Talk:Milk substitute

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2022 and 30 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): AnnaY1014 (article contribs).

I was going to create this as a stub article, but when I did a search for articles with the phrase "milk substitute", I saw that grain milk is very, very similar to what I had in mind. I decided that although it's not a perfect match (as it excludes non-grain milk substitutes, such as soy milk), it's better than nothing and better than creating a mostly redundant article. --Icarus 04:31, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

I've changed this to redirect to Milk (disambiguation) which links to the different substitutes (including soya &c). However, ideally I think there should be a short article here explaining what a milk substitutes is and the different types as well as reasons why people may prefer them (taste, veganism, milk allergy); we could then link to that article from Milk (disambiguation).

Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley _{talk contrib} 22:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Milk replacer

I suppose this is something different. I can't find an article in milk replacer though. __meco (talk) 16:51, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Multiple issues

1. Western bias

The article's classification of plant milks as "milk substitutes" reflects both a geographical bias towards North America and a lack of historical knowledge. Plant milks have been used as foods/beverages in their own right for hundreds - if not thousands - of years, and, when home-made, require minimal processing. Lumping them together with highly synthetic, exclusively factory-made products like Coffee Mate is bizarre.

2. Poorly conceived

The failure to distinguish between a non-synthetic/natural product like all home-made and many modern factory-made plant milks and modern, highly synthetic coffee creamers is a major problem. Moreover, since there are already articles on non-dairy creamer and plant milk, with contradictory material on each subject from that given here, any need for this article to even exist is questionable.

3. Very poorly constructed

Example A: Third sentence of first paragraph: "Milk substitutes usually contain milk powder" - in other words, "non-dairy" creamers (presumably this is what's being referred to as there's a photo of Coffe Mate to the immediate right) contain dairy ("milk" must be interpreted as dairy milk, according {apparent} to Wikipedia policy). Naturally it is not true that plant milks contain dairy milk powder, so the intended meaning here can only be guessed at. According to our own article on non-dairy creamers, ingredients include dairy milk derivatives like casein & sodium caseinate, sometimes sweeteners (e.g. solidified corn syrup) sometimes flavours, and sometimes hydrogenated vegetable-based fats. If the list of ingredients was at some point an accurate description of a certain brand of plant milk (of which there are thousands) it is extremely selective, even aside from the fact that it leaves out home-made versions, and non-representative. --Philologia (talk) 22:36, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 13 December 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 00:31, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

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Milk substitute → Milk analogues – Per talk page, Western bias (plant milks - the main subject of the article in terms of word count & images - is not a “substitute” for dairy milk for at least half of the planet). Also see article titles Meat analogues and Cheese analogues. Philologia (talk) 02:53, 13 December 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 22:53, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support per nom and its links. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• It seems to me that milk analogues are only interesting as a class insofar as they are also milk substitutes. That is, we have an article on plant milk to discuss plant milk as a substance. The article on milk substitutes should only discuss plant milk as a milk substitute. This does seem to be the case. So oppose for now. Srnec (talk) 02:41, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose - milk substitute is fine, or milk alternative or even plant-based milk. But "analogue" is not going to be the common name. It does not show up in an ngram Red Slash 01:25, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Re "plant-based milk", the article covers infant formula & coffee creamer, which can be either based on cow milk or have animal ingredients.--Philologia (talk) 22:49, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support per nom. As mentioned, these are not seen as substitutes but as analogues in much of the world. —  AjaxSmack  06:30, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• Question: Per WP:COMMONNAME, what do the reliable English-language sources, including non-Western sources, actually show? Kim Post (talk) 18:08, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Red Slash. See also WP:TITLECHANGES, "If an article title has been stable for a long time, and there is no good reason to change it, it should not be changed." Calidum 04:13, 19 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support per mentioned precedents. This article should be no longer named differently. Shashank5988 (talk) 13:19, 27 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Arriving at the proposed title will WP:SURPRISE readers as most may not know what an "analogue" is in this sense. Steel1943 (talk) 21:49, 27 December 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Those Vegan Cowboys

Perhaps a page can be made on Those Vegan Cowboys ? See [1] and [2]. It seems a very notable company (given that it is made by the person behind The Vegetarian Butcher (there's a Dutch wiki page)). I have the impression that they are focused on trying to make milk from grass rather then a conventional milk substitute input crop. --Genetics4good (talk) 11:00, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't want to throw a sop on all this plantmilk, which I think is historically important, but featuring a company for its own sake might not be suitable without more indicators of recognizable notability. MaynardClark (talk) 11:12, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Remove sentence?

In Lactose Intolerance, I’d like to remove this sentence: "Due to genetic differences,[21][22] intolerance of lactose is more common globally than tolerance.[23][24][25][26][27] "

The main reason is that the expression "due to genetic differences" is not saying what it should, as I see it.

I suggest putting its main part after the following sentence, and rephrase both this way: "Rates of lactose intolerance vary widely between different ethnicities[21][22], from less than 10% in Northern Europe to as high as 95% in parts of Asia and Africa.[28] Seen globally, intolerance of lactose is more common than tolerance.[23][24][25][26][27]"

However, as there are so many references in that first sentence, I hesitate to just change things around this way without checking all those references, or asking the community. Please let me know what you think! Geke (talk) 20:51, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Editathon June 17

Just a heads-up that as part of an editathon I'm leading on June 17, new editors might be making some edits to this article. I'll be following up shortly afterwards to check for copyright compliance and other quality issues and will clean up stuff if needed. Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 23:05, 12 June 2023 (UTC)