VIDEO: What's the Deal with Plant Milks?
Transcript
Hi everybody! Last week we talked all about dairy milk and I promised I would come back to share some of the history and some of my thoughts on plant milks because they are all the rage right now. They're relatively new to the market but they have blown up, so in most grocery stores now the milk aisle is almost half and a half it feels like, especially in the Whole Foods type grocery stores.
I think the first question is: what is plant milk? So plant milk is usually the seed of a plant, although sometimes like in coconut it's the flesh, is usually soaked and then pressed for the milky liquid that comes out. I would probably argue that the liquid should be called “juice” since that's what we call all other pressed plant substances. But historically it has always been referred to as milk because the substance that comes out is pretty white and milky in color.
Semantics aside, I'll usually refer to them as milk substitutes or milk alternatives or plant milks to clarify that they're not the same as the stuff that comes out of a mammal. And that's something that you really have to remember – it’s not the same as the stuff that comes out of a mammal. To say that just because it's a white milky substance it makes it the same as mammalian milk would be like buying a can of red paint and saying “well, it's red, it's a liquid, it's probably nutritionally similar to ketchup.” That the argument just makes no sense. If you think about it, the stuff that comes out of a mammal’s breast to feed its young is incredibly nutritionally complex, nutrient dense. It's got protein, carbs, fat, tons of micronutrients. It's got all sorts of substances in it that the stuff you squeeze out of an almond just isn't going to have. Usually the protein is a little lower, it might be comparable. The fat is almost always a lot lower and then the carbs vary depending on what substance it is that you're using to make the plant milk. Then of course the micronutrients are different. There are some [in plant milk] because seeds do have vitamins, but they're not similar to what would be in dairy milk, so just keep that in mind.
Nuances aside I think the big question is: is this stuff safe to drink? In theory I have no issue with it. Most plant milks are 98% water so when you buy one of those Tetra Paks or one of those refrigerator bottles of plant milk you're mostly buying water. Keep that in mind before you spend $7 on one of these bottles – it’s mostly water. And then as far as the part that actually is extracted from the plant and usually the seeds, I don't actually have a big issue with it. Such a small quantity, it's from whole foods, I don't really have a big issue.
But what you have to remember is that historically plant milks were made in the home and consumed right away. But now they're being made commercially and they are shelf-stable in the case of the ones that are at room temperature or they're able to sit in a refrigerator case for weeks. That would not be the case if you made homemade plant milks. So what are they adding beyond just the plant extract in the water to make these things shelf stable? It usually comes in a couple categories:
One thing that a lot of them are adding is stabilizers. That usually comes in the form of a gum or carrageenan, sometimes a lecithin, maybe a starch. These are all isolated food substances that are able to keep the plant milk all nice and homogeneous so it looks the same and it doesn't start to separate out. And so that the mouthfeel is a little bit more similar to that of dairy milk. Many of these are harmless, but some of them could cause you issues. I've talked a lot about how a lot of these gums like guar gum and things like that, they can cause people stomach upset. I think that is really ironic because a lot of people switch to plant milks because lactose was causing them stomach upset and they don't realize that these gums or this carrageenan that's in their plant milk could cause them just as much trouble.
Then there's the flavoring agents – that’s usually sugar. My number one caveat for people buying plant milks is it's got to be the unsweetened kind. If you buy the sweetened kind you might as well be buying chocolate milk. It's just a big bolus of liquid sugar that nobody needs in their diet. And then they may flavor it, like vanilla almond milk or something like that, and there you just have to read the labels. A lot of times they're using artificial vanilla flavor or just weird natural flavors, things like that. They're not actually using vanilla extract or high-quality extracts.
And then one other thing to watch out for is oils. A lot of them are adding oils, usually seed oils, because they're cheap and because they're trying to get the nutrient content more similar to that of dairy milk so people can use it as a replacement, in theory. But dairy milk has excellent healthy fat in it whereas if they're adding sunflower oil or canola oil you're getting highly processed, usually high in omega-6 fatty acids, often sprayed with pesticides – just a mess. These are not oils I recommend.
They also tend to add vitamins and minerals, again, to try and get it a little bit more similar to dairy milk. I dug pretty deep on all the popular brands and none of them are really a true substitute for dairy milk, though, as far as vitamins, minerals, fat, protein and carbohydrates are concerned. Some of them will hit a few categories but I couldn't find one single plant milk that truly matched the makeup of dairy milk, so keep that in mind.
So generally speaking, if you really want to buy a plant milk, okay. But the rule of thumb is you better spend ten minutes in that aisle reading every single bottle’s ingredient list to find one that's acceptable to you: it doesn't have these weird added oils, doesn't have a ton of gums and stabilizers, doesn't have sugar. So just be very cognizant of what you're buying.
That brings me to my final point which is what I always ask my clients whenever they tell me they've switched to plant milks: what are you using these plant milks for? Because chances are I'll tell you to just stop eating that product altogether.
The number one answer cereal. I don't recommend cereal to any of my clients, really. There's a few granolas I'll sometimes use in our house, very one-off, not something we have a lot. And frankly we almost always have them with yogurt not milk because milk just isn't filling enough to keep us full till lunch. So anyway, I take cereal out of most of my clients’ diets so there's one main reason to use plant milks gone.
The next one is smoothies which if you guys been following along I just posted a lot of stuff this week about my general dislike of smoothies for a wide variety of reasons. There are individual scenarios where I'll help people come up with smoothie recipes, but most of my clients I discourage smoothies so there goes the number two biggest reason people use plant milk.
Then there's just drinking a glass of it. I don't recommend that adults drink a glass of any kind of milk, dairy milk or plant milk. Adults should be drinking water and maybe black coffee or plain tea. Just drinking a glass of milk isn't necessary for an adult or frankly even an older child so I pretty much take that off the board.
Some people will tell me they want to use it for their kids, if they their kid is dairy intolerant or allergic to dairy. That's kind of a one-on-one counseling question that we can work through. There may be some small use for it there, but keep in mind kids should be on breast milk or formula until they're one and then if you're working with me I'm going to probably get your kid off milk altogether about 15 months or two years. So I definitely work individually with clients on how to do that but even there I see it as a pretty minimal use, especially considering that like I said it's really not nutritionally similar to cow's milk. I just don't really want kids having glasses of these plant milks.
Coffee. Some people want to put it in their coffee instead of dairy milk. If you're using just a small amount of it, okay that's fine I guess, it's not a ton. Again, we want to make sure you're buying one without a lot of additives and certainly no sugar but that could potentially be an okay use for plant milks.
Then cooking that's one where I'm like “yeah, okay, sure.” Coconut milk for example is great in so many Thai dishes and lots of curries. There's people who are dairy-free for very good reasons and they still want to be able to make something like a chicken pot pie or cream of mushroom soup. I've done recipes like that using dairy free plant milk alternatives. So I think cooking is probably the most logical way to use these plant milks for the adult population.
Awesome. I hope that answers a lot of your questions. Stay tuned, we'll be doing more of these videos hopefully every Friday if I can get around to it. Have a good week guys!
