Singapore-based What If Foods launched a new kind of plant-based milk – BamNut Milk – that’s made from the Bambara groundnut (BamNut for short). The Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranean) is a peanut-like legume that originated and is still grown, mostly by women, in West Africa. Bambara can be grown in arid regions due to its drought and heat tolerance and also on marginal land that’s not suitable for other forms of agriculture. Being a legume, it can fix nitrogen from the air and also help regenerate the poor soil systems that it’s capable of growing in. I’ll get back to the main ingredient in a moment, but first a few comments on the milk.

WhatIF’s BamNut Milk is available at the Grocery Outlet for around $1 – a big discount on the normal price of around $5.50. It comes in a shelf-stable 1 L carton that you’ll find in the Grocery Outlet’s NOSH section (NOSH = Natural, Organic, Specialty, Healthy). I bought the Everyday version (in the lavender carton) and noticed that they also have a Barista version for coffee drinks.

The Everyday version worked really well in my coffee, tea and cereal – so it covered all the bases, for me. Added to hot coffee, it didn’t curdle or separate, nor did it interfere with the all-important flavor of my coffee. I don’t really drink milk on its own but I tasted the BamNut Milk and found it to be very pleasant – it has a creamy texture and tastes a little nutty and slightly sweet. It actually worked well mixed with Kahlua, so I’d also recommend it for vegan white Russian – or a white vegan Russian, if you prefer : )

BamNut Milk – Ingredients and Nutrition Facts

BamNut Milk Ingredients: Water, Bambara groundnuts, coconut oil, calcium, vitamin D2, vitamin B12.

The milk has 5 g of protein per serving – a little less than dairy milk and pea protein milk such as Ripple, which comes in at around 8 g per serving. It contains 22% of your recommended saturated fat allowance, mostly from the coconut oil I would guess, but the Bambara groundnuts also contain some fat (they are 19% protein and 6% fat). It’s also fortified with calcium, vitamin D2, vitamin B12, providing 20-50% of your daily needs for these.

Note that since Bambara nuts are related to peanuts, they may provoke a reaction in people with peanut allergies.

What are Bambara groundnuts?

The Bambara groundnut is one of several nutrient-rich legumes grown in Africa that are said to have a lot of potential. A paper published in 2023 by a consortium of African biologists and food security experts lists Bambara groundnut among 10 legumes that are widely considered to be underutilized:

Adzuki beans (Vigna angularis), African yam bean (Sphenostylis stenocarpa), Bambara groundnut (Vigna subterranea), Jack bean (Canavalia ensiformis), Kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), Lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus), Marama bean (Tylosema esculentum), Mung bean, (Vigna radiata), Rice bean (Vigna Umbellata), and Winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus)

A 2020 paper, focused on the Bambara groundnut, states that this legume “has the potential to contribute to improved food and nutrition security, while providing solutions for environmental sustainability and equity in food availability and affordability.” Here’s some more information from that paper:

Bambara groundnut is a sustainable, low-cost source of complex carbohydrates, plant-based protein, unsaturated fatty acids, and essential minerals (magnesium, iron, zinc, and potassium), especially for those living in arid and semi-arid regions. As a legume, Bambara groundnut fixes atmospheric nitrogen to improve soil fertility. It is resilient to adverse environmental conditions and can yield on poor soil. – Bambara Groundnut: An Underutilized Leguminous Crop for Global Food Security and Nutrition (2020)

So it’s a nutrient-rich crop that can be grown on poor soil in dry areas, actually helping to regenerate that soil. Why is it not grown more? From that same paper:

Despite its impressive nutritional and agroecological profile, the potential of Bambara groundnut in improving the global food system is undermined by several factors, including resource limitation, knowledge gap, social stigma, and lack of policy incentives. Multiple research efforts to address these hurdles have led to a more promising outlook for Bambara groundnut; however, there is an urgent need to continue research to realize its full potential.

So that’s where WhatIF Foods come in – the company, who’s CEO learned about the benefits of Bambara nut at a science conference on sustainable nutrition, sources Bambara nuts from smaller farmers in Ghana.

How sustainable are Bambara nuts?

WHatIF foods works with Swiss organization the Pond Foundation to source Bambara nuts from Ghana:

Until now, there’s never been an export market for Bambara, so it is slowly becoming locally extinct as farmers prioritise growing other crops for international markets. It has a very short vegetative growth cycle, copes with poor, degraded soils and low and intermittent rainfall, and is not reliant on capital-intensive inputs, including harmful fertilisers and pesticides. – Pond Foundation

WhatIF Foods’ three pillars of ReGeneration consist of creating nourishing foods that not only fill you up but bring nutritional benefits, respecting and restoring the land we live on to ensure that no damage is being made to the planet, and creating beneficial livelihoods for farming communities. Our joint effort in making this a reality is starting at the grass-roots in northern Ghana. We’ll be working there with the women-led farming communities that produce Bambara Groundnuts. – Pond Foundation

WhatIF Foods presents data on the carbon, water, and land footprints of BamNut milk versus oat, almond, and dairy milk (shown below). The company has many blog posts but I can’t find a reference to the Life Cycle Assessment that produced these numbers.

Similarly, WhatIF Foods have been working with the Pond Foundation to create a “world first carbon reduction initiative” but there’s no detail available yet on exactly what’s entailed.

The My Carbon Zero initiative helps [WhatIF Foods] deal not just with today’s emissions, but with ‘legacy’ emissions – all the carbon they’ve emitted since their inception – and helps them develop and implement a strategy to take the strongest climate action possible. – Pond Foundation

Ethical rating for BamNut Milk

I’m scoring WhatIF BamNut Milk 4.5/5 Green Stars for social and environmental impact, for these reasons:

• A vegan product. Adopting a plant-based diet is the top thing you can do to mitigate deforestation, climate change, animal cruelty, and the negative impact that the meat industry has on society.
• The main ingredient, Bambara groundnuts, offers several social and environmental benefits, as discussed above. By providing a market for these BamNuts, sourced from women-led farms in northern Ghana, WhatIF could help these sustainable legumes make a comeback in Africa. I think this factor carries some weight.
• Bambara groundnut shells are converted into biochar to help improve the soil.
• The other ingredient, coconut oil, is not organic – WhatIF Foods is “working real hard to be Regeneratively Certified instead.”
• The shelf-stable Tetra Pak carton is difficult to recycle as it contains layers of plastic and aluminium – the recycling rate may be 25% at best. On the plus-side it doesn’t require refrigeration and is efficient to ship. To be fair, there’s no perfect packaging for milk on supermarket shelves.
• WhatIF Foods shares quite a few blog articles but it would be helpful to receive more concrete information from the company, such as the life cycle assessment report (LCA) and details on carbon reduction.
• Milk made from legumes is generally agreed to be the most sustainable option, particularly when protein content of the milk is taken into account.

Summary scores (out of 5) for BamNut Milk:

• 4.5 gold stars for quality and value
• 4.5 green stars for social and environmental impact

If you have a different opinion, please share your rating! Until next time, stay safe : )