Tag: Milk in Hot Chocolate

What Milk to Use for Your Coffee, Tea, or Hot Chocolate? Part II

Posted on by Sara Walker

In the previous blog we discussed using dairy milk versus soy milk and in this part we will continue to discuss those, but also move onto other milks. We recommend you read the previous blog first!

Rice milk is an alternative to dairy milk that’s becoming more and more popular. It has very little protein and unfortunately a lot of sugar, but like soy milk it is usually fortified with various vitamins and minerals. The texture is quite watery, but the taste is pleasant enough when making hot chocolates and lattes if you like the sweetness.

Almond milk is very popular in the US, but is still catching on in other parts of the world and gaining quite a lot of popularity in the UK. The great thing with almond milk is that the texture varies from brand to brand, meaning you can find a thick variety for that creamy hot chocolate and a much lighter one for your latte. It doesn’t contain that much protein, but nor is it very sugary and almonds themselves contain various vitamins and minerals that have great health benefits.

Other milk alternatives include hazelnut milk, hemp milk and oat milk. Oat milk is probably the most popular of those three and has the added benefit of reducing cholesterol and various other health benefits. It’s not good for those who suffer gluten sensitivity, nor is it very thick and creamy (unless some brand has invented a new variety we haven’t tried), but rather watery. Hazelnut milk is usually very flavorful and it appears some brands have gone full out and made it taste like marzipan! Not so great if you want to make a traditional latte, but fabulous if you want the hazelnut flavor. Hemp milk is good if you seek to get extra omega-3s in your diet and many report a great texture, but it really depends, just like almond milk, what brand you get hold of.

It’s tricky to advice what milk is the best to use. What appears obvious is to stay away from all non-organic brands of soy milk as even the non-GMO varieties often contain pesticides that are dangerous for you (see part I of this blog for more information). Soy on the whole appears dubious when it comes to your health, but if you want to use it, stick to the organic brands.

Organic is also the obvious choice for dairy milk as you will know the cows (or goats, or sheep) have been treated with respect (there are quite a few horror stories when it comes to how cows are being treated these days) and because they won’t contain any growth hormones, or unnecessary antibiotics. If it’s good for your health seems up for debate – probably as with most things it is alright in moderation. Maybe also try using some goat’s or sheep’s milk (the latter has a distinctive taste that you may or may not enjoy) as well to mix it up to avoid intolerance (and goat’s milk has good instead of bad cholesterol).

Rice milk is probably also alright in moderation, the only note of warning is using it too often as it contains a lot of sugar. All other vegan milks appear fine to use (apart from oat milk if you are sensitive to gluten, or the nut milks if you have nut allergies), so maybe try them all and stick with the one you prefer, or alternate between them to get the various health benefits from each one.

The best alternative to dairy apart from soy when it comes to texture is probably almond milk, if you can find a brand that has the texture you enjoy.

You can make most vegan milks yourself – there are plenty of sources online for recipes if you google one that takes your fancy!

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Maybe now is the time to start exploring different milks if you own a coffee shop as today’s consumers are getting progressively pickier and looking for new alternatives!

What Milk to Use for Your Coffee, Tea, or Hot Chocolate? Part I

Posted on by Sara Walker

Most people these days have heard of the milk controversies going around – is dairy bad for you, or good for you? Is soy bad for you, or good for you? Should you avoid both soy and dairy and go for something like rice, or almond milk? And which milks taste best with your coffee? So let’s go through the different options one by one – in this first part we will cover dairy and soy and in the second part other alternatives.

Traditional dairy milk is still the most common milk used to create lattes and hot chocolates and the one which has a superior texture as it’s the texture people are used to and one that works well for foaming. As there are different dairy milks available – from half and half to no fat varieties it’s also easy to choose how creamy you want your drink to be. However, more and more people are becoming lactose intolerant, or subscribing to veganism, or diets such as the GAPS diet which forbids milk and whereas many seek to avoid the high cholesterol and fat in creamier milk varieties, the health community are now arguing that the healthiest milks are the fattier kind, making it all a tad confusing. Dairy milk does contain both protein and calcium, which are needed by the body though and in that regards it is healthy (although apparently there are less cases of osteoporosis, which is often caused by lack of calcium, in China than in the West and people in China don’t really use dairy). In some instances people choose to use goat’s milk or sheep’s milk as an alternative as they can tolerate it better. Some people also prefer unpasteurized milk, as even though chances of bacteria are greater, it contains live enzymes, helping the body to break it down.

Dairy milk naturally contains some levels of estrogen and can contain growth hormones and antibiotics if these were used for the cows, making organic an obvious choice if you don’t want this in your body.

Soy milk is maybe the most popular dairy milk replacement on the shelves today and in theory it sounds great – it is easy to use for lattes as it creates great foam, it contains lots of protein and little fat and it’s usually fortified with vitamins and minerals that make it similar to milk. Some studies have shown that things that are fortified aren’t necessarily as good as the real deal, but still, it is likely to have some benefits. However, from being touted as a miracle product when first launched it has since come up in several studies that soy is harmful, especially GMO soy, which makes up 90-95% of the market. Word has it that soy might make women infertile, affect men’s hormonal levels, cause certain cancers and create allergies. In fact there are so many studies done by now that it’s hard to cover it all in this blog, but you can read more here.

So if you are choosing between dairy and soy, maybe dairy is the best alternative after all? At least if you go for goat’s milk. However, in part two of this blog we will discuss more alternatives that you may find suit you better!

Read Part II here.

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