Yogurt on the Military Diet

Yogurt can be used as a substitution on the Military diet, but get your facts right before eating…

Yogurt: health food or dessert?

We all tend to think of yogurt as a health food, but over the years, many yogurts in the grocery store have gone from healthy to hazardous because of America’s insatiable need for sugar! Some yogurts are no better than full fledged desserts with all the sugar, corn syrup and artificial sweeteners as ingredients. As discussed on this website, we are not amused by artificial sweeteners – they are worse than real sugar.

And probiotics are awesome right? We see the commercials, we read the articles and we want probiotics to make our guts healthy too.

But not all probiotic yogurts are created equally. Sucralose kills probriotics, so any yogurt that uses Splenda as a sweetener might be fully dead, containing no active probiotics. Probiotics help your immune system and digestive health, but what’s the point in eating dead yogurt?

How can you get the most out of your yogurt?

Read the labels and look for brands of yogurt that contain live and active cultures. Living yogurt is actually easier to digest than regular milk products because of the reduced lactose content created by microbes. The average yogurt on the shelf contains 3-4 strains of probiotics with 1 billion to 5 billion CFUs (colony forming unit) per cup. To get the real benefits of probiotics, it’s better to up your dose. Kefir is a 99% lactose free dairy drink that contains 10-20 strains of probiotics and 7 billion to 50 billion CFUs per cup. Kefir is great for your digestion and easy on the system if you have lactose sensitivity.

Are sugar and fat bad in yogurt?

Honey is a great natural yogurt sweetener

FAT is not a bad thing in yogurt. Eating yogurt with no fat and added artificial sweeteners is like eating a white chemical soup. It’s better to choose plain unsweetened Greek yogurt and add Stevia, honey or fruit. We need to eat fat for fuel and it’s especially good for you in the mornings when most of us eat yogurt. Full fat satisfies your appetite meaning you’ll eat less later in the day. Non fat yogurts just leave you hungrier and more likely to over compensate later in the day.