Three days ago I said that I tried soy milk for the first time. I finished the entire carton pretty quickly, and decided that at the next opportunity I would buy more plant milk, to try different brands and types, and to figure out where I could find plant milk at different stores.

I noted last time that the plant milk was hidden in a random out-of-the-way corner of the store — in the store I went to this time, the plant milk was in a section called frifor (also spelled fri for, fri-for), a play on fri for which means “completely without (dairy, gluten, etc)”. I’m assuming the plant milk in the other store I went to was also in this section and I just didn’t notice the sign. I just expected to find plant milk in the same place you’d find dairy milk, rather than in its own little section of the store for people with dietary restrictions.

Anyways, I bought chocolate oat milk this time. The brand is called Oatly. The soy milk I bought last time was Alpro brand. The oat milk was a few kroner cheaper than the soy milk, but I forgot to compare prices with dairy milk.

What I’ll say right now is… Oatly brand chocolate oat milk is kinda how I expected plant milk to be like before I tried the soy milk from the previous post. By no means “chemical-y,” like a lot of bozos seem to think, just… “bouba”…? I don’t know how to put it, exactly, but it’s a taste that’s distinctly “I’d rather not”

So, Oatly is drinkable, in small amounts, but it’s not nearly as good as the Alpro soy milk; I poured a glass of Oatly for myself and actually spat out the last bit because I “needed a break”. I also noticed that while Alpro didn’t smell at all, Oatly has a distinct scent to it, mild but I still don’t favor it; on the other hand Oatly resembles dairy milk slightly more in appearance (not a major concern for me), and it doesn’t stain the cup nearly as much (which is a positive).

Oatly brand chocolate oat milk is serviceable enough that I’ll drink the whole carton eventually, but I think the next time I’m shopping for plant milk I’m not gonna go for Oatly again. I’d rather pay just a little more for better-tasting moloko. I’m not sure if I’ll go for rice milk or almond milk next time, but I do think I’ll have the milk be plain rather than flavored in any way.

One last thing I’d like to address is just the packaging.

I haven’t actually thrown away the Alpro carton yet, so I have that to compare as well.

So on the Alpro the only words of Norwegian/Scandinavian are the contact information for customer service on the proper right bottom third of the carton, and the product information / ingredients / nutritional information on the reverse. There is also text in Finnish and Romanian in these same places, and some other Romanian fine print on the obverse and proper right. But as a whole the entire carton is covered in big, bold, flashy English, and I do not like this.

Because if the reverse assumes that anyone buying the milk necessarily speaks Scandinavian, Finnish, or Romanian, then why should the package assume that everyone buying also speaks English? Conversely, wouldn’t the vast majority of the packaging being entirely in English lead one to believe that one should also be able to find the ingredients and nutritional information on the back in English?

The obverse has plenty of room to in fact entirely replace the English text with translations into Scandinavian, Finnish, and Romanian; the sides, too, could cut out the marketing flourishes and convey the same information in all three languages as well. There is no reason for English to be there at all other than I guess to be trendy and to save the negligible amount of money it would take to localize the packaging beyond the literal bare minimum required by law.

I do have to wonder why Romanian, though. There are many far more widely spoken immigrant languages in Norway, Romanian is not a super widely spoken language on the global scale, and Norway and Romania are not particularly close to one another, so it seems a bit of a random choice, doesn’t it? But whatever, it is a pretty language, so I can’t object to seeing more of it.

Now Oatly on the other hand, there is a nice and clear “HAVREDRIKK SJOKOLADE” written on the front. In that regard, it’s way better than the Alpro carton.

However… Again, most of the carton save for what the carton itself labels as “the boring (but very important) side” is written in English. Basically none of it is anything actually important, but it’s just this really aggravating “corporate silly”, you know the kind, the kind of writing that feels like it’s a variant of that same vile disease that also brought us “wholesome adulting” and grown-ass characters swearing like 5th graders in Hollywood blockbusters.

Like I know I probably seem really petty by focusing so much on the packaging, but I don’t want to feel cringe when buying abuse-free milk. Like I know there isn’t really any other way to do it, but I don’t want to be reminded that I’m buying from some corporation that’s cashing in on people’s desire to not support animal abuse and trying to turn veganism from a radical movement for animal rights to a qwirkee #aesthetic under their own Brand Image of corporate silly wholesome chungus English for the globally-minded youth. Just give me the fucking plant milk, in the local language, without marketing frills. No different from the store brand apple juice and instant ramen. No different from the dairy milk.

Is that really so much to ask?