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Bet you have never heard of this brand. Bought this from my downstairs convenience store and from what that shop lady told me, this milk is one of her best sellers and she claimed that this is one of the best tasting full cream milk! As you guys should know, I am a very curious person. So I went ahead and bought the milk. It isn’t really expensive – about S$1.90. Yes, you can definitely get cheaper UHT milk but I guess pricing wise, this is the middle of the pack. And I have never tried Indian milk before. I remembered in the past (20-30 years ago), there were these Indian milk sellers that would come around our housing area and sell us fresh milk.They would carry those aluminum pots filled with milk and we would go down with our containers to purchase those fresh milk. Not sure how fresh they were, but it was definitely tasty. So, maybe this milk will make me re-live those olden days eh? Well, I doubt it. UHT milk will never match the taste of fresh milk. The process will destroy the aromas in the milk, leaving probably a very tasteless odourless milk as a result. But one can always hope, can’t they?

If you happen to pass by some of those “mama” shops, be sure to check out the UHT milk they carry, especially the Indian brands. Most of them are full cream milk. Yes, I am scaring a huge portion of my female readers, but seriously, full cream milk don’t make you fat. Just excessive consumption of fatty, sugary and oily foods do. A moderate consumption of milk is actually very very healthy, just like eating butter.

The Amul Taaza Full Cream Milk. Check out the happy cow grazing in the lush green fields. And yup, those birds are red and green in colour.

Cool, it is fortified with Vitamins A & D! And you will have Amul’s guarantee that this milk is made from fresh milk – no water, powder or preservatives added. Viva la Amul!

Now, we check out the ingredients. It contains just milk and Vitamins A & D.  Hmmm…..it needs to be consumed within 2 days of opening. Normally you can store for about a week after opening for UHT milk but hey, who are we to challenge the experts. Yes, this milk is made in India and they are experts in manufacturing milk and dairy products!

Amul – The Taste of India! I want. I love Indian cuisine! However, it is not surprising that a lot of people associate Indian cuisine as unhealthy. I mean, they see the curries, the coconut cream, the full cream milk and so on, they get all scared. But in all seriousness, there is no problems (heart wise) with eating Indian food if you eat everything moderately. Of course if you follow what the label says and consume this 1 litre of full cream milk in 2 days and do this continously, you might find yourself gaining some weight over a long run but come on, who in their right mind will finish the 1 litre carton of full cream milk in 2 days?

And if it taste great, I think it is a good choice. You just have to limit the other intake of saturated fats.  As you can se from the nutritional table, one serving of 200ml contains about 21% of your daily recommended intake of saturated fats.

About 8 months of freshness. Don’t you just love UHT milk? Unlike pasteurised milk, UHT milk keeps without refrigeration for a long time.That means that you can keep them in your cupboard in case you need milk and use it anytime you want. Convenience in package.Of course, you will need to refrigerate it after opening.

Yup, we have come to the end of the review. I hope that you guys will look beyond what our local supermarkets carry and try to experiment with other brands. There are a lot of varieties of milk out there. You just need to know where to look. With just a little more effort, you will be able to find countless other brands which may taste way better than what we find in our local supermarkets. Ciao!

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We all love grape juice. I know I do. And most of my friends and relatives do too. I mean, what is there not to like about grape juice? Even pure grape juice! Yes, it can be slightly sour without any additional sweetener but good grape juice should have a balance between the sour and the sweet of the grapes. As you guys probably know, I don’t really like stuff that is too sweet. And unlike orange juice, which can be a little more acidic tasting, grape juice is actually very neutral in flavour. Furthermore, grape juice is a healthy drink. Unlike those carbonated soda drinks, grape juice comes packed full of antioxidants which can help your body fight off free radicals. This of course comes mainly from the Vitamin C in the juice. Grape juice also has Resveratrol which helps reduce the risk of blood clots, preventing damage to blood vessels in the heart and help maintain a healthy blood pressure. In other words, good for your heart! Come on, nowadays with our oily and fatty diet, I think that we should really consider eating (or drinking) more of such foodstuff.

Anyway, did you know that Welch’s is a very old company? If I am not wrong, they started manufacturing grape juice in 1869! They also sell grape jam, jellies and other snacks. They must really love their grapes! If you are interested, please take a look at their website: Welch’s.

Okay, so I got this small bottle from NTUC at Hougang. Normally, they sell Welch’s grape juice in those 1 litre plastic bottles but it might be too much for me. And it is a hassle to bring back. Yes, I am a little lazy but why waste the effort?

The Welch’s 100% Grape Juice. Unlike most other grape juice, this is very dark coloured which would mean that it contains more antioxidants than lighter coloured grapes. However, from what I read, dark grape juice can affect your body by inhibiting the intake of iron which could increase the risk of iron-deficiency anaemia. So it is better to alternate between light and dark grapes. But good news, Welch’s has light coloured grape juices as well!

