Whence
Oat milk
Drink

Where does Oat milk come from?

Oat milk as it is sold today comes from Lund, in southern Sweden. The food scientist Rickard Öste developed it at Lund University in the early 1990s, and his drink was among the first oat milks ever sold commercially.

A question in a Lund lab

In the 1990s Rickard Öste and a team at Lund University set out to answer a practical question: could oats become an alternative to cow's milk? Öste was researching lactose intolerance and sustainable food systems. Oat drinks were not new, with records going back to the 18th century, but an oat milk for sale in shops was. The process was patented in 1993, and in 1994 Öste and the scientist Angeliki Triantafyllou co-founded a company to make it.

How oats become milk

Raw oats cannot simply be blended into milk, because their hard outer hull must be broken first. The grains are milled, stirred in warm water and ground into a slurry. Enzymes and heat then turn the slurry into a thick liquid oat base, which is separated from the solids by decanting, filtering or spinning. Vitamins, minerals, oil, salt or flavourings are added at the end. Early versions, made on modified soy milk machines, were dismissed by some in the industry as 'undrinkable'.

Why people say the USA

Oat milk's big boom came later, and much of it happened in America. Shops in Europe and North America ran short in 2018 because demand was so high. US retail sales rose from $4.4 million in 2017 to $29 million in 2019 and $213 million in 2020, when oat milk became the second most popular plant milk there after almond milk. Coffee shops helped, because oat milk foams and mixes into coffee much like dairy milk. The drink itself, though, was Swedish.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · epo.org › angeliki triantafyllou ↗ · epo.org › 1362815 ↗

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