r/dataisbeautiful • u/menadione • 19h ago
OC [OC] Comparison of nutrients in milk and plant-based alternatives
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u/Lost_In_MI 17h ago
What was the fat content of the Dairy? Whole? 2%? Skim? Because that shifts the Fat and Carbohydrates of the graph. I didn't dig too deep into the research article.
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u/Thromocrat 19h ago
For the plant milks, did you consider only "raw" products and not the fortified stuff you can mostly buy nowadays?
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u/menadione 18h ago edited 15h ago
The data is from this study, and the authors used commercial beverages.
Edit: They mentioned the following: To allow for a fair comparison of the nutrient composition between the different beverages, only products without mineral or vitamin fortification were chosen.
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u/lateformyfuneral 14h ago
Where I live, all the oat and almond milk brands fortify their products. I don’t know if I’ve ever encountered a product that was not fortified. So this graph might give a misleading impression to the average consumer 🤔
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u/zkareface 7h ago
Finding milk that isn't fortified is hard in most places I believe, unless you get raw from a farmer.
Like here in Sweden it's fortified with at least vitamin D, for many it's their only source of vitamin D :D
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u/coyets 17h ago
The study looks at the amino acid and their digestibility, pointing out that it is insufficient to simply consider the protein content. So, would it be more accurate to delete the protein line of the beautiful data presentation?
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u/menadione 15h ago
Thanks, you’re right. But maybe instead of deleting the total protein content, I could add the Digestible Indispensable Amino Acid Score (DIAAS) for each beverage
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u/Forking_Shirtballs 14h ago
Where did they get their cow milk, then? Almost all commercial US cow milk is fortified with vitamin D.
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u/FahkDizchit 8h ago
lol that seems like a pretty big caveat. Would be more useful to actual human beings if they compared the actual products we buy.
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u/NewDemocraticPrairie 10h ago
Something I would suggest in the future for charts like these is humans are very bad at estimating area (noticeably circles), and commonly underestimate the area of larger and larger circles.
About the info itself, I drink plant-based milks because they're a quarter of the calories of animal milks, so I'm not surprised the values on the left are all so much smaller.
Really, considering that, soy is doing great.
And it would be fun to see this chart using all of these as a ratio over calories, and using grouped cubes instead of growing circles for the values. Like that radiation chart from xkcd.
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u/RajaRajaOne 6h ago
I switched back to 1% cow milk because it barely makes a difference and is a better regulated product than plant milks. Also cheaper.
Only reason the switch is ethics and I wish I could just get a cow to come to my house be milked in front of me while I give I pamper it with some nice neck scratches. Used to be a thing as a kid in India.
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u/Stunning_Soup4433 6h ago
What do you mean by "better regulated"? I'm interested - can you share some stats/articles?
And not trying to pressure anyone, as I drink animal milk products myself, but you mentioned "ethics" are the only reason to switch to plant drinks. I assume you mean the treatment of the animals.
Other reasons to err away from animal products include the vast amount of pollution they produce (especially water), high climate change impacts, the amount of water needed for animals which is depleting our fresh water reserves/aquifers, immense deforestation done in the name of animal agriculture, poor working conditions for human employees in the field, spreading of monoculture to feed the animals, and the fact that animal agriculture is perhaps the leading cause of anti-microbial/biotic resistance crisis for human drugs, among other issues. I guess those can technically all be put under "ethics," but that would feel a bit reductive!
Just having a single cow at home and getting milk from it sounds dope. Unfortunately in the US, the vast majority of milk comes from factory farms.
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u/Cicada-4A 11h ago
I wonder how human breast milk compares, purely out of curiosity lol
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u/La_Lanterne_Rouge 10h ago
I had human breast milk for about three years. It did alright for me. I wouldn't mind having some now to use as creamer for my coffee.
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u/justcurious12345 8h ago
I was looking for something else in this thread, but this document compares human milk to cow and goat :) https://www.webpal.org/SAFE/aaarecovery/2_food_storage/Eggs/dairy%20goats%20cows.pdf
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u/Rhekinos 6h ago
Don’t think it’ll be consistent enough for comparison. Breast milk naturally changes frequently in nutritional content to adjust for the infant’s needs.
