Scottish Milk And Healthy Snack Scheme: Statutory Guidance For Local Authorities And Participating (Registered) Day Care Settings - updated 2025

Annex B

Soya Drink Specification

1. There is a very wide range of soya drinks on the market with varying levels of nutritional content (calories, protein, sugar and fat) and added (fortified) vitamins and minerals. This specification has been designed as a guide to support those selecting an unsweetened, fortified, calcium enriched soya drink for children over 12 months as part of the Scheme to ensure that those provided have the closest nutritional content to cow’s milk.

2. The values below are guiding amounts and can be used to compare against the nutritional information of unsweetened, calcium enriched soya drinks. This information can be found on the back of the packaging or requested from suppliers.

3. Any soya drink provided must be unsweetened and enriched with calcium. Fortification with other nutrients which are present in plain cow’s milk has been included as desirable to help ensure adequate nutrient intakes in children drinking dairy alternatives. However, please note that not all drinks will contain all of the desirable nutrients listed below.

4. It is desirable that unsweetened fortified non-dairy alternatives are also fortified with Vitamin A, however soya drinks containing this vitamin are very limited.

5. Organic varieties are not fortified with any vitamins or minerals and are therefore not suitable to be provided within the Scheme.

How to know if a product meets the requirement to be unsweetened

6. Descriptions of unsweetened fortified, calcium enriched soya drinks varies between products. Products may include descriptions such as ‘reduced calorie’, ‘no sweeteners’, ‘totally unsweetened’, ‘no sugars’, ‘light’, ‘natural’, ‘skinny’ and more. As well as checking the description, if unsure whether a product contains added (free) sugar, check the ingredients list. Sugar may appear in ingredients lists as sugar, raw cane sugar, honey, fructose, maltodextrin, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup and more. The specification above should be used to determine the amount of sugar within the product and this will help to ensure that it meets acceptable levels.