Who doesn't love an iced chai latte from your local coffee shop? But a Grande at Starbucks can load 315 calories and 37g sugar in 16 ounces! Even a Grande using soy milk is 203 calories and 25g carbohydrates.
"HEATHIFIED" ICED CHAI
1 Chai Tea Bag
16 ounces vanilla almond milk (or coconut milk)
4 TBS Swerve (or stevia to taste)
Warm almond milk until soft steam (not boiling). Add tea bag and sweetener and steep. Place in fridge to cool. Pour over ice and serve. (Or serve hot).
NUTRITIONAL COMPARISON (per serving)
Starbuck's Chai Latte = 315 calories, 39 carbs, 0 fiber, 37g sugar
"Healified" Chai Latte = 80 Calories, 4 carbs, 2 fiber, 0 sugar
For those of you who think you are doing yourself a favor by drinking soy, think again. Many people are becoming aware of the health problems connected with pasteurized dairy products, so a lot of people are turning to milk substitutes like soy and rice milk. But they both have some issues too.
Soy and rice milk often contain polyunsaturated vegetable oils which contributes to an imbalance of essential fatty acids in your body. A chronic imbalance of these fatty acids caused by regular consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. Polyunsaturated fats that contribute to this harmful imbalance are found in corn, soybean, sunflower, and cottonseed oils...pretty much everything on the grocery store shelf. Some brands of soy and rice milk also contain rice syrup, evaporated cane juice, or some other natural sweetener. Natural or not, most sweeteners put significant stress on your pancreas and liver. They also raise your insulin levels, which significantly increases your risk of suffering from unhealthy weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, premature aging, and several other negative side effects. While small amounts of fermented forms of soy like miso, tempeh, and natto can be okay choices for some people, non-fermented soy products can cause a variety of health problems if consumed in large quantities on a regular basis, including changing our estrogen levels. A jail was recently in big trouble because they were feeding the prisoners soy meat, milk, soy butter...you name it, they were trying to decrease the testosterone in the prisoners!
You can make a rich and creamy alternative to cow’s, soy, and rice milk with raw almonds and a good blender.
All-Natural Almond Milk
1 1/2 cups of raw almonds, soaked in water overnight
4 cups of filtered or spring water
Blend 1 ½ cups of raw almonds that have been soaked overnight in 4 cups of water. Blend with pure vanilla extract if you like your milk with a hint of sweetness. Strain once to remove almond granules. The result is a delicious, creamy milk that is free of harmful vegetable oil, and sweeteners. It can be stored safely for 3-4 days in the refrigerator.
"HEATHIFIED" ICED CHAI
1 Chai Tea Bag
16 ounces vanilla almond milk (or coconut milk)
4 TBS Swerve (or stevia to taste)
Warm almond milk until soft steam (not boiling). Add tea bag and sweetener and steep. Place in fridge to cool. Pour over ice and serve. (Or serve hot).
NUTRITIONAL COMPARISON (per serving)
Starbuck's Chai Latte = 315 calories, 39 carbs, 0 fiber, 37g sugar
"Healified" Chai Latte = 80 Calories, 4 carbs, 2 fiber, 0 sugar
For those of you who think you are doing yourself a favor by drinking soy, think again. Many people are becoming aware of the health problems connected with pasteurized dairy products, so a lot of people are turning to milk substitutes like soy and rice milk. But they both have some issues too.
Soy and rice milk often contain polyunsaturated vegetable oils which contributes to an imbalance of essential fatty acids in your body. A chronic imbalance of these fatty acids caused by regular consumption of polyunsaturated vegetable oils is a major cause of cardiovascular disease. Polyunsaturated fats that contribute to this harmful imbalance are found in corn, soybean, sunflower, and cottonseed oils...pretty much everything on the grocery store shelf. Some brands of soy and rice milk also contain rice syrup, evaporated cane juice, or some other natural sweetener. Natural or not, most sweeteners put significant stress on your pancreas and liver. They also raise your insulin levels, which significantly increases your risk of suffering from unhealthy weight gain, high blood pressure, heart disease, premature aging, and several other negative side effects. While small amounts of fermented forms of soy like miso, tempeh, and natto can be okay choices for some people, non-fermented soy products can cause a variety of health problems if consumed in large quantities on a regular basis, including changing our estrogen levels. A jail was recently in big trouble because they were feeding the prisoners soy meat, milk, soy butter...you name it, they were trying to decrease the testosterone in the prisoners!
