Day 160

Thoughts: Is yogurt really that good for you?

Basic food can be very healthy, until it is corrupted in the hands of food manufacturers. The more food is processed, the unhealthier it becomes. The healthiest foods have no list of ingredients. They are what they are.

Milk was once apon a time pure and uncorrupted. Now it is a multi billion dollar industry producing mass to keep up with the demands of the people. So is yogurt.

Yoghurt or yogurt is a dairy product produced by bacterial fermentation of milk. Fermentation of lactose produces lactic acid, which acts on milk protein to give yoghurt its texture and its characteristic tang. Dairy yoghurt is produced using a culture of Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus salivarius subsp. thermophilus bacteria. (Wikipedia)

This blog thanks to Jiveny Blair-West and Carolyn Wagner.


The yogurt section in the grocery store has gotten pretty complicated. Instead of just choosing between regular and light, or fruit on the bottom versus premixed varieties, customers can now select what kind of bacteria they wish to devour with each cold spoonful.

What is sold in mainstream supermarkets under the name yogurt is really a dairy dessert loaded with sugar and processed fruit, disguised as a health food. Stay away from yogurt altogether and if you abolutely cannot live without it, try plain, organic yogurt and add your own fruit.

"Is Yogurt As Bad As Soda?" This article was written by Dr. Todd M. Narson who is a Chiropractic Sports Physician. "This FAT epidemic in the United States started about 30 years ago. Just about the time a then little known substance called High Fructose Corn Syrup was introduced into our food chain. Initially it was just in sodas. Now, it's in everything from Ketchup to Yogurt. Yes yogurt has the same nasty man-made sugar crapola that Coke & Pepsi and other sodas have. And..This stuff is killing our friends, our children and us. So, this got me ticked off enough to start writing about it and that's why you're reading this today. Simply because I've had enough.
The big food manufacturing companies know we are sleeping and they're taking advantage of us. But yogurt? I thought that was a healthy snack? Nope, not any more. Although there are a couple yogurts out there that have regular sugar in them (Thank you Stoneyfield Farms for keeping it real!!) , you must....YOU MUST take your health into your own hands and read the labels on everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G!!!!!!!"

Marie Clare even wrote an article 'Foods that make you fat"
FAT FOOD TRAP: Fruit-flavored yogurt.

Though yogurt has been around for thousands of years, most people didn't know about it until fairly recently. And when it was introduced it wasn't very popular. Yogurt was manufactured in some northeastern U.S. cities by Turkish and Armenian immigrants in the early 1900s, but serious commercial production didn't begin until 1940, when Dannon Carasso bought an existing yogurt factory in the Bronx and began making yogurt using a culture of bacteria brought from Europe. Yogurt found a ready market among certain ethnic groups in the New York City area but didn't catch on with the rest of the country until the 1970s, when strawberry preserves were added, successfully masking the natural sour taste that some people disliked.

Others have also taken issue with Dannon’s marketing strategies. In January, a Los Angeles firm served Dannon with a class-action lawsuit alleging that the company intentionally hyped its probiotic wares and made millions based on false claims.

Are probiotics a prescription for glorious guts or just a gimmick?

Probiotics are microorganisms that provide health benefits inside the body, but some scientists say that probiotics remain poorly understood. Of the thousands of probiotics that exist, very few have been tested for their effects when consumed by humans as part of their diets. Laboratory research does not necessarily translate into real health benefits, these researchers say.

As the list of digestive ills that probitoics can allegedly cure expands, so do the number of probiotic drinks, cereals, and shakes. Now, there’s probiotic dog food, probiotic ice cream, and probiotic treatments for farm-raised salmon. Ha what a joke! The only problem: Some so-called probiotic bacteria don't contain strains medically recognized as beneficial.

"At present, the quality of probiotics available to consumers in food products around the world is unreliable," says a 2006 report by the American Society for Microbiology. Yeah ya think! There are few FDA regulations on marketing claims made on probiotic products, as long as those products do not claim to be equivalent to drugs that have the ability to cure diseases.

These probiotics, they say, can regulate digestive health, lower cholesterol, strengthen bones, and make you and your stomach happier. Consumers are encouraged to imagine good, little critters colonizing their stomachs. The stuff is allegedly so good, in fact, that yogurt containers seem like a better fit in the medicine closet—alongside Nexium, Prilosec, and Protonix—because of their medical-sounding prospects of transforming your digestive tract.

