Yogurt – a great health food

Yogurt was so popular for many years.  And rightly so as it is a very healthy food to add to your diet.  However, in the past year or so, my husband has noted the shelf space for yogurt is getting less and less.  And the flavors we used to love are getting harder to find.  This means the popularity of yogurt is waning but this is not good news for people’s health.  Not only does yogurt provide a good source of calcium, it also provides vitamin D, a vitamin so many Americans are low in.  Recently I was talking to a health care professional and she stated how many of her patients are deficient in vitamin D.  Guess those patients aren’t drinking cow’s milk, eating yogurt and going outside.  Yogurt also provides an excellent quality protein.

Consumer Reports has an excellent article on yogurts. 

Why is yogurt so healthy?

• Calcium – Children and adults need bone-building calcium every day.  Easy to do if you drink milk at meals or have some real cow’s milk yogurt in place of a glass of milk.  Recently, students in my class kept 24-hour diet recalls.  They wrote down everything they ate or drank for 24 hours.  It is always amazing to see the number of students who have no dairy in their diets at all.  Guaranteed their diets are low in calcium (and low in vitamin D).  Kids 4-8 years need 1,000 mg of calcium a day, teenagers 1300 mg a day and adults about 1,000 mg a day.  Yogurt packs in the calcium as 8 ounces of yogurt provides over 400 mg of calcium.   Most yogurts aren’t in 8-ounce containers but 6 ounces or less.  We try to buy yogurt in at least 6-ounce containers, as I want all the calcium I can get from yogurt.
• Vitamin D – like cow’s milk, most yogurts are fortified with vitamin D.  We need about 600 IU a day of D.  An 8-ounce serving of yogurt provides from 115 to 127 international units.  But check the nutrition label as some yogurts provide zero vitamin D.
• Protein – most people know meat provides protein.  But did you know that cow’s milk yogurt provides a higher quality protein than meat?  The 2 proteins in cow’s milk yogurt, casein and whey, are very high-quality proteins.  Muscle builders often buy protein powders containing casein and/or whey?  Why?  Because these are 2 proteins of excellent quality.  But plant-based yogurts do not provide high quality proteins, so choose real yogurt made from cow’s milk, not fake milk. To boost the protein in his breakfast, my husband eats yogurt at breakfast every day.   

Real yogurt provides a high quality protein.

 

• Probiotics – yogurt provides healthy bacteria called probiotics.  Two bacterial strains often found in yogurt are Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus.  One would think bacteria are bad.  But not these bacteria.  One thing these bacteria do is convert some of the lactose, the natural “sugar” in yogurt to lactic acid.  So many people who are lactose intolerant, like some of my relatives, can tolerate eating some yogurt without any GI upset.  The healthy bacteria in yogurt help populate your GI tract with healthy bacteria.  Some yogurts are now not telling you what probiotics are in their yogurt. Not sure why, but I avoid buying those yogurt brands.

Yogurt provides healthy probiotics.

Why do some people call yogurt a “superfood”?

Consumer Reports quotes Debbie Petitpain, MS, RD, the wellness director at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, as saying: “In its simplest form, dairy yogurt is almost a ‘superfood’”.  (Note – she said “dairy yogurt” which means it is made from cow’s milk, not the plant-based yogurts made from fake milk.) 

• Blood pressure - Yogurt – can help lower blood pressure.  Real cow’s milk yogurt is high in potassium, and low in sodium.  Not only that, but the protein in yogurt helps regulate blood pressure.  A study in 2018 found that people who ate yogurt 5-6 times a week had a cut in their high blood pressure risk by 16%.
• Type 2 diabetes – Eating some yogurt everyday can lower one’s risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by 14-26%.
  
• Weight loss, weight control – WebMD states:  “Adding yogurt to your diet may rev up your body’s fat-burning engines, speed weight loss, trim your tummy…”  Guess I need to boost my yogurt intake as people in the study ate yogurt 3 times a day.  I get at least one serving of yogurt a day.  The other good news, is those who lost weight retained their muscle mass by eating real yogurt.  Not surprising since real yogurt is high in protein and as stated above, real yogurt provides high-quality proteins.
• Less inflammation – studies have found that “yogurt is associated with decreased inflammation.”   Probably because of the probiotics in yogurt. 

Avoid plant-based yogurts

I always encourage students in my nutrition classes to add yogurt to their diet as yogurt is such a healthy food and so many students have diets lacking in calcium and vitamin D.  One student came up to me after class to say she added yogurt to her daily diet.  I was so pleased but then she said she added almond milk yogurt.  My heart sank.  At the time, I didn’t even know you could buy yogurt made with fake milk.  I knew there was almond milk but now almond milk yogurt?  Consumer Reports explains why plant-based yogurts aren’t the best choice.  One reason customers choose the fake milk yogurts is that they actually think fake milk yogurt is healthier, but not true.  Many fake milk yogurts are low in protein and the protein in the fake milk yogurts is not the high-quality protein in yogurt made from cow’s milk.  Calcium is often lower in fake milk yogurts. Nutrients like potassium and vitamin B-2 are missing in most plant-based yogurts.  If you do choose a plant-based yogurt, choose one made from soy milk.  Soy milk and yogurts made from soy milk are recognized by USDA as “dairy” but none of the other plant-based yogurts are. 

If you haven’t had yogurt in a while, try some this week.  If you don’t like a flavor you try, try another flavor, another brand.  I like lime and lemon yogurts.  I put some real whipping cream on top and it is like eating a dessert.  A student was eating yogurt before my nutrition class started.  She cringed at every spoonful.  I asked her if something was wrong.  She said she was trying to eat some yogurt as I had recommended but she couldn’t stand the taste.  Right away, other students in the class offered recommendations on good tasting yogurts.  The next class she came in with a flavored yogurt she liked. This week, boost your nutrition with some yogurt superfood (but real yogurt, not fake yogurt.)

Sources:  yogurts , bone-building calcium , calcium , international units , proteins , Consumer Reports , WebMD, studies  Image sources:  type 2 diabetes , protein , probiotics