Latest Fact Sheet

Season 4, Ep 6 - Yoghurt

· New Zealanders gobbled down enough yoghurt to fill 13 Olympic pools last year. Yoghurt is a multi billion dollar global industry.

· The basic recipe for yoghurt is very simple – milk and a starter culture of bacteria. But it takes two more ingredients to make yoghurt edible to most of us. Sugar to counter the sourness of the acid and fruit for flavour.

· Everything that is good about milk is good about yoghurt. It’s a good source of protein, calcium, some vitamins and minerals.

· Look out for the sugar content on the back of the pack as it can be as high as 25 grams per serving which is about six teaspoons. Low-fat yoghurts aren’t necessarily lower in kilojoules as they can still be very high in sugar.

· New Zealand doesn’t have official guidelines on how much sugar is ok. However, the American Heart Association suggests women have no more than 6 teaspoons of added sugar a day and 9 teaspoons for men.

· When it comes to fat, the three big manufacturers all make low fat yoghurt as their standard product with only around 1 or 2% fat. But beware, there are also more and more full cream sugary yoghurts in large serving sizes on the shelves. A serving of some yoghurts have as many kilojoules as a Big Mac!

· Our human experiment suggested larger tubs may encourage people to eat more than they would from smaller tubs.

· There have been a number of scientific studies which look into the effect of yoghurt and other dairy products on our ability to shed the pounds. There are a couple of ways that yoghurt might help. Protein may fill us more, so we’ll eat less. Calcium may interfere with our absorption of fat. However, in some studies people lose weight, in others they gain weight and in most there is no effect at all.

· Fresh fruit in manufactured yoghurt would ferment and spoil the yoghurt so what goes in is effectively a low sugar jam with preservative to stop yeast and bacterial growth.

· Artificial sweeteners are included in many yoghurts. Some people have concerns about acesulfame k and say it was approved on the basis of flawed testing. European and American authorities admit the tests don’t live up to today’s standards, but they are nonetheless confident that acesulfame is safe.

· The most common probiotics added to yoghurt are acidophilus, bifidus and caseii.

· We couldn’t find much evidence that probiotics do anything for your digestive balance. They may have a hard time balancing the 20 trillion bugs already in your gut. But if you are a fan, eat a probiotic yoghurt as fresh as possible for the best results, – or you could even make your own yoghurt with sachets.

· Dairy food can be a great source of calcium and can actually have less sugar and fewer kilojoules than many yoghurts.

· Dairy food is 86% skim milk with a dash of cream to bring it up to 1% total fat. It is very similar to cold custard.

· In our dairy food human experiment, it was interesting that kids struggled to tell flavours apart when the visual clues were taken away.

Read more about Yoghurt via these links.