Eight Recipes To Celebrate World Plant Milk Day

If you’ve visited the dairy aisle recently, you may have noticed a trend: Dairy milk has made way for plant-powered alternatives. Shelves are now packed with milks made from soy, almond, rice, oats—and even bananas and quinoa!

It’s another sign of consumers’ growing appetite for nondairy alternatives. One recent report found that the U.S. nondairy milk market grew by 50 percent in 2018 and now represents 15 percent of the overall dairy market. By 2024, the nondairy market is expected to reach revenues of more than $38 billion.

At the same time, consumers are ditching traditional dairy milk. Earlier this year, the Dairy Farmers of America reported that total sales dropped by $1 billion in 2018.

That’s good news for our health: Studies show that dairy products offer little if any protection for bone health and increase the risk of breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease, cognitive decline, and early death.

Even some farmers have embraced the plant milk trend: Elmhurst, a dairy that sold cow’s milk for 92 years, recently shut down operations, but reopened and is thriving by selling dairy-free plant milks.