I’m a bit lactose-intolerant, but I love milk on my cereal. So I normally buy LactAid brand lactose-free milk. But in the supermarket the other day, they had a new brand: Smart Balance. I picked up a carton just to try it. I noticed it said something about Omega-3 fatty acids, but didn’t read the ingredients.
That night, I decided a bedtime snack of Fruity Cheerios would be just right. Opened the milk, poured it, tasted it – fish. Not sour or curdled, but fishy. I looked on the ingredient label; sure enough, it contains “purified fish oil”. I guess purifying fish oil doesn’t involve removing any of the taste.
Possibly I could get used to it, but I’m not going to. Poured it out, threw away the bowl of cereal, and got some LactAid next time.
Has anybody else tried this stuff? I know those happy fatty acids are supposed to be good for you, but does it have to be fish oil?
Oh, yuck! Thanks for the warning. I thought about buying some of that last time I went shopping.
I’m being naughty this morning, and eating some of my kids’ froot loops. I’m just imagining what they would taste like with a fishy note added. Yummm! A bowl of fish-candy for breakfast!
Apparently the oils in flax aren’t nearly so beneficial (in terms of what people are trying to achieve in putting Omega 3 in everything) as those in fish. I’ll see if I can dig up a cite.
Yeah, I eat flax seed for the fiber, but still use fish oil supplements for the omega 3 fatty acids. I had thought that the omega 3 enriched eggs were produced by feeding chickens flax seed. I don’t see how that could affect the taste, flax seed has kind of a pleasant, almost nutty flavor.
That’s odd, I use the Smart Balance margarine and I like it, no fishy taste, but I do use the one made with flax seed. I wonder why they decided to go with fish oil instead of flax seen with the milk?
I don’t think I could have tolerated that on cereal either but I wouldn’t have dumped it, sounds like it would be ideal to use in a fish or clam chowder. It would be a good excuse to make a big pot of chowder, which would be great right now since it’s all cold and stuff again, it’s about 50 degrees F here! Brrrr!
I really like flax seed in bread and it would be fine in cereal. Save the fish oil for gel caps that you swallow, and then it’s a problem for some people. Fish oil in food would ruin the taste of any food. It reminds me of a bread that they started putting pea flour into, to make it higher fiber. Everything had a pea taste in it. Pea flavored toast and jelly is terrible. Yuk.
I always figured the reason fish oil supplements are sealed inside 3mm thick gelatin capsules is to minimize the risk of someone having to actually taste the stuff.
That’s odd that your grocer just started stocking the Smart Balance milk; I had worked at a grocery store for years, and I remember stocking that stuff in 2006–maybe even earlier.
I don’t know if it gets a wide distribution since it’s based in New England but Garelic Farms does the same thing to their milk and has for at least the last 15 years. I wonder if the Smart Balance chololate milk has it, though, because I didn’t notice it, and I hate Garelic Farms’ milk.
Sheesh, if it’s not McDonalds basting their fries and hash browns with beef broth, it’s dairies sneaking fish oil into milk. Being an ovo-lacto vegetarian can really be a pain in the ass.
Hint from my eye dr—if you can’t stand the taste of fish oil capsules or get “fishy burps”, put your caps in the freezer. Hubby does that to his and it works like a charm.
When I was stationed in Okinawa, the military would dehydrate milk and ship it to Okinawa then rehydrate it using coconut oil. Eventually you got used to the taste.
Yeah, but certainly it would dawn on someone that it would make the milk taste fishy and best to go with something less flavorful. Even if it doesn’t provide as much benefit they can still put “contains flax seed oil” and people would think it’s good for them.
Being an ovo-lacto vegetarian can really be a pain in the ass.