Pea Milk

 Some of the huge range of milk alternatives

At one time, being sent to the shop by your parents to buy milk was an easy job. You only had to ask if you needed to get full fat or semi skimmed. I don’t think gold top has been an option for quite some time but I remember it was always the bottles the birds pecked the silver foil off in winter when the bottles sat on the doorstep. 

If someone asks you to get milk now the choice is enough to bring you out in a cold sweat.  The choice of dairy-free milk drinks has grown massively over the last few years. It’s debatable (in court probably) if manufacturing companies can actually call their plant based products ‘milk’ as such but it’s in the public domain now so it’ll most likely stay.

 We have a choice of almond milk, oat milk, coconut milk, rice milk, hemp milk, soy milk as well as other nuts, macadamia, hazelnut and cashew. 

Plant-based milk sales are on the rise, while sales of traditional dairy milk continue to decline, although sales of yogurt and cheese are staying strong. Recent research from Nielsen has found that the plant-based milk category is up 3.1% since last year, while cow’s milk sales are down about 5% over the same period. According to research from 2016, almond milk is the top-selling milk substitute with sales growth of 250 % from 2011 to 2015.

I’ve tried and bought all of the variations. I’m usually influenced by two factors, one is price – I go for the special offers, and the other is that they don’t contain sugar to make them sweet. I always go back to soya milk and the cartons I buy are sweetened with apple juice. The others are sweetened with sugar which is the second highest ingredient and that doesn’t suit me.  They are often found in the fridge section of the supermarkets/shops. If you have a vegan lifestyle or are allergic to either dairy or nuts the choice of regular milk and alternatives can be a bit limiting too.

Some people can’t drink some of those milks mentioned due to nut or soy allergies. Some aren’t good for the environment: Almond milk production uses a lot of water to produce the finished product and there is a concern about the estrogen-like compounds in soy. Oat milk seems to come out the best for environmental impact and seems particularly popular among vegans, according to PETA, thanks to its slight natural sweetness, neutral flavour and consistency.

Pea Milk

Just when you thought the choice was daunting enough, along comes a newcomer -Pea Milk. (Supress the giggles please).  There were talks about changing the name at one stage as producers didn’t think the idea of drinking ‘pea’ sounded very appealing. Thankfully they realised people could spell and kept the name and because it’s a creamy white colour you don’t have to drink green goo.

This one appeals to me because as gardeners it’s great to know that we can make this at home. The same can be said for oats and soy but you’d need a fair size plot or field to grow enough to process. The drink is made from yellow split peas which grow the same as regular peas. It’s a different process to almond milk production and it’s claimed that it takes 100x less water to grow the peas rather than farming almonds and25x less water than farming dairy. 

I bought my first carton and chose the unsweetened one. It’s a bit like the Barista oat milk which is used for coffee and has a rich creamy texture. I really want to like it more than soya but I think it’s a bit of an acquired taste in both drinks and porridge.

Pea milk claims to be free from diary, nuts and soy which pleases most groups and takes far less energy to produce. It has 8g of protein per glass (8x more than almond milk) 40 % less sugar than cow’s milk and twice the calcium of cow's milk. It’s also high in fibre and low in saturated fat. The peas themselves are also high in the amino acid lysine (a building block of protein) as well as iron. it makes a very pleasing, creamy bananas and custard too.

Fortification

Plant milk doesn't always offer us all of the nutrients that cow's milk does, so for people who are vegan or can't consume dairy because they're lactose intolerant, they are encouraged  to check the labels for fortification. Plant-based milks are not required to be fortified,

Fortification is the process in which vitamins and minerals are added to the base product. Some are fortified with calcium, Vitamin D and B12, but this doesn't mean to say that all pea milk products will be.

There's no right or wrong when it comes to choosing milk to suit your lifestyle, it's a judgement call. Like most things, some products are less environmentally damaging than others.

