- My name is Rosemary, I'm a food scientist.
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And today we're going to be talking about
each and every plant-based milk.
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First up, almond milk.
Almond milk has been around for centuries.
It's first referenced in Baghdadi cookbooks,
as well as medieval European cookbooks in the 14th century.
It's very neutral, it's slightly thinner
than some of the other plant-based milks.
One of the benefits of almond milk
is it's high in alpha-tocopherol or vitamin E.
It's also slightly lower in protein,
and it's lower in carbohydrates as well.
Most of the almonds that we consume
in North America come from California.
California does not have a lot of water.
Almonds take up a lot of land space,
and they require quite a lot of water
as irrigation in order for the plants
to grow and proliferate.
So that is environmental impact that's very significant.
Almond milk can separate in your coffee.
And that's because when you put it in a really
acidic environment like coffee,
it just forms these small particles at really high heat
with low acidity, which is exactly what you have
when you have a cup of coffee.
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Oat milk is the new milk on the market.
Oat milk is another super popular plant-based milk
and it's very easy to make at home.
All you need are rolled oats,
some very icy cold water
because the oats will start to gelatinous.
It's a chemical process where the bonds
between the starch molecules start to break,
they open and allow water in.
We don't want that with our oat milk,
because that's how it gets slimy.
And we're going to get as much of the oats as possible
because that's where all the flavor, the fiber,
some of the protein and the beta-glucans
that we really want for our good health to come out.
You wanna use rolled oats and not whole groats or instant,
because the instant have some chemicals added to them
that make them really porous.
So they're not quite as nutrient dense
as the straight slow cooked rolled oats.
It's really only been around since the 1990s.
It's based on a grain oatmeal,
which has known health benefits.
Let's see how oat milk made at home is gonna froth.
This is frothing somewhat, but not quite as much
as if you had a commercial brand.
The commercial brands are specially designed
with additional emulsifiers
as well as lipids that are going to really cause it to foam
more like cream than we have here.
So it's not the greatest foamer,
but it's certainly delicious
and it's full of fiber and beta-glucans.
Also, it's pretty abundant.
So it grows really well in a lot of different places.
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Soy milk has been around for a long time.
It's first referenced in literature from China
in the 14th century.
It's the first step in making tofu.
Soy milk gained popularity from the '80s
when they moved it from the center part of the grocery store
to the refrigerated section.
And that's because that's where the dairy milk is.
Soy milk resembles bovine milk pretty closely.
It's very high in protein.
It has most of the essential amino acids
that we need in our diet to make the proteins
that we need in our bodies, just like cow's milk does.
Let me show you some of the similarities
and differences between soy and cow's milk.
We have soy milk and we have cow's milk.
If you were to look really closely
at the nutritional labels,
you will find that cow's milk is higher in fat per serving.
Soy milk has about eight grams of protein
in an eight ounce serving,
which is your typical serving of any kind of milk.
It's also lower in calories
and it has some really good nutritional benefits as well.
It's got phytoestrogens, as well as isoflavones.
These are plant chemicals
that are associated with good health.
The other thing is soy milk is part of the 2020
to 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
It's recommended in the dairy category
which is unique and very interesting.
The reason it's there is because glass per glass
or serving per serving,
you're going to have very comparable amounts of protein.
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You can make rice milk
from almost any kind of rice.
Commercially, it's fortified with other nutrients
like B12, vitamin D, sometimes calcium.
One of the advantages of rice milk
is it does have a bit of a wider appearance
and some people really like that.
Rice milk is great for people with gluten sensitivity
and that is because it has no gluten.
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Macadamia nuts make a fabulous milk.
This plant-based milk tastes the most like the nut,
which is extremely high in fat.
In fact, it's the fattiest nut that we have on the market.
So a lot of the flavor is translated into the milk
because a lot of the flavor compounds are lipid soluble.
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Hemp milk is from a seed.
It is really becoming popular
because like soy and like cow's milk,
it's very high in protein.
It also does not require a lot of emulsifiers
or additional chemicals to give it shelf stability,
so you may consider it to be slightly less processed.
It's high in protein, it's high in fiber.
Hemp is high in omega-3 fatty acids,
which is an essential fatty acid,
that means we have to take it in through our diet,
our body doesn't make it itself.
It's also very high in essential amino acids.
They work the same way.
They're the building blocks of the proteins
that we need for our metabolism.
So this little tiny seed delivers a big nutrient density.
Hemp milk is really good for people
who wanna avoid nuts or soy or other allergens.
And as you can see, it has a pretty nice viscosity
from that omega-3 fatty acid.
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Coconuts are one of the plants
that are very, very high in fat.
Whether or not that translates into your coconut milk
depends on the packaging.
If you buy a can of coconut milk,
it's got a lot of fat in it
and one of those fats is called lauric acid.
It's a 12-carbon fatty acid that is really important
for as an intermediary, for forming other biomolecules
for human metabolism.
When you buy coconut milk in the carton,
it's gonna be much thinner,
it's gonna be lower in fat, lower in protein,
and it's gonna be slightly lower in carbohydrates as well.
When you make coconut milk at home,
you are not adding any extra enzymes,
you're not any adding any polysaccharides
like gellan gum or locust bean gum that you will find
in the commercial versions.
