coconut milk
- Very smooth and satisfying
- <=1 g natural sugars so basically carb-free
- amazing replacement for milk in cereal and smoothies
Depends on what I am using it for. I quite like oat milk in my coffee drinks. I feel like it is nice to have the oaty flavor paired with the coffee taste.
Oat for lattes, rice for drinking straight, coconut for smoothies, almond for cereal
Nice call out on rice milk straight. I do think it has a nice subtle sweetness to it the others don’t.
oat milk for everything
Yes
Mostly the same as everyone else here, mostly use oat milk or coconut depending on use case, but a while back I was making something that called for pea milk and it cooked up surprisingly well.
Oat milk followed by homemade cashew milk. I found coconut milk and almond milk both to be too watery tasting.
I found almond milk to be a great substitute a couple of years ago when I was dieting. Particularly the ‘unsweetened, vanilla’ variety from Almond Breeze.
As an added bonus, it also has a much longer shelf life than regular milk.
I can’t stand the sugary versions of any of them, unsweetened with/without vanilla is all the flavor needed haha
For information, almond milk is by far the least environmentally sustainable milk substitute. Almond farming is extremely water-intensive.
Ah damn, and it looks like almonds are grown mostly in California. Adding insult to injury.
California-grown almonds account for 80 per cent of the world’s commercial almond production.
(From https://davidsuzuki.org/living-green/the-best-plant-based-milks-for-the-planet/)
Rice milk for oatmeal, oat milk for baking, soy milk for drinking straight due to protein
Rice Milk
I like soy milk. I don’t know why people freak out about it.
I liked the smell of it in my shaving cream but yet to formally try it in the mouth hole
It’s fine? It’s not ambrosia, but it’s easier on my stomach and a little bit healthier than the moo juice.
something about estrogen load
Oatly had this strawberry-elderflower sort of drink and then it stopped being made / imported.
It was so fucking good, and I just don’t enjoy the other flavours as much.
Oatly adds amylase to convert oat starch into maltose. The result is that the sugar content is about that of Coca-Cola while they still write “unsweetened” or “no added sugar” on their sassy packaging because it’s technically true.
It’s good for a dash into your coffee, but I wouldn’t suggest it as a daily substitute due to the sugar content.
Wouldn’t the starch break down into an equivalent amount of sugar during digestion?
Yes. In fact, human saliva contains amylase. Also, coke is way less calory-dense than regular milk.
I keep getting surprised that people seem to think that adding amylase to oat water suddenly adds calories. You merely increase the amount of simple sugars. On the whole, the calory total is stil much lower than regular milk.Nice strawman you got going there, but I never said anything about calories. It’s about sugar.
Your uptake of sugar is not equal across all forms, but varies by the underlying sugar. The rate of uptake is measured with the glycemic index, the higher, the faster the uptake. Lactose has a GI of around 45, sucrose of 65 and maltose of 105. Maltose lets your blood sugar level spike significantly more than the others which leads to a more significant crash which induces hunger, irritability, fatigue, and overeating.
Coke is a lot more sugar-dense than milk (more than double the density) and coupled with the presence of a higher GI sugar, it’s more of a snack than a refreshing drink.
Additionally, the controlled enzymatic conversion by adding amylase breaks down a lot more of the oat starch than what would normally happen while eating and digesting, so my point still stands.
I see where you’re coming from and I didn’t mean to misrepresent your argument.
I am wondering about the following though:the controlled enzymatic conversion by adding amylase breaks down a lot more of the oat starch than what would normally happen while eating and digesting
On what basis do you say this? Do you know literature that shows this? Are blood sugar levels clearly impacted differently by oat-water starches with and without amylase treatment?
There is this study about different kinds of processing with alpha-amylase. The relevant data is in Figure 2, control (C in the figure) was just an oat-water slurry that was heated for some time, En is with the addition of amylase. The rest is about exploring different processing techniques.
It doesn’t compare starch-sugar ratio during digestion tho, not sure if there are any studies that do that. But higher initial maltose content means a higher spike.
Thanks for the ref.
higher initial maltose content means a higher spike
Based on your ref, I’m not convinced that this is truly the case though. I think this may be more relevant to your point:
https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fbf01092074
Mountain Dew
I always felt like it tasted like already flat soda
You gotta get it straight from the Mountain cow. It’s never quite as good once it’s bottled.
I always felt it tasted like pine-scented dish soap.
Coconut milk is the closest to the real deal, it’s creamy, you can make a whipped cream or friggin butter with it easily and it’s white AF
Unsweetened almond milk mainly due to the low calories compared to other non-dairy milks but not as tasty for sure.
It’s been a while, but one time I had almond milk in rooibos tea* and it made it taste like cake. Can’t remember proportions or how much extra sugar or sweetener I had in it but knowing me, the amount wasn’t “none”.
* tea-like infusion. Rooibos and tea are not related plants.
Soy milk is the only non-dairy alternative I’ve tried that actually tastes good and also still goes with cereal. I’ve had a few kinds of nut milk, but I don’t like the taste or consistency of 'em. Though that isn’t to say they taste awful; I just don’t want the extreme taste of almonds or cashews when I am wanting milk. Soy milk actually comes pretty close to just regular milk.
I also would like to say this is only for use as a beverage (or for cereal). Trying to use any of these as a substitute for milk in cooking DOES. NOT. WORK. There’s a chemical process going on in most recipes that simply doesn’t happen with non-dairy alternatives.
Agree about soy. I’ve tried and liked rice milk on cereal, but it wasn’t as good as a milk substitute in hot drinks. Since I prefer not to buy a bunch of different things for both simplicity and storage reasons, I switched everything to soy.
That doesn’t mean that the different brands of soy milk are all the same though. Luckily I’ve found one that works for me.
Specifically: Califia Farms Toasted Coconut - Coconut Almondmilk Blend. This is the closest I have found since I started watching my carbs/sugar intake 4 years ago.
