Plant-based milk experiments, phase 3: Aldi's almond milk

The biggest news on the environmental front this month, pretty obviously, was the October 8 IPCC report on climate change. Among other bombshells, it revealed that we're going to have to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, rather than the 2°C many nations have been aiming for, if we want to avoid major ecological disasters around the globe. (The Guardian offers a pretty good summary of what a difference this half-degree could make, including "extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty.") Furthermore, we have only 12 years to hit this target, and it will take "rapid and far-reaching" changes in just about everything: land use, energy, industry, buildings, transportation.

Unfortunately, there's not that much any single person can do to make that happen. A recent Lifehacker story suggests several ways to put pressure on your elected officials and "take action yourself," but the steps it promotes—drive less, vote more, compost—are all things I've already been doing for decades. However, the Guardian's advice on the subject actually pointed toward one clear, concrete step that I could take to do my bit for the atmosphere: cutting down on dairy. In fact, it said cutting back on meat and dairy was "the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet," and pointed to yet another study, this one published in Science last June, to prove it.

After reading the Guardian's coverage of that study, along with a few other articles I found on the topic, I decided it was time to start getting serious about getting off the moo juice. Over the past few months, I'd tried tinkering around with various plant-based milk alternatives, but I just hadn't found one that seemed to tick all the ecofrugal boxes: eco-friendly, not too expensive, and reasonably good for all the uses we currently put milk to. But after seeing the new research on just how big an impact dairy actually has, I decided just about any alternative had to be better than cow's milk; it was just a matter of finding one that could work for me.

So I decided to start with the least expensive non-dairy milk I'd seen so far: Aldi almond milk, at $1.89 per half-gallon. On our last trip to Aldi, I picked up a half-gallon of it, planning to test it in all the applications we normally use cow's milk for: my morning cocoa and afternoon egg cream, Brian's breakfast cereal, and the occasional glass drunk straight. If it performed satisfactorily in all these tests, I figured we could take the plunge and switch over completely. It wouldn't end up costing us too much than dairy milk, and with three different Aldi stores within a few miles of our house, it wouldn't require too big a change in our shopping habits.

Now, in an ideal world, this story would conclude with the news that Aldi's almond milk passed all its tests with flying colors, and we were now one step farther along the path to achieving vegan superpowers. But unfortunately, it didn't go down that way.

The almond milk did fine on some of my tests. In fact, for drinking straight, I'd say I actually liked it a bit better than cow's milk. Brian was also quite satisfied with the way it worked on his breakfast cereal. However, when I used it in my morning cocoa, something about it tasted just a little...off. It was hard to put my finger on, but there was a faint off-taste that clashed ever so slightly with the chocolate. This odd flavor was even more noticeable when I tried it in an egg cream, and on top of that, the fizz seemed to go flat much quicker than it does with regular milk.

So after four unsatisfying days on almond milk, I felt like I was back at the old drawing board once more, searching yet again for that perfect milk alternative that I knew must be out there somewhere.
Seeking inspiration, I tuned in this morning to a Science Versus podcast on plant-based milks, in which pun-loving host Wendy Zukerman posed the question, "Are they udder bull?" (along with as many other puns as she could manage to "milk" the subject for). She spoke to Joseph Poore, one of the authors of the Science study, about these plant-based milks (or as she called them, "schmilks"), and he revealed that, unfortunately, they all come with their share of environmental problems. Almond milk, of course, has its heavy water use; rice milk turns out to be much more carbon-heavy than other nondairy milks, due to the methane produced by rice paddies; and soy and oat milk both use rather a lot of land to produce.

But here's the thing: even with these problems, all these "schmilks" are much, much better than dairy milk. Switching to any of them, Dr. Poore argued, would result in much lower land use, water use, and carbon emissions. The bottom line is, it doesn't really matter which one you pick: they're all so much better than cow's milk that you pretty much can't go wrong. Just figure out which one you like enough to drink it regularly, and go with that.

So instead of obsessing over which is "the best" ecofrugal milk alternative, I'm just going to settle for finding one I can live with. Since I've already rejected the cheapest variety I could find, I'm moving on to the second-cheapest: Shop-Rite store brand coconut milk, which costs $3 per half gallon. That's about twice as much as we currently pay for cow's milk, but looked at in perspective, we're only talking about an extra $6 a week here; that's not going to break us. And besides, with only 12 years to save the planet from climate apocalypse, we don't have time to pussyfoot around.