.

This is a family business. Why you've got to crap all over it?" And I'm like, "Oh, I'm pretty sure I'm not talking about you. I'm talking about the faceless corporation with 10,000 cows that m- makes Highway 5 smell for 100 miles." But neither sort of wholesome family farm or corporate villain, neither of that captures what actually happened to real people with the whole dairy consolidation thing.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, of course. I mean, the consolidation story is just genuinely complicated, so these large industrial dairies. They survived and [00:50:00] expanded, but the small farms got squeezed out, and not because of your podcast, you know? And then COVID hit the remaining small and mid-size operations the hardest. But some of them did something remarkable.

So the Dairy Farmers of America bought $15,000 of milk in Upstate New York specifically to donate to local residents rather than dump it. So in Syracuse, they held a drive-through milk giveaway. Over 8,000 gallons were distributed to low-income families.

Jordan Harbinger: That's pretty cool. So that's not a PR stunt, that's people who grew up farming deciding to feed their neighbors.

That's pretty darn cool. I like hearing that.

Jessica Wynn: Some people did good things during the pandemic, and it created direct relationships between producers and consumers that hadn't existed in the modern food system. So the farmer driving milk to a food bank, it's a very different story than Dean Foods lobbying Congress, right?[00:51:00]

Jordan Harbinger: Right. Same industry, completely different realities. Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: And then going back to how the industry works and just gets into communities, you know, you mentioned the Got Milk campaigns. I mean, that was America being sold milk by just the most successful ad campaign that ever was created.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah. The Got Milk ads, like I said, those were everywhere.

Every celebrity had one. It was in every magazine. It was all over TV. So it was on billboards every... How do you dominate the culture and still lose the industry? That's confusing to me, I suppose.

Jessica Wynn: I think my brother had a Got Milk T-shirt. I think that's what

Jordan Harbinger: it was. Yeah, but it was probably one of those pervy ones where it was like, what's her name from Baywatch was on there.

Jessica Wynn: But yeah, I mean, it, it completely dominated the culture. So it started in 1993 when Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which was an ad company, they created the original Got Milk campaign for the California Milk Processor Board, and the key insight was don't sell milk, sell the anxiety of not having milk. [00:52:00] In the very first commercial, you guys might remember this, it was directed by Michael Bay and it- The explosions

Jordan Harbinger: guy?

Jessica Wynn: Okay. It follows a guy who knows the answer to a radio trivia contest, which was about Alexander Hamilton, but he can't say it because his mouth is full of peanut butter and he's out of milk. Oh, yeah. So he loses the, like, radio prize because

Jordan Harbinger: he doesn't- He's doing that and, like- ... he's saying it over and over in the, like...

"Sir, are you th-" Yeah, yeah. That's deprivation marketing, man. If they'd just waited for COVID, they could have been like, "You're going to die if you don't got milk."

Jessica Wynn: And then it worked on another level. So the campaign recognized that people almost never drink milk by itself. They drink it with cereal, cookies, and peanut butter.

So it wasn't selling milk, it was selling milk as the thing that completes other foods.

Jordan Harbinger: So milk's entire marketing strategy is you need me because your cookies are lonely- ... basically? [00:53:00]

Jessica Wynn: Oh, God. Yeah, the thought of lonely cookies, that's so sad, right? Indeed,

Jordan Harbinger: yep.

Jessica Wynn: But then that campaign went national. So Milk PEP!,

which is the Milk Processor Education Program, which is this Washington DC-based non-profit, it's funded by US milk companies to boost milk consumption. That's what launched the celebrity milk mustache ads in 1995. They were photographed by Annie Leibovitz and eventually folded the California Got Milk logo into those ads.

So between the two campaigns, Americans were seeing milk advertising constantly, and at its height- More than 80% of Americans saw a milk ad at least once a day. Over 300 celebrities posed with milk mustaches, and the campaign just became so ubiquitous it triggered a Supreme Court case about how the hell it was funded.

Jordan Harbinger: I kind of want to pull on that [00:54:00] thread, but I also kind of don't. That's crazy, because I was going to say that must have cost, like, a billion dollars or something because it was everywhere. But also, if you want the entire cast of Friends to pose for your... I, I mean, that's, that alone is millions of dollars per person-

Jessica Wynn: Exactly

Jordan Harbinger: right, to do that, I would imagine. So the, even that ad alone-

Jessica Wynn: Oh, yeah, it was the, it was the biggest celebrities.

Jordan Harbinger: And then you've got to put it on 5,000 billboards across the United States and/or on television and/or in magazines. I mean, you have to pay for each one of those, and that stuff adds up fast. I mean, when they use my voice for stuff, I get paid an amount of money where I go, "What?

