Three Shelf-Stable Soy Milks Compared: Soy Dream, Westsoy, and Silk

I have been buying shelf-stable rice milk and soy milk for almost a year. A lot of the time I get these kinds of beverages because sometimes I can save money on them. From time to time I will change the brand of soy milk that I get to save money. While I enjoy saving money on food items I want to make sure that I am not cutting back on good ingredients, nutrition, and tastes when I choose the cheaper item. For this reason I decided to look more closely and compare three of the brands of shelf-stable soy milks that I have tried; these brand are Westsoy, Soy Dream, and Silk.

There were several similarities that I found in these three soy milks. All three soy milk tasted good so initially it was difficult to compare them. If I had to list them in order from favorite to least favorite as far as taste I would say Silk, Soy Dream, and then Westsoy. I would not say that Westsoy Soy Milk tasted bad, just a tiny bit less good than the other two. They were all not too sweet, being original flavor, and had a nice texture and thickness to them. Side by side they also looked very similar if not identical in color as well. I imagined that there ingredients were going to be very similar but at the same time I did not expect them to be identical.

The ingredients of all three soy milks were not identical but were very similar. Westsoy Organic Soy Milk consisted of filtered water, organic soy milk that simply consisted of filtered water and whole organic soybeans, organic dehydrated cane juice, tricalcium, phosphate, sea salt, natural flavors, carrageenan, vitamins E, A, and D, and riboflavin. Silk Organic Soymilk ingredients were organic soymilk that also was only made of filtered water and whole organic soybeans, organic evaporated cane juice, calcium carbonate, sea salt, natural flavors, carrageenan, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin D2, riboflavin or vitamin B2, and vitamin B12. Soy Dream Organic Soy Milk was barely different to Silk because it listed filtered water, organic whole soybeans, organic evaporated cane juice, calcium carbonate, sea salt, carrageenan, vitamin E, vitamin A palmitate, vitamin B12, and vitamin D2 as it ingredients. At a glance I saw that they all primarily consisted of soy milk, a sweetener, sea salt, and vitamins. Looking more closely I noticed all similarities and differences.

All three soy milks started out with filtered water and whole organic soybeans but I noted that Silk soy milk and Soy Dream soy milk did not have additional filtered water like Westsoy soy milk did. Again all three soy milks used sea salt as well as carrageenan and all three included vitamins A and D. As a sweetener Silk and Soy Dream used organic evaporated cane juice, while Westsoy used organic dehydrated cane juice. Both Westsoy and Soy Dream used vitamin E in their soy milks. Silk and Westsoy were the only two to use natural flavors and riboflavin while both Silk and Soy Dream use vitamin B12. Calcium carbonate was one ingredient that was only found in Silk and Soy Dream soy milks. Westsoy also included tricalcium phosphate which the other two did not. Overall the differences were pretty subtle in the ingredients but noticeable all the same.

Thinking about the taste and ingredients of all three milks was not enough to decide on which I like the best. Another factor would have to be the nutrition facts of each soy milk. In Part 2 of this paper I discuss the similarities and differences that each soy milk has in the way of nutrition facts. In Part 3 I further analyze not only the nutrition facts but the ingredients as well to determine which of these soy milks I am the most happy with getting for me and my family.