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
Great question!
Many have tried.
It’s fairly easy to make components of milk (proteins such as casein or sugars like lactose) using bacteria or yeast. We did something like this as a first year university science experiment 20 years ago.
But making whole milk that feels like a satisfying replacement is super hard. We can’t do that because milk is a complex mix of different biological processes, every bit as complex as human milk.
Making milk components might be easy enough – but super hard to do at industrial scale. As an example, there was a well-publicised effort around 10 years ago by some California bio-hackers to make milk proteins using yeast (modifying the yeast cells to produce milk proteins) as a step towards making replica cheese that would be vegan. They made some cheese, raised a lot of money, but it wasn’t commercially viable… it was way tk expensive and only limited quantities could be made.
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