The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recently raised a few eyebrows with its ruling that plant-based products are milk.
Among those taking issue is Jim Mulhern, President and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation.
"We reject the agency’s circular logic that FDA’s past labeling enforcement inaction now justifies labeling such beverages 'milk' by designating a common and usual name,” he said. “Past inaction is poor precedent to justify present and future inaction."
As far healthful benefits are concerned, he said, "inconsistent concoctions of water, factory-processed powders and other additives simply don’t contain the same nutrition that milk provides."
Even the satirical online website The Onion got its licks in.
But now that the Feds have made their beliefs known, what are your “milk” choices? They appear to be many and varied.
You can throw away the days when your choices were limited to skimmed, semi-skimmed and full fat.
We now have all these:
- Oat Milk
- Soy Milk
- Potato Milk
- Coconut Milk
- Almond Milk
- Cashew Milk
- Rice Milk
- Hemp Milk
- Pea Milk
- Hazelnut Milk
- Macadamia Milk
- Tiger Nut Milk
Among the most popular
- Oat milk is made by soaking and blending whole oats with water and has a creamy texture with an unsurprisingly oaty taste. It's often fortified with vitamins and minerals such as calcium, vitamin D, and riboflavin, making it high in fiber.
- Soy milk uses, as you would surmise, soaked soybeans ground into a liquid and then boiled to form milk. It provides the necessary amino acids and has been linked to lowering blood pressure and bad cholesterol levels.
- Almond milk is among the most common nut milks around, created in a similar way to oat. It’s high in the antioxidant vitamin E, which helps keep skin healthy and strengthens the immune system.
Nutritional reckoning
To help consumers work all this out, the FDA is proposing new guidance that would require these products to have labels that indicate how these options are nutritionally different.
They would point out how vitamin or calcium levels in plant-based choices compare to the vitamin and calcium makeup of traditional milk options.
If you're counting calories, unsweetened almond milk is your best option -- only 13 calories per 100 ml. That’s followed by coconut milk with 14 calories per 100ml.
Unsweetened almond milk, soy milk, coconut milk, macadamia nut milk, hemp milk and pea milk are all keto-friendly but nutritional values may vary from brand to brand.
While mammal’s milks contain lactose, plant-based products don’t. But, if you're lactose intolerant, check out the product's ingredients just to be sure.