Denise~*
Salad nightVirginia Tadrzynski There are 2 seasons when nothing seems appetizing and I don't want to bother cooking: extreme winter as in February, and extreme summer as is now. In the cold, I...
To make a long story short, you need to have live bacteria in the yogurt for it to do anything. Live bacteria are not good for business as they turn the yogurt more sour and if you don't kill them, there's always the chance something bad will survive too.
Therefore most commercial yogurt does not have long lived cultures, or any live bacteria at all it.
While most of the live bacteria in yogurt does not survive your stomach, if it were to reach your large intestine, it is good for you. So for the health benefit of the "good" bacteria, you need to eat fresh, live, strong cultures, not old and weak or over pasteruized or sterilized yogurt.
Here in Israel that's a problem because of all the brands called "BIO" (the local catch phrase for live cultures), only two of them are alive enough to reproduce in your home or survive your stomach.
This does not include special active cultures in little plastic bottles that resemeble milk cans, imported from Belgium. They may have been alive when they were bottled, but I and no one I know has ever been able to get them to do anything. As for additives, it really does not matter. If the culture is alive, it will reproduce. If you take a tablespoon of yogurt with additives and make a quart of yogurt out of it, there is not going to by many additives left. If you go two or three generations, there will be nothing left.
The reason that is the "conventional wisdom" is that the less additives that are put in the yogurt, natural or otherwise, flavoring, preservative, etc, the more likely it is to actualy have live bacteria when you get it home.
You can also increase you chances by finding out when dairy products are delivered to your store of choice and getting them "off the truck".
It does not take much to test a particular brand for how well suited it is for you. If it is below 90f in you home, warm your oven to the lowest possible setting and turn it off. Place warm (baby formula temperature) milk in a muffin pan and add stir in a teaspoon of yogurt in each cup, making sure you can tell which is which. A drop of food coloring, toothpicks, etc will do. Put it in the oven and come back in 8 hours.
new pizza recipeI think this joke was posted earlier, but it fits the topic: Guy used to have a Labrador retriever & was buying a large bag of Purina at Wal-Mart...
If it tastes bad, or tastes like milk with a spoon of yogurt in it, don't use that brand. If it has started to thicken and you like the flavor, use that brand.
Yogurt, World's GreatestDefault User I don't even like fresh milk so I am no judge. However, as an interesting anecdote, I was buying 50 lb bags of dehydrated WHOLE milk for cheese and...
Geoff.
-- IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 Fax ONLY: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