You can make a rich and creamy alternative to cow’s, soy, and rice milk with raw almonds and a good blender.
All-Natural Almond Milk
1 1/2 cups of raw almonds, soaked in water overnight
4 cups of filtered or spring water
Blend 1 ½ cups of raw almonds that have been soaked overnight in 4 cups of water. Blend with pure vanilla extract if you like your milk with a hint of sweetness. Strain once to remove almond granules. The result is a delicious, creamy milk that is free of harmful vegetable oil, and sweeteners. It can be stored safely for 3-4 days in the refrigerator.
I LOVE almond milk. Personally I can't stand the taste of soy. I tried a couple different brands of soy before saying "Forget It!" and soon afterwrds found almond milk-YEA! With only 1g of sugar (store brand you have listed), it doesn't affect my sugar level at all and is perfect is my protein smoothies or just plain (ice cold-mmm).
ReplyDeleteI haven't tried making my own...yet.
Thanks for the recipe!
Thanks Lucy;)
ReplyDeleteI'm really excited to make this. Do I blend the almonds in the same water they were soaking overnight in, or do I drain and replace with fresh water, and then blend? I'm sorry if I'm making such an easy recipe more complicated, I just don't want to mess it up.
ReplyDeleteYep, use the same water. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteHow does this work Maria? You soak the almonds in water to remove the to eliminate phytic acid, doesn't it go in the water the nuts have been soaked in or is it one of those reactions that just eliminates the acid altogether?
ReplyDeleteI have always used fresh water to blend my soaked almonds, even rinsed the almonds first. This would be a good step to avoid. Thanks for any insight.
As far as I know this eliminates the phytic acid. But I don't think a lot of research has been done on it so I will let you know if I see something to the contrary. :)
DeleteI love Panera's Chai the best but they were using Republic of Tea's Chai concentrate so know of any brands close to that taste and have a recipe for hot chai? :)
ReplyDeleteJust use the above recipe and serve hot. :)
DeleteI tried their bag of chai from Republic of Tea-different flavor. I like the black tea and the Republic of Tea concentrate was my favorite-have a good replacement?
DeleteI have a couple options I like here. :)
Deletehttp://astore.amazon.com/marisnutran05-20?_encoding=UTF8&node=14
Your recipe for nut milk is Yummy. the other one I tried before was too watered down. I love yours and can't wait to see if it froths in the coffee machine at work (I haven't given up on coffee completely yet!)... also I think I'm going to try to make breakfast cereal (your crunchy cereal type) with the leftover meal, unless you have better ideas?
ReplyDeleteThank you! I think that's a great idea! :)
DeleteThe ever so slightly wet almond pulp turned the cereal recipe into cookie batter! I've done a bit of research and though I would love a recipe to use the pulp as is from making milk, a few people suggest to dehydrate it (dehydrator or low oven) and turn it into almond flour. When I make myself a protein smoothie, I'll just not bother draining the almond milk, and use the extra fibre as part of the smoothie.
DeleteThanks for letting me know. :)
DeleteJust an FYI the tea pictured contains (non-fermented) soy.
ReplyDeleteI too have just started making my own almond milk, and dehydrate the pulp to use as a flour (I sure don't want to waste all that!). I have only tried one recipe of yours using my own almond flour, the cheese it crackers. I had made them before with a store bought almond flour and loved them. With my almond flour not so much :). Could this be because my flour was made from unblanched almonds? Do you have any suggestions on which recipes might do better with homemade almond flour? As always, thank you for sharing, I am really enjoying your recipes (and my husband loves that you use bacon as a starter for some recipes ~ I can get him to eat anything with bacon!!!)
