Milk scores its own “golden goal”

It often takes incredible patience and fortitude to defeat a staunch competitor, but when it happens, it feels truly special.

This is certainly the case for the U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey Team, whom on Feb. 22 picked up its first gold-medal win exactly 46 years after its amazing “Miracle on Ice” performance against Russia in 1980. Led by incredible goaltending from Connor Hellebuyck and Jack Hughes’ overtime “golden goal,” the U.S. team defeated Canada 2-1, joining the women’s team, which did the same exact thing a few days earlier.

Although not on an Olympic stage, fluid milk defeated its toughest competitor in 2025: plant-based beverages. According to Circana data, fluid milk sales were steady last year. But the bigger story was the decline of plant-based beverages, which dropped 6% year over year (YoY) on a volume basis to 358.4 million gallons.

“As a result, for the fourth straight year, good old-fashioned fluid milk’s market share rose compared to plant-based beverages, holding 90.7 percent of the combined dairy-and-alternative-beverage market in 2025. That’s the fourth straight annual increase in milk’s market share, and it’s up from 89.4 percent in 2021,” states the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF). “Slowly, but surely, consumers are choosing the better value, in nutrition, in price, and in trustworthiness. In a rational world, real milk and plant-based beverages wouldn’t even be in the same category; their nutritional profiles are radically different, and their ingredients bear no similarity.”

Of course, plant-based beverages aren’t going away. It is more likely that they will instead evolve. “Even though beverages made from almonds, which is 63% of the plant-based market, fell by 8.6% last year, and soy fell 8.3%, oat-based beverages rose 1.8%, as it’s become a solid-though-distant second place to almonds,” NMPF notes.

Either way, milk’s story is a powerful one. Plant-based beverages had strong public relations executives producing effective messages purporting their value as recently as only a few years ago. “But despite that, dairy remains dominant. That’s a tribute to milk’s irreplaceable nutritional package, and to consumers who dig past the hype and make the choices that best fit their nutritional need,” NMPF says.

The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, signed by President Donald Trump in January, paves the way for whole and 2% milk to return to America’s school cafeterias for the first time in more than a decade. The bill allows schools to provide students with a variety of fluid milk options, which can now include flavored and unflavored organic or conventional whole, 2%, 1%, skim and lactose-free milk. I would expect the signing of this legislation to lead to increased milk sales on a year-over-year basis in 2026, perhaps widening the gap between milk-based and plant-based sales even further.

Of course, more can be done to promote the power of milk. NMPF suggests enforcing federal standards of identity that “define milk as an animal product and reserving dairy terms on labels only for true dairy beverages would further these positive marketplace trends.”

The trade association notes that nutrition science has spoken, and consumer behavior is changing too. “Slowly but surely, milk’s integrity is carrying the day, and real dairy is winning. Often, it just takes time,” NMPF concludes. DF

Brian Berk is Editor-in-Chief of Dairy Foods. Contact him at 516-402-1369 or berkb@bnpmedia.com.