Owner | Groupe Danone |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Introduced | 1978 |
Markets | United States |
Website | http://silk.com/ |
Silk is an American brand of dairy-substitute products (including soy milk, soy yogurt, almond milk, almond yogurt, Cashew milk, coconut milk, and other dairy-alternative products) owned by Danone North America (formerly WhiteWave Foods).
Silk was founded by Steve Demos in Boulder, Colorado in 1978. The first product was introduced in March 1996 by WhiteWave, Inc. at the Natural Foods Expo in Anaheim, California. In the years that followed, Silk became a successful, worldwide, organic brand.
In 2002 WhiteWave, Inc (parent of Silk Soymilk) was sold to Dean Foods for just under $300 million. The company's sales grew to $350 million in annual revenues by 2005. As the business grew, Silk became the largest purchaser of organic, Non GMO soybeans in North America.[citation needed] According to Silk's web site in August 2009, all its soy beans are sourced from North America including organic and non-GMO soybeans.[1]In January 2010, the company introduced Silk Pure Almond, an almond milk, and its first non-soy-based product.
In 2013, WhiteWave Foods separated from Dean Foods, and became an independent, publicly traded company.
Silk has been a five-year recipient of the Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency.[2][3][clarification needed] Silk has been a supporter of Farm Aid since 2002. Silk is a member of the Soyfoods Association of North America, (SANA) which provides information about the health benefits and nutritional advantages of soy consumption.
In July 2016 it was announced that the French company Danone would purchase WhiteWave Foods for $10.4 billion.[4] The acquisition was completed in April 2017 and newly formed company is named DanoneWave[5]
In the fall of 2009 the Pioneer Press reported that the Cornucopia Institute had made complaints to the U.S. Department of Agriculture accusing Silk producer Dean Foods and its WhiteWave Foods division, of shifting their products away from organics without properly notifying retailers or consumers.[6][7] According to the Star Telegram and other news sources, Silk brand soy milk was made using organic soybeans switched to conventional soybeans while maintaining the same UPC barcodes and prices on the Silk products while replacing the word “organic” with “natural” on the Silk product packaging.[8]
Silk maintains that it sources only domestic/U.S. soy beans. The brand has also enrolled all of its products in the Non-GMO Project's verification process.[9]
As of August 2017:[10]
There are good reasons why people may want to swap soy with dairy milk. The carbon, water and phosphate footprint of soy milk is a fraction of the latter. But the main reason for the increasing popularity of soy milk seems to be health concerns, such as inflammatory bowel disease and lactose intolerance.
First, let’s look at what these milks are. The milk from a cow (or goat, or sheep) is complete food for the growth and development of a young animal. It contains all the essential amino acids (the protein building blocks that your body is unable to make for itself) as well as a complex mixture of fats, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals including calcium, phosphate and vitamin B12.
A soy bean is also complete food – for the growth and development of a soy plant seedling. The nutritional needs of plants are obviously quite different from those of animals, and accordingly, the nutritional profile of unadulterated soy milk is very different from that of animal milks.
Fresh soy milk, made from grinding and then straining soaked dried soy beans, has less fat and carbohydrate than animal milks, and only a small amount of calcium. And it’s missing some of the vitamins present in animal milks as well.
The protein content of soy milk is similar to cow’s milk, and all the essential amino acids are present but in smaller amounts than in cow’s milk. Because it’s plant food, soy milk contains small amounts of fibre, and twice as much folate as animal milks.
The contrast between the two products is significantly reduced when comparing the commonly-available commercial brands of soy and cow’s milk. Both types of milk are heat-treated as part of production, to destroy bacteria and enzymes that may be harmful to health or shorten shelf life. They’re also nutritionally similar.
Supermarket soy milk products are mostly made from soy protein isolate powder (rather than ground whole soy beans), reconstituted with water and adjusted with oil and often sugar, to bring the fat and carbohydrate content to levels comparable with full-cream cow’s milk. A similar vitamin and mineral content is achieved by adding vitamins (including B12) and calcium.
Once this is done, the main differences between the products are in the type (rather than the amount) of carbohydrate, protein and fat.
The carbohydrate in cow’s milk is lactose, the milk sugar, which is digested by the enzyme lactase. In most animals (including human ones), the amount of lactase in the intestine naturally decreases after weaning. Once this has happened, milk cannot be digested properly, causing flatulence or diarrhoea.
In humans who continue to consume lactose-rich dairy products throughout their lives, lactase enzymes are maintained in the gut. But some unlucky individuals become lactose intolerant and, for them, soy milk is a useful alternative as it contains no lactose.
