Yogurt is becoming more and more popular as people cotton on to the health benefits of probiotics and companies try to cash in on the trend.
It has been eaten for thousands of years in various forms, with ancient Indian records even referring to yogurt and honey as “the food of gods”.
Modern science has helped confirm its claim to help improve health and longevity through various studies, mainly on probiotics. These probiotics have been linked to everything from better digestion to weight loss, improved immune systems and, more recently, enhanced brain activity. It’s also naturally high in calcium, magnesium, potassium and protein.
With so many potential health benefits, it is little wonder consumers and companies alike have made yogurt a part of everyday life, treating it as both a health food (and now as a sweet snack).
There’s basically a flavour for everyone; from classic, unflavoured varieties to fruity favourites like strawberry or mango and onto more gourmet inventions like “cheesecake” or “coffee swirl”.
So popular is yogurt that Dairy Australia’s latest data shows the average Australian consumed 7.5kg a year in 2011/12 – around 1kg more than in 2005/6. That’s 144 grams per week, or about one average sized single-serving container from the supermarket.
Different types of yogurt, different types of waste
But not all yogurts are created equal – Greek yogurt, for example, produces an overwhelming amount of waste every year.
A recent report in the industry publication Modern Farmer showed that Greek yogurt production in America produced 150 million gallons of waste in the New York region last year. “There are no industry-wide statistics on where all the whey is going, but a typical option is paying to have it hauled to farms near the yogurt factories,” the article explains. “There, it is often mixed into feed or fertilizer. Chobani, for example, says more than 70 percent of its whey ends up as a supplement for livestock feed.”
All of this cost to the environment comes in exchange for a thicker, creamier yogurt often recommended or advertised as a “healthy” option.
Meanwhile, the addition of things like sugar and processing methods has made health experts question the effectiveness and presence of “good” bacteria in some commercial yogurt brands.
For one thing, probiotics are not present in every type of yogurt. It all depends on how it is processed – the ones that do include live cultures will state it in the ingredients or on the nutrition panel.
This factor also brings to light the issue of how yogurt is marketed to us, with many making claims that could easily lead to false assumptions.
A Choice report on low fat yogurts, for example, found that many of them were actually “more fattening than regular, full-fat brands.”
“Quite a lot of the flavoured yoghurts (sic) we bought from major supermarkets make healthy-sounding claims of one sort or another, including ‘low fat’, ‘lite’ and so on,” Choice said.
“Most of these yoghurts in fact give you more kilojoules per serve than plain full-fat yoghurt, and some of them even more than YOPLAIT Original Strawberry, the top-selling full-fat flavoured yoghurt. These unexpected and unwanted kilojoules come from sugar.”
Another factor is whether it is worth eating something you wouldn’t like in its natural state just because there may be health benefits, a question Sydney Morning Herald contributor Stephanie Wood explored from all angles in a recent feature.
While there are many reasons people choose to eat so much yogurt, the introduction of sugary brands and inventions like frozen yogurt suggest it is a food moving further away from its original form.
And, like so many other processed consumables, one has to wonder whether the benefits will be retained in every reinvention.
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