I didn't even do any extra work." And they're like, "Oh, it's a licensing fee and a talent fee," and I'm nobody. So if you're somebody who's really famous, and it's like, oh, they're using your voice for this, you're making tens of millions of dollars potentially off of just the usage rights for something like that.

Anyway, so it's an expensive campaign, and it, that, all those partners at that ad firm are fantastically wealthy just based off of that one [00:55:00] campaign, I'm sure. And still, though, consumption dropped sharply with milk. 20 years of the most recognized ad campaign in history, and the decline continued, so it basically didn't work.

Jessica Wynn: Right, I mean, because it was a marketing solution to a structural problem. So the Got Milk campaign could slow the decline, but it couldn't reverse the fact that dietary habits were shifting. So alternatives were gaining ground, and the industry wasn't adapting its actual product strategy. And now the dairy industry has almost no meaningful social media presence.

I mean, when's the last time you saw a milk ad?

Jordan Harbinger: I don't even see ads, right? Because I don't watch TV, and I buy the YouTube that doesn't have ads on it so I don't have to watch a Lexus ad if I'm watching an interview with somebody. I just don't see that many ads. Anything I use, I use a premium version so I don't have to see ads, Netflix, Reddit, whatever it is, right?

Jessica Wynn: Sure, but even billboards when you're driving down the street. I mean-

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, true ...

Jessica Wynn: the,

Jordan Harbinger: the

Jessica Wynn: wildest thing-

Jordan Harbinger: Well, th- this is Silicon Valley. [00:56:00] All the billboards are like, "Is your AI 401[c] compatible? That's what I thought." And I'm like, "I never understand what I'm reading or anything." Good point. Yeah, and it's just, like, a weird graphic or a meme.

Jessica Wynn: The wild thing about those campaigns too was that it was just for milk. It's not like one specific farm or brand, which always- True ... yeah, when you think about it is so weird. But you know, they won the 20th century with those ads, but they showed up to the 21st century with essentially a print campaign.

Jordan Harbinger: They needed milk cryptocurrency, Milk Coin. I think there's an assumption that people switching to oat milk or any of these alternatives are making a rational, well-considered, nutritionally informed decision. I suspect that's not what's happening at all, right? You just ask a barista, and she's like, "All the cool kids drink oat milk now."

And you're like, "Do it."

Jessica Wynn: It's almost never purely nutritional. So people switch for a cluster of reasons. There's health conditions. There's environmental values. There's a lot of identity and social signaling in all of that. Yes,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah.

Jessica Wynn: [00:57:00] Often all four combined.

Jordan Harbinger: So start us with the legitimate health stuff.

Jessica Wynn: So nearly 70% of the global adult population has some degree of reduced ability to digest lactose.

Jordan Harbinger: Huh, okay.

Jessica Wynn: In East Asian populations, it's as high as 70 to 100% who just can't tolerate it. And these are people for whom dairy genuinely causes discomfort. For them, switching to a plant-based alternative, that's not an identity statement. It's relief, right? And the emergence of palatable alternatives has genuinely improved quality of life for a significant portion of humanity.

That part of the story is real.

Jordan Harbinger: And before oat milk, what did they do?

Jessica Wynn: They suffered through it. You know, they took lactose supplements, or they just gave up eating cereal or putting milk in their coffee.

Jordan Harbinger: So if lactose is the issue, why isn't the answer just lactose-free milk?

Jessica Wynn: I mean, that's such a great question.

For a lotta people, it is the cleanest [00:58:00] solution. There is lactose-free dairy, and it's still dairy. It's got the same protein, same calcium, same overall nutrition. It's just treated with lactase, so the lactose is already broken down.

Jordan Harbinger: So nutritionally, it's basically milk, but partially pre-digested.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly.

And for many people, it solves the problem without switching to plant-based.

Jordan Harbinger: So plant-based isn't the solution. It's just a solution, and lactose-free milk is the, kind of the boring one that works. So what are the environmental motivations for this?

Jessica Wynn: Well, that's increasingly the primary driver for younger consumers.

So overall, the environmental case for plant-based milks over dairy, it's pretty strong, but they aren't all created equal. So oat and pea milk are the cleanest environmental options because they use relatively little water and produce low greenhouse gas emissions. Soy also scores pretty well, though in some regions it's [00:59:00] associated with deforestation.

Almond milk has a much larger water footprint, like we discussed, and coconut milk actually uses relatively little water, but it's often shipped long distances and raises concerns about biodiversity and labor practices in some producing countries. And cashew milk has similar concerns because the nuts are labor-intensive to process, and they're often sourced from regions with documented worker safety issues.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, and the less flattering reasons that people switch are what?