Hmm….made from Welch’s Own Concord grapes. Cool. But note that this is from concentrate and not from direct juicing. Too bad, it would be better that it was made from direct juicing methods. Who knows what happens during the dehydrating process to make the concentrate. And no sugar added. I am not very sure what 100% Vitamin C means? Probably it means that the entire serving provides 100% of the daily recommended intake of Vitamin C.

Oh, by the way, this glass bottle contains about 355ml of Welch’s Grape Juice. Quite a lot actually.

Grape Polyphenol antioxidants and 200mg/serving based on total polyphenolic values. Huh? What talking them? Must be someone complained about their claims and so they have to add some “exclaimer”.

Oh, nice. They meet the American Heart Association food criteria for saturated fat and cholesterol for healthy people over age 2! For that, I am glad. And this is made in the good old USA.

Here we have the nutritional values and the ingredients list . It contains Grape Juice from Concentrate (filtered water and grape juice concentrate), grape juice and ascorbic acid (Vitamin C). It does not contain any artificial flavours or colourings!  Hooooray!

The top cover of the bottle. Nothing interesting here.

Okay, this is the end of the review on this Welch’s 100% Grape Juice. One thing about Welch’s is that the taste is more complex than other grape juice I have ever tried. And most feels a little diluted to me. But not this Welch’s Grape Juice. It definitely feels more full bodied than the rest. I would highly recommend you to give it a try if you have not tried it before. The Welch’s grape juice taste might be a little overwhelming at first, but I think it should not be a problem after a few sips.

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Marigold, a very very popular brand in Singapore. Probably because they advertise so much in the local media that you can never escape it. You will definitely have heard of the brand before, unless you are a tree-hugging hermit living in a self-made wooden hut in Mount Faber. But even that, you should have seen the milk cartons thrown away by well-meaning people visiting Mount Faber right? And I am sure that more than half of those milk cartons are made by Marigold. For the rest of us, although there are quite a number of choices of fresh pasteurised milk in our local stores, you will bound to have tried the Marigold Brand before. Everyone knows that milk is good for them. It has been drilled into our sub-conscious that when we think of health, we think of milk. Well, it is true, milk is indeed good for us. But there is a world of difference between the different types of milk – raw, pasteurised and UHT. From my limited knowledge of milk raw is probably the best for us. However, due to the nature of milk, raw milk has bacteria in it and some of which are bad. Hence, in some countries it is illegal to sell raw milk and it is not recommended for young children, the elderly, expectant mothers and those with compromised immune systems. At the extreme end, we have Ultra High Heat Treated (UHT) milk. This type of milk has been heated treated to a very high temperature for a few seconds and then pressurised. This method is fast and kills off most (if not all) of the bacteria present in the raw milk. It should be the safest milk to consume. But there is a trade-off. The high heat process will kill destroy all the enzymes, destroy some of the nutrients and vitamins and definitely alter the milk taste. It also keeps for a long time if left unopened. If you have drunk UHT milk before, you might be turned off by the taste of the milk. So, the best for most of us would be pasteurised milk. You get good flavour, less nutrients and vitamins destroyed but I guess most of them would last in the fridge for 2 to 3 weeks at most. Fresh pasteurised milk will normally cost more than UHT milk (in Singapore anyways).

Okay, I know, I am a long winded old man. But what I am saying is that you should always go for the pasteurised milk instead of UHT milk if you can. You will find that it not only taste better but you get more of the nutritional value of milk than from UHT milk. They don’t call it “dead milk” for nothing. And it cost like 1 buck more per litre. Unless you are really hard up, it is not really a big thing.  Furthermore, you get more bang for your buck.From what I read, up to 45% of some minerals and vitamins are destroyed due to the high heat process.

Marigold HL Milk. The HL stands for “High – Low”. Basically what it means is that it has High Calcium and High Protein with Low Fat and Low Lactose content. And this is the 99% fat free milk. So does that mean that this milk contains about 1% fat? Hey, check it out, this milk contains Vitamin K and Vitamin D for stronger bones! They call it BonePlus!

The prefect balance of highs and lows. Interesting.  So mentioned earlier, it is high in Calcium. Calcium helps build strong bones & teeth. Drink 2 glasses of Marigold HL everyday. It is also high in protein. Protein helps to repair body tissues and is essential for growing children. Ahh…it is low in fat. Probably the most important thing to many ladies out there. One wonders if 99% of the fat is removed, how much of the nutrients in the milk is gone as well. From what I read, the fat in the milk contains a lot of the nutrients of the milk and thus removing them doesn’t really make the milk “healthier”. Anyway, this HL milk is low in lactose. Again, this is not good at all. Although for people who are lactose intolerant, this allows them to drink milk without the side effects but with very little lactose, a lot of the energy and nutritional value is gone. So, this is a trade off. Hey, this HL milk comes with 9 vitamins. The unique BonePlus formulation with Vitamins K & D to help calcium adsorption and improve bone strength. Whatever.

