Many who seek to improve their health
buy commercial yogurt from the grocery store, thinking they're doing something good for themselves when in reality they're not.
You will also
need commercial yogurt that contains live culture (half a cup) in order to give your batch its starter bacteria culture.
If you must buy
commercial yogurt for whatever reason, this brand is a quality product that I seek out when traveling.
Some flavour enhancers
of commercial yogurt like aspartame and sucralose actually have antibacterial properties.
I am wondering what kind of yogurt you use... do you use starter (from somewhere like cultures for health) or do you use
commercial yogurt as your starter?
The fact that this study showed any improvement at all is remarkable, considering they
used commercial yogurt preparations that are notoriously unhealthy — loaded with artificial sweeteners, colors, flavorings, and sugar.
Yogurt can contain various strains of Lactobacilli, but
commercial yogurt makers will restrict the number of bacteria to a few, for profitability.
What is really remarkable to me is that this study showed any improvement at all, since they used
commercial yogurt preparations that are notoriously unhealthy foods loaded with artificial sweeteners, colors, flavorings, and sugar.
Traditionally made yogurts and kefir are beneficial,
many commercial yogurts have sugar and additives that destroy the health of the food.
It is supposed to be a total of 300 g yogurt, which is usually 2 small containers of
commercial yogurt sold in the US.
Fermented foods and fermented dairy in fact make up separate sections of my «What Eating Real Whole Food Looks Like» though most people today eat few to no living probiotics beyond
perhaps commercial yogurt whose nutrition, additives, quality, and probiotic qualities are questionable:
However, even health savvy shoppers typically don't realize that even if the label
on commercial yogurt says «sugar» instead of corn syrup, it is virtually certain that sugar is also from a GMO source.
Another problem
with commercial yogurt is that it is usually sweetened with genetically modified (GMO) sweeteners.
Commercial yogurt consumption has been suggested to favorably alter the gut microbiota and gut function (12), decrease the risk of overweight or obesity and metabolic syndrome (13, 14), improve immune - system activity (15), and lead to a better lipid profile (16).
Commercial yogurt fulfills the current concept of probiotics if it contains viable, live, and abundant beneficial bacteria (namely Streptococcus thermophilus and Lactobacillus bulgaricus) at a minimum concentration of 107 CFUs / g (9).
Commercial yogurts often contain upwards of 25 to 30 grams of sugar per serving, which meets or exceeds the daily recommended amount of sugar for the whole day!
At the same time, I readily admit to anyone who asks (and at all my events) that in addition to making my own yogurt, which I do regularly, I also buy
commercial yogurt as well.
Most importantly, the vast majority
of commercial yogurts have clinically insignificant levels of beneficial bacteria.
The best way to optimize your gut flora is by including some naturally fermented foods in your diet, but I'd caution against using
most commercial yogurt and milk products as your primary source of probiotics, as they're made from pasteurized dairy and often have sweeteners, artificial sweeteners, and other additives.
I've been using skim milk and
a commercial yogurt base the first time around, my own the second.
Dairy: milk, milk products, ice cream, whey powder,
commercial yogurt, heavy cream, buttermilk, sour cream, and the following cheeses: ricotta, mozzarella, cottage cheese, cream cheese, feta, processed cheeses, and cheese spreads
While the culture is forming, the temperature of the milk should remain at about 110 degrees.If you don't have
a commercial yogurt maker to regulate the temperature, try one of these ideas to keep your homemade yogurt warm:
You can order a starter or use
a commercial yogurt as your starter.
So if someone you know eats a lot of
commercial yogurt and is doing this primarily to assist with their digestive health and to boost immune function, tip them off that they would be better off making it themselves or buying it from a small farm!
The length of time for fermentation of
commercial yogurt (both regular and Greek) is so short (one person in the dairy industry told me that it is an hour or even less) that thickening agents are sometimes even added to commercial yogurt to give it the look and feel of yogurt that has been fermented for much longer such as would happen with yogurt made on a small dairy farm or in your kitchen.
The problem is that
commercial yogurt is fermented for very short periods of time.
Most
commercial yogurts are cultured for 8 hours or less, and to thicken them, many yogurt makers add nonfat powdered milk, which raises the amount of lactose, or milk sugar, in the end product.
BUT
commercial yogurt and kefir found in most grocery stores are to be avoided since they typically contain a lot of heavily processed ingredients (from the pasteurized milk to the sugar or artificial sweetener).
This bacterial strain is one of the most popular, commonly added to
commercial yogurts and probiotic supplements.
Easy and fun to make at home, it is superior to
commercial yogurt.
Increasingly prebiotics are being added to many types of processed foods such as
commercial yogurt and dairy drinks, nutrition and meal replacement bars, «green foods», functional wafers, cereals and cereal bars as well as infant foods and formulas.
It's not really creamy (like
commercial yogurt) and although they say it is mild tasting I find it to be very sour.
This tells you that it is important to avoid
those commercial yogurts and make your own, adding good pro-biotics.
However, most of
the commercial yogurts are so processed that they're often left with little to no probiotics.
All commercial yogurt and dairy products are pasteurized.
The amount of probiotics you'll get from
commercial yogurt is also far lower than what you'd get from a high - quality probiotic supplement.
A commercial yogurt might give you a million probiotic cells, which sounds like a lot, but if you take a quality - made supplement you're getting tens of billions of probiotics — three orders of magnitude greater amounts.