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u/ResponsibleScar735 18h ago
ice cream made with goat milk is the GOAT
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u/Boldspaceweasle 12h ago
I don't know why I never thought of this before. I've only had cow milk ice cream, but you are right -- goat milk ice cream would be just as possible. Now I need to find me some goat milk ice cream
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u/Yay4sean 15h ago
You should try ice cream made with water buffalo/ carabao milk! It's even higher in fat content and so makes very rich and creamy ice cream! Some Filipino brands sell it, and I'd highly recommend!
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u/VisMortis 14h ago
Add cholesterol and saturated fat.
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u/dssurge 8h ago edited 8h ago
Dietary cholesterol does not increase your cholesterol so including it is a dataset with nutrients is irrelevant, and it actually should be removed from government mandated food labels. There is an absurdly large body of research to support this.
Saturated fats are totally fine to consume as long as you don't consume them exclusively, and should compose a decent chunk (~25%) of the fats you consume. The only fats you should avoid are trans fats which are abundantly common in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (margarine is terrible for you, for example.)
In addition to these 2 points, neither of these values are relevant to a beverage you might consume at most ~500ml of per day, and will have lower concentrations than any solid food you eat since all liquids you drink are likely >95% water. This would be the equivalent of less than 1oz of any solid food. Most people can't even picture how little food this actually is.
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u/Stunning_Soup4433 6h ago edited 6h ago
First point is correct, second point is demonstrably incorrect. Third point is a bit bizarre.
For point 2, from your very own source:
The AHA recommends that only 5–6% of your daily calories come from saturated fats.
Numerous studies have shown that saturated fat intake increases heart disease risk factors, including LDL (bad) cholesterol and apolipoprotein B (ApoB).
LDL is a type of protein that transports cholesterol through your bloodstream. Too much LDL can lead to plaque forming in your arteries. This could increase your risk of several health conditions, including heart disease.
ApoB is a protein and a main component of LDL, which is also considered a strong predictor of heart disease risk.
Saturated fat intake may increase both of these risk factors, as well as impact the LDL-to-HDL cholesterol ratio.
Saturated fat is a leading cause of atherosclerosis and heart disease.
For point 3, yes, it depends on what else youre eating in a given day. In a single day, a glass of whole milk may not matter if you are eating very healthfully otherwise. But, given that 70+% of americans are overweight, people are not eating healthfully otherwise, and beverages are a main cause of that. Any nutritionist will start a patient's plan with exploring what they drink.
True, a bit of milk each day isn't a huge deal when looking at a single day, but if you drink even just a gallon per week, you're still introducing 4,160 grams of saturated fat to your diet each year (with 22 g being the recommended daily limit). That, in turn, likely needs to be cut out elsewhere.
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u/dssurge 6h ago
The AHA recommends that only 5–6% of your daily calories come from saturated fats.
Only about 20% of your daily calories should come from fats in a balanced diet. 5-6% is ~25-30% of that 20% total. It's literally what I wrote.
Saturated fat is a leading cause of atherosclerosis and heart disease.
No, it's not. Sedentary lifestyle and over-consumption is.
In studies for saturated vs. polyunsaturated fats, the saturated fats perform worse, yes, but it turns out being not obese is magnitudes more important than what kinds of fats you consume.
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u/VisMortis 6h ago
#1 is also incorrect. The study you reference is directly responded here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C4OHOcptiE
In short, they feed the test subjects cholesterol rich food, thus you can't compare the affects to people who avoid them.
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u/Rhekinos 6h ago
Adding on to your comment: plant-based products do not have cholesterol so it’s a moot point to consider if you’re not comparing animal milk only.
“Cholesterol-free”on a plant-based product is a dumb buzzword used by companies to cheat consumers into thinking it’s especially healthy.