Jessica Wynn: Identity- Yeah ... is the one. Oat milk in your coffee, it became this cultural signal. It said something about who you are. It gave the impression you were health-conscious and environmentally aware, maybe a little ahead of the curve-

Jordan Harbinger: Sure

Jessica Wynn: buying palettes from your local cafe or whatever- That's right. Yeah, exactly ... people were doing. But brands like Oatly, they really leaned into that, and they weren't just selling oat milk, they were selling the kind of person who drinks oat milk. For [01:00:00] sure. And yeah, I mean, that product became a badge.

Jordan Harbinger: And the dairy industry's response to losing the culture war wasn't to win it back.

Jessica Wynn: I mean, essentially.

Jordan Harbinger: What about people on the other side, people who tried oat milk or almond milk once, made a face, never went back? I mean, I tried it a few t- a l- a lot of times, and I was on that train, and now I'm just like, "Nah, I just want regular milk. I want regular protein. I don't need anything fancy."

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I mean, also it has to do with the same diet doesn't work for us our entire lives, so you should listen to your body of what you want and go back to things that you didn't used to eat or, you know, whatever. It's okay to go back and forth. But there's a documented psychological phenomenon called food neophobia, which is a fear of novel foods.

Mm-hmm. This is, this is real- Okay ... and it's measurable, and it's particularly strong around foods that replace something familiar. So when you substitute almond milk for dairy in cereal, the experience is objectively different. It's thinner with a subtle nuttiness that some people [01:01:00] might find pleasant, but others just don't.

And when you put oat milk in hot coffee, it can be sweeter and more viscous than expected. So these aren't imaginary complaints from people.

Jordan Harbinger: So people aren't wrong that it tastes different, because it does.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, of course they're not wrong, and some oat milks have a genuine technical problem called off flavor, which is an undesirable taste caused by oxidation of unsaturated fatty acids.

Jordan Harbinger: I've definitely tasted this before, where you're like, "Is this bad? Is this rancid?" And it's, you smell it, and it's like, it kind of, it seems fine, but then you taste it, and you're like, "This is disgusting."

Jessica Wynn: And some people are just more sensitive to it. Like, we all know people who can't eat cilantro because it tastes like soap.

I mean, our taste buds are all so different. So some people detect that- And the industry uses cold plasma treatment, pulsed electric fields, and high-pressure processing to reduce those off flavors. But no manufacturer has completely solved the problem across [01:02:00] every product.

Jordan Harbinger: So when someone says oat milk tastes weird, they might not be being difficult, they might be...

There might be something actually chemically wrong with that specific product. I've de- again, I've definitely tasted this where I'm like, "Is this- Yeah,

Jessica Wynn: correct. What is this nonsense

Jordan Harbinger: in

Jessica Wynn: here?" They have the sensitivity to detect it, so with specific products, uh, that can absolutely happen, and not all plant-based milks are equal within their categories.

So the variation between brands is significant, particularly for oat and almond.

Jordan Harbinger: What does the research say actually moves people and keeps them moved? You know, what actually changes minds?

Jessica Wynn: It's taste consistently, right? The primary driver of sustained switching is that the product is good enough to prefer or at least not miss the original.

And climate messaging, like I said, moves younger consumers, but it generates backlash among others. Nutritional messaging moves almost nobody- Okay ... which is unfortunate, because-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's where I'm at. I'm like, "I want... Just give me [01:03:00] the one with the protein and the complete amino acid profile, and I don't need...

Ain't nobody got time for that."

JHS Trailer: Ain't nobody got time for that.

Jessica Wynn: Right, exactly, and that's unfortunate because that's where the actual complexity lives.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. So lead with the taste, not the lecture. All right.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, that's essentially what the consumer behavior literature says. Companies that make products people genuinely enjoy because of its taste and the texture and the color, they tend to outperform companies that rely mostly on marketing and meaning.

So you can get to 15% market share strictly on identity, and getting further probably requires that the product is actually better.

Jordan Harbinger: Does that hold true across the board, or is that mostly adults?

Jessica Wynn: Children generally prefer dairy, so familiarity wins at that age, and preference for plant-based alternatives tends to be way lower in younger children, which matters because parents choosing plant-based options need to be much more deliberate about nutritional [01:04:00] compensation than adults do.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's talk about what might be the dumbest fight in American regulatory history, which is whether you are legally allowed to call oat milk milk.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. So when environmental comparisons stop working, industries don't just compete on product, right? They compete on language, and that brings us to the word milk.

The dairy industry has been attempting since 2017 to get Congress to ban the use of the term milk on any non-dairy product. The bill is called the Dairy Pride Act.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, wow. Dairy Pride. They named a milk labeling bill Dairy Pride. What does, what does that stand for?

