Plant-based milks are on the rise. If you’re confused by which variety to try, Serena Lee has all you need to know

Whether you’re thinking of giving up dairy milk to reduce your carbon footprint, to prevent cruelty to cows, or for health reasons, now is a better time than ever to reach for a plant-based alternative. Dairy-free products are a rapidly growing industry, and supermarket shelves are lined with everything from soya to tigernut milk. But, which should you choose? Here’s the low down on the most popular plant milks, their pros and cons, what they’re best used for, and which you might want to avoid using in certain recipes.

Before we begin, it’s important to note three big reasons for why dairy is dwindling and plant-based alternatives are expanding so rapidly.

1. Animals – like humans, cows only produce milk when pregnant or when nursing their young. In order for humans to drink cow’s milk, female cows are continuously forcibly impregnated and made to give birth for all of their fertile years, before they are killed. Typically, when the mother gives birth to a son, the calf is killed, as males are not worth keeping, due to females being more profitable. This cycle exploits cows and kills calves, and so an easy and kind switch is simply to buy dairy alternatives instead of cows’ (or other mammals’) milk.