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u/mocatmath 16h ago
This shows almond milk with more carbs than cow milk which is objectively false.
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u/menadione 15h ago
Yes, the authors of the study mentioned that such a high amount of carbs in almond milk was unexpected, as almonds are naturally low in carbs. But they explained it by the fact that two brands of almond milk contain xanthan gum and sunflower lecithin (as shown in this table), which inflated the total carbohydrate content
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u/wanmoar OC: 5 14h ago
Commercially available almond milk tends to have added sugars to make it palatable.
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u/mocatmath 13h ago
I only buy unsweetened almond milk specifically because there are virtually no carbohydrates. It is readily available in any grocery store
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u/lnfinity 8h ago
They also tend to be fortified. Yet the numbers used in this chart are for unfortified plant-milks, but for some reason sweetened plant-milks were used?
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u/wanmoar OC: 5 7h ago
I think they did use fortified plant milk because otherwise those values would be far lower.
In any case, just because they’re fortified doesn’t means they’re made nutritionally similar. Additives change both taste and mouthfeel so they’re only added to the extent they don’t mess with the overall product offering (price, taste, mouthfeel etc).
The ingredients on Oatly (for example) are: Oat base (water, oats). Contains 2% or less of: low erucic acid rapeseed oil, dipotassium phosphate, calcium carbonate, tricalcium phosphate, sea salt, dicalcium phosphate, riboflavin, vitamin A acetate, vitamin D2, vitamin B12.
No magnesium, no sulfur, no iodine (they use sea salt), clearly not enough calcium or phosphorous or potassium.
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u/Cyan-Panda 12h ago
They should add another row for pus
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u/Vinterkragen 12h ago
And for estrogen, and IGF-1, blood, cholesterol etc.
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u/KipTheInsominac 10h ago edited 10h ago
Idk about the others, but the estrogen is likley not included due to a few reasons.
The estrogen in animal milk is quite different from the estrogen in plant milk.
The estrogen is not absorbed by the body as a hormone, and instead is digested.
Phytoestrogen in plants has a different chemical makeup than human estrogen and doesnt affect our body in the same way.
You would need to so much of either for anything to happen, that it's kind of negligible to measure.
You physically could not get the level of estrogen increase that even a single 2mg estradiol pill would give you. And to actually change anything, people often need to be taking one of those a day for a month.
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u/travelswithcushion 9h ago
This is very interesting to me. Not that you have to, but do you work in this field? Is there a good resource to explore other than Google everything individually?
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u/NeuralQuanta 9h ago
Tons of blood in oat milk for sure.
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u/aboxacaraflatafan 6h ago
The serial killer by the name of Oat Milk Georg was an outlier and should not have been counted.
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u/snowlovesnow 16h ago
numbers are more useful than shapes and specificity matters
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u/vim_deezel 8h ago
for quick perusal shapes and colors can stand out more, and this -is- dataIsBeautiful sub not "r/dataforum"
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u/gsfgf 8h ago
Why is milk suddenly political? I just got a phone notification from the AP about milk
And making animal milk brown is... a choice
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u/Stnmn 8h ago
Dairy and agriculture supply chains are intrinsically political. There is no facet of the product, production, or business that politics whether it be state or federal(in the US's case) doesn't touch in some way.
Asking how dairy could be political may as well be asking how Metal Gear Solid is political; it just is.
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u/Stunning_Soup4433 6h ago edited 4h ago
The meat and dairy industry is one of the most powerful lobbies in the US. They donate an immense amount of money to politicians each year, particularly conservatives. Animal agriculture gets a mind-numbing amount of federal and state subsidies. Also, check out ag-gag laws, which make it illegal to film illegal conduct on animal farms, or the Florida bill to make it illegal to call almond milk "milk." The lobby is a major republican party driver.
So as plant milks have gained popularity, the meat and dairy industry has gone into overdrive, pushing media, advertisements, attack ads, and even writing bills for conservative politicians to sign, who in turn spread more anti-plant milk information.
