As a consumer I’m overwhelmed by the selection of milk alternatives on grocery store shelves. They can be made from: soy, rice, oats, almonds or hempseeds. You can even buy one that combine rice and soy.  So how do you know which one is best for you?  Perhaps by comparing labels and taste. This sounds like a great experiment for my in office clients!

For this experiment I'm comparing the taste, price and nutritional information for 3 milk alternatives: soymilk, oatmilk, and almond milk.  I picked these 3 products because soy is what I drink daily and I had never tried the other 2 before. The method of taste testing involved  sampeling of all 3 lactose free products in small mouthful amounts. Participants did not know which milk was made from what and were asked to guess after tasting all 3 varieties.  Let me tell you, I was plesently surprised by the end results.

In the taste test (to my surprise) most participants favored the oat milk, then the soy, then the almond.  The oat milk had a lot of flavor, the soy tasted more like cows milk, and the almond had a funny aftertaste.

As for cost, the milk alternatives were comparable in price which ranged from $1.99 for the soy to $2.69 for the almond milk. All in all, these alternatives are pretty much the same price as cows milk.

And as for nutrition all 3 products differ. Nutritionally speaking, consumers drink milk for its protein and calcium content.  All 3 alternatives contain 30 % of your daily calcium intake however the protein amounts differ. Soymilk has an impressive 8 grams of protein per serving, followed by oat at 3 grams and almond with only 1 gram.  I'd also like to note that all 3 milk alternatives had only 4 gram of fat per serving.  Also the calories differed, for a 1 cup serving the calorie counts were: soy  80, oat  120, and the almond at 60.

All in all, the winner of the milk alternative taste test is oatmilk; however when it comes to nutritional information the soymilk wins.  Participants thought the almond milk had a funny aftertaste and were surprised that it didn't smell like almonds at all. I would like to thank all my in office clients for helping me gather the data for this in office experiment.

Do you have another healthy food experiment you'd like us to evaluate? If so email your suggestions to us at Rachelle Wood Nutrition.