Why Almond Milk is So Controversial
And Why You Should Just Make Your Own
Photos by Annie Bacher
As much as it might surprise hipster millennials of 2017, (myself included), almond milk existed long before almond lattes became a regular item on café menus.
Almond milk grew 250 percent in popularity from 2012 to 2015, according to data from the Nielsen company, but it was used hundreds of years before the days of Instagrammed smoothie bowls. In fact, the history of almond milk goes back hundreds of years.
According to authors of History of Soymilk and Other Non-Dairy Milks (1236-2013) William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, it was first mentioned in writing in a 13th-century cookbook in Iraq, which describes the process of creating the alternative milk. And according to historians, Europeans also used almond milk as a special substitute for animal milk during Lent as early as the 13th century.
Fast forward to 2017, and almond milk has gone mainstream. Many, including Shurtleff and Aoyagi, attribute the recent success of almond milk to growing concerns about growth hormones in dairy milk, and to the preference for the taste of almond milk. It’s also lower in calories than dairy milk, and has no cholesterol.
Almond Milk Isn’t Always So Innocent
It’s easy to label almond milk as an angelic substitute for dairy milk. But not so fast.
Seemingly innocent almond milk has been embroiled in a significant amount of controversy of its own. Mother Jones writer Tom Philpott started an almond milk firestorm with his article titled “Lay off the Almond Milk, You Ignorant Hipsters.” He points out that a typical 48-ounce bottle of almond milk contains a negligible amount of protein—about as much as a handful of almonds. Many of the nutrients, including Vitamin E and Calcium, boasted by almond milk labels come from additives, and not from the goodness of almonds themselves.
Philpott provides plenty of subjective arguments as well: “I think it’s deeply weird to pulverize their crunch, drown them in water and send them out to the world in a gazillion little cartons.”
Claims beyond the “weirdness” of producing milk with almonds include environmental concerns. It takes 23 gallons of water to produce a single gallon of almond milk. And when 80 percent of the world’s almonds are produced in drought-ravaged California, there’s cause for consternation. But on the other hand, it turns out a single gallon of dairy milk requires 30 gallons of water, due to the water required to grow cows’ food. So almond milk is still the more environmentally friendly of the two.
For those on Team Almond Milk, there are a growing number of brands to choose from. But as an increasing number of brands pop up in supermarkets and specialty grocers alike, there is a wide variation of quality, use of additives, texture and almond content.
A perfect example of this quality disparity is the great almond scandal of 2015. Popular almond milk brands Blue Diamond Almond Breeze and Silk were faced with a lawsuit claiming that they misled consumers about the quantity of almonds in their product, although it contains only 2 percent almonds. Business Insider compared almond milk to “a glass of water and a multivitamin,” referring to the wide use of supplemental potassium, vitamin A and vitamin D added to almond milk.
Other common additives include carrageenan (a thickener), sugar, locust bean gum, sunflower lecithin, gellan gum, evaporated cane juice (sugar), pea protein, rice protein and guar gum. Whew. When you start to study the lengthy ingredient lists of popular almond milk brands, making your own becomes even more appealing.