For everyone else, though, lactose has some advantages over other sugars because it has a very low glycaemic index. This means that it is released slowly into the blood, avoiding abrupt spikes in blood glucose levels.
Both soy and dairy milk are good sources of protein, with different health advantages. Soy protein appears to have its own protective effect on heart health, possibly due to its content of phytochemicals (beneficial plant substances). Some of these include phytoestrogens, whose weak oestrogen-like action can help soothe hormonal swings during menopause.
Cow’s milk consists of two proteins, casein and whey, both of which are popular among body-builders as effective muscle-building proteins. In controlled diets, dairy foods appear to promote fat loss, possibly due to the effect of their calcium content in conjunction with the dairy proteins and other substances in milk. This effect is not seen when the same nutrients are consumed as supplements.
The fat content is similar in both cow and soy milk, and low fat or “light” varieties are available for both. The type of fat in full-cream cow’s milk is butterfat, high in saturated fat, while soybean oil is mostly polyunsaturated. The fats added to soy milk are usually canola or sunflower oil, again rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats. This means that soy milk is a source of “good” fats.
The Heart Foundation recommends we avoid saturated fats in order to control our cholesterol levels, but interestingly full-fat dairy foods don’t appear to increase the risk of heart disease in the same way as other sources of saturated fat. This may be due to the protective effect of other complex elements in milk (such as the proteins or minerals) or the unsaturated fats present.
Fresh, raw soy milk and fresh, raw animal milk are very different foods. But in the form usually purchased in the supermarket, there’s little difference in their nutritional profile. So rest assured that if you choose to replace some, or all, of your dairy milk intake with soy milk for environmental reasons, you will not be nutritionally disadvantaged.
I’ve never been a big milk drinker, but I pour it over cereal or granola, add a splash to black tea, and order the occasional cappuccino. Several years ago I discovered almond milk, and making the switch from cow’s milk to non-dairy milk felt like a no-brainer. It seemed like everyone around me was giving up dairy for health reasons, and since I wasn’t particularly attached to milk I joined in.
But then I learned a little more — and stopped drinking alternative milks altogether. Here’s why I made the switch back to cow’s milk.
One of the reasons I initially switched to non-dairy milk was because I learned about the prevalence of lactose intolerance: 65 percent of human population has trouble digesting lactose, the sugar found in milk. For people of East Asian descent like me, that statistic is even more significant: Up to 90 percent of the population is lactose intolerant, and even those who aren’t lactose intolerant as a child can develop an intolerance as an adult. Those numbers seemed so high, I was pretty sure I had to have some kind of intolerance.
And yet I have never had a single symptom of lactose intolerance. Drinking a milkshake has never given me gas, abdominal cramps, or any signs of gastrointestinal distress. And I’m definitely not allergic to casein, the protein in milk, which would manifest itself as an immune reaction after drinking milk. As far as I can tell, I digest dairy just fine.
I don’t follow a special diet or adhere to any particular eating philosophy except one: I make sure most of what I eat every day is unprocessed food. That means I cook from scratch and read labels carefully, but also indulge in the occasional treat. The key word here is occasional. I believe you can eat anything you want, as long as you eat it in moderation; it’s the foods you eat on a daily basis that you need to keep an eye on.
But almost every day I was consuming an industrially processed food with one especially concerning additive: carrageenan.
Carrageenan is an additive derived from seaweed and is used as a stabilizer and thickener. Although it is considered safe by the FDA, some scientists have raised questions about the potentially harmful effects of widespread carrageenan consumption. (You can read a review of the research, published in 2001, here.)
The FDA denied a petition to re-examine the safety of carrageenan and it is still an approved ingredient in organic products, but many companies have reformulated their products to cut out the additive.
Until I had this realization, I had felt so virtuous every time I passed by the milk case at the grocery store and stocked my shopping cart with organic almond milk instead. After, those cartons stuck out like a sore thumb in my basket of fruits, vegetables, meats, and whole grains.
Of course, not all milk is created equal. I don’t consider cheap milk from sad cows on industrial farms the better alternative. Instead, I seek out the best-quality milk I can find, from local sources when possible. This means milk that is considerably more expensive than the stuff I can buy from the convenience store around the corner, but as with meat and eggs, I think what that extra money buys — better animal welfare, fewer pesticides, support for a more sustainable food system — is worth it.
I don’t consume all that much milk, and I don’t think I ever will. But I’m also not lactose intolerant, allergic to milk, or vegan, so a small amount of good-quality milk every day is the choice that works best for me. And in dairy-hating, health-obsessed Los Angeles, it’s one that feels almost rebellious!
How about you? What kind of milk do you drink and what are the factors that informed your decision?
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