Jessica Wynn: It, it is an acronym.

Jordan Harbinger: Of course it is.

Jessica Wynn: It, it stands for Defending Against Imitation and Replacements of Yogurts, Milk, and Cheese to Promote Regular Intake of Dairy Every Day.

Jordan Harbinger: They worked backwards from an acronym to justify [01:05:00] federal food policy. E stands for Every Day. That's a... Okay, well, that's not even grammatically correct now that I think about it, and this is a piece of federal legislation.

Jessica Wynn: It has been introduced every time Congress rewrites the farm bill, which is this massive piece of legislation that governs US agriculture and food policy.

And that's been in play since 2017, but it still hasn't passed.

Jordan Harbinger: Maybe because their mascot is a cow holding a rainbow flag. No, why ha- why has, why hasn't it passed?

Jessica Wynn: Gay milk. Gay milk. That's, that would sell. That would sell.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: Uh, the, the FDA actually looked at this rigorously. They held consumer focus groups, and the focus groups confirmed unambiguously that Americans do not confuse plant-based milk with cow's milk, right?

We're not that dumb.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: Wow. Many consumers buy plant-based alternatives specifically because they are not milk. There is no consumer deception happening, and [01:06:00] legally, the government can only restrict commercial speech if it has a compelling interest, typically to prevent consumer deception. So without deception, the legal case collapses.

Jordan Harbinger: The federal government spent money on focus groups to determine whether Americans know that almonds don't lactate?

Jessica Wynn: That's not the official framing, but yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: And I think we should be proud of that. Thank goodness. Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: Absolutely. A long time ago, there was a Simpsons episode where they're in school and complaining about budget cuts, and Bart picks up a carton of milk, and it's...

He's like, "Oh, this isn't even milk," and it's Malk, M-A-L-K. Now there's a brand called Malk on the shelves, which is kind of this subtle, like, you to the big dairy.

Jordan Harbinger: Jeez. Yeah. Hey, it's not called milk. Yeah. Oh, man.

Jessica Wynn: And the FDA has also noted that consumers genuinely struggle to compare nutritional content between plant-based and dairy products at a glance.

So there is a real labeling [01:07:00] problem, just not the problem the dairy industry is raising.

Jordan Harbinger: The dairy industry is fighting almonds over the word milk. Imagine losing market share to something that doesn't even have nipples. We'll be right back.

Thank you for listening to and supporting the show. All of the deals, discounts, and ways to support this podcast are searchable and clickable on our website at jordanharbinger.com/deals. Thank you for supporting those who support the show. Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Yeah. So here's what kills me is the International Dairy Foods Association, which represents dairy companies, is not even lobbying for Dairy Pride, which is their...

So their own trade group is not even lobbying for this.

Jessica Wynn: Because some of their member companies have launched plant-based milk lines.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh.

Jessica Wynn: You know? I mean, the industry is not monolithic. The loudest voices against plant-based labeling are the companies most threatened by plant-based products. So some dairy companies read the [01:08:00] market and decided if you can't beat them, sell them an oat latte.

Jordan Harbinger: That actually makes sense. Big dairy is fighting a war against plant-based milk while some of big dairy is actually selling plant-based milk. Just follow the trends. Why, why go this whole legal rigmarole? Just come up with your own brand. It's probably cheaper.

Jessica Wynn: Welcome to corporate strategy. I mean, here's the biggest pattern.

When industries lose market share, they don't just compete on product. Like I said, they compete on regulation and litigation, and the dairy industry has challenged plant-based labeling for years. The Dairy Pride Act, that's just one attempt. There have been many lawsuits targeting marketing claims, particularly around environmental comparisons.

Jordan Harbinger: Milk v. milk.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Right. And Oatly, for example, has faced lawsuits over some of its environmental marketing claims. Some came from consumer groups, others from competitors challenging how the company advertised its climate [01:09:00] benefits. Some of those cases were dismissed. Others ended with Oatly agreeing to change or clarify parts of its marketing.

Jordan Harbinger: So this is not about almonds lactating, it's about market share. Got it.

Jessica Wynn: Exactly. Now that plant-based milk has reached 15% of US sales, I mean, that's billions of dollars the dairy industry stands to lose. So at this point, lawsuits aren't just about labels, they're about protecting the market share.

Jordan Harbinger: So the war is partially theater.

Jessica Wynn: Corporate strategy often is, right?

Jordan Harbinger: So is this just an American fight, or are people arguing about what counts as milk, uh, everywhere? Like in the UK, is it... What's the controversy?