Rewilding in Inishowen

 Photo: Photo courtesy of Adam Rory Porter Photography Buncrana

Rewilding. What’s that?

The term ‘Rewilding’ pretty much encapsulates anything that encourages wildlife to thrive. With careful management initially areas can also become a self-sustaining ecosystem. But it is a bit more complicated than that (like most things are) 

While the word has been around since the early 1990s and included three necessary components: Cores (i.e. core areas where nature is strictly protected), Corridors (to link the cores to each other) and Carnivores – the three ‘C’s.  

The term never went beyond the academic world of conservation biology until George Monbiot published his 2013 book ‘Feral’, and worked its way into the public imagination.

There is a temptation to omit the ‘c’ for carnivore. There was a failed experiment in the Netherlands where the ‘rewilding’ didn’t include carnivores and kept herds of horses behind a fence (leading to overgrazing and starvation of the animals) has done more harm than good for the concept.

Most would agree that for it to be real ‘rewilding’ it has to be big – landscape level; it has to include reintroducing species driven to extinction by people; and it has to steer the land so that, in effect, it has control of itself – something which is sometimes referred to as ‘self-willed land’. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the case as we are encouraged to rewild our own back gardens by being more tolerant of wildlife and careful maintenance and planting.

New relationship with nature

Padraic Fogarty writing in GreenNews.ie thinks that trying to reassemble our collapsed ecosystems is an enormous task.

He thinks that one of the principle arguments from some detractors is that we cannot simply walk away from our landscapes to be overrun with invasive species or with nothing to keep a lid on deer numbers.

They have a point – for the foreseeable future there will be a need for people to be involved in the land: helping to remove barriers on rivers and restoring floodplains, re-profiling mined-out bogs to hold onto water, eradicating rhododendron, converting conifer monocultures to native woodlands and monitoring populations of reintroduced species.

And this is good news for landowners – rewilding has enormous employment opportunities and is a chance to reverse rural decline. Another big objection is that rewilding is the opposite of farming and that its supporters want to see swathes of the country ‘abandoned’.

Yes, farm animals, and sheep, in particular, will need to be removed from large areas, especially in the uplands. But our landscape is diverse enough so that this would not exclude small-scale farmers producing, say, high-end organic beef, artisanal dairy products, or honey.

Rewildling can exist – as it does in many European countries – in a mosaic with these small producers. And, of course, ‘real’ rewildling would be a boon for tourism.

Wild Ireland

One person who has been aware of rewilding even before the term was created is zoologist Killain Mclaughlin from Buncrana. Ever since he was young Killian wanted to create a haven for wildlife.

I’m sure you have already heard that this has been made a reality. Wild Ireland is a wildlife sanctuary in Dundrain, Burnfoot and is set in 23 acres of ground.  Introduced in the sanctuary are animals that had been rescued from dangerous or unsuitable places and working with three international charities Killian has even rescued three bears.

Killian has spent over six years transforming the site into the perfect habitat for the return of other animals. Along with the bears. Lynx, wolves boars and deer all roam free. All the animals were native to Ireland, but they were hunted to extinction or went extinct due to habitat loss. There are also Barbary Macaque monkeys that were living in Ireland according to archaeological digs and you’ll see those in the sanctuary too.

Killian says that just a few centuries ago, Ireland was clothed in a thick blanket of Temperate Celtic Rainforest. Due to destruction and deforestation, this woodland has all but disappeared, in a small pocket of remaining woodland on the Inishowen peninsula, the hands of time have been rolled back to an era were ferocious beasts ruled the Irish countryside. 

Here they live in their natural habitat in the temperate rainforest.

Lots of wild birds also call Wild Ireland home and the beautiful lake is home to swans, ducks and even a cheeky pair of otters.

There is a lot to see and do for children too, take the fairy trail around the rainforest, be delighted with tales of ancient folklore, play in our state of the art play park and finish off with some tasty treats from the Wild Ireland Shop and café.

If you would like more information go to their website www.wildireland.org