Your Complete Guide to Plant-based Milk

2020-7-9

For those of you who doesn’t have any idea what plant-based milk is, they are beverages made from grains, nuts, seeds and/or legumes, they look similar to the ordinary cow’s milk but are totally dairy-free. With the growing appetite for plant-based milk in Hong Kong, there are plenty of choices of plant-based milk now even in supermarkets. A few years ago, the Hong Kong plant milk market was still largely dominated by soy milk, but demands for other options such as oat, almond, rice and quinoa milk are on the rise. It’s definitely great news to those who are lactose-intolerant and vegans. So which kind of plant milk is the best for you? What are their nutrition values? Here are the answers!

Plant milks outcompete cow’s milk in many aspects. First, they are lactose-free and cholesterol-free because lactose (a type of sugar) and cholesterol are found in animal products only. Drinking plant milk will not cause lactose intolerance symptoms nor increase of bad cholesterol level in blood so they are healthier than cow’s milk. Plus, production of plant drinks requires less water and land to yield the same amount of cow’s milk, and it releases less greenhouse gases, making these drinks more eco-friendly. Besides, the whole process of plant milk production does not involve animal suffering and no hormones nor antibiotics is needed to boost the production yield.

Do you know: Is there a difference between plant "milks" and plant drinks?

In principle, the term “milk” may not be suitable to describe these beverages because milk should be produced from mammary glands in animals as stated in the European Union law. Therefore, in European countries, plant-based beverages that imitate milk are only allowed to be described as plant drinks (e.g. oat drinks and soy drinks instead of oat milk and soy milk respectively). However, most people, especially non-vegetarian, would feel comfortable with the name “plant milk” because of similarity in appearance so many plant drinks in the market are commercialized as plant “milks”.

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