Jessica Wynn: Right. I mean, the

Jordan Harbinger: UK- The

Jessica Wynn: controversy. Controversy.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: The UK Supreme Court ruled Oatly cannot use the phrase "post milk generation" on packaging, which was part of its cool label.

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like that should have been fair game. Post milk generation.

Jessica Wynn: I know. It's cool. Now

Jordan Harbinger: they're basically saying, "No, you can't say that because it is [01:10:00] milk."

Jessica Wynn: Food labeling is, I think we talked about this in an episode, is way stricter in the UK.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: And way stricter than the US. But meanwhile, soy milk has been called soy milk since at least medieval times, and the term predates the modern dairy industry's feelings about it.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So the label debate is essentially no impact on consumer behavior. People who buy oat milk. They know what they're buying. Surprise, surprise. They know it's not milk.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, they know. I mean, it's a fight about words between industries, while consumers have already voted with their wallets.

Jordan Harbinger: Let's talk about the Make America Healthy Again folks, or MAHA movement, and its push to put whole milk back in schools.

What's the argument there? I disagree with a lot of stuff from that group, but this is one thing where I'm like, "Fine, put whole milk back." I feed my kids that. It's generally good for them.

Jessica Wynn: The argument is that whole milk tastes better, and because it's richer and creamier, kids may be more willing to drink it.

It's also more satiating, and some researchers argue the [01:11:00] push toward low-fat dairy went too far, which I also agree with.

Jordan Harbinger: I agree with that. I mean, I've got to get my kids calories. I'm not giving them skim milk because th- th- there's no reason for that. They're already not eating enough. Which I guess is, you know, not, not maybe the problem with every American kid, but, like, why are we punishing healthy kids?

Jessica Wynn: Fat's never been the problem. I think that's another misunderstanding. Sugar is our problem, but-

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly, yeah. So okay, so this all sounds pretty reasonable. Put some hot regular fat milk back in. Low-fat dairy push went too far. What's the catch?

Jessica Wynn: Well, because saturated fat still matters for cardiovascular risk, and kids already show early markers of cardiometabolic problems, which is terrifying.

Jordan Harbinger: That's terrible, yeah.

Jessica Wynn: I don't know if that's coming just from milk, but so you get a policy tension. You know, fight chronic disease while adding a reliable saturated fat source back into daily school meals.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm not a doctor, and I'm spitballing here, but I'm going to guess the kids don't [01:12:00] have cardiometabolic problems because of milk.

It's because they're eating McDonald's five times a week, a lot of kids.

Jessica Wynn: And way less active,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah. And they're not moving around, and they're eating chicken nuggets instead of actual food and stuff like... And I'm guilty of some of this myself, because my kids like it, and it's, like, easier. But I don't feed them five days a week of that.

But yeah, I don't know. Wouldn't be... Ugh, that's really scary. So the real debate isn't moral. It's a trade-off, and then they bring in ultra-processed foods, like you said, with load of sugar or whatever, which sounds simple until you look closely.

Jessica Wynn: Ultra-processed, that's a broad category. We've talked about it on other episodes.

And some products in it are genuinely harmful. Some are fortified staples that improve public health outcomes. So the question isn't processed or not, it's we need to be asking processed into what?

Jordan Harbinger: And oat milk is awkward here because it's processed but not automatically bad, and that's the whole problem.

The label is not really the verdict.

Jessica Wynn: The category is much more complicated than people think. So there was one large Harvard study that [01:13:00] found some animal-based foods were associated with a 44% increased risk of type 2 diabetes, while some ultra-processed breakfast cereals were associated with a 22% reduced risk.

That doesn't mean sugary cereal is a health food. It means ultra-processed isn't a nutrition verdict by itself. You have to look at the actual food.

Jordan Harbinger: And ironically, oat milk, which we've established is quite processed, could be caught by such a definition.

Jessica Wynn: Potentially, yeah. The question of what constitutes an ultra-processed food needs to be kept entirely separate from the question of which ultra-processed foods are harmful.

So not everything in the ultra-processed category is equivalent.

Jordan Harbinger: Do we even need dairy? I mean, this is well beyond the scope of the episode, but like biologically, do we need that? You know, some people are like, "You don't need to eat vegetables at all," and it's like, "Just eat meat." Those are probably quacks or [01:14:00] kooks, but do we need dairy at all?

Like, do you have to have it?

Jessica Wynn: Humans do not biologically require dairy. Every nutrient in cow's milk, the calcium, protein, vitamin D, can all be obtained from other sources. That's why it's okay to be a vegan. But what dairy provides is convenience and efficiency. So removing it requires deliberate nutritional planning.

It's not a risk if you do it thoughtfully, but it's a risk if you just stop drinking milk and assume you're covered. That goes for all plant-based milks, which are... They vary enormously in their nutritional completeness.

