Where in the food plan does rice milk fit?
Made from rice, rice milk is primarily grain-based. However, it has been fortified with calcium in most cases to be a substitute for cow’s milk. If you have someone in your class who is lactose intolerant, vegan or simply doesn’t drink milk, rice milk or soymilk can be substitutions. However, when I looked up a vanilla rice milk online, I found that 1 cup of it contained 130 calories – 40 more than skim milk. If there are “light” varieties I would suggest using those. If the person drinks milk, but would also like to use rice milk, it needs to count as a grain. As you can see here, the main ingredient is rice and water. The third ingredient on this particular brand is safflower oil. So, technically you could also count ½ tsp of oil here. 1 tsp = 5 grams of fat and since this label shows 2.5 grams of fat per serving, that would equal ½ tsp oil.