So this is just as pure as it gets.
This homemade coconut milk
has so much complex coconut flavor
that you won't get from some of the refined process
in the commercial world.
It also froths really nicely.
Just in the blender, you can see
I have a layer of frothy foam,
so that the fats that were leached out
are really nicely emulsified
and they hold a really good foam
compared to some of the other plant-based milks.
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Pea milk does not taste like peas, ironically.
And that's because the protein
is isolated from the other components in the yellow peas.
So you're really just getting pure protein
along with water and some emulsifiers
and thickening agents as well.
It is made differently than some of the other
commercial plant-based milks.
It's made with yellow pea protein.
And the manufacturers usually separate
the fiber and the starch from the protein,
and then they use the protein powder in making the milk.
Pea protein, you can actually buy as a powder
at the grocery store and make your own that way.
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Cashew milk is made with cashews.
They're nice and white with isoflavones.
This milk is fortified with vitamin B12 and calcium.
Cashew milk contains anacardic acid,
which in one study showed to reduce liver fat accumulation
which can be beneficial for type 2 diabetics.
Flax seed is another plant-based milk on the market.
As you can see, it's a really dark nutrient dense,
tough little seed.
Flax seeds are also really high
in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids,
which are essential for human metabolism.
So this is really nutrient dense milk.
Flax seed milk though sometimes has other
types of plant-based milk added to it,
and that's to give it the protein content or viscosity
that you're looking for in the final product.
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Quinoa milk is a grain-based milk.
Quinoa is called a super grain
because it's very high in protein.
So this is a high protein, high carb milk
that's made again by steeping the grain
in water and then filtering it.
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Pistachio is the newest milk on the market.
It just came to the grocery store shelves in about 2020.
So this is something that you may see growing.
If you open a pistachio,
you can see it's beautiful green color,
as well as some slight purple.
The green is from chlorophyll, it's lipid soluble
and the purple is from a compound called anthocyanins,
and it's water soluble.
Your nut milks in particular are gonna be higher in fat
when they're made at home than they are commercially.
Many companies wanna take the fat out of the nut,
which also removes some of the fat soluble vitamins
and minerals and they wanna sell it.
It's a higher grossing product than the nut milk
so it's also a nice way to utilize the entire nut.
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Hazelnut milk, also known as filberts,
they're from a hazel tree.
Usually when you make hazelnut,
you take this outer skin off.
Because it's full of tannins
that can be a little bit of stringent
and give you a little bit
of a puckery feeling in your mouth
that you don't want in your milk.
Hazelnuts are also really high in Vitamin E
similar to almond milk.
You don't have a really intense hazelnut flavor here,
but you do get an essence of hazelnut
so it pairs really nicely with chocolate.
And you might even call it a Nutella plant-based milk.
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Potato milk is one of the newest milks on the market.
And in fact, you can't even get it in the United States yet.
It's made by a company based in Europe, in Sweden,
and they take potatoes in a proprietary process
and cook all of the starches out
so that you're left with just the potato protein.
It's becoming really popular in European coffee shops
because it does foam so well.
It also has a lower impact on the environment.
It doesn't require quite as much water or space.
It also is a nitrogen fixer.
So it might not require as much fertilizer as well.
I would think people find potato milk
to taste a little bit earthy,
kind of like the potatoes that come from the soil.
However, I suspect it's more neutral in taste
because it's been so highly refined
and a lot of the compounds
that may impart any kind of flavor
are likely removed from the potato.
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Banana milk is a fruit-based milk.
It's a little thicker, it's a little darker
from enzymes, an enzymatic reaction
that you have in bananas.
There's polyphenol oxidase.
It's an enzyme that promotes browning in certain fruits.
One of the benefits of banana milk
is that it's usually fortified with vitamin B12.
Vitamin B12 is usually only delivered
to humans from animal sources.
Banana milk does not taste like bananas.
All of that flavor has been removed in the processing.
It has some of the thickness
from the starches in the bananas,
but it does not have a banana flavor.
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Sesame is a type of seed milk and it's really high in oil.
Sesame is a really important seed crop in the world.
It's grown in a lot of countries.
And for the size, there's quite a lot of oil
which is pressed out prior to making sesame milk.
The oil is very valuable,
so you can sell it for a higher price
than the rest of the seed.
Sesame milk also usually includes
other types of plant-based milks
and emulsifiers and stabilizers.
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Walnut milk is delicious.
It's made from walnuts, and it's pretty simple
and straightforward even commercially.
It's very expensive because it's just walnuts,
which are high in protein,
high in essential fatty acids,
also have some fiber in them and water.
So just those very pure clean ingredients
and you have walnut milk.
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Spelt milk is made from a grain
that's very small and it's an ancient grain.
It's really high in protein.
And it has a little bit of gluten proteins,
the glutenin and the glycerin that you find in wheat.
So if you're avoiding any kind of gluten,
you wanna stay away from spelt.
In conclusion, there are many variations
and something for everybody out there.
Whether you wanna go nuts, seeds, cereals, grains,
they're all delicious, they're nutrient dense,
and they make a delicious plant-based milk.