I mean oat milk has hardly any nutrition to speak of and seriously lacks protein when you compare it to your general soy milk products that are widely available in stores.

This doesn’t make it a bad choice, you can consider both oat milk and almond milk a very good alternative to tap water with more nutrition, and if you do view it that way, as long as you get all the high-protein and nutrition you need from your other food choices both almond and oat milk can be the perfect choice for you.

Although I will argue that soy milk, black coffee and tap water are by far the three best beverages you could ever consume.

THE FOOTPRINT.
Only 18% of calories come from animal agriculture.

One liter of cow milk requires roughly 600+ liters of fresh water.
Compared to less than 30 liters of fresh water per liter of soy milk.
You need almost 9m2 of land for every Liter of cow milk that we produce worldwide.

Soy milk only requires 0.66m2, and this disparity in the required landmass between plant-based food and animal-based food products is a major driver of the ongoing climate & biodiversity crisis. Coupled with the difference in calories in vs out of cow & meat versus plant-based food choices and the math of animal-based meat and dairy becomes quite impossible.

Emissions for cow milk are triple those of soymilk.
Cow milk requires roughly 3kg of emissions per liter and for soymilk, the average comes out as less than 1kg per liter and this story play out the same every time we compare animal ag foods with plant-based foods.

But we are, of course, not only discussing milk alternatives here in our article. If we compare beef and peas this is what we see.

The carbon footprint of beef is significantly higher than that of peas.

Producing one kilogram of beef emits 60 kilograms of greenhouse gasses (CO2-equivalents), while peas emit just one kilogram per kilogram produced.
The disparity in emissions between these two foods is so substantial that even if the beef were produced locally and the peas were shipped from another country, that beef that you love to devour would still have a much larger carbon footprint, not to mention substantially higher natural resource drain.

To conclude.

I am not sure how this study can conclude that oat milk improve nutritional intake in a somewhat similar way to soy milk.

So there is either a mistake as far as nutritional completeness goes in this study for the plant-based milk products, or they found a very good nutritionally enhanced almond milk.

But that’s the only way I can see anyone concluding that oat or almond milk is a comparable nutritional choice to soy milk. It is true that almond milk is not that far behind soy milk, but from protein to iron, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus, soy milk is the better choice. 

Still, tho, my remark put aside, the sum of it all remains the same as countless other up-to-date scientific studies and assessments.

Whole plant-based food choices coupled with a high-protein intake make for a very healthy choice that combines being a nutritionally complete, high-protein, high-satiety, and planet-friendly choice.

Much more so than going all in on animal-based foods.

What about the omnivores?

This means that for omnivores, the second best thing they can do is to have a mix of animal and plant-based high-protein intake together with lots of whole plant-based foods, while the best thing remains the same as always, going all in on a high-protein whole plant-based food approach due to the environmental impact of animal-based foods.

Omnivores are usually quite skeptical of claims like that. Even from fact-based coaches like myself, and that is ok. So, my response, as always is data, because that´s what good science is, fact-based numbers that help explain the way the world actually work.

As such, if you are a skeptical omnivore.

Take this to heart when you debate increasing the amount of whole plant-based foods you consume, only 18% of the world’s calories and 37% of the world’s protein come from livestock. So, how can we really, intellectually speaking defend a majority carnivore world ( or majority animal ag omnivore approach to foods )?

Having said that, if we disregard that aspect of our food life and only focus on health, fitness and body composition outcomes then there is virtually zero difference between a high-protein omnivore that consumes as much whole plant-based fruit, berries, veggies and leafy green as they want on a daily basis and a completely plant-based high-protein approach.