milk

November 25, 2016 by Tofu Temptress Leave a Comment

Plant milks are the non-frightening, yummy alternative to dairy milk. They’re often fortified with calcium and B12 among other things and have none of the horrid qualities of dairy, such as pus, growth hormones, antibiotics, cancer promoting animal protein and cholesterol. Also, milk from cows is supposed to feed their calves, not us. The same goes for goat’s milk, which is just as cruel an industry. The separating of mothers from their newborns just so humans can steal their sustenance is an inhumane and totally unnecessary practice. For health, the environment and of course animal welfare, it’s best to go with plant milks.

So, what kind of plant milks are there? Loads! In your local supermarket you will find a huge variety including: coconut milk (regular, low fat and chocolate flavour) almond milk (sweetened, unsweetened and vanilla flavour) hazelnut milk, oat milk (various kinds) and of course soya milk. You may even find hemp milk and rice milk in there somewhere. As you can see, the choice is extensive.

Many plant milks come fortified with vitmains & minerals

I used to drink quite a lot of milk in my pre-vegan days and, even though I’m not much of a tea or coffee drinker, I couldn’t imagine doing without cereal in the morning. I use almond milk for that these days and also for making porridge. My other half prefers coconut milk in his muesli and if you’ve got a sweet tooth, that could be the one for you. Soya milk is great for baking, and my cousin swears by oat milk as her daughter has an intolerance for both dairy and soya. My advice is to try each one that’s available to you easily till you find a taste you enjoy. Some people are really fancy and make their own milks using fantastic machines, but I’m a bit lazy for that.

Milk isn’t a tough thing to replace in your diet at all. Other products that are traditionally dairy or egg based, such as yoghurt, mayonnaise, ice cream, custard, chocolate, cream and margarine or butter have many alternatives too and they only get more numerous as time goes on. There’s even a dairy free creme fraiche!

Now I know what you’re thinking, what about cheese. Well that is a subject best covered in a whole separate post, but let’s just say for now that there are many superb cheese alternatives. One of the main reasons many people feel they can’t go fully vegan is because of cheese, so I’m glad the dairy free times are a’changing.

There's a huge variety of plant milk out there -try them all! — There’s a huge variety of plant milk out there -try them all!

The fabulous charity Viva! is a great resource and they have a whole booklet dedicated to the dairy free switch. You can download it or order a paper copy and it’s a great place to start. Giving up dairy milk is one of the best things you can do when it comes to altering your diet. If you’ve already given it up, well done! Do let me know if you spot any new vegan milk products, as I say, they’re springing up all the time!

The Dairy Crisis

January 20, 2015 by Tofu Temptress Leave a Comment

I’m sure you saw the news in the media recently about the crisis that UK dairy farmers are facing. In a nutshell, too much milk has been produced for not enough demand and farmers are getting a pittance for what they produce from the supermarkets because of this. They’re even getting their payments delayed, which means missing deadlines for bills and so on.

Just before being separated forever – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

Now as you may have guessed, I’m not a big fan of the dairy industry, but it is kind of a complex problem. It seems that small dairy farmers are giving up the business due to lack of profits and it is these smaller businesses that tend to graze their cattle outside in the warmer months. Sadly, some small dairies are trying to solve the problem by merging, and this means having cows in sheds all the time. There’s no daylight, no freedom to roam, no joy whatsoever in their lives as working milk machines. Of course, even farmers who do choose to graze their herd outside still have to sell male calves to the meat industry, forcibly separating them from their mothers. They still have to maximise output, meaning unnecessary strain on udders and calcium deficiency in cows. They still have to administer painful injections to stop infection and sell ‘worn out’ mothers for slaughter at the end of it all. I’m not saying that small dairy farmers are living in an idyll, just that they are a degree better than factory farms, where misery is everywhere, all the time. The fact that decreased demand for cows’ milk has led to this sorry state of affairs is odd. The irony is not lost on me.

The calf is wheeled away like rubbish – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

And then of course we have the frightening individual that is Liz Truss, our current minister for the environment. She has proposed a raft of measures to combat this dairy crisis, one of which is to reduce the number of dairy inspections by eight thousand a year. It seems lunacy (and if you’ve ever heard her give a speech, this will be of no surprise to you). To reduce inspections, when more farmers feel forced to merge into so-called mega farms, therefore negatively impacting animal welfare significantly at a stroke, seems insane. Viva has a website which is an excellent resource called White Lies which details the fact that when farms attain Soil association, Freedom Foods or Red Tractor accreditation, often all the farmer needs to do is not break the law on the day of the inspection. Standards need to be raised and this means an increase in random, unannounced inspections, not a flippin’ reduction Ms Truss!

The dairy industry doesn’t just impact negatively on the welfare of cows however. The recent badger cull sparked controversy, not just because badgers are cute (well, there may have been a bit of that) but because many scientists felt that badgers were being made the scapegoat by the dairy industry, to explain away the outbreak of bovine TB on their farms. A far more likely explanation seems to be that slurry gets transferred from one dairy farm to another and TB gets transported that way. (Remember foot and mouth.)

Author Patrick Barkham suggests in his novel Badgerlands that perhaps the intensive way cows are reared these days makes their immunity to TB very low. So these mega farms that could become part of the system here in Britain (they’re already the norm in America) could well be creating their own problem (remember mad cow disease, or BSE.) Even in the unlikely event that Badgers are the main cause of this outbreak, catch/vaccinate/release programmes have been found to be far more effective than culls anyway.

