Shopping Tidbit: Milk Powder

I know that there are people reading this blog all over the world, so I'll apologize now that this is a very China-specific post. But I know there are TONS of you around China reading this, too, so I want to make sure everyone's in the loop on some product availability when I can! So here you go--dry milk powder. I know that even if you weren't actually here for the melamine scandal in 2008 that you are probably still scared when it comes to China milk products. Our family WAS here for it unfortunately. And its made me more than a little skeptical of the name brands of milk around China--ones like Yili and Mengniu. I tend to only buy from local dairies--they were less affected. When it comes to milk powder for adding into some bread recipes or for making yogurt, I just always bought Nestle Full Cream Milk Powder--it was reasonably priced, an international brand name, and I knew what I was getting since there was some English on the bag. However, I've been making LOTS of yogurt and we have been using it in a lot of things--I've been straining it to make it thicker and using it in recipes calling for Greek yogurt and even using it as a substitute for some of the butter or oil in recipes. Since I was still using a full cream milk powder, however, it wasn't like it was too much better on the calorie count! I finally noticed that Nestle does have a low-fat milk powder but its about 3 times the price of the whole milk. Then I got to talking to the fuwuyuan on the milk powder aisle and she helped me notice the wide array of new milk powder products that Yili brand is making. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture unless you blow it up, but the bag on the left says "Milk Powder for Young Women." This is LOW-FAT milk powder. The pink bag on the right says, "Milk Powder for the Family." It is SKIM milk powder. Yili also has a full fat powder, but I didn't buy that one (blue bag maybe?). I hope this is helpful for some of you that may be needing milk powder. I'm now making all our yogurt with the low-fat or the skim milk. Makes me feel better! I'm still a little skeptical of Yili, but its what's available if you want something other than whole milk powder. These bags contain 16 smaller pouches of powder in them. I've found one pouch is equal to 1/4 cup. I'd been thinking about posting this for some time and then another person in my city asked me if I knew where to buy skim milk powder last week. It made me think this might be useful information to others, too!