'Silk' soy milk? (Read 1348 times)

Hi All, Just picked up some jugs of 'silk'. Main reason being it doesn't expire as fast as the milk here does. We only have a few days normally before our regular milk goes bad, so we decided to give 'silk' a shot. Are there really health benefits from this stuff? Less cholesterol? Any drawbacks? We got the light original kind, and the light vanilla flavor. Thanks a lot for any input. -Mike

It's the only brand of soy milk I like (and I can't drink regular milk). I drink a glass of the light chocolate after every run. It significantly decreased my night sweats and hot flashes.

regular milk is probably fine if you don't have an allergy or food tolerance issue. If you are concerned with fat, drink 1% or skim. I'm no expert, but if it is health benefits you seek, drink milk.

Correct. Eat food. Soy milk, in the end, is a (mildly) processed food product. And if you can, get unhomogenized milk, then let the fat rise and scrape it off. That is as lowfat as 0.5% milk, or so, and is not homogenized. Milk homogenization is also food processing (hint: they don't just shake the stuff up really hard). Unhomogenized milk may be less likely to cause symptoms of lactose intolerance and mild allergies.

Nashville is nowhere near dairy country, but we now have three sources of unhomogenized milk. Five years ago, we had none. So keep an eye out for it, it is a growing market...weird, since it is the original product and all you could get just a generation or two ago. A prior post on this stuff: http://runningahead.com/forums/post/a2d08cc6dd0849b8aad9d6bfe068ede9#focus

The milk sticking to the pan scares the crap out of me. Homogenized milk does. Unhomogenized milk does not. What is that sticky processed "homogenized" milk doing inside my body?

The milk IS pasteurized but IS NOT homogenized. With homogenized milk, this does not work: "Skim milk: boil milk and skim fat off." The layer you see at the top of boiled milk is coagulated milk proteins, likely casein. Read the post I linked to, above, for details.

I drink Silk Unsweetened - maybe 1 gram of sugar. Add a little splenda if needed but more healthy (fewer calories) than the sweetened / flavored kinds.

Does it work with unhomogenised? that's what I'd do if I ran out of skim milk.

With unhomogenized milk, you do not need to boil it. The fat will just rise. That is why "they" invented homogenization, to : a) keep the fat from rising in whole milk, and b) to remove the fat in lowfat milk. The problem is, the homogenization process likely alters the milk in some way that is unhealthy...which is why RZR and I see it sticking to the pan when heated.

Specially interesting to me was something called the Wulzen factor, the researchers that named it fed calves pasteurised cows milk and the calves developed stiff joints.

Yes. I know about this debate. I do think it a farce that the penalties in most states for selling raw milk are higher than the penalties for selling some street drugs. But we have no good evidence that pasteurization changes milk in a way that is potentially dangerous. Of course, I have no research evidence to support my concern about homogenization either, but the pot sticking thing and certain epidemiological trends seem to support it (to a degree). Plus, unhomogenized milk tastes better. Plus, I can get unhomogenized milk easily and legally. You may want to try pasteurized but unhomogenized milk if you can find it. I personally just don't know what the big deal about scraping the fat off the milk is, and why it is so hard to find unhomogenized milk in many places. Fat rising to the top is what milk is about, and that fat (i.e., heavy cream) is useful in many recipes or is easily thrown out if you need to avoid it. It goes along with the usual American trend of removing food from its sources when presenting it in the store. Many kids don't realize, for example, that carrots come from the ground or that the meat so neatly prepackaged in the grocery store comes from real animals. For real. I think that disrespects the animals and the people that produce our food. Chickens have heads and we should be ready to deal with that fact. And the fat that rises to the top of milk is tasty.