Why does coffee creamer have no protein, even creamers made with real milk?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “best tasting vegan coffee creamer“
Why does coffee creamer have no protein, even creamers made with real milk?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “best tasting vegan coffee creamer“
How much creamer do you use? Serving size on the creamers in my pantry is one creamer which is 9 mL. 15 mL is one tablespoon. So the creamer is 3/5 of a tablespoon. Labels in the US are not required to list any nutrition info for any component that’s less that 1%, or less than 1 gram. Now look at the nutrition info on a carton of milk. A whole cup of milk. One cup of the 2% milk in my fridge says it has 8 g of protein. One cup is 8 fliud ounces so there 1 gram of protein in one ounce of 2% milk. And one ounce is two tablespoons or 30 mL. So that 9 mL of creamer, were it 2% milk would have less than 1/3 of that, or less than 1/3 of a gram of protein. And therefore by US law doesn’t need to be listed on the nutrition label. And only needs to be listed in the ingredients as milk or cream. Not by what components are found in the milk or cream, that’s what the nutrition label is there for.
A further consideration is if the creamer is actually cream, or half and half. When milk is obtained from a cow, the dairy will homogenize it at some point. Without being homogenized, it will separate upon standing into a watery layer in which most of the lactose and most of the protein is dissolved, and a fat layer with only tiny percentages of the lactose and proteins from the milk. The fat later is called cream. So when the cream is skimmed off, to use as is it’s called heavy cream or whipping cream, or when it is mixed 50:50 with while milk it makes half and half, sometimes also called light cream. In both cases, the final product has so little protein, and much less than a gram per serving in it, that the dairy need not list it on the nutrition label by US law.
So when you read a nutrition label it doesn’t list how much sweetener it has because non—caloric sweeteners are so much sweeter than sugar that hardly any in used. If less than a gram, it’s not required to be listed. It would be listed in the ingredients but not in the nutrition information. And by law milk and cream can be listed as ingredients and don’t have to be broken down into what is in that milk or cream, except on the nutrition lable and then only if more than 1% of the serving.
And in all dairy products made from cream, no protein needs be listed because protein is water soluble so very little stays with the cream when the raw milk is skimmed. So cream cheese and butter generally don’t have protein listed in the nutrition facts either.
It’s not that there’s none. It’s that there’s only infinitesimal amounts, which by law don’t have to be listed.
If I am making a recipe that calls for heavy cream, I might not be able to eat the final product precisely because I have a medical condition that requires me to have adequate protein mixed with any carbs or I get severe nausea and vomiting. So I have learned a couple of cooking tricks (sometimes called hacks) to increase the amount of protein in the creamy tasting sauce to enable me to eat the meal without changing its taste much.
The first choice is to substitute plain Greek yogurt for all or most of the cream. I generally add one to four half and half creamers to that to fool the taste buds into thinking it is cream. But, Greek yogurt (I prefer to use the Fage 5%) is thicker than heavy cream, so I may need to adjust the sauce to make it thinner. I generally use white wine for that purpose. I won’t need to thin it if the yogurt is being subbed for sour cream, not will I need the creamers to make it taste more like cream. Yogurt is sour and so is sour cream, and most people can’t taste a difference when it’s subbed in a flavorful recipe. Fage 5% yogurt says in the label that the 5.4 ounce serving has 20 grams of protein. And it’s only 5% milk fat but each cup is made from five cups of milk. That means it has five times more protein than a cup of milk. And while it starts out with lactose, that is basically used up by the specific cultures used to turn it into yogurt. (Baker’s and brewer’s yeast can’t eat lactose, but the Greek yogurt mother culture — also called the starter culture — can.)
The second choice is to sub a can of evaporated whole milk for the heavy cream or sour cream. Evaporated milk says on the label that four cups of milk are used to make one cup of evaporated milk, and the fat content is adjusted to be the same as one cup whole milk. So again, there’s a lot of protein, and again I add 2–4 of the half and half creamers to fool the taste buds into thinking it’s made with heavy cream.
I make both those substitutions for my beef stroganoff and Tuscan shrimp or chicken recipes which originally called for a pint of sour cream and a pint of heavy cream respectively.
A third choice is to stir some whey protein into the cream you use in the recipe. I don’t use this one much, except in making a smoothie, because the sauce would still contain the high level of fat from the cream. I had to have my gallbladder removed several years ago, and since then my gut cannot tolerate any food that is high in fat. So this option doesn’t work for me because I can’t have that much fat in one meal.
A fourth option (I have not tried this one but have read it) is to sub non-dairy milk or coconut cream and to add whey protein powder to that and whisk it in. The non-dairy milk products are also low in protein, so for me to use them, I would have to increase the protein content. I don’t use coconut oil or coconut milk products simply because I don’t like they way coconut tastes. Several family members who also have never liked it have become allergic to it over time. So for me it seems logical and safer to avoid the stuff altogether.
I have used non-dairy milks for baking and making vegan entrees, but I will generally add some spice to cover the different taste of the sauce or entree that results. Since I make vegan entrees on holidays when my son and daughters are visiting, and the elder daughter is allergic to tree nuts and the younger daughter is vegan, I have experimented only with soy and rice milks since I can’t use nut milks. And in both cases I can taste the difference in the milk. So my vegan mashed potatoes are garlic herb mashed potatoes and nobody can tell there’s Earth Balance vegan butter substitute and soy milk instead of dairy milk and butter in them.
I make vegan gravy using starch rather than a roux so it’s lower in fat and I make it mixed wild mushroom gravy because then nobody can tell what butter, milk, or starch was used. The savory flavor of the mushrooms covers the non-dairy flavor of the ingredients.
So, the answer to your question is that ingredients have to be listed if they are added separately. But components of the natural food don’t need to be listed with the ingredients, and only are listed in the nutrition facts if they are more than 1 gram of a serving. Protein in cream is much less than that, so isn’t required to be listed in the nutrition info.
Your answer is in the name of the product – cream. It is the fatty part of milk, skimmed off in dairy creamer. Non-dairy creamers are non-dairy substitutes that follow the same composition profile.
It’s fat. Cream is milk fat. The protein is water soluble and therefore it is in the water portion.