Soy milk and other plant milks

Soy milk is made by soaking soybeans, grinding them with water and straining the result. That is the whole process. You will sometimes see it written as soy mylk on a carton, which is a spelling some brands use to mark a drink out as plant-based rather than dairy. It is the same thing.

What makes it worth knowing about is protein. A glass of soy milk gives you somewhere around seven to nine grams, which puts it close to dairy milk and well ahead of every other plant milk on the shelf. Oat drinks come next and are some way behind at roughly two to four grams, while almond and rice drinks barely register, often around a gram or less.

If you are reaching for a plant milk partly to help you hold on to muscle, soy is the one that does that job. The others are fine as drinks; they are simply not doing much for your protein.

The first thing is whether it is fortified. Calcium and vitamin B12 are added to many soy milks but not all, and the fortified ones are considerably more useful if you are not getting much dairy.

The second is sugar. A lot of what sells is sweetened, sometimes quite heavily, and unsweetened is the sensible everyday choice with sweetened kept as a treat.

It slots in easily enough. Soy milk works in tea, over oats or muesli, in rice pudding and in most places you would use milk, though it behaves a little differently when heated hard.

Soy will already be familiar to you in other forms, as tofu, soy chunks and soya granules, and those count towards your protein just as the drink does.

None of this is an argument for giving up dairy. If curd, milk and cheese suit you, they are excellent sources of protein and calcium and there is no reason to replace them.

Soy milk is genuinely useful if you are avoiding dairy, if it does not agree with you, or if you simply want another way to get protein into the day. This is general food guidance, not medical advice, and any specific concerns about soy in your own diet are worth raising with your doctor.