The ingredients are milk solids, fresh milk, permitted stabilisers and emulsifiers, milk calcium, Vitamin C, Permitted flavouring, Vitamin E, Lactase, Nicotinamide, Calcium-D-Pantothenate, Pyridoxine (Vitamin B6), Thiamine (Vitamin B1), Vitamin A, Vitamin K and Vitamin D3. So many vitamins! However, if you were to take a look at WHFood’s take on Milk, you would realize that all these vitamins actually supposed to be in cow’s milk. However, if I am not wrong, the vitamins are destroyed in the pasteurisation process and they have to add in (aka fortified) those vitamins afterwards.

As you can see, this milk is pasteurised, homogenised and flavoured. Homogenised means that the fat in the milk has been fed through pressured tubes to ensure that the fats do not stick to each other and you get a nice “milky” texture in your milk. Not clumps or globs of fat floating around in your milk. People scared. Don’t buy un-homogenised milk.

Ahhh….wow. Do check out the energy provided by the milk – about one quarter of normal lactose milk. And never feed your toddler or young kid low fat (or lactose free) milk. they don’t provide the nutrients and energy source needed for growing bodies. This milk is for adults to supplement their diets. In fact, unless the milk label says so, you should not feed your very young kids these kinds of milk. Please.

Hmmm….the no. 1 pasteurised milk. I bet only in Singapore. We love Marigold so much that we have absolutely no idea that there are other brands out there!  Too bad.

And this concludes our little review on the Marigold HL milk. Eat well and your body will reward you with whatever you want. Well, nearly everything.

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Went to NTUC just a few days ago and saw this root beer. You remembered that I tried brewing my own root beer? Well, that didn’t turn out good. It sort of tasted weird and more like medicine than root beer. I am not sure whether it is because of the ingredients or I somehow brewed wrongly. Basically root beer brewing is just root beer concentrate, sugar and yeast. I did manage to get some fermentation going but after that it sort of died off. The smell that was produced wasn’t exactly pleasant so I threw everything away, including the root beer concentrate. Anyway, the concentrate had traveled all the way from the United States, so that could be the reason why it was a bit funky when it arrived. From what I read on the Internet, most root beer brewers were rather successful using concentrate.

Well, what can I say? Although I do like root beer, but I am not a fanatic. So I guess I will stick to store bought root beer. However, if you have been drinking our local supermarket root beer, all you would have tasted is the sweetness of the drink. Nothing more. Again, this is the same problem with our commercial bought root beer (and most other drinks for that matter) – too sweet. To cut cost, they just add massive amount of sugar instead of the more expensive root beer extract. The result is tastless black coloured drink with tons of sugar in it. Well, I am sure that kids would love it but for me, I no longer crave sugar. I would rather have the taste of root beer when I am drinking root drink, don’t you? If I want to drink sugar water, I can easily make myself some sugar water and save some money.

This is the Bundaberg Australian Root Beer. Check out the cute kangeroo on the label.

This is a non alcoholic beverage. I guess there are alcoholic versions of root beer probably from yeast and well, addition of more sugar. Yes, yeast eats the sugar and produce alcohol. As you can see, this is a naturally brewed (with yeast) root beer. Other store bought root beer contains probably just root beer extract, sugar and water all mixed in some commercial vent and then bottled. A brewed (with yeast) root beer will produce a more complex and robust product which is what root beer is actually all about.

The bottle contains about 375ml of root beer.

Hmmm…this natural root beer is true to its roots – quite literally. Traditionally brewed to a genuine old recipe from real sarsaparilla root, licorice root, vanilla beans and molasses, this Bundaberg Root Beer is an authentic taste of yesteryear – from their family owned brewery in Bundaberg. No, that is not in Germany but in Australia. Ya, I would thought that they are from Germany due to their name. Maybe they are of Germany decent?

The ingredients are carbonated water, cane sugar, sarsaparilla root, vanilla bean, ginger root, licorice root, molasses, sarsaparilla flavour, caramel, acid, yeast, preservatives and antioxidant.  Hmmm…..they have preservatives which isn’t that good in my opinion. Why would they add preservatives to their root beer if they had claimed that it is naturally brewed?

The nutrition table for the root beer.

Bundaberg logo. Nice or not? To open, you need to open out the tab and then pull up! You will be greeted with the sound of escaping gas.  Afterthat, you should pour the contents of the bottle to a cold ice filled cup and enjoy the root beer. In Singapore’s super warm weather, it is always refreshing to have some ice cold root beer in the afternoon. Heck, it is just as great at night!

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