I purchased a carton of Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Vanilla Almond Milk for my daughter the other day. Oh my. She's ambivalent, but I'm in love. BUT the ingredient list has me a little concerned so I'm going to investigate.
Before I do so, I am proud to announce the launching of OneHealthyKid.com which is my daughter Bella's food blog. One of the challenges I've faced as I've become a more conscious and healthier eater is my inability to convince my child to follow. She's been virtually vegetarian her entire seven and a half years (an occasional meal of chicken nuggets or fried calamari - I really think it's the "fried" that she likes) and we weaned her off liquid cow milk several years ago, so those aren't issues.
She likes to describe herself as a "Cheese-atarian" because that is literally her favorite food...put it on bread, pita, tortillas or pasta and she's a happy kid. I like to purchase organic, raw cheese for her when I can find it and she's great about eating sprouted grain and whole wheat products. But cheese is still a cow milk product and I'm not thrilled about that. Sadly too, her narrow extent of fresh foods include apples, carrots, watermelon, pomegranates and edamame (whole soy beans).
She and I have discussed different ways to encourage her to like new fresh foods. She has long ditched helping me in the garden, so that didn't work. Together we decided to start OneHealthyKid.com so that she can learn about new fresh foods and try them live on video for her blog. Please join us there too!
Back to the almond milk.....
Here are the ingredients in the vanilla variety: filtered water, evaporated cane juice, almonds, calcium carbonate, natural vanilla flavor with other natural flavors, sea salt, potassium citrate, carrageenan, soy lecithin, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D2 and D-alpha-tocopherol (natural Vitamin E)
Unfortunately this almond milk is not organic by nature of lacking any organic ingredients. The fact that there is more cane juice than almonds in almond milk is a bit disconcerting. (A food's ingredients are listed in order of most to least, fyi.) "Natural flavors" are ambiguous at best. All the additives are surely synthetic and the soy lecithin is surely derived from GMO (genetically modified) soy.
BUT I would still drink this almond milk over cow milk any day. Because pharmaceuticals are injected into the animal and not into the animal's milk, those additives are not required on the cow milk carton's label even though they are passed into the milk. Conventional milk is a toxic sauce of cow pus (from chronic teat infection), medicine and milk. The best kind of cow milk to drink is raw cow milk, but still the milk is designed for baby's cows, not baby humans or grown humans.
Milk derived from a plant --- Exactly how does one milk a plant? I'll explain below ---- be it almonds, hemp or rice (I don't recommend soy milk) is almost certainly a safer and a more healthful choice than animal milk, except maybe raw animal milk in certain situations. Young children probably shouldn't have almond milk until at least one year of age and are hopefully getting human breast milk at least up until then.
I would like to find a packaged organic almond milk in my area for an occasional treat, however, the best way to control additives and organics is to make your own plant (nut or seed) milk. While I've only ever made my own almond milk, here are recipes for rice milk and hemp milk.
Here's the almond milk recipe I used from Matt Amsden's Rawvolution recipe book. It couldn't be easier!
"To make almond milk, combine 1 cup of [raw, organic] almonds and 3.5 cups of pure water in a blender, blend until smooth, and strain through a nut-milk bag [or cheese cloth]."
And that is how you milk a plant. Live Light, xo-C.
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