We tested the following powdered milk brands:
- Fluid Skim Milk (used as a comparison)
- Provident Pantry Instant Nonfat Dry Milk
- Country Cream Instant Nonfat Dry Milk
- Maple Island Instant Nonfat Dry Milk
- Hill Country Fare Nonfat Dry Milk (Instant)
- LDS Church Cannery Nonfat Dry Milk
- Nestle NIDO Instant Dry Whole Milk
- Morning Moo Regular Low fat Dry Milk Alternative
- Morning Moo Chocolate Low fat Dry Milk Alternative
- LDS Church Cannery Hot Chocolate Milk (tested cold)
We did not go into much detail. We rated each milk on taste on a scale of 1 - 5 with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. I was quite surprised to find that there were a couple of milk brands that tasted very similar to the fluid skim milk and the rest had a very strong powdered milk taste. Most people in our group (about 45 people) rated each brand either low or high with not much in between - they either liked it or they didn't. We did not total ratings on individual brands; just asked for a show of hands on which brand people liked the best. After eliminating the choice of the unexpected fluid skim milk, the large majority of people chose Provident Pantry as their favorite. A few people chose Country Cream as their favorite, putting it in second place. A few others chose Nestle NIDO as their favorite, putting it in third place. Personally, I could tell very little difference between the Provident Pantry and the Country Cream, and even the fluid skim milk. I did vote for Provident Pantry, but it was extremely close. I asked my 15 year old son to come as well to get his opinion but he wouldn't taste all of the choices. I did get him to taste a few of them, including the Provident Pantry brand. I asked him if he thought the Provident Pantry milk would be something he would drink if we purchased it and he thought it tasted like regular milk and that it was fine.
We tasted the Morning Moo Milk Alternatives and the LDS Church Cannery Hot Chocolate Milk separately since they are all whey based products and do not have enough protein to store as a main milk substitute. I had heard rave reviews on the Morning Moo milks, but I didn't like either one of them. Since they were tasted separately, not everyone tried them. The cans were only a few months old and they were opened for the taste testing, but very few people liked them as well as the Provident Pantry. That was quite surprising to me. The other thing that really surprised me was how much I liked the LDS Church Cannery Hot Chocolate. I didn't expect to like it cold. My 15 year old son liked it so much that he drank multiple glasses of it and then came home and made up 2 qts of it to keep in the refrigerator so he could have more later!
Utah Preppers did a very detailed taste test of powdered milk brands that can be found HERE. Below is a summary of their results:
(click on the table to view larger)