On a Mission 4 Milk
As the rise of alternative milks has soared in recent years, and consumption of dairy has fallen, Mission 4 Milk aims to revitalise Britain’s love for dairy milk.
According to Jamie Oliver’s Channel 4 documentary, sales of plant-based alternatives to milk have doubled in the last five years, meanwhile consumption of dairy in the UK has fallen by 20% over the past thirty years.
Andy Venables, a dairy farmer and owner of rural marketing agency Hillsgreen, has launched a campaign called Mission 4 Milk, to help the British public rediscover the various health benefits of cow’s milk. He launched the campaign after realising that milk is declining most rapidly among young people, which means many are at risk of missing out on valuable nutrients.
Mission 4 Milk wants to highlight that plant-based milk alternatives do not offer a like-for-like substitute to dairy milk when it comes to nutritional content, especially nutrients such as calcium, iodine and vitamin B12
Andy believes that the way in which milk products are marketed to the public, in particular younger adults, plays a big part in its decline in popularity.
He says: “Milk packaging and branding has changed very little over the past twenty years; meanwhile new brands releasing plant-based alternatives, such as soy and almond, clearly display the nutritional benefits of their products on their cartons, along with attractive branding. For this reason, many people are unaware that cow’s milk offers more nutritional value than many of its dairy-free counterparts and are choosing to leave their pint of cow’s milk on the shelf.
“Milk was once a staple item on every household shopping list, but ‘free-from’ movements and intolerances which dominate the younger generations have made people start to favour dairy alternatives, and not always for the right reasons. While some people undoubtedly suffer from dairy and lactose-related complications, a large number of those who have given up dairy have done so as a result of self-diagnosis or because it is trendy to do so. They do not realise how many valuable nutrients milk contains. Mission 4 Milk’s aim is to communicate the health benefits of milk to people of all ages, arming them with valuable information before choosing to cut dairy out of their diets.”
To support Mission 4 Milk’s campaign, head to the Twitter profile @mission4milk and join in the conversation.
