The thing is, I haven't drank milk in years (only hot chocolate once in a while), and I've gotten the kids used to soy milk since they were around twelve months old, in hopes that they would like it (I clearly and unfortunately don't!). Because of that, I'm always trying to find a non-dairy milk-like beverage that I like. No luck so far. The only soy milk I ever liked was the refrigerated Vitasoy which disappeared from grocery stores years ago -- their site still indicates it's sold in some places, but I haven't found it. I also enjoy the new So Delicious coconut based milk-like beverage (this is the manufacturer, but the product site is down), but it's just so expensive I cannot afford to use it for my family. :-(
So a couple of weeks ago I was in Trader Joe's buying my sons' soy milk and I decided to try this new beverage, made of whole grains:
I couldn't believe my eyes, though, when I went to open it some days later and saw this in the nutrition facts:
Really!?! No protein? In a whole cup? Aren't proteins one of the main reasons (if not the main reason) people drink milk or milk substitute beverages? At least it's one of my main reasons, to add more protein to my diet, since I don't eat meat (and calcium when the product is. I looked at the list of ingredients (click to enlarge):
...and seeing that brown rice was the second one, I went to get some of the bags of brown rice that I had in my pantry. It turns out that 1/4 of a cup of brown rice has between 3-4g of protein. Here are the labels of brown jasmine rice (from Trader's too) and plain long grain brown rice (from WalMart) -- click to enlarge:
Then today I picked up my bag of quinoa, another of the ingredients (although probably in trace form because it's one of the last ones in the list -- still prominently placed on the front label, though, together with amaranth and millet, both very rich in protein), and quinoa has 6g of protein in 1/4 of a cup:
How much brown rice or any of these other cereals can be found in a cup of this beverage exactly? Almost nothing, I guess. It is a very thin drink and it tastes pleasantly enough, but... I was more than disappointed by its serious nutritional deficiency. Does Trader Joe's really expect me to go back and buy this zero protein milk substitute again? Really!?! 'Cause I just won't!
Here in Spain, and I'm sure other places so probably the US too, they have oat-based milk substitutes that are pretty good (I don't know about protein) and also there are some nut-based ones like almond milk. I've never had soy milk myself, though soy products are becoming popular here.
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