by Susan Ow

Created on: January 17, 2009   Last Updated: January 28, 2009

You have probably heard most nutritionists say that milk is vital part of living well. In each glass of milk, you and your family get the essential 9 nutrients and an array of health benefits. Milk is also a nutritional bargain that offering more nutrition for your dollar than virtually any other beverage you can buy. There are variety of milks, and mainly categorized into animal versus plant milk. With various types of milk presence in market and each type offers different composition of nutrition, we get confuse in choosing a suitable type of milk for ourselves and our family. Following are discussion about benefits offered by different types of milk.

The most common types of animal milk are:

Cow's milk

Cow's milk is the most popular type of milk for human. It contains 9 nutrients, which are Calcium, Vitamin D, Phosphorus, Riboflavin, Protein, Vitamin B-12, Potassium, Vitamin A, and Niacin, that are important to human body. It is a substitute of human milk to infant. Unless the infant is allergy to lactose, it is recommended that we do not replace cow's milk with other milks for infant.

Goat's milk

Goat's milk is popular for people who are lactose intolerant. However, it has a slightly salty taste that would not suit everybody palates. Its nutrition is similar to cow's milk, except it have more protein, less cholesterol, and less saturated fat overall. Hence, it is more tolerated by a damaged liver because of the smaller fat molecules and it is naturally homogenized. It also contains antibodies that are naturally immune to diseases such as tuberculosis. The disadvantages of goat milk are it is more expensive than cow's milk and contains a substance that bonds with vitamin B12 to prevent it from being absorbed. Vitamin B12 deficiency, which leads anemia, has been found in children fed by goat's milk.

The most common types of plant milk are

Soy's milk

Soy's milk has become a popular alternative to animal's milk and also safe for people with lactose intolerance or milk allergy. It is commonly available as chocolate and vanilla flavor as well as original unsweetened flavor. Similar to goat's milk, its nutrition is close to cow's milk, but has less saturated fat and no cholesterol and contains polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats that are good for the heart and isoflavones
and organic chemicals that may possibly be beneficial to health. The disadvantage of soy milk is it lacks of omega-3 fatty acids, EPA, and DHA that encourage the production of body chemicals that

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