Low-fat "light" Yogurts. I assume they're crap/bad. But exactly how? page 2

[cori93437]

gadsie's dead-on right. nothing wrong with low fat. lots of dairy products are traditionally low fat when they're made, as the fat from milk is often reserved for cream or butter. it's all the other crap you have to watch out for!

This always gets me...
tra·di·tion·al/trəˈdiSHənl/
Adjective:
Existing in or as part of a tradition; long-established.
Produced, done, or used in accordance with tradition.

As a part of what "tradition"?
Mostly a modern, electrical, big cow dairy farm, readily available refrigeration tradition...

Before modern times it depended on location, climate, season, and status.
If you were a regular farmer with a milk cow in a temperate zone, in the cool months, sure you skimmed the cream and saved it a few days to gather with the cream from other days, then made some butter.
If you were rich and rand a large farm with hands to run a small dairy, those folks skimmed daily... possibly even in summer... because they didn't have to gather together several days worth of cream to get enough for a single batch. This was for rich people.
But in the summer if you were a regular guy with a milk cow, you didn't skim that cream and save it for several days to get a batch to beat into butter... it would rot. You made yogurt, or cottage cheese, that day... at full fat and ate it. Or sold it, or traded it... Because to do otherwise was a waste.
In other places where people didn't have cattle, and instead had sheep or goats (The first yogurts were from goat milk) there was no skimming unless the milk could be held at very cold refrigerator like temperatures for 3-4 days. Because goats and sheeps milk does not separate like cow dairy.

Cow dairy taking over the world as the primary dairy is sort of modern as well... it goes hand in hand with that refrigeration.
Back before that more people could afford and could feed a few family goats or sheep.
Cows take a nice large pasture, sheep a rather smaller lot, goats... they will thrive on rocky ground and prefer scrub.

Traditional... is a funny thing.

Sure there is a place for some "low fat" dairy products... just don't forget why they exist.
They were made when it was convenient for the people making them, seasonally.
And according to location, type of dairy... so in some regions the people really never ate any low fat dairy at all... because it was very, very hard to separate the cream of the type of dairy they used.
Butter and the skimming of cream didn't become a regular thing unless it was in a very rich household until the advent of modern times.
The butter and cream went to the rich guy, or the cow owner in the seasons he was lucky enough to treat himself. The low fat left overs went to the kitchen maids and the dogs or pigs, or into the cow owners wife's cooking pot if she was really frugal... which she likely was.

Even when large farms came about, and early factory processing came about, before milk trucks were refrigerated there were often entire summer deliveries of milk that were too clabbered by the time they reached the factory to be skimmed. They were used whole for full fat cheeses.
So still seasonal... until very recently.

[PHaselow]

Just how even "health" cereals are just low-fat, high-carb, I assume these yogurts are not Primal and are bad. Can someone give me the once over for all of these fruit yogurts that are marketed as healthy, when I know they're not? The obvious ones are loaded with sugar, but some are more vague:

Light & Fit® Greek - Dannon Light & Fit®

This one is 80 calories. What's the deal with being sweetened with fructose, sucralose and acesulfame potassium, ?

Low fat, fine. Low calories, fine.

I see it's got sugar/carbs. But at only 80 calories, how bad can it be?
How much is from natural fructose in the fruit vs. added sucrose, etc.
Also, artificial sweeteners are bad how? Blocking leptin/grehlin/peptide X?

I'm a huge advocate for avoiding artificial sugars, so sucralose (Splenda; I'm sure they don't call it Splenda on purpose) makes this a 'nope' for me right off the bat. I just don't enjoy putting laboratory created food products into my body. I formed my opinion based on a negative reaction to Aspartame (Nutrasweet) years and years ago: headaches, dizziness, balance/coordination deficits (so bad I was tested for a brain tumor). So, take it for what its worth. I just don't like any of them but I know little about Splenda. Same with the Acesulfame K.

Then, the whole process of how they make milk 'skim' is not pleasant. Basically, the fat free milk is fortified with dry milk to increase the protein content (add back what has been taken away). That dried milk is made at high temperatures which damages the nutrients. Vitamin A must be added back, because any natural form of it was also taken away during the de-fatting process (A is a fat soluble vitamin). If it is not synthetically fortified, any Vitamin A needed to process the added proteins is taken from the liver; could lead to depletion over time if you do not get enough Vitamin A from other sources.

A sneaky side of the whole fat-free dairy issue is that the cream/fat that is extracted is then used in other products. Gives more profit from the same quantity of milk to the company at the expense of giving you a lower quality yogurt.

Are you eating this to reduce your calorie intake? Fat in your diet will actually curb your appetite and lead to a lower calorie intake overall *without* the horrible feeling of deprivation and hunger! Fat is needed for you to utilize the protein in dairy so fat-free dairy isn't as nutritious as you'd hope because you might not be getting a lot of the nutrients.

if you are looking for some quality food to put into your body that isn't freaking you out with calories, then go for full-fat, plain yogurt. It is GOOD. Greek yogurt is decadent. Not a whole lot of calories that tastes so good going down.

[PrimalPumpkin]

Find yourself a nice organic whole milk yogurt if you want yogurt! Around here I can get several kinds that are decent but maybe not everyone is so lucky.

Anything that should have fat in it but it made low fat is processed to death even if it was not sweetened.

[jsa23]

Companies like dannon and yoplait make you think you are eating yogurt but what you're really eating is sweet, pudding-like processed food.

