Before I was diagnosed with the cow milk allergy, it never dawned on me that yogurts can be made with milks other than from a cow. I mean, if you live in the U.S. and can eat whatever dairy you want, why would it even occur to you other than health reasons or a friend/family member told you about it, to think of non-cow milk yogurts?
What I'm getting at is how much the cow dominates our eating culture. Don't get me wrong, I love the cow, and miss its milk dearly, but for many of us, milk does not do our body good, so we need choices.
When it comes to yogurt, one of the things I love about Whole Foods is that they offer a plethora of non-cow milk yogurt choices. In this picture, here is the wall of yogurt at my local Whole Foods. Pretty amazing!
So, just to shed some light, here are some other milks that are used to make yogurt:
- Soy
- Rice
- Coconut
- Arrowroot
- Sheep
- Goat
- Nut (cashew, almond, hazelnut. macademia)
Basically, you can take any type of milk and turn it into a yogurt. Here's a simple recipe to make nut milk based yogurts at home. Arrowroot is a new non-cow milk yogurt I've seen through the brand Nogurt.
I will point out though that the taste and experience of non-cow milk yogurts is a whole other story. I've tried all of the above yogurts except nut and Arrowroot. Of the yogurts I've tried, the coconut milk based yogurts made by So Delicious brand are by far the best. In fact, the So Delicious yogurt is so important to me that I've listed it as one of, "10 Things in Steph's Healthy Kitchen."
I avoid soy as much as possible because it affects my metabolism. Rice milk yogurts tend to be on the watery side and not as flavorful. Goat and Sheep taste too barnyardy for me.
Your palate may be different, so I recommend you try any of the yogurts listed above. I highly encourage experimenting. If anything, trying out a new yogurt would be an interesting conversation topic.
So, what is your favorite non-cow milk yogurt?
