Milk, the kind from cows, is still Americans’ favorite complement to a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. But it’s feeling the heat from milk, the kind from almonds.
You can tell by the trash talk.
“You can’t get milk from an almond,” said Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation. “You have to add a lot of other ingredients to make it look like milk.”
Galen’s correct, of course, as anyone who’s ever attempted to milk an almond can attest. Almond milk usually contains only 2 percent almonds, with a lot of water, vitamins and gelling agents mixed in. But the numbers don’t lie. U.S. sales of almond milk rose 4.2 percent last year to within sniffing distance of $1 billion, according to IRI data. At the same time, while Americans are drinking more organic and full-fat cow’s milk, low-fat varieties are plunging, with skim milk consumption down 13 percent from a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s June data.
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