Jordan Harbinger: What about breast milk? That's the one milk humans are, you know, designed to drink.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. Would you drink a breast milk latte?

Jordan Harbinger: I'd have to be reassured- I would ... that it was safe, right? Not, I'm not going to end up getting whatever, the oral clap or something like that from drinking someone else's breast milk. I'd probably not. No, it's a little gross to think about. You would?

Jessica Wynn: Absolutely.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Yeah. But whose breast [01:15:00] milk? Does that matter? Or you're just like, "Whatever. Hey, I don't, I don't discriminate."

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, I wouldn't discriminate. I mean-

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So some lady could just be like, "Hey, you want some..." Uh, you're, you're like, "Ah, we're out of Oatly," and this woman's like, "Look, my kid's asleep. You want some of this?"

You would take that?

Jessica Wynn: I'd try it- ... right from the udder.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. Yeah, I see. I feel like we're not talking about the milk part anymore. I feel like this has now evolved into a not safe for work episode- Yeah. Let's- ... of the show.

Jessica Wynn: Let's get away from my kinks, yeah?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But- Uh, didn't see that coming.

Jessica Wynn: But as infants, you know, yeah, we, we drink breast milk.

Human breast milk is extraordinary. It contains immune cells, antibodies, hormones, enzymes, and specialized sugars that help feed a baby's developing microbiome. Like, why wouldn't I want that, you know? It's probably the most biologically sophisticated milk on Earth. It's just designed for [01:16:00] babies, not coffee.

Jordan Harbinger: So after infancy, we're just basically freelancing.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. I mean, nutritionally speaking, yes.

Jordan Harbinger: So once we start freelancing, how do we know what to look for? Because once you decide you're drinking dairy, there's a whole second layer of choices. You know, what are, what do the labels on dairy milk mean? A2 milk.

I got raw milk. There's grass-fed milk. What is all that stuff?

Jessica Wynn: The A2 stuff, I mean, I see that everywhere now. I didn't... I never noticed it before. That has to be a new trend, but- A2 milk comes from cows that naturally produce only the A2 form of beta casein protein instead of what most cows produce, which is A1 and A2.

So some people report it's easier to digest, and there's some evidence it may help a subset of people with digestive discomfort. But it's not lactose-free, so it's not a cure-all.

Jordan Harbinger: And that's just from cows. So does that hold true for other animals' milk? Is goat milk actually different from cow's milk? I guess it has to be.

Jessica Wynn: It is, [01:17:00] yeah. Goat milk has smaller fat globules and a different protein profile, so some people find it easier to digest. It's still dairy though, and it contains lactose, so if you're lactose intolerant, that's not going to be a magic fix either.

Jordan Harbinger: Lactose is still lactose, so grass-fed milk isn't helping anyone's intolerance either, I guess.

Is that just marketing, or is there something more to that? What does that even mean?

Jessica Wynn: I mean, I think that is a lot of marketing, but it's just like putting natural on a lot of food products or whatever. Grass-fed milk simply refers to what the cow ate, and it's primarily grass rather than grain. And then sometimes you see like a lowercase R, capital BST on a milk label, which refers to a synthetic hormone used to increase milk production.

It's still FDA approved and used by a few dairy producers, so brands like to mark it as rBST free on their label. They could easily [01:18:00] say hormone-free. And then you have the raw milk, which is simply unpasteurized milk. I don't recommend it. So each has its own passionate supporters though, and its critics, and you could easily spend an entire episode on any one of them.

For most people, those aren't the biggest decisions. The biggest questions are: Can you digest it? Does it meet your nutritional needs? Or that should be one of the questions anyway, the nutrition. And do you like the taste, and does it fit your budget and values?

Jordan Harbinger: Health risks seem to be at the top of the debate.

Every few months I see another headline saying milk causes or prevents something. Lately, I've seen research linking dairy to Parkinson's disease. Is that true?

Jessica Wynn: That's questionable. It's highly debated in nutritional epidemiology. Some studies suggest epidemiological evidence associating two or more glasses daily may have increased Parkinson's risk, but this is [01:19:00] not a definitive causal link.

It's new research and it's a really active research area, but I don't know. I don't think anybody knows yet.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So the thing I've been drinking twice a day my whole life might be subtly bad for my brain, and this is just not common knowledge. I guess I can't worry about that kind of stuff right now.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah. There's plenty of worse things you're doing that are affecting your brain, Jordan. True.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes.