This is the problem with most yogurts out there. Most yogurts throw a bunch of sugar and some artificial fruit flavors in a dairy product, and try to market it as "health food".

Start with the plain, unsweetened stuff(greek or regular) - add some whole/chopped fruit if it fits your tastes, or maybe a bit of cinnamon or other spices. Many of the flavored(not plain) commercial yogurts out there are closer to sugary desserts than healthy snacks, nutritionally speaking.

[sbhikes]

According to Christmas stories my mom told me when I was young, the cream is skimmed off and left out for your nisse.

[cori93437]

Like a Danish/Norwegian house elf?
That's cute.

And yes... in that location, northern, it was more likely that they could have skimmed milk more of the year.

The peasant folk recognized it as rich enough to be seen as an offering. I like that.
I imagine they didn't leave all of the cream for the nisse, but always left some.
Good peasant folk were an ever superstitious lot.

[Chaohinon]

Whole Foods 365 greek, Mountain High, and Fage have great 0% and 2% versions. It's one of the few low-fat foods that doesn't taste like puke. If you can fit full-fat yogurt into your diet, then go for it, but I gotta cut calories somehow and I'll die before I eat egg whites.

[Iron Fireling]

How does this: acesulfame potassium in any way sound okay?? If something's sweetened with stevia, or xylitol or erythritol... then okay, not so bad. In fact, I sweeten stuff with erythritol and stevia . But I don't buy anything that's sweetened with artificial sweeteners.

Personally, though, I prefer my yoghurt with fat! I will buy full cream Greek yoghurt and then add a few berries and my own sweetener, if I get the urge for it.

[Neckhammer]

Not only everything everybody else said, but brands like dannon or yoplait are basically dead foods. It's better to make your own......

Right on! Hey I don't know for certain how dead dannon and yoplait are but I know that 24 hour yogurt done in the style of SCD yeild a TON of probiotic AND you can determine the quality of milk you use to make it to start with....which is of vital importance IMO. Check this out Healing Crow: The Great Yogurt Conspiracy. One well made point here
Claim One (probiotics vs home made yogurt): "Our product contains 15 billion bacteria at the time of manufacture. It would take ten tubs of yogurt and a dozen bottles of kefir to get the same amount of bacteria."

To answer this claim we went digging into the scientific literature. From several different references, we were able to determine an average concentration of yogurt. Homemade yogurt that is fermented for 24 hours, as recommended in the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle, will have an average concentration of 3 billion cfu/mL of yogurt. What does this mean? Well, if you were to eat a small bowl (500 ml) of 24 hour fermented homemade yogurt, you would receive 1.5 trillion beneficial bacteria - 100 times more bacteria than a 15 billion capsule.

So BAM!
Question why you should even be worried about eating the fat ( you shouldn't)....then look at all the crap they add to make non-fat palatable (sugar).....just not worth it IMO.

I edited cause I was actually thinking bout homogenization for a second rather than low fat. Homogenization sucks too.

[Neckhammer]

This always gets me...
tra·di·tion·al/trəˈdiSHənl/
Adjective:
Existing in or as part of a tradition; long-established.
Produced, done, or used in accordance with tradition.

As a part of what "tradition"?
Mostly a modern, electrical, big cow dairy farm, readily available refrigeration tradition...

Before modern times it depended on location, climate, season, and status.
If you were a regular farmer with a milk cow in a temperate zone, in the cool months, sure you skimmed the cream and saved it a few days to gather with the cream from other days, then made some butter.
If you were rich and rand a large farm with hands to run a small dairy, those folks skimmed daily... possibly even in summer... because they didn't have to gather together several days worth of cream to get enough for a single batch. This was for rich people.
But in the summer if you were a regular guy with a milk cow, you didn't skim that cream and save it for several days to get a batch to beat into butter... it would rot. You made yogurt, or cottage cheese, that day... at full fat and ate it. Or sold it, or traded it... Because to do otherwise was a waste.
In other places where people didn't have cattle, and instead had sheep or goats (The first yogurts were from goat milk) there was no skimming unless the milk could be held at very cold refrigerator like temperatures for 3-4 days. Because goats and sheeps milk does not separate like cow dairy.

Cow dairy taking over the world as the primary dairy is sort of modern as well... it goes hand in hand with that refrigeration.
Back before that more people could afford and could feed a few family goats or sheep.
Cows take a nice large pasture, sheep a rather smaller lot, goats... they will thrive on rocky ground and prefer scrub.

Traditional... is a funny thing.

Sure there is a place for some "low fat" dairy products... just don't forget why they exist.
They were made when it was convenient for the people making them, seasonally.
And according to location, type of dairy... so in some regions the people really never ate any low fat dairy at all... because it was very, very hard to separate the cream of the type of dairy they used.
Butter and the skimming of cream didn't become a regular thing unless it was in a very rich household until the advent of modern times.
The butter and cream went to the rich guy, or the cow owner in the seasons he was lucky enough to treat himself. The low fat left overs went to the kitchen maids and the dogs or pigs, or into the cow owners wife's cooking pot if she was really frugal... which she likely was.

Even when large farms came about, and early factory processing came about, before milk trucks were refrigerated there were often entire summer deliveries of milk that were too clabbered by the time they reached the factory to be skimmed. They were used whole for full fat cheeses.
So still seasonal... until very recently.

Awesome to have some real perspective.