No.In the refrigerated counter in the supermarket, yogurt usually takes up several shelves. Do not miss the Greek, there are lean and organic, yogurt with chopped fruit or gathered in a kind of jam on the bottom, the jar with chopped hazelnuts and the cream proposed for the children’s snack.
A customer who is not too determined is wondering what to choose. Then you better ask yourself a question: want healthy food or dessert? Because the yoghurts on the market can be one or the other.
If you are looking for the food appreciated in scientific studies, excellent for breakfast, we must focus on products that have not undergone major industrial processes, composed of milk and that pinch of bacteria that starts the natural fermentation process. Whites. Without sugars, dyes and other additives except the live microorganisms that degrade lactose and transform it into lactic acid.
Yogurt is a food rich in calcium and microorganisms that train the immune system (photo Getty Images)
The relationship with the waistline
“Surveys have reported numerous benefits for regular yogurt consumers»Reads the information site of theHarvard Medical School in Boston. «To begin with, the physical form: they are thinner than those who don’t hire them. It is still not entirely clear whether yogurt really slims the waistline or whether it is because people with better diets eat it. Certainly what a jar can give is a sense of satiety ».
It is the proteins that in yoghurt help to quench hunger (and in the Greek, dense because filtered several times, they are record-breaking, almost 19 grams per serving).
Nutrients that are added to other valuable substances for the organism as calcium, magnesium, vitamin B12 and unsaturated fatty acids, called in jargon “good fats”. But the real interest of researchers now revolves around theanti-inflammatory action some yoghurt.
The anti-inflammatory virtues
A team from Stanford Universityin a study published a few months ago in the journal Cellnoted one marked reduction of 19 inflammatory compounds in volunteers who followed a diet with plenty of fermented foods for ten weeks (yogurt, sauerkraut, kefir, kombucha and kimchi). Good news for health.
It is now a shared fact that levels of inflammation in the body are linked to a more or less healthy longevity and a lower or higher risk of contracting diseasesfrom cancer to Alzheimer’s.
The benefits of microorganisms
Fermented milk contains probioticswhich are bacteria similar to those present in the intestine and so defined because they are beneficial (from the Greek pro bíosin favor of life).
The microorganisms of yogurt do not resist the acidic environment of the stomach in mass, but even if inactive they have their usefulness: train the immune system, which constantly patrols new arrivals in the belly and trains itself to recognize friendly and enemy germs.
There is another very important aspect to consider: during the fermentation processes of milk, microbes produce chemicals, called postbiotics or metabolites, useful to the human body.
In other words, they derive energy from the sugars present and release molecules such as peptides, polyamines and short-chain fatty acids, also giving rise to mixtures of compounds with potential anti-inflammatory action in yoghurt.
The phenomenon is identical to the processing of a part of those trillions of bacteria, viruses and fungi known by the collective name of intestinal microbiota.And.
The probiotics that colonize us mainly feed on dietary fiber derived from our meals and in turn supply us with postbiotics.
“Microbiota, secret weapon of the immune system” by Maria Rescigno (Vallardi).
“Their metabolites are molecules small enough to penetrate the meshes of the inner mucus layer and directly reach the epithelial cells, and then continue towards the interior of our organism, where they will communicate with the cells of the immune system and favor their work” he writes Maria Rescigno, pro-rector of research at Humanitas University in the book Microbiota, the immune system’s secret weapon (Vallardi).
“And if the molecules are small enough to also overcome the intestinal vascular barrier, they will be distributed throughout the body, performing their function also at a systemic level”.
The delactosed product
Inside a jar the events of the microworld we host are replicated. Fermentation is an ancient process, at least six thousand years oldborn with the purpose of preserving food when it was not even imagined that the refrigerator would be invented in the future.
The doctor Stamen Grigorov discovered at the beginning of the last century the first bacterial strain to which the fermentation of milk is due (Lactobacillus bulgaricus), while it was the immunologist Il’ja Il’ič Mečnikov, Nobel laureate in 1908, who imagined the virtues of yogurt and the like by associating the longevity of the populations of the Caucasus with the use of consuming sour milk.
Lactobacilli, by operating a sort of pre-digestion of part of the sugar, make yogurt more digestible than milk in case of lack of lactase, the enzyme that breaks down lactose into the two monosaccharides glucose and galactose, so that they can be absorbed.
However, those who have a serious problem of intolerance will have to opt for the delactosed product (i.e. subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis of lactose).
Skinny to fruit? It is a dessert
So far the ideas dictated by science. In reality, focusing on the favorite taste is the criterion that addresses many consumers. Strawberry, apricot, blueberry, pistachio, chestnut. Delicacies.
Some imagine that they are doubly good for their diet: “A single package contains fermented milk and moreover fruit”, they think. Too bad that such delicious yoghurts generally conceal so much of that sugar that they actually turn into a dessert.
“We are talking about quantities that are not irrelevant at all, which correspond to about three to four coffee spoons of sugar (therefore about 15-20 grams) for each jar”, reads the project website Smartfood of the Ieo-European Institute of Oncology.
Someone will say in front of the shelf: I take it with fruit, but lean so I save in calories. It is an error of assessment. The 4 or 5 grams of fat in a jar of full-fat yogurt versus 1 gram in low-fat yogurt doesn’t make a big difference in terms of energy..
«The fats of yogurt can be defined as ‘good’ and especially suitable for those suffering from constipation» write the nutritionists of the Smartfood team. “There is a minimal and negligible difference in calories between a low-fat and a full-fat yogurt.
In addition, choosing a low-fat yogurt with fruit generally means introducing even more sugar than the same yogurt with the same taste but whole ». The lack of fat is compensated with an increase in sweetnessto satisfy the consumer.
Getty Images
How to enrich the white
The main yardstick of choice in the store must concern the presence or absence of sugarsregardless of whether the yogurt is “organic”, creamy, “lactose free” or “Greek”.
The advice is to choose a white yogurt with no added sugareven whole, and if you want to enrich it with fresh and dried fruit, puffed cereals or pieces of dark chocolate.
For those who just can’t get the acidic taste to go well, the trick is to stretch the fruit yogurt with a white one, in order to dilute the sugar by halving it, preparing the jars to be consumed in two mornings.
Eliana Liotta (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
Eliana Liotta is a journalist, writer and science writer. On iodonna.it and on the main platforms (Spreaker, Spotify, Apple Podcast and Google Podcast) you will find his podcast series The good that I want.
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