Happily, there are some people who have seen the industry for what it is – some very important people: dairy farmers themselves. There are pages devoted to documenting dairy farmers who have ‘seen the light’ and decided to go into a kinder business. These individuals are from all over the world – Ireland, The Netherlands, Iran and beyond. Each one of them has to struggle against a culture (no pun intended) that sees dairy farming as not doing much harm, and so brands them mad for giving it up. They have seen the look in the calf’s eyes as they sell him at market, pleading and scared. They have heard the cries that emanate from both mother and calf when they are forcibly separated, that sometimes go on for days. They have experienced cows going lame from lack of calcium brought on by intensive breeding and mastitis due to excessive milk production.

Cows are friends, not milk machines – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

Cows need grass – Jo-Anne McArthur/We animals

Perhaps Liz Truss should work on getting those EU subsidies diverted from propping up the meat and dairy industries and have them support kind businesses instead. Due to lack of demand through increasing lactose intolerance and increased awareness of health and welfare issues, dairy is a dying industry. Let’s breathe new life into farms, making them utopias of plant based food and wildflowers. Naive, me?

Why do they put milk in everything?

December 10, 2014 by Tofu Temptress 18 Comments

Picture the scene. A lovely friend of mine has invited me over for snacks and drinks and is in a food shop (which will remain nameless), trying to pick out crisps, crackers and choccies. After checking each product is vegetarian, a cursory glance at the allergens on the back reveals that almost every packet of goodies contains cow’s milk goats milk, whey… ‘Why,’ she asks me when I come round ‘do they put milk in everything?’ I’m at a bit of a loss. I was gutted to find out that, when I turned vegan, that my Monster Munch eating days would be over. Memories of swapping the crisps at school and putting them on my fingers like rings and then munching them off have been consigned to the vaults of history. Walkers (who make them) have added a milk derived ingredient fairly recently when they were removing monosodium glutamate (MSG) from their products. For me, this just amounts to replacing one evil with another, but hey ho.

Cow saved from the dairy/veal industry. Jo-Ane McArthur – We animals

Many people are shocked that loads of crisps contain milk. They are even more shocked when they realise that products like Quorn do too. Quorn is one of the most surprisingly un-vegan brands around. Not to worry though, soya mince and vegan sausages and burgers are readily available in supermarkets, so until Quorn wake up and get with the vegan programme, you needn’t miss out.

It’s no great surprise that lots of chocolate contains milk, when the clue is in the name (milk chocolate) or in the colour (white chocolate) but did you realise that even some brands of dark chocolate contain milk? It seems crazy, but it’s true. Again, a quick look at the back of the packet is all you need to do to establish what’s in there. Sometimes, it can be confusing. After Eights, for example, used to be vegan, but then they changed their recipe to include butterfat, which is of course another milk derivative. Another confusing thing is that European law states that if milk free products are produced in a factory that also produces products that contain milk, they have to put a wee disclaimer on their packets. It’s basically to cover their backs so that they can’t be sued by anyone with a severe allergy, but I have spoken to friends with allergies and most say they’d be happy to consume a milk free product, even if it did say ‘ May contain milk traces due to manufacturing methods used’ or whatever…Vegan organisations sell these foods, so as long as milk products (or any other animal ingredient of course!) doesn’t appear on the ingredients list, I’m generally happy to go with it.

Unless it says ‘Contains cow’s milk’ or something similar, it can be a bit of a minefield, so for your information, some of the commonest milk-related terms are: Butterfat; Caesin (mostly found in cheese); Lactose; Whey and Lactitol (E966).

The good news is there are lots of yummy snacks out there that don’t contain any cow juice at all, hurray! Most of Golden Wonder crisps are vegan and if, like me, you miss putting crisps on your fingers, Hula Hoops to the rescue! Or you could always go with Salt and Vinegar or Pickled Onion flavour Ringos. McCoys do a lovely Salt and Malt Vinegar flavour crisp and you’ve got a good choice with Kettle Chips too. I particularly enjoy Tyrrells vegetable crisps. They have very simple ingredients and are always the first to be scoffed at a party in my experience. Who wouldn’t feel good munching away at a beetroot-based crisp pretending to be healthy?

Even Pringles have options although their labelling can be a bit misleading.

Make sure where it says vegan that there is a little tick next to it (like on my favourites, Paprika flavour.) Sometimes it says vegan, next to vegetarian, but there’s no tick, so be aware. Bafflingly, Walkers have vegan crisps in BBQ Rib, Prawn Cocktail and Roast Gammon flavours amongst others, so if you’re craving a meaty flavoured crisp, don’t despair!
A lot of dairy free chocolate can be pricy, so if you’re shopping to impress, by all means go for Booja-Booja or Lindt 70% or something, but slightly more affordable and still party-like are Bendicks Bittermints or Elixabeth Shaw Dark chocolate Mint Crisp. A company dedicated to dairy free chocolate is Moo Free, which does all sorts of flavours, including milk and white chocolate, using rice milk. Also, check supermarket own brands, because they can hold pleasant surprises in the milk-free department, and not just in the ‘free-from’ section either.

So you see, avoiding dairy can be a bit mystifying at first but once you get the hang of it, it’s a breeze. Bear in mind though that INGREDIENTS CAN CHANGE, with companies fiddling about with recipes in the never ending pursuit of ‘new and improved’, so do check your favourite vegan products every now and again, especially if they’ve suddenly changed the packaging. Viva! have a great guide to going dairy free, as do many of the other animal charities. With lactose intolerance on the rise and many people simply wanting to cut back on dairy, demand is on the rise, so hopefully one day, dairy free will be the norm.

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