Who invented yogurt? No one really. It was undoubtedly discovered by accident, since yogurt is simply milk that has been converted into a weak solid by the action of bacteria. This happened more readily in warm climates, like the Middle East, but yogurt was also familiar centuries ago to those who lived in cold climates, such as Scandinavia. Given time and the right weather conditions, certain bacteria that occur naturally in milk from any mammal can cause milk to sour or ferment.

We’ve been introducing bacteria into our stomachs for millennia—not to mention the some 50 trillion microbial cells and thousands of species of microflora in the gut already—but many of the scientific-sounding claims surrounding probiotic bacteria have nothing to do with the actual science itself. While some recent studies have suggested that Lactobacillus bacteria aid in digestion and play a role in our body’s immune defenses, many of the contemporary claims seem almost as exaggerated as Metchnikoff’s longevity theory. Until his death in 1916 at the unremarkable age of 71,the Nobel Prize-winning Russian scientist Ilya Metchnikoff promoted a theory for prolonging human life. His recipe for longevity was simple: yogurt. Metchnikoff thought that the consumption of the bacterial cultures enabled Bulgarian peasants to live for an average of 87 years and he sought to bring its transformative qualities to the West.

But most people don't eat yogurt to reduce their cholesterol levels or fight an upset stomach. Many eat it because they believe it's low in calories. That may be true of plain low-fat and nonfat yogurts, but yogurts to which flavorings, sweeteners and fruits have been added have many more calories. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the calories in an eight-ounce serving of fruited yogurt average about 230 (compared to 350 calories in a cooked, three-ounce hamburger and bun). The surprise is that there is an insignificant difference in calories between eight ounces of unflavored whole milk yogurt and unflavored nonfat yogurt--about 145 versus 125--so the calorie-counting consumer who prefers the whole milk type needn't feel too guilty.

People also think yogurt is chock full of vitamins and minerals. For many nutrients that's true, although the amounts vary depending on the milk from which the yogurt is made. And guess what...MILK IS POISON! So we are taking poison and fermenting it into more fermented poison. My friend Dwayne Peachey says "yeah lets take some food and make it rotten so we can eat it. I guess the same applies with cheese." (Read my blog on milk Day 135).

But the chief reason yogurt is such a big seller in supermarkets and health food stores is that people like it. Sales are increasing by 11 percent a year--with an estimated $1.3 billion market predicted for 1990. This has encouraged other manufacturers to introduce similar fermented milk products.

In 1977, Dannon made a TV commercial for its yogurt repeating a similar claims, only this time it was Soviet Georgians who prolonged their lives by eating spoonfuls of creamy, fermented milk. Many of these longevity claims have been refuted, but yogurt companies continue to market the bacteria that break down lactose and turn liquid milk into lumpy yogurt—like Streptococcus and Lactobaccilus—as beneficial.

"Deceptive advertising has enabled Dannon to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ordinary yogurt at inflated prices to responsible, health- conscious consumers," said attorney Timothy G. Blood.

http://www.theearthdietforvegans.blogspot.com/
http://jiveny.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/love-thyself/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoghurt
http://www.livescience.com/health/top_10_good_food_bad-1.html
http://www.good.is/post/is-yogurt-really-that-good-for-you
http://naturalsportsmedicine.blogspot.com/2006/12/is-yogurt-as-bad-as-soda.html
http://theearthdiet.blogspot.com/2010/03/day-135.html

Challenges: I do get activated, mad and feel cheated when I hear more and more each day what 'they' are doing to our food and earth. Destroying people's lives and health for money. 'He insulted me, he cheated me, he beat me, he robbed me' those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.' Buddha. It would be easier for me to think this, however I choose to take responsibility, and I have a responsibility as a consumer, and I choose not to buy these corrupt money making products.

Triumphs: If we all stop buying them, they will stop making them!

What I Ate Today:

Breakfast: Warm water with lemon squeezed in it. A beet, carrot, celery, ginger juice.

Lunch: Strawberries and 2 apples. A chocolate ball with peanut butter (crushed peanuts) . Walnuts.

Dinner: Roast chicken with garlic and himalayan salt. A potato. Cauliflower. A quater of an avocado.

Dessert: 3 nectarines.

Snacks: 2 tablespoons of peanut butter (crushed peanuts)

Recipe: Recipe for chocolate balls in blog day 115.

Exercise: A walk around the block, and then it started raining so it turned into a run round the block! Hehe I loved running in the rain woo woo!

205 days to go!!!