Almond Milk

What is there to say about milk? It belongs to the pantheon of great American beverages, right next to Coke and Budweiser. It sat comfortably on dinner tables on black and white television shows, transforming plates of meat, peas, and mashed potatoes into a complete meal. Promotional films have been made about it! Ads featuring some of the most recognizable faces in the world are still made about it!

I have never been a big milk drinker. We always had 2% in our house – which apparently tastes like water to whole milk drinkers – and I mostly use it for cereal or baking. I’m fine with the stuff and I’m equally fine without it. I tried soy milk and liked it but not enough to incorporate it into my lifestyle. As for almond milk, I had never tried it until this past fall at my internship. I wanted to try some milk in my tea but just like you’ve undoubtedly experienced in your own house, that which you covet ain’t there. However, there was Almond Breeze almond milk. A handful of my friends had been espousing the awesomeness of almond milk for quite some time so I finally decided to give it a try.

My research tells me that on the almond milk sweetness scale, Almond Breeze tends to be on the higher end. I actually appreciated the flavor because I prefer my Earl Grey slightly sweetened. Killing two birds with one stone never gets old. Almond milk was solid in my book and I continued have it in my tea for the remainder of my internship.

Fast forward to yesterday. I met up with my friend and at one point during our conversation, almond milk came up and she started talking about how great it was and how she loves it in coffee. I decided to read up on almond milk to see if there were any nutritional reasons as to why a non-vegan, non-lactose intolerant person should drink almond milk. It turns out that almond milk has a lot of nutritional benefits: it has no cholesterol and is rich in calcium, Vitamin D, and Vitamin E. It also contains copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, riboflavin, and zinc but the amount present varies amongst brands. Original-flavored almond milk is low in sugar and serving has 60 calories versus the 90 – 150 calories per serving of cow’s milk.

Not bad almond milk, not bad at all.