One of the things I have tried lately is oat milk. It has “no added sugar” so it must be better. Right?
Well, milk has no added sugar and is “all-natural” too. So, um, yeah – about that…
| Things | Oat Milk | Semi-skimmed* |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 46 kcal | 49 kcal |
| Fat | 1.5 g | 1.7 g |
| – of which saturates (“bad” ) | 0/1 g | 1.0 g |
| Carbohydrate | 7.2 g | 5.0 g |
| – of which sugar (“bad”) | 3.3 g | 5.0 g |
| Fibre | 1.5 g | n/a |
| Protein | 0.3 g | 3.5 g |
| Salt | 0.09 g | 0.1 g |
| Calcium [notes] | 120 mg | 122 mg |
| B12 [notes] | 0.38 μg | 0.4 μg |
| Other vitamins [notes] | Yes | No |
*Because fully skimmed is gross and nasty.
The oat milk I have has vitamins D, B2, and B12 but only because they were added in. Likewise with the calcium.
Overall, oat milk wins in the stats comparison by a tiny margin. The difference is pretty much negligible though.
Oat milk is mostly water with 9.8% being oat. It also contains corn fibre, sunflower oil, stabiliser, and a bunch of other stuff. Overall it is a stretch to call it either oat or milk, to be honest.
Review of Oat Milk
I originally brought 1 litre of oat milk as an experiment. I assumed that oat milk would be much healthier and maybe I would like it.
Drinking oat milk is like drinking liquid porridge. That’s not bad as such but it takes a bit of getting used to.
Oat milk is okay on cereal, would make a reasonable substitute for milk when making porridge, but would no way work in tea.
Given the price at £1.40/litre for oat milk compared to actual milk at £0.47/litre, it is hard to justify buying it.
Overall, I would rate this as just another fad food. For those who cannot tolerate actual milk, this might be an alternative but for me… Eh, not so much. If the margin between weight loss and no weight loss was oat milk, I think I could just as easily drink one less cup of tea a day.