ReplyDeleteThank you! I think home made almond flour has higher moisture content. So look for recipes where you can add less liquids to offset this. :)
DeleteHowever Maria, wouldn't *dehydrated* flour made from leftover from almond milk have less moisture? When I dried my almond pulp in my low temperature oven, it was quite dry but this was an oven, not a dehydrator, so I'm not sure of the results. I'm interested in a dehydrator... eventually.
DeleteHowever if you just use the pulp without dehydrating it, it's very very wet (used that in cookies once, and the dough was very wet, had to adjust dry ingredients) -- so yep, you just need to adjust your recipes to the right consistency. Maria usually states when only blanched almond flour should be used.
I've used dry almond milk pulp in some of the "HEALTHIFIED" CEREAL recipes. I'm very interested in this topic for the same reasons as Nicole, don't like to waste.
I've found some unsweetened almond milk (no agave, no this, no that!) at the local shop finally (Blue Diamond, I think that's what you use Maria) so I'm less inclined to make my own since my good blender is broken at the moment :) Nicole, if you do use your pulp successfully, please come let us know, so I can benefit from our experience :o)
Yes, If you dehydrated it that should help. I'm not sure what the difference would be from dehydrated vs. store bought. I actually use the unsweetened Silk almond milk. :)
DeleteOops, Thanks for the correction about the milk! :)
DeleteWhat brand of almond milk do you use? I noticed that Almond Breeze contians carrageenan, which I thought was a bad thing. Any suggestions? Thank you!
ReplyDeleteI use Silk unsweetened or make my own. :)
DeleteSomeone said today that Almond Milk is highly processed, so they just use cows milk.....What are your thoughts. I usually use the Silk Brand like you, but in my fridge right now is a Trader Joes brand, and there is quite a bit of ingredients besides almonds and filtered water.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
It is no more processed than the vast majority of milk out there. Here is a description of the process used to make skim milk from my metabolism class. Yuk!
Delete- Butter-fat is in milk for a reason
Without it, cannot absorb the vitamins and minerals
Synthetic vitamin D, is added to replace the natural vitamin D
- Non-fat dried milk is added to Skim, 1% and 2% milk
Dried milk is produced by forcing skim milk through tiny holes at high
temperatures and pressures which damages its nutrients.
Unlike the cholesterol in fresh milk, the cholesterol in non-fat dried milk is oxidized and this rancid cholesterol promotes heart disease
- All spray dried products (non-fat dried milk) has a high nitrite
content
- Precious enzymes are destroyed in the pasteurization process
Without them, milk is very difficult to digest
The pancreas can’t produce these enzymes;
stress of the pancreas = diabetes and other diseases
As for almond milk, I use the Silk brand and the only thing in the ingredients is water, almonds, thickener (like guar gum which is harmless) and vitamins. You can make your own at home where you just soak almonds in water. :)
Thanks Maria! I did read your post the other day too about Whole Milk. It is amazing to read this stuff. It's like we've been "brainwashed" for so long with fat is bad...fat is bad....that it is amazing to read a lot of your posts and see your successful clients stories. It is for sure proof that what you say works. :) Thanks for all the great information all the time!
DeleteThanks!!
Jan
Thanks Jan. My clients are always amazed that they more fat they eat, the more they lose. They even start saying "I am so full through the day that sometimes I skip a meal". Really changes how we eat. :)
Deletejtlyk, Silk Pure Almond Unsweetened Original & Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk has 0g carbs! this is an amazing recipe, though!
ReplyDeletehave a nice day :)
hey, how would you make a low-carb iced coffee latte?
ReplyDeleteI would just use unsweetened coconut milk or almond milk. :)
Delete