‘Is Wood Milk real?’: satirising the rise of plant-based moo juice

What to watch, read, drink and buy: get ready for the weekend with these great diversions.

SPOTLIGHT / The white stuff

Actor and comedian Aubrey Plaza walks through an idyllic woodland setting, caressing tree trunks and explaining why she co-founded Wood Milk, “the world’s first milk made from … wood”. “I saw a tree,” she says, staring intently at an oak. “And I asked myself, ‘Can I drink this?’ ”

Plaza, known for her deadpan roles in The White Lotus and Parks and Recreation, is in an ad for US dairy organisation Milk PEP. The ad, a satire on plant-based milks, has Plaza turning a vice on a tree to extract liquid (“you want that wood as your milk,” she purrs straight-faced to the camera). The ad is appearing in the thick of America’s hotly contested “milk wars” between dairy companies and their vegan competitors.

Poking fun at plant-based milks – oat, soy, rice – the ad ends with Plaza drinking white, wood-flecked liquid and asking, “Is Wood Milk real? Absolutely not. Only real milk is real.”

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Not only is the sketch spoofing earnest artisanal branding (look up “artisanal firewood” for handcrafted kindling at $US1000 a pop), it underlines the pull of non-dairy products everywhere right now. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, consumption of unflavoured dairy milk substitutes increased by more than 14 per cent in 2020-21, while sales of dairy milk declined by 1.7 per cent.

Debate rages over the nutritional and environmental effects of both, of course, with a 2018 Oxford University meta-analysis estimating that a glass of dairy milk results in almost three times more greenhouse gas emissions than its non-dairy equivalent.

Wood Milk – available in oak, cherry, maple and mahogany flavours, says Plaza – may be fake, but let’s hope Gwyneth doesn’t get to hear about it: it’ll be sure to become a Goop bestseller after just one sip. Lenny Ann Low