Last year saw an increase in the sale of cow’s milk for the first time in more than a decade. Sales had been declining for several years, but there was a slight tick up in 2024.
These numbers, by the way, do not include other dairy products like cheese, yogurt and butter.
Marina Bolotnikova, deputy editor at Vox’s Future Perfect section, has written about this and joined The Show to discuss what exactly we’re seeing in terms of people drinking more cow’s milk vs. plant-based milks.
Full conversation
MARINA BOLOTNIKOVA: Yeah, so cow's milk consumption in the U.S. was up just a bit last year, by a little under 1%, and that's significant because the long term trend for many decades has been that milk consumption has been plummeting. So the uptick in, in 2024 is the first one, the first uptick in milk consumption we've seen in 15 years.
Overall, dairy hasn't been getting less popular, but cow's milk, which is described in the industry usually as fluid milk, has, you know, plummeted since World War II, and so the uptick last year was, is notable.
And at the same time, sales of plant-based milks like oat milk, soy milk, almond milk have gone down quite a bit in 2024. They declined by about 5% both in dollars and in unit sales like the number of bottles or cartons sold, so it's been quite a shift.
MARK BRODIE: Even with cow's milk consumption going down, I'm curious where it ranked in terms of like the number of cartons sold or how much of it was sold relative to some of the plant-based milks. Like even when it was going down, was cow's milk still generally more popular than, than plant-based milk?
BOLOTNIKOVA: Yeah, that's a good question. You know, cow's milk has always been the, the overwhelming majority of the milk market. Last year, you know, cow's milk was over 86% of the milk market, and all plant-based milks were, you know, the rest of the less than 14%.
Like we can say that cow's milk's popularity has been plummeting for 80 years, and that's a true statement, but it's still, you know, it's still purchased by 90% of American households and it's still like far more popular than plant-based milks.
BRODIE: To what do folks who are knowledgeable about this kind of thing attribute the fact that even though it's a slight uptake, there is now an uptake in the consumption of cow's milk?
BOLOTNIKOVA: Yeah, it, so it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that there are a few different explanations, you know, we've seen quite a cultural and political vibe shift in the United States in the last couple years. And I think the shift back to cow's milk kind of goes hand in hand with that.
It feels, you know, today it it feels almost rebellious to choose cow's milk now after plant-based milk reached cultural ubiquity in the 2010s and and had had kind of like a cool factor, you know, and I think it also corresponds to the emergence of kind of like politically inflected trad culture that is shaping the way people eat.
There's been a real push in those spaces toward eating more animal products, which are perceived as being natural and health promoting and, you know, offering protein. Raw milk is, which is milk that hasn't been pasteurized to kill pathogens, has seen huge double digit percentage growth last year, though it still makes up a really small share of overall milk sales.
The way I broke it down in, in the piece, what's driving the renewed interest in fluid milk is kind of the three P's: price, protein and perception. So the first one is kind of obvious. People have been struggling with inflation and high grocery prices, and cow's milk is pretty much always going to be less expensive than plant-based milk.
The second one, protein, Americans are obsessed with protein. They're trying to get more of it, and cow's milk is pretty high in protein. It's, I want to avoid talking about the plant-based milks as though they are all, it's, they're homogeneous because they're really not.
The types of plant-based milks that are low in protein like almond, oat milk, have seen the steepest declines in sales, but it's worth pointing out that soy milk, which is the milk that I'm a real cheerleader for, it's higher in protein as a share of calories than whole milk, 2% milk and 1% milk. And it's also much lower in sugar and saturated fat. And indeed what we've seen is that within the plant-based milk category soy is actually not declining, it's grown modestly.
And the third P perception is kind of my term for consumer perceptions of cow's milk and a plant-based milk and the, the health impacts of those choices.
BRODIE: So there's been a lot of talk for a while now about sort of the environmental impact of cows on ranches. You often described, you know, beef cattle. I'm curious, what are some of the issues with increased milk consumption, cow's milk consumption.
The headline of your piece is called “Americans are drinking more cow's milk. Here's why that's a problem.” Why is this a problem?
BOLOTNIKOVA: Yeah, you're, you're totally right about the environmental impacts, you know, beef, beef is like the notorious climate food, and it's definitely, you know, and it has a higher environmental impact along most indicators like greenhouse gas emissions than dairy, but dairy is, is very much up there. And it's, it's far higher in greenhouse gas emissions in water use, you know, because if you think about dairy cows, these are really large, you know, 1,500 pound mammals, that we, you know, that we're basically mass producing for their milk. They're, they're resource intensive. And so cow's milk, you know, on a per serving basis, cow's milk is is much higher in greenhouse gas emissions and water use, water pollution and land use then plant-based milks.
BRODIE: I'm wondering about the taste component, like, obviously all of these milks taste a little bit different and various people have, you know, different people have different taste for things. Like, is there an aspect here where people just maybe or some of them like the taste of cow's milk more than they like the taste of oat milk or almond milk or soy milk or any of the others?
BOLOTNIKOVA: Yeah, I think that's probably part of it. One consumer expert I talked to at Nielsen, you know, mentioned this, this explanation, you know, whole milk, which has seen particularly fast growth last year, it has this, you know, rich, full-bodied quality, right, whereas almond milk, it's extremely thin and extremely, you know, low in calories and and watery. So you know, the desire from, for the richness of cow's milk, I'm sure has something to do with it.
I guess that would raise questions for me about why, you know, if people prefer cow's milk to some of the alternatives, why, you know, why hadn't they been expressing that preference more before, like why the shift in 2024?
BRODIE: For people who study this kind of thing, do they seem to think that what we saw in 2024, is that the beginning of sort of a a resurgence of cow's milk, or is it more of like a a temporary blip that more people are are drinking cow's milk than have been over the past number of decades?
BOLOTNIKOVA: You know, I think it's too early to tell, and I, I don't, I generally don't want like to try to predict the future, and I think it really is too early to tell and the different, you know, advocates on both sides, you know, like to say that they, you know, ultimately their narrative is going to, end up being triumphant.
