10/3/2023 0 Comments Alfred coffee oat milk![]() ![]() ![]() Linking the health of the planet to the health of the body makes solving massive threats seem plausible, like you can just personally decide to switch milks and then feel confident that at least whatever is going through your digestive tract isn’t as bad for the environment as something else.īut, it turns out, oat milk isn’t just a brief LA-only trend. Environmentalism as a trendy advertising technique doesn’t seem to be so much about solving climate change as it is about easing our existential dread the only way we know how, by buying things we can put on or in our bodies. The thing is, on a day to day basis, you can’t. With the threat of something as abstract and foreboding as total environmental decay, what are you supposed to do? How do you tackle a global catastrophe? In October, the very bleak Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report warned that climate change induced floods and famine could start seriously damaging countries as early as 2040. Unsurprisingly, this link between the planet and the individual body is positioned in relation to climate change. It’s as if the body and the planet are linked by an umbilical cord: What is healthy for the planet must be healthy for the body too. But positioning a food product as environmentally friendly associates the health of an individual body with the health of the entire planet. It’s common to align a brand with a cause (see “nasty woman” shirts, “pussy hats,” or even Amanda Hess’ New York Times article about period-blood absorbing underwear that branded itself as, somehow, anti-Trump). The emphasis is not on consuming less, but rather consuming the same, if not more, of something different. The oat milk trend positions drinking oat milk as environmentally beneficial, as if consumption can be a type of conservation. The caption reads, “To fully experience the potential impact of climate change, continue to drink cow’s milk, eat meat, and live your life unchanged.” 5, Oatly posted a profile shot of a man standing in the middle of a field, the sky behind him gloomy, wearing a morose cow mascot head. ![]() 26, they posted a picture of a millennial-pink apartment complex in the middle of a tame but still lush forest with a caption announcing that “switching from cow‘s milk to oat drink saves the planet 80% greenhouse gas emissions.” On Sept. ![]() Their Instagram bio reads, “Our goal is to deliver products that have maximum nutritional value and minimal environmental impact.” And their Instagram captions often include climate change facts. This is Oatly’s schtick: They’re the environmentally-conscious milk company. “I don’t know, it tastes good, and I’ve heard it’s probably better for the environment.” I asked the barista why they started carrying oat milk and she shrugged. So, I assumed this was just another LA health fad that popped up while I was across the country, like that restaurant in Venice where you order food via affirmation (“I’m decadent” for a vegan milkshake) and weekly coffee enemas.Ī week after visiting the first Alfred, I went to a second Alfred location, just two blocks away from the first one. I hadn’t been home for more than two or three days in over a year because I stayed on campus all summer. We do almond and we do oat.”Īs late as last fall, zero coffee shops in Cambridge served oat milk. We haven’t had soy milk for, like, a while. The barista, who wore a black baseball hat embroidered with “Alfred” - the A sprouting large, majestic deer horns - just looked at me. At the register, I asked for a large coffee with soy milk. The shop shares a foliage-covered alleyway with Cycle House, a spinning studio that had its own E! Channel reality TV show in 2015. While home in Los Angeles last January, I stopped by a coffee shop in West Hollywood called Alfred in the Alley. I first encountered oat milk a year ago, after I had left Cambridge for winter break. ![]()
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