Yogurt is thought of as a healthy food. It provides healthy bacteria, protein and calcium. Unfortunately most yogurt available in the grocery stores is not what I would consider healthy. When my older daughter was young I bought her yogurt tubes because she could take them to school and loved the taste. What I didn’t realize was how unhealthy they were because of the food colouring and sugar in them. I believe that yogurt is no longer a healthy food once you add those.
The bacteria in the yogurt helps keep our system in balance and helps us avoid sinus, ear and candida infections. The bacteria also decreases the amount of lactose in yogurt, which means that yogurt is easier to digest than milk. In my opinion, to buy the best yogurt:
Avoid:
- artificial food colouring (“colour” as an ingredient, Yellow #5, Red #40, or Tartrazine)
- sugar (on the ingredient list, not the nutritional panel that shows “sugars”)
- aspartame, Splenda and other artificial sugars
- additives or extra ingredients like cornstarch
Choose:
- plain yogurt
- yogurt sweetened with fruit juice or fruit
- yogurt sweetened with honey or stevia
- yogurt without colour, or coloured with beet juice or annatto
I buy plain yogurt and add fruit to it myself. I love plain yogurt with fresh raspberries or bananas. Sometimes I add homemade granola, raw nuts, pumpkin seeds or unsweetened coconut. I buy vanilla yogurt for my daughters occasionally, buying the ones with organic sugar so that the sweetener isn’t quite as processed.
More reading on the health benefits of yogurt:
Reasons Why Yogurt is a Top Health Food by Dr. Sears
In this blog post I have been writing about dairy yogurt, but the same information applies to goat yogurt, soy yogurt and coconut milk yogurt.
2 replies on “Unhealthy Yogurt”
Good tips in this article. I think most people buy sweetened yogurt or yogurt with fruit at the bottom, which I personally can’t stand because it has way too much sugar.
This is what I do: mix a serving of plain non-fat greek yogurt with half an individual container of fruit at the bottom yogurt.
Suzanne
Agreed on the unhealthy yogurt out there! When I developed a food sensitivity to corn I had to begin reading labels for corn ingredients such as corn starch added to food. There are very few yogurt brands that do not have LOADS of additives. Now that I have spent enough time reading labels I love Liberte (they use natural sweeteners), PC Greek yogurt (skim milk, bacteria culture), and Jerseyland Organic yogurt (especially the vanilla 8% fat). I try to buy plain but occasionally splurge on sweetened varieties and treat them as a “treat” like ice cream.