Food Review: Silk’s Almond Milk

I’ve written on here previously about my issues with dairy. The short end of it is, as much as I love milk, chocolate milk and milk in my cereal, as I’ve gotten older, whenever I drink milk, thereafter my stomach is a mess. It doesn’t matter if it’s whole milk, 2% milk, 1% milk or even skim milk. And it doesn’t matter the quantity, either. A moderate heaping (can you moderately heap?) into the cereal bowl and I’m still feeling blargh afterward.

So, I’ve ventured out to a plant-based nutty alternative: Silk’s Almond milk, sweetened with vanilla. Before I get into further analysis, let me just spoil you at the start here:

• This passes the taste test. Before anything else, that’s the most important part of putting anything edible into my body. That’s probably due to the vanilla sweetening, but regardless, yum! If you think plant-based almond milk sounds weird when you’re used to cow-based milk, then let me tell you, it does sound weird, but it’s still delicious!
• There are only 80 calories per 8 ounces. I rarely even do half of that in a bowl of cereal, so we’re talking 40 calories at most. On the other hand, my favorite cow-based milk, 2% reduced fat milk is 120 calories per 8 ounces. So, at my cereal level, 60 calories. Not a huge difference by any means, but hey, if you’re counting calories like I am, that’s something to take into consideration!
• And most pertinent to what I discussed above: No blargh feeling after having a bowl of cereal with almond milk. I felt fine! Did I just crack my digestive code on how to enjoy milk without feeling blargh? I think I cracked the code, folks. Or, uh, Silk did.

There are a lot of alternatives out there for meat and dairy products that try to imitate the products we love while not being those products. Think impossible meat. And to be honest, a lot of them fall short. In my opinion, almond milk (sweetened with vanilla! who knows what the unsweetened version would taste like) is actually better than 2% milk. Yeah, I said it!

Plants for the win!

My favorite part of the carton here is that the back uses my go-to phrase for describing all edible items: Smooth. “We believe in making delicious plant-based food that does right by you and fuels our passion for the planet to make your journey smooth.” They sure did! My digestive system is chugging along nice and smooth.

Also, for those who worry about the amount of water it takes to grow almonds (reportedly 20 gallons of water to make one glass worth of almond milk), Silk promises that it offsets 100 percent of the water used in their plants, restoring it to nature. I’m not sure what that means. So, on their website, they explain that they balance all the water used in their manufacturing facilities to make all of their products partnering with drought-stricken places in California to restore more than 8.7 billion gallons of water to freshwater ecosystems.

Also, it’s worth pointing out, that conventional cow milk still uses significantly more water to make than almond milk. If sustainability is your thing, then check that box, too.

Have any of you tried any of Silk’s products or almond-based dairy products in general, such as milk? If not, I highly recommend trying the milk out!