But we can also produce milk from yeast now. Perfect Day, for example, produces milk without cows.

So it's not out of the question we could scale that up to meet plastics demand.

zer00eyz an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Is this going to result in net less greenhouse gas emissions?

Maybe but probably not zero, from parents article: "The use of such treated fertilizers will be most relevant for reducing the carbon footprint of milk in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Netherlands, where N fertilizer is a major contributor to the footprint."

In case you are unaware much of the nitrogen in plant matter (food for yeast or cows) comes from fertilizer. And that is extracted using the Haber process (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process ). This runs on natural gas, because it's effectively a waste product of other hydrocarbons being extracted.

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5o1ecist 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I remember when people still knew what milk was ... and what was not milk.

That was before multi-billion-dollar companies came up with marketing strategies that manipulated people into not understanding what milk was, instead making them believe that milk is whatever they tell people.

Usually, the reaction to this is "Well, language and the meaning of words change." ... Sure, but that argument comes in complete ignorance of the fact that it only happened, because people with too much money and power can manipulate millions into believing whatever these millions of people are supposed to believe.

Thus now anything can be milk, as long as some profit-oriented company decides that people shall call it milk.

This practise has become the norm to a degree that people will not only generally accept it, but also generally defend it. Pure madness.

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ahhhhnoooo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You understand that the product I'm talking about is the same proteins as milk, and is essentially whey, right?

I'm not talking about grinding up nuts or grains and calling it milk, I'm talking about engineering yeasts to literally produce the proteins that milk has to create a product that isn't just milk-like, but is literally identical proteins.

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systoll 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Language changes. In this case just the spelling though.

"Almaund mylke" is all over medieval cookery manuscripts, among other options.

We’ve been using milk for non-animal products for longer than we’ve spelt milk with an i, and for longer than we’ve had companies, let alone multi-billion-dollar ones.

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OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To be clear, Perfect Day doesn't make "milk" like plant-based milks (think almond "milk", oat "milk", etc). They bioengineered some yeast to grow whey protein directly. The milk they make (made?) probably wouldn't be considered "milk" in the strict sense (they had to get the fat and sugars from plants), but there's really not a good reason to distinguish between "whey protein from cows" and "whey protein from yeast" when it's the same stuff.

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qff 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The large diary producers are forcing things that everyone understand what is — “Oat milk” and “Almond milk” — to be called “Oat drink” and “Almond drink”. New terms for things that have existed for decades.

Really, we should be calling the OG milk “cow milk” and let the good times roll.

Big milk have been pushing questionable health research and narratives for cow milk for quite some time.

All this coming from someone (me) who drinks 0,5L of cow milk every day.

Yes, yeast milk is milk too. Just like coconut milk.

	▲	throwway120385 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I thought the reason things are called "Oat Drink" versus "Oat Milk" is because non-dairy "milks" have to be fortified with vitamin D and calcium and the stuff that's labeled a "drink" is not fortified.

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vlabakje90 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The first documented use of the word coconut milk in English dates from 1698 ( Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, volume 20, page 333) and the use of almond milk goes quite a bit further back, to at least 1390 (The Forme of Cury).