Milk cannot be easily replaced by plant mimics. The relationship between food and the health of the consumer extend far beyond macronutrients, and even beyond micronutrients.
Here’s a non-comprehensive rundown of what exists in milk that will undoubtedly be missed by ‘replacements’. This manifesto also contains an ethical argument for milk. Milk, sourced in the right way, is more vegan than vegetables.
Odd-chain saturated fats are uniquely found in milk, as they are synthesized by bacteria in the rumen. These fats have showed a myriad of health benefits:
a number of studies on cardiometabolic diseases have shown that plasma concentrations of OCS-FAs are associated with lower disease risk (1)
Here, we show C15:0 as an active dietary fatty acid that attenuates inflammation, anemia, dyslipidemia, and fibrosis in vivo, potentially by binding to key metabolic regulators and repairing mitochondrial function …. Further studies are needed to evaluate the potential impact of decades of reduced intake of OCFA-containing foods as contributors to C15:0 deficiencies and susceptibilities to chronic disease. (2)
The only significant dietary source of these odd chain saturated fats, including the above C15:0 15-carbon fat, but also 17, 13, etc. carbon fats, is bovine milk.
‘Milk-fat globule membrane’ (MFGM) is the name for spheres of fat, stabilized by casein, that contain active proteins in various species’ milks.
MFGM supplementation has been shown to be vital for infant health and neurodevelopment (3) (4), and widely beneficial in adults:
It is clear that the MFGM is an integral part of the whole-food matrix of milk, whose beneficial health effects cannot easily be replaced by other fat substitutes.