Why do you eat yogurt?
In this country we eat yogurt mainly
because we are told it is good for us. The TV commercials, our doctor, our
parents—somebody told us to start eating it for some reason. Unless we were
born into a family who had an ethnic connection to yogurt as a regular part of
their diet, most of us would never even try it. Do we even know what yogurt is?
How did yogurt come to be considered good for us? Why is it good for us? Is all
yogurt good for us?
Yogurt is a fermented dairy product. You
start with some kind of milk, generally cow's milk, add some dairy cultures (beneficial
bacteria or "probiotics"), keep it warm for a period of time, and let
the bacteria do their work. The milk's physical components (fat, protein,
sugar, and water or whey) are digested by the bacteria and are changed in
subtle ways causing the milk to thicken.
Yogurt, cheese, butter milk, kefir, bread,
tempeh, shoyu, pickles, wine, and beer are all members of a food group called
"super foods." These super foods are the result of microbial or
enzyme (yeast, bacteria, fungus, rennet, etc.) action on common foodstuffs that
transform them into nutritional power houses by breaking down and altering
certain molecules into a more usable form. This allows for easier digestion of
the food and an increased level of nutrient absorption.
These microbes hang around, populate our
gut, and continue to help digest all the food we eat. This population of gut microbes
is also our main source of B vitamins (especially B12) and trace minerals,
which are needed by our internal systems to function properly. Most of the
super foods mass produced today have their microbes killed by heat treatment
and are not passed on to our body. That is why yogurt with live bacteria is
considered to be such an important part of our diet.
All yogurt is not meant to be a supplier of
probiotics and will not maintain your gut bacteria population at healthy
levels. Most of the popular yogurts today are marketed as a confectionary
dessert food item, and not the traditional staple meal that yogurt has
historically been. The bacteria are typically used simply as a texture and
flavor enhancing agent. Some yogurt is heat treated after fermentation to kill
the bacteria. For most of us, yogurt is nothing more than a supposedly healthy
replacement for ice cream.
All yogurt, even in
this country, used to be sold plain with no flavorings or thickeners. It was
also all tart, because of the high bacteria count and long fermentation process
with produced high levels of lactic acid.
Someone got the bright
idea that it would sell better if sweeteners were added. That happened during
the first frozen yogurt wave that hit the states in the late 1970s. The
fermentation process was also changed to produce a mild flavor.
Since sweetened
flavored yogurt sold far better than tart yogurt, most other manufacturers
followed suit or risked losing their market share to their competitors. As a
result, the mass market yogurt of today has been altered from a health
supporting staple food to a desert item filled with harmful levels of sugar,
thickeners, and chemical additives.
Our body requires live microbes to be
present in order to properly digest the food we consume and protect against
illness and infection. Our intestinal tracts are inoculated with bacteria
during pregnancy and from our mother's milk shortly after birth, which helps us
digest our food properly and efficiently. Bottle-feeding, age, use of
antibiotics, chemotherapy, or poor dietary habits can cause our intestinal
bacteria to be severely depleted.
The bacteria transferred to the gut
from the consumption of yogurt helps to restore our natural bacteria
population, and help fight off invasion by other bacteria, yeasts, fungi and
viruses. Foreign, harmful bacteria have a hard time getting a toehold in our
body if there is already a healthy thriving beneficial bacteria colony taking
up the available space and food.
Research done by
Russian biologist Ilia I. Metchnikov (Nobel prize 1908) suggested that regular
consumption of yogurt can help to
achieve a longer and healthier life span. His research focused on the Caucasus
region of Eastern Europe, including Bulgaria , due to its high
concentration of centenarians. Metchnikov helped launch yogurt's reputation as
one of the original health foods during the health food movement of the early
1900's and again in the 1960's.
The probiotic (bacteria) unit of measure,
called a CFU or Colony Forming
Unit, denotes active, reproductive bacteria as opposed to inactive or dead
bacteria. A single bacterium can divide and form a "colony" of many
bacteria. Commercial labs can analyze samples and report a certain number of
CFUs per gram of product. The most recent independent lab analysis of
White Mountain Foods yogurt reported 400 million CFUs per gram of yogurt. That's up to 90 billion per one cup
serving, making our yogurt
one of the most probiotic-dense foods on the market.
While eating
real yogurt occasionally is good for our overall health and provides many
nutritional and probiotic benefits even in small amounts, to maximize the
digestive and probiotic value of White Mountain
yogurt one should incorporate it into their daily diet as a staple food. Consuming
one cup or more at a time, every day, will provide a steady stream of live
probiotics that survive beyond initial digestion and contribute in a
significant way to the support of our health.
Read what our customers say about the health-supporting benefits of naturally ultra-probiotic White Mountain Foods Bulgarian Yogurt here.
Check out our recipe page for more imaginative and traditional ways to incorporate yogurt into your everyday diet.
Read what our customers say about the health-supporting benefits of naturally ultra-probiotic White Mountain Foods Bulgarian Yogurt here.
Check out our recipe page for more imaginative and traditional ways to incorporate yogurt into your everyday diet.
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Clearly explained.
ReplyDeleteThank you
Wow i have been searching for the best yogurt and i have found it. I have been suffering with a yeast for 4 years. And this yogurt contaning live probiotics has done magic,wonders to my body. I am so thankful for companys like white mountain who make original products and care about consumers like me . Im telling u if i can meet the owner of this company i would hug'em and kiss'em because this yogurt has cured me of something doct couldnt .all do to its brobiotics and keepong the good bacteria. Thank u so much white mountain !
ReplyDeleteSo happy our yogurt helped! We appreciate your enthusiasm and support so much.
DeleteI don't eat yogurt, but I decided to try this and it is so delicious. I'm looking forward to the benefits. Thank you for such a good tasting yogurt!
ReplyDeleteHow do we get the probiotic youghurts in Nigeria
ReplyDeleteCurrently our yogurt is only for sale in the USA.
DeleteAre you not providing anymore to salt lake City Utah? I can't find it in any of my "usual" stores. Very sad :(
ReplyDeleteYou can find stores near you that carry our yogurt here by entering your city or zip code: https://www.whitemountainfoods.com/store-locations.html
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ReplyDeleteMy favorite
ReplyDeleteLove this product and it has been the best gift someone gave me after a battle with C Diff caused by antibiotics. I had no idea that good quality yogurt had so many healing benefits. I was reading about SIBO diet for healing gut flora and daunted by making yogurt myself and your White Mountain product came up as the best one to use and I was already eating it daily! Thank you.
ReplyDeleteIs White Mountain yougart sold anywhere in south central mississippi area code 39501 am waiting excited for answer Thank-uou cindi
ReplyDeleteYou can find stores near you that carry our yogurt here by entering your city or zip code: https://www.whitemountainfoods.com/store-locations.html
DeleteThank you so much for sharing this great blog.Very inspiring and helpful too.Hope you continue to share more of your ideas.I will definitely love to read. Keep up the good work! Organic soil
ReplyDeleteHello, i love your article and i have also read an article which is really a great one for yeast infection, you can check them yogurt uses for infections thanks
ReplyDeleteI wish you sold this yogart in our markets in Cumberland, Maryland zip code 21502
ReplyDeleteHave you tried Martin's Foods in Cumberland? Our data shows we should be available there.
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