Evaporated Milk
Food · Dairy · Food, Typed Supps
Milk with the water taken out and nothing added — 256 mg of calcium per hundred.
Stage by stage
- Water removed (The tin): About 60% of the water gone; everything else roughly doubled.
- Calcium (Skeleton): 256 mg per 100 g — more than double fluid milk.
- Iodine (Thyroid): 53 mcg per 100 g, and dairy is a main Australian iodine source.
- Protein (Muscle): 7.5 g per 100 g, which is what lets it enrich a sauce without cream.
Timing
Nothing to time. Diluted one to one it is ordinary milk; undiluted it replaces cream in most savoury cooking.
Time to effect
- Per 100 g: 256 mg calcium, 53 mcg iodine and 7.5 g protein.
- Cumulative: Calcium and iodine status build over time.
Allergens
Contains: Milk. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free. Depends on the product: Keto.
Satiety
120 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — moderate. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.
Environmental footprint
3.2 kg CO2e and 628 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Milk" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Cheap — roughly £2.5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 141
- Protein: 7.5g
- Carbohydrate: 10g
- of which sugars: 10g
- Fat: 8.2g
- of which saturated: 5.2g
- Sodium: 104mg
Food vs. supplement
Evaporated milk is one of the few shelf-stable sources of both calcium and iodine, which makes it genuinely useful where refrigeration is limited — a practical advantage that has nothing to do with the nutrition panel and everything to do with access.
Kitchen tip
Use it in place of cream in savoury sauces. It thickens well at 8.2 g of fat per 100 g against cream’s 36.5.
Common myth
“Evaporated milk is the sweet one you use in desserts.” In reality: That is condensed milk, in a similar tin. Evaporated milk has no added sugar at all — the 10 g of sugars is lactose from the milk. It is milk with about 60% of the water removed, which doubles the calcium, iodine and protein, and it works in savoury cooking as a lower-fat substitute for cream.
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