Non-dairy milk substitutes

We all know about milk. It’s a source of Vitamin D and calcium, thus thus “good” for us. Well, some of us can’t drink it, or choose not to do so. Depending on whether or not the peak of allergy season is here, I may regret drinking even a small amount of milk.

For those of you who find yourself in that situation, have a child who can’t handle cow milk, or are vegans, there are a few good alternatives.

Soy Slender™ Vanilla Soymilk by Westsoy® is lower in carbohydrates than many soy milks. This makes it a carbohydrate-friendly choice. It is very drinkable. This is the best soy milk Westsoy® makes, in my humble opinion, and I’ve tried nearly all of them. It's also the best-tasting, sweetened lower-carb choice, beating out both Silk Vanilla Light and 8th Continent's light vanilla soymilk by, well, light-years in taste. Soy Slender™ Chocolate Soymilk also is pretty good; if you put it in your coffee, it tastes like a mocha! Those of you trying to avoid artificial sweeteners, note that the Soy Slender™ products contain Splenda™.

Silk® Very Vanilla is probably the best-tasting soy milk I have tasted to drink just as you would milk. You’ll want to know, however, that it and Silk® Vanilla soy milk (and any of its milks not marked as unsweetened) are sweetened with evaporated cane juice. Silk® Chocolate soy milk akes good mochas (my primary use for chocolate milk).

Silk® also makes light versions of its vanilla, plain and chocolate soy milks (which I strongly suspect are the regular version diluted with water). The company recently began marketing Silk® Almond, which I tried only because I had a coupon. I like the taste, but was unable to find an unsweetened version yet.

Any of these milk alternatives taste great on cereal or in coffee. Believe it or not, chocolate Soy Slender tastes wonderful on both Shredded Wheat and Koala Crisp chocolate rice puff cereal (really, both were absent-minded happy accidents on my part). That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I don’t use sweetened soy or almond milk in baking, cream sauces or mashed potatoes, for obvious reasons.

My hands-down winner for general use is Silk® Organic Unsweetened soy milk. It tastes more like regular milk, and has only one gram of sugar. It also goes on cereal, in coffee, in baked goods or in your baked potatoes without changing the flavor.

If you can ever find Silk® Nog around the holidays, it’s a tasty alternative to eggnog. It is a seasonal item I am not sure is made anymore.

There are other alternative “milks” including other soy milks, rice milk, coconut milk and hemp milk. I don’t care for 8th Continent Soy Milk or any rice milk as “drinking milk.” I haven’t tried hemp or coconut milk, so I may try one of these and/or give rice milk a second shot soon.

Note: Just as I was completing this post, I learned that Dean Foods, the parent company of White Wave, which makes the Silk® products, changed the company’s policy of using only organic soybeans in its products. This action, which was not announced publicly before it was implemented last year, led to a movement started by the Organic Consumers Association to boycott the brand. Currently, only some of the products now use organic soybeans and are marked organic. Very Vanilla, which is heavily marketed to children, is not one of those made with organic soybeans. In my opinion, this gives us all another reason to read (and perhaps re-read) our food labels.