Derided by many as a strange-tasting alternative to cow’s milk, sales of the product have grown rapidly over the last couple of years, as the quality of the liquid has improved and consumers have embraced its relatively healthy status.
Sales of dairy free milk hit more than £136 million during 2010, compared with almost £103m in 2008 and £87 million in 2006, according to Nielsen, a market research company which tracks food and drink sales.
Soya is now regularly bought by over 4 million of Britain’s 26 million households compared to 3.4 million in 2006.
Starbucks, the leading coffee chain, said that it had completely taken off in the last two years, from being a niche product offered to people who asked especially for it, to now being regularly on the menu. The company now uses more than 500,000 litres of soya milk a year in its British shops, and this summer will start selling a soya frappuccino, a version of its cold, milky drink that it sells when the weather is hot.
Soya milk
Claire Waugh, head of brand development at Starbucks UK, said; “A few years ago, we noticed that customers here were starting to ask for soya milk and after offering the option, we’ve seen the trend keep on growing. More people want drinks made exactly to their taste and in trials we saw that it was one of the most popular choices to customise the new frappuccino.”
There has been a steady increase in the number of consumers, including children, diagnosed as lactose intolerant, with the NHS estimating that 5 per cent of all Britons and as many as 100 per cent of Asian-Britons suffering from the condition, which can cause stomach pain.
However, many people who have started to drink the product are doing so because they perceive it be healthier or better for the environment, according to Alpro, the country’s biggest manufacturer of soya milk.
John Allaway, the commercial director at Alpro, said: “Five years ago it didn’t taste like dairy. But the quality has much improved.
“A lot of people who now drink it do so because they like the fact it is a plant-based product not an animal-based one. It’s better for the environment and it’s becoming trendy.”
It has less saturated fat, more protein and fewer calories compared with cow’s milk, and though its production uses up less carbon and water, many environmentalists have complained that large tracts of forests in South America have been destroyed in order to plant soy beans.
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Soy appears to do nothing to relieve the symptoms of menopause, scientists say, despite the high hopes of many.
A controlled study involving nearly 250 US women going through “the change” found soy tablets did not abate hot flushes or bone density loss.
The tablets were no better than placebo over the two-year-long investigation, Archives of Internal Medicine reports.
But experts said other studies have shown soy can ease menopause symptoms.
The dose given in the latest trial was twice that normally ingested by people with soy-rich diets.
Soy products like tofu contain natural plant oestrogens and experts have suggested that these might help women going through the menopause whose own oestrogen levels are dwindling.
Many women are already offered oestrogen in the form of hormone replacement therapy or HRT to help with menopausal symptoms.
But following reports that prolonged use of HRT may carry a very small increased risk of other conditions, like breast cancer and stroke, some do not want to go on HRT and look for alternatives.
The researchers from the University of Miami say their work suggests soy is not a candidate, although they stress that they only looked at soy isoflavone tablets rather than other dietary sources of soy.
They recruited 248 menopausal women to take part in their study and randomly allocated them to one of two groups: soy or placebo.
The soy group received 200mg of soy isoflavone tablets daily for two years, while the women in the placebo group were given dummy pills.
During the follow-up, no significant differences were found between the two groups regarding changes in bone loss – a common side effect of the menopause.
Menopausal symptoms such as sleep disturbances affected both groups to similar degrees, although the soy group did appear to experience more hot flushes than the placebo group overall.
Lead researcher Dr Silvina Levis said: “My advice would be that women should reconsider taking these products for menopausal symptoms. We found soy isoflavone tablets did not provide any benefit.
“We did not look at soy foods but I suspect these too would probably not be helpful.”
Dr Malcolm Whitehead, a menopause expert at King’s College Hospital in London, said: “I’m not at all surprised by the findings. In my clinical experience, women say this doesn’t work for them.”
He said HRT could be a safe and effective treatment for most women.
A spokesperson from the charity Women’s Health Concern said that other studies had shown soy could be helpful for treating symptoms of the menopause.