I have been trying all different types of milk alternatives like oat milk, almond milk etc. But none of them taste similar to cow’s milk. I know a lot of it has to do with familiarity with the milk I’ve been drinking all my life. But I want to understand why there has not been a lab-created cow’s milk yet.
In: Biology
Milk alternatives are not really trying to mimic cows milk at all, they’re just made to serve the same purpose.
Personally, after using an almond-oat milk blend for a long while, on the rare occasion I have cows milk in my tea/coffee, I immediately go “Oh my god, this tastes like milk”. A big reason why cows milk works in our beverages is that we’re used to it. Milk alternatives, for the most part, will feel the same after a while.
The main reason why we haven’t recreated cow’s milk is that it’s doing so is really hard, and would be really expensive. Cows create milk from what they’re fed. Just think about how incredibly complex that process must be for them to turn plant matter into something totally different. It’s comprised of hundreds of steps, with tons of different chemicals involved. That’s not easy to recreate. The end product would probably be so expensive that no one would even be willing to buy it.
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