Yogurt is extremely good for you. However in the last years it as turned into a fad.
Yogurt or Calorie Loaded Desert?
The good news is that now we have a wide variety of yogurts available in super markets with live cultures (great for probiotics!). The bad news is that instead of making healthy wholesome food most yogurts are more like a calorie loaded dessert. To give yogurt a dessert flavor they add extra sugars’ or artificial sweeteners! YUCK!
It’s easy to be confused when shopping for yogurt in the dairy aisle, as there are hundreds of varieties.
Some yogurts are made with cow’s milk, goat’s milk or soy milk. What’s the difference? Some are made with live cultures such as Lactobacillius, acidophilus and bifidus. The bacteria in these yogurts help the gut to heal faster after taking oral antibiotics.
To make it easier on my VegFusion readers, I created a simply cheat sheet to make your yogurt shopping experience super easy 🙂
Simple Healthy Yogurt Cheat Sheet
1. Get plain yogurt without added sugar, corn syrup or flavor.
2. Add your own fruit.
3. Avoid the artificial sweeteners like aspartame etc.
4. Find a locally produced yogurt without gum, fillers,thickeners, or stabilizers such as carrageen, modified food starch Example: Seven Star Yogurt from whole food.
5. Know what to look for on the labels. Specifically, you are interested in yogurts that contain the live cultures Lactobacillus, Acidophilus and bifidus. There may be two or three other types of live cultures, but these are the most common and easiest to assimilate for most people.
6. Remember that even nonfat, organic, live culture yogurt has natural sugar. A one-cup serving of this kind of yogurt provides live cultures, 14 grams of protein, 0 grams of fat and 10 grams of sugar. That is not added sugar, but simply sugar from the milk from which it it is made. This is to say all things in moderation.
Yoplait original 99% fat free cherry orchard has 170 calories with 27gms of sugar with 1.5g of fat.(
Unhealthy-loads of sugar)
Dannon all natural vanilla has 150 calories and 25gms of sugar. (Unhealthy-loads of sugar)
Breyers cream savers has 240 calories with 3.5 gms of total fat,
dried corn syrup. artificial cream flavor, gelatin, and artificial
color red 40 blue.(Unhealthy-Added artificial colors)
The whole soy yogurt has 150
calories, 12gms of sugar and
Fage has 90 calories, 7 gms of
sugar and 15 gms of protein.
(Highly Recommended)
I always try to make yogurt at home using 2% reduced fat milk, but if I’m going to buy yogurt I would recommend the veg fusion readers stick to one of the healthier examples above. Visit my blog for a detailed version of making
yogurt at home.
