It seems like everyone loves milk nowadays, as long as it doesn’t come from a cow. You can get it from nuts, coconuts, soybeans, and even the Coca Cola company (seriously, look at the ingredients on a bottle of fairlife and see if you think it’s really all that natural). However, with water conservation being one of the most important issues on the minds of people who like to conserve things, there’s a new star in the world of milk: Peas.
That’s right, those little green things that Brits love to make mushy, kids like to push around their plates, and I like to eat frozen straight out of the freezer (they are sweet and frozen… think of them as healthy dippin dots!), might be the next thing you pour all over you Capt. Crunch.
The new beverage goes by the name of Ripple, but there’s a big problem. Just look at that logo. It looks like it says “Nipple.” That just reminds me of Greg Focker telling his mother in law how to milk a cat. However, other than the unfortunate branding, it looks like there could be some benefits to sucking on a nice cold pea Ripple.
From a nutritional standpoint, pea milk provides 50 percent more calcium, only has half the sugar than cow’s milk and 8 times more protein than almond milk. Also, peas are packed with vitamins we don’t normally get in milk, like vitamins K, C, and B1, manganese, dietary fiber, copper, phosphorus, and folate.
What’s really getting conservationists happy are the ecological ramifications. Almond milk currently has a big PR problem because the nuts take an insane amount of water to grow. By comparison, 1 glass of cow’s milk takes 60 gallons of water to produce, almond milk takes 20 gallons, but pea milk is just a paltry 1/2 gallon per glass.
You can already get nipple, I mean Ripple, at Whole Foods. If it does well, I’m sure we’ll be peaing all over our breakfasts and in our tea in no time!