RANKED: The healthiest milk and milk alternatives for you

By Lydia Ramsey and Hollis Johnson From Business Insider

We’ve all been there: You get to the front of the coffee line, and you still haven’t settled on what milk you should put in your latte. Soy? Almond? Skim?

We’re here to help, at least on the nutrition end.

We evaluated some of the most commonly used dairy milk and milk substitutes and stacked them up based on how much protein, vitamins, and minerals they contain relative to their fat, sugar, and calorie content. (Unless a brand is otherwise specified, we used the nutritional content provided by the US Department of Agriculture.)

Find out how your favorite dairy or nondairy beverage stacks up:

No. 10. Soy milk
Hollis Johnson
Soy milk, unfortunately, hits the bottom of the list. According to the USDA, the average 8-ounce glass of soy milk has 8 grams of protein (the highest amount found in any serving of milk on this list). But it also contains 131 calories and 10 grams of sugar — high compared with the other beverages on this list — and comparatively few vitamins and nutrients.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 131

No. 9. Rice milk
Hollis Johnson
Rice milk packs in about 25% of your daily vitamin D content (an important nutrient that can be tricky to come by), but with 13 grams of sugar and less than a gram of protein per cup, it didn’t stack up well with most of the other dairy and nondairy milks on the list.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 112

No. 8. Whole milk
Hollis Johnson
Whole milk may taste the best in a latte, but with 8 grams of fat, it’s probably not the healthiest. Still, an 8-ounce glass of whole milk contains the most vitamin D of any of the milks on this list, with almost a third of your daily intake.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 148

No. 7. Hemp
Hollis Johnson
This earthy-tasting coffee alternative has 30% of your daily vitamin D intake and half of your daily calcium intake, but it also has the most sugar of any milks on the list at 14 grams per 8-ounce serving. Plus, it has only 3 grams of protein — pretty low compared with the rest.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 140

No. 6. 1% milk
Hollis Johnson
This dairy milk falls firmly in the center of our ranking. The drink has some fat (2.4 grams), 13 grams of sugar, but also packs in 8 grams of protein with fewer calories than whole milk.

Calories per 8-oz. glass: 103

No. 5. Coconut milk
Hollis Johnson
Coconut milk (because there’s a fair amount of variability here, we referenced Silk’s version) had some of the highest vitamin B-12 content of the milks on the list and was relatively low in calories. However, it didn’t contain any protein, which is one of the main reasons people drink milk in the first place.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 80

No. 4. Almond milk
Hollis Johnson
Almond milk surprisingly doesn’t have as much protein — 1 gram per serving — as you might expect from a nut milk. Almond milk makes up for its lack of protein in vitamin D and calcium content (25% and 45% of your daily content, respectively). It’s also very low in calories. For this milk, we referenced Almond Breeze’s nutritional label.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 30

No. 3. Cashew milk
Hollis Johnson
Cashew milk slightly edged out almondmilk when accounting for calories and fat content, although their nutritional content was virtually the same. Cashew milk contained less than 1 gram of protein in a serving.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 25

No. 2. Skim milk
Hollis Johnson
As expected, skim or nonfat milk came in at the top of the dairy — and nondairy — milks, with only 0.2 grams of fat and 8 grams of protein, along with a solid amount of calcium and vitamin B-12. (The only place it came up short was vitamin D; it has none.)

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 83

No. 1. Skim Lactaid
Hollis Johnson
The lactose-free milk alternative surprisingly topped the list, in part because it’s fortified with 25% of your daily vitamin D, which gave it the edge on standard nonfat milk. With 8 grams of protein, 50% of your daily calcium intake, and just 90 calories, it reigned as the supreme milk included on this list.

Calories per 8-ounce glass: 90

For more on this story go to: http://www.businessinsider.com/healthiest-milks-dairy-soy-almond-hemp-2016-8?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+businessinsider+%28Business+Insider%29/#no-1-skim-lactaid-10