By Dean L. Jones
Baby boomers probably remember when the government legislated assistance in a kid’s nourishment making it mandatory that every child receive roughly a cup of milk each school day. Public schools received daily milk deliveries, and each teacher would choose a student(s) to act as a monitor in the distribution of the milk to their respective pupils.
Public schools have moved away from that practice, but in general the belief that milk is nutritionally important remains high on the list of daily dietary items. As a result, businesses are constantly seeking ways to sell products in a hefty variety of non-dairy alternative milk sources. The list of non-dairy alternative milk products make it from oats, soy, almonds, rice, flax, hemp, coconut, hazelnut, cashew nut, and a number of other plant-based resources.
Since non-dairy milk alternatives are growing in popularity, there may be a need to revise the milk monitor, but instead of distributing dairy milk try monitoring the per-serving processed sugar level found in the variety of milks. Strangely, non-dairy milk labels frequently display processed cane sugar as the second ingredient, right behind the main source being identified in a type of filtered water mix.
A common reason why people choose to drink milk is to help strengthen the body’s immune system; conversely, ingesting processed sugar weakens the immune system. The basic explanation is that white blood cells need Vitamin C to destroy bacteria and viruses. Where processed sugar and Vitamin C have very similar chemical structures, as the body takes in processed sugar it directly competes for space with Vitamin C immune cells.
So, the more processed sugar is consume, the less Vitamin C can get into white blood cells, thereby weakening the immune system’s defense from infections. When I stopped eating processed sugary-filled items, it became noticeable how my immune system strengthened, all the way to now where it prevents both flu and cold infections.
Ordinarily, having such a large array of choices would breed a big difference in ingredients, but unhappily, alternative milk manufacturers are constantly adding processed sugar to their end-product. Silk is a brand name advertised most often and their Original version contains 7-grams of processed sugar per cup. [Vanilla 16-grams; Light Vanilla 11-grams; and Light 5-grams]. Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Original is 7-grams of processed sugar per cup. [Vanilla 13-grams; and Chocolate 20-grams].
So Delicious Almond Plus Original is 7-grams of processed sugar per cup [Vanilla 8-grams]; Pacific Organic Almond Milk Original is 7-grams of processed sugar per cup [Vanilla 10-grams]; and Natura Almond Milk Original is 7-grams of processed sugar per cup [Chocolate 18-grams; Vanilla 15-grams].
If it were not for processed sugar being so liberally used in other products, having these aforementioned non-dairy milks would probably be rational. Except for, processed sugar is an overtly added foodstuff ingredient; therefore it is necessary to live SugarAlert!
www.SugarAlert.com
Dean Jones is an Ethics Advocate, Southland Partnership Corporation (a public benefit organization), contributing his view on certain aspects of foodstuff.