Jessica Wynn: You know, and medical research takes a long time to become common knowledge. Industries that are historically good at shaping which research gets amplified tend to have an outsized influence on what becomes common knowledge.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a sentence I'm going to think about for a long time. Yeah. Oatly's brand is essentially choosing us as a moral act. How true is that? How does the picture change across all these different milks? If your only goal is minimizing your environmental footprint, not nutrition like we talked about before, who's the winner, or what's the winner?

Jessica Wynn: Overall, most plant-based milks have a smaller environmental footprint than dairy. The [01:20:00] tricky part is they all get there differently. But if I had to choose strictly based on environmental footprint, pea and oat milk have the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, require relatively little land and water, and peas would be the winner because they have the added benefit of naturally putting nitrogen back into the soil.

Dairy has a much, much larger environmental footprint across all these measures. So if that's why you're choosing a milk, you would definitely not choose dairy.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it. So all milks have a catch, and it just, you have to choose which one you're comfortable with.

Jessica Wynn: Kind of. I mean, we've talked about all the individual trade-offs, but the important takeaway is that none of these alternatives are environmentally perfect, but all of them improve on dairy in one way or another.

Jordan Harbinger: Is there any milk that doesn't come with an environmental asterisk?

Jessica Wynn: Not really, no. I mean, hemp milk has an excellent environmental profile, too. [01:21:00] Hemp's drought resistant, it improves soil health, it requires very little pesticides, and the seeds are a byproduct of fiber production, so there's very little additional land impact.

Coconut milk, like we said, is more complicated because the coconut palms need relatively a lot of water and can store carbon. But Most coconuts, they're grown so far away from the people drinking them, so that means long supply chains, labor rights concerns in some producing countries, and just less transparency about how the crop's produced.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Okay. So there's no perfect environmental milk. Every option comes with compromises. That makes sense.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, exactly, and none of them have the environmental footprint of dairy. I just want to stress that if that's what you're going for, because dairy requires raising methane-producing cattle, growing the feed crops, and using much, much more land and water than most plant-based alternatives.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it, and [01:22:00] yet the best environmental options, hemp and pea, are the ones nobody buys.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, right, exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: Which, uh, that tells you branding matters at least as much as sustainability. So you have companies like Oatly, whose entire brand is built around environmental virtue. Do they live up to that image at all?

Jessica Wynn: It is well documented that Oatly was partially funded by capital with significant environmental contradictions, and the company faced serious backlash from environmental advocates because of it. This illustrates that brand values and corporate financial structures, they're not always the same thing. So you can buy a product for environmental reasons while the company selling it does really complicated things with your money.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so the brand and the business aren't necessarily the same thing. That actually makes sense. With a lot, a, a lot of things are like that.

Jessica Wynn: Of course, yeah. Companies can sell one story while operating inside a much messier financial system.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so dairy is the nutritional heavyweight, but if you're looking for the best balance of nutrition and environmental impact, you're looking at soy or pea.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, that's fair, and then [01:23:00] there's a whole political layer.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, geez. What

Jessica Wynn: starts as a conversation about what's in your coffee, you know, it quickly becomes this fight over school lunches and food labels and environmental claims and just billions of billions of dollars in market share. You've got this MAHA movement pushing whole milk back in schools while pediatricians continue debating saturated fat.

You've got the dairy industry trying to protect the word milk even though most consumers don't seem to be confused- Not confusing at all ... by any of that. Yeah, exactly. At the same time, the movement against ultra-processed foods risks lumping together products that are genuinely nutritious with ones that aren't.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, Oatly is not Cheetos.

Jessica Wynn: Exactly, and even the companies selling environmental virtue aren't immune from criticism over where their ingredients come from. And while all of that is happening, some of the most nutritionally and environmentally promising options, they barely get any attention. So lost underneath the politics, the marketing, and [01:24:00] the lawsuits are the people who actually produce our food.

These farm families, many of whom survived consolidation and price crashes and even dumping milk during the pandemic because they couldn't sell it, they're probably the least represented voices in this entire conversation.

Jordan Harbinger: One more variable nobody likes to admit, money.

Jessica Wynn: Right. It's easy to tell people to choose the best option when they can afford $6 oat milk and live somewhere that actually sells it.

Yeah, I mean, that's me. But that's not available to everyone, yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Dairy is still the cheapest way to buy protein in liquid form. I mean, even I'm finding that. I r- like I said, I buy these protein shakes from Fair Life, and there's all kinds of criticism about the company and about milk, and it's like, "Okay, fine.

Find me 42 grams of protein shake that doesn't taste like a, I'm eating a piece of chalk."

Jessica Wynn: And it's also so hard to keep up with. Yeah. Do I have to investigate every sourced thing on an ingredient list to make my decision? I'm just

Jordan Harbinger: not going to do it. And I, I- I'm just

Jessica Wynn: hungry ...

