No One Drinks Actual Milk Anymore.
It’s all about oat & almond now.
On the internet, there is a trend where people will claim that something was a “cultural reset.” According to Urban Dictionary, a cultural reset is “when something big in well known pop culture changes or is added causing people to change the way they look at things or to have a lot of people hop on the trend.” Take a look at the TikTok below, which I think describes one of the biggest cultural resets in current times:
That’s right — plant-based milk. If you haven’t noticed this, the next time you go into a Starbucks (which might in fact be some time due to the current pandemic), listen to what kind of milk people are ordering— chances are, the number of latte orders with oat or almond milk instead of dairy will surprise you.
According to Marian Bull in The New York Times, data from Nielsen shows that between 2010 and 2018, sales of milk had dropped by 13 percent — and that trend is expected to continue. Meanwhile, amidst the current pandemic, the demand for oat milk is skyrocketing.
But why is this happening? Why are plant-based milks such as oat, almond, and even coconut, pea, and cashew gaining so much popularity?
I think there are a few reasons. To start, let’s look at one YouTube video from a teenage girl living in the Bay Area, California, called “EMMA’s LEGENDARY COFFEE RECIPE.”
This video is by Emma Chamberlain. If that name sounds familiar, it should. Emma is now a very popular YouTuber and influencer with nearly 9 million subscribers on YouTube. But back then, she was just a coffee-loving teenager making videos for fun. But there was one thing interesting about her recipe — instead of putting dairy milk in her coffee like most people, she used almond milk (specifically, New Barn’s Vanilla Almondmilk).
Soon after Emma started gaining subscribers, I noticed that her signature coffee drink — an iced almond milk latte — started becoming more and more popular among teenagers, especially teen girls (Emma’s main demographic on YouTube). I noticed that drinking almond milk had become more and more popular. It became the trendy drink of choice for many on the internet, and as a frequent visitor to Starbucks myself, I noticed the drink becoming more and more popular (it was my drink of choice as well).
It seems crazy that one person could have such a big influence on teenagers’ milk choices. On one of Emma’s older videos, a comment saying “You literally got me addicted to iced lattes with almond milk” has over 4.4k likes. But it actually makes sense — Emma was slowly starting to become the “cool” girl on YouTube, with her outgoing and funny personality and unique, casual sense of style. Many were inspired by her and started to take on her style — and her love of coffee as well, which, of course, meant drinking almond instead of cow’s milk. Nondairy, plant-based milk now had a “cool” factor to it. (Note: Soymilk had been around for a while now but it had never had this same coolness to it. Maybe it’s because, well, according to one of Emma’s tweets, “soymilk is like the ingrown toenail of milks.”)
The other main reason, I think, for the rise of plant-based milks is the sustainability factor. Teens have become a huge force in the movement to protect the environment and tackle climate change — such as by participating in School Strikes for the Climate, which were started by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg.
A main contributor to the climate crisis is agriculture, which includes the dairy industry. Harvard food and climate policy Helen Harwatt states that “dairy is the second-highest emitting livestock product, accounting for 4 percent of all global emissions.” But according to a 2018 study by Joseph Poore, “almond milk takes half as much water to make than the same amount of dairy, and produces a quarter of the emissions.” Oat milk is also much better for the environment than cow’s milk.
Plant milk companies have capitalized upon both sustainability and the “coolness” factor to market themselves and become successful. The best example of this is Oatly, a Swedish company which makes oat milk and frozen oat deserts. According to the Oatly website, it was founded to “create a plant-based drink that was in tune with the needs of both humans and the planet.” Oatly shows a commitment to the environment and produces a yearly sustainability report.
In addition to its environmental awareness, Oatly also has, in my opinion, an amazing marketing strategy that helps it appeal to young consumers. Their cartons are designed to stand out with bold cartoons and fonts and attention-grabbing phrases.
Oatly’s strategy in the US involved getting into third-wave coffee companies, instead of focusing on grocery stores. This allowed it to be viewed as cool and exclusive. And soon Oatly’s popularity began to skyrocket. Now, oat milk has become the “it” milk of choice, replacing almond milk. (Even Emma Chamberlain now drinks oat milk as well as almond.)
Ultimately though, whether you drink almond, oat, or some other plant milk doesn’t matter as much as the fact that it’s just not cow’s milk. Because plant-based is the ultimate cultural reset. 🌱
