Vegan Milk vs Cow milk: Which is better and should Amul & India 'switch' as PETA claims?

A fierce battle is brewing online and in advertising forums between India’s dairy icon - the Amul co-operative - and what it appears to believe are vested interests hell-bent on discrediting and mooching off milk - the dairy variety, the ‘only’ variety. This purported lobby, Amul’s venerable chief RS Sodhi roughly feels, is pushing a product that is trying to attach itself to milk on shelves like a parasite and sell plant-based alternatives by simply presenting an option. By ‘encashing the equity of milk’, the GCMMF Ltd MD says that the companies that make these ‘plant-based foods’ are eyeing profitability over livelihoods and are telling at least 2 ‘lies’ in the process - that Vegan milk is better than dairy/cow milk and that vegan milk is better suited to India and Indians than real milk.

Plant-based ‘vegan milk’ versus dairy & cow milk: Which is better?

Vegan milk* (it’s not actually allowed to call itself milk in many geographies and is even abortively marketed as 'mylk' in the US) is primarily made of a few varieties that are always changing - Almond milk, Soy milk and Coconut milk are the predominant varieties, as per the latest writings, and Oats and other alternatives, even corn, are catching up for fairly arbitrary reasons (read: fads). Just to be clear, in no circumstance at the moment do these vegan milks appear naturally superior to fresh milk from cows. They are lower or at par on energy in terms of calories, as well as fats, carbohydrates, proteins and vitamins, and if ever they are not, that's because there’s a good chance they’re fortified with additives. It’s not illegal, it’s permissible within limitations as per most accounts (the WHO guidelines are a standard).

Vegan milk nutritional details vary markedly depending on what you buy, but at best they’re as power-packed as dairy milk, and at worst they’re like bottled water emulsion with a few percentage points of their plant base and some enhancers and other agents including vitamins, flavours, sugars, thickeners, texturisers, etc. Mr Sodhi has said they’re modified lab foods made of chemicals and synthetic materials. Perhaps not all of them, but there appears to be a good argument that they may be largely classifiable as ‘beverages’ rather than the more rounded ‘food’ category that real milk falls under.

But should you believe this analysis? Well, the truth is it’s probably going to be very hard to establish beyond doubt. Like debates into topics like diet colas, there is likely already enough research on either side to render a conclusive answer impossible to find. One can argue on the implied question - if there were motivations to ‘findings’? What’s clear is, however, that ‘vegan milk’ has a whiff of being ‘healthy’, ‘sustainable’ and most importantly, ‘woke’, derived as it is from the clean-food counterculture that has swept the blogosphere and originated allegedly on Instagram. The ‘but is it really?’ just writes itself.

Is Vegan milk really good for India? Should India & Amul be thinking about switching?

Clearly, RS Sodhi feels ‘no’ and PETA India feels ‘yes.’ To push its argument, Unilever theories aside, PETA cites a report on Forbes that in many of its arguments cites the most shallow outlier lines of attack, including emblazoning the Bat-origin theory of COVID-19 front and center. (Don’t even try.)

But coming to the main points that should decide the ‘dairy milk versus vegan milk’ battle for India, here’s what you need to know.

Is cow & dairy milk bad for you?

Essentially, cow milk is the latest in a long line of foods that has been revised (smeared) as being bad for you. As far as this author could find, it’s contentious. The biggest truth there is that there is a good percent of the population in many countries that could be lactose intolerant. This also depends on historic, environmental and ethnic factors, but it is the biggest question that can be raised against milk. Aside from that, there’s no apparent reason to believe Milk is anything other than net-positive for you. Lactose intolerance is primarily because some peoples’ bodies wean off producing an enzyme that breaks down milk from when we’re babies. If you're not lactose intolerant, by-and-large milk is supposed to be good for you.

Are cow and dairy milk environmentally friendly in India?

The answer is in the model. India’s dairy industry is not even close to being mechanised enough to cause as big a dent as in many foreign countries in terms of environmental damage. And more importantly, our consumption of beef is negligible and so we don’t contribute to the immense harm meat farming causes globally. Like Amul has argued, India’s dairy industry does not follow a factory production model, small individual farmers own their pairs of cattle and lakhs of them co-operatively contribute to making India by far the largest milk producer in the world!

PETA and the article they rely on to question Amul claim that Vegan milk can easily be made in India. Why, exactly? Look up almonds, soy, oats and even coconuts. India doesn’t even make it into the top-10 producers, and in percentile terms, it would be laughable to compare with India’s milk prowess - which owes quite a bit of this competitive advantage to Amul, the White Revolution and Operation Flood (all basically interchangeable). Sure, with greenfield investment and marketing (and lobbying apparently) one could turn it into a success story in India, but really, to ask Amul to ditch its operations, dairy model and all the good they bring, and ‘switch’ to Vegan milk is not even worth considering at the moment. Sure, the company is best placed to cannibalise any demand, and even more so, to cater to the demand abroad, which is copious and could allow farmer an option. But those are decisions RS Sodhi should be taking for his and farmers' reasons, not having to swat away because Instagram influencers and foreign-funded lobbies want to falsely declare the death of milk.