Jordan Harbinger: y'all know me. Like, I'm, I'm thirsty [01:25:00] for knowledge, but I'm thirstier for m- hitting my protein macro and not spending half the day figuring out how to make that happen.

Jessica Wynn: Exactly, which means some of the conversation about choosing the, quote-unquote, "right milk," it's really a conversation about who has the luxury of choosing that right milk in the first place.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so the most ethical nutrition advice is pick what you can actually sustain. You, yourself, yeah.

Jessica Wynn: Right.

Consistency beats purity, for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: What do we tell somebody who just wants to know what to put in their coffee after all this? After 90 minutes of- I know, it's

Jessica Wynn: confusing ... back

Jordan Harbinger: and forth. Yeah.

Jessica Wynn: If you can digest dairy, have no ethical or environmental objections, and want the most complete nutritional package, dairy is excellent.

If your priority is nutrition, choose soy or pea. If your priority is the environment, choose oat, pea, or hemp. If your priority is coffee, choose oat or macadamia. And if you have allergies, rice milk can be an option, but don't make it your only one. And if you're choosing milk [01:26:00] for a child under five, talk to your pediatrician before taking dairy out of their diet entirely, regardless of what that barista says.

Jordan Harbinger: But my kid loves a good affogato. Yeah, and the word milk, the word milk, are we still allowed to use it?

Jessica Wynn: I know. Milk is a word, and words evolve, right? Language is fluid. Almond milk appears in English texts from the Middle Ages. Humans have been drinking mammal and plant milks for thousands of years, and somehow For some reason, almond milk's become this controversial one.

It's not, but if this is the hill the dairy industry wants to die on

Jordan Harbinger: Yep, they'll die on it. And underneath all of it, every version of milk is, it's what, like you said, 87-plus percent water. Everything else is the, the story that they've built around it.

Jessica Wynn: Yeah, milk isn't just a beverage. It's a trillion-dollar supply chain fighting over shelf space, science, and perception.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. So the next time you're standing in the dairy aisle staring at 12 different kinds of milks, just [01:27:00] remember you're not choosing a drink. You're choosing between nutrition, taste, price, ethics, marketing, and whatever makes your coffee taste the way you like it. And of course, your, your identity as one of the cool kids or not, as I've found out recently.

Thanks, Jess. Another thing in our food system that has been watered down. And thanks to you all for listening. Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to me Jordan@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers, deals, discounts, and ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com/deals. I'm @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find Jessica on her Substacks Between the Lines and Where Shadows Linger. We'll link to those in the show notes. Her work is on Instagram @NeverMetJessicas. That's plural. This show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Our advice and opinions are our own, and I'm a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer, and I'm definitely not a nutritionist, a dietician, or a doctor. Also, we try to get [01:28:00] these as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it's fact-checked. Consult a qualified professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and well-being or those of your kids.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge we doled out today, maybe somebody who drinks bougie milks. They could use a little dose of this. They might be interested in spending 90 minutes learning about why their choice is wrong.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. You're about to hear a preview from Joe Loya, a man who robbed 30 banks across California, but says the real crime scene was his childhood, where his Pentecostal preacher father beat him over 100 times before he turned 15.

JHS Trailer: For 14 months, I robbed 30 banks, sometimes several in one day. I lost all sense that my life was going to be long at all. I just wanted to grab the loot and get the hell out of Dodge as fast as possible and go spend it and [01:29:00] have fun. That was my ethos. And so I did. Because all the crimes I did and all the violence I did, and starting with my dad, when my mother died, we had received a lot of love from her and everything like that.

It's just too much for him. And when he gets angry now, he gets brutal. Like, he may have socked me, he may have choked me, he may have done all those things, beat me with a bat. He wants us dead. He's using the dead language. He could kill us or I could kill myself, but this is, like, it's just a tough time for me to try and process the grief myself and be, I'm being brutalized.

I don't believe I have a future. So there's nothing inside of me like, "Oh, I've got to protect my future. I better get a job. I start, better start saving money for the future." None of that. Because the trauma is so intense, you're only looking at surviving the next day in front of you. You know, in fact, I'm not made for society.

They have all these moralities, but they're too timid for me. I've seen past the curtain. Like, I become in my heart like this little sociopath looking at, like, "You guys are falling for the [01:30:00] okey-doke, and I'm not the guy who falls for the okey-doke. I'm the guy who stabs the okey-doke and says, 'Get the hell out of my way.'

I'm not buying it," right? Once upon a time, Joe Loya couldn't handle his emotional shit, and so now I'm a criminal. I'm a bad guy.

Jordan Harbinger: Check out episodes 1264 and 1265 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.