Almonds are undoubtedly some of the healthiest foods you can eat. They provide healthy fats, protein, antioxidants, flavonoids, and beneficial phenols. Would this make almond milk healthy and nutritious as well? Not necessarily.
Millions of Americans are filling their refrigerators with almond milk as a healthier alternative to dairy milk, but they might be throwing their money away, along with much needed nutrients. Read this story to find out the true health benefits of almond milk and what to do about it.
If almonds are superfoods, so is almond milk, right? Unfortunately, that carton of almond milk you just bought for a premium price has substandard nutrition.
Store-bought almond milk includes the…
nutrition you find in almonds, but in addition it is filled with water, sweeteners, and additives.
This means that the average carton of almond milk contains the equivalent of only a handful of almonds. Recent research concluded that leading brands of almond milk contain only 2 percent almonds, and the rest is a mixture of sweeteners, water, added A, E, D vitamins, and carrageenan (a thickening agent).
What does this mean? It means that when you pour a glass of almond milk for your child in order to provide him or her with essential nutrients for growth and health, you are actually giving them loads of harmful ingredients, the worst of which is sugar.
Earlier this year, a three year old boy in New Zealand had to have eleven teeth removed because of the damage done by his unusually high sugar intake. A nightmare for any parent, this kind of anecdote has driven many to switch their kids to sugar-free diets, but that may not be enough.
Even sports drinks, which are marketed specifically as an important part of a healthy, active lifestyle may contain as much as 12 packets of sugar per 12 ounce serving.
And sugar and other sweeteners are literally everywhere you turn in the grocery store, from salad dressings to soups to pasta sauces.
In fact sugar, corn syrup, honey, agave, and the myriad of synthetic sweeteners are in pretty much every prepared food product you can think of. It may be that sweeteners are more common additives than salt.
The worst part for parents is the drinks, though. Even many sugar-free drinks contain acidic additives that soften tooth enamel. This also happens when you drink beverages that do contain sugar. The sugar from the drink reacts to the plaque already covering your teeth and produces harmful acids. And that is a recipe for disaster when talking about the baby teeth, which are much less strong than adult teeth.
So what are parents to do? Well, the healthiest form of milk is dairy milk. But if your child is lactose intolerant, then there is good news. You can make your own almond milk at home so that it does have all the nutrients found in almonds without all the harmful added sugar.
Below we feature a news report on almond milk, please watch it and leave your comments below. Share this article with your friends to show them something they probably didn’t know.
Source: AWM