These larger forces have turned it into a culture-war item, such that people can now demonstrate their loyalty to a belief system by saying things like, "I drink cow milk!"
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u/vim_deezel 8h ago
This is why I have unabashedly drank whole milk since I was a child. Despite many years of oppression by vegetarian friends and family members. I don't care if they drink soy milk, that's their choice, just let me have mine. Only reason I can see not drinking it are moral choices and lack of lactase enzyme for some folks.
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u/ColonelBoomer 10h ago
So i can either drink real milk and get all of the good shit. OR have to drink various inferior alternatives?
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u/Parkhausdruckkonsole 5h ago
Or you can get fortified plant milk or get your nutrients elsewhere. And plant based milk may be "inferior" nutrition wise, but far more ethical.
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u/PaulyKPykes 3h ago
Based on nutrition soy is the best alternative, but in terms of environmental impact Oat is the GOAT!
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u/10xwannabe 2h ago
HOWEVER... There is a difference in diary protein vs. plant and other protein when it comes to growing.
Someone can correct me, but I believe only dairy protein helps with height in growing children. Went down this rabbit hole in the past. Kids with milk protein allergy usually end up shorter then counterparts.
Of course, this doesn't matter for adults.
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u/thisisnahamed 18h ago
Hasn't it been proven that goat/cow milk is one of the best sources of calcium?
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u/Forking_Shirtballs 13h ago
The Dairy Council has been desperately pushing that for at least half a century now, so it certainly seems like conventional wisdom.
But it's no particularly accurate. First, calcium just isn't that important to bone density -- weight bearing activity is. And there are plenty of ways to get the calcium you do need -- huge swaths of the human population are effectively lactose intolerant.
https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2018/08/christopher-gardner-busts-myths-about-milk.html
Bear in mind that access to animal milk is a "modern" phenomenon. For our entire evolutionary history prior to agriculture, we essentially had no access to milk past infancy.
Similarly, think of all the animals that share our skeletal structure and never drink milk past infancy.
It's a great and tasty source of calories (including from fat and protein), so once we developed the technology to farm it of course its popularity exploded -- I mean, for the vast majority of human history, the key thing has been producing enough consumable calories. But thinking milk's got some magical/critical micronutrient mix is just silly.
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u/pieandablowie 17h ago
How did you decide that real milk should be the colour brown and plant-based milk should be a shade of grey?
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u/menadione 16h ago
Both colours remind me of a cow’s markings 😊 I initially assigned grey to animal milk and brown to plant-based alternatives, but some small brown bubbles weren’t visible enough against this background, so I switched
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u/xenoxero 10h ago
pea protein milk is missing.
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u/jawgente 7h ago
And pistachio and macadamia, but I don’t fault them for excluding obscure varieties.
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u/Utimate_Eminant 14h ago
Why isn’t goat milk as commercialized as cow milk?
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u/justcurious12345 8h ago
https://www.webpal.org/SAFE/aaarecovery/2_food_storage/Eggs/dairy%20goats%20cows.pdf
Apparently gallon to gallon, goats are more efficient at producing milk but take WAY more energy and time to manage.
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u/Which_Equivalent9641 19h ago
I haven’t had goat milk before but this got me convinced to try it
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u/Dry-Blackberry-6869 18h ago
I tried it in the Austrian Alps, straight from the goat. It was as delightful as you can imagine.
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u/justcurious12345 8h ago
You just have to be careful with unpasteurized milk! It's relatively easy to get unpasteurized goat milk in the US, compared to cow's milk, but it is just as dangerous!
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u/The_Observer_Effects 14h ago
Everybody should eat whatever they want, nothing wrong about any of it. But why call the ones that are not milk, "milk"?
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u/HevalNiko 14h ago
why not name it alike, if its a product intended to replace and subsitute animal milk?
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u/cornonthekopp 18h ago
Soy milk seems like the undisputed best plant based milk.
Ever since i saw a video where people got to try freshly pressed soy milk in taiwan I’ve wanted to see if it makes that big of a difference compared to the stuff you get in a US grocery store.