Walk the Talk

As much as I continually suggest we should all eat nutritious, real food... I fell off the wagon a year ago. Actually I didn't fall... it was a very long, slow descent, adding a few empty calories here and there... until the additives (which are designed to addict) took over after a few months. I even lost the habit of taking my few daily vitamins. As a consequence, my energy levels are down and my weight is up. So it's time to get back with the program.

I don't have the disorder known as SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) but I can sure tell the difference in how I feel on bright, sunny days, even in winter. My self-diagnosis is a shortage of Vitamin D3 (the sunshine vitamin) and I started taking it again this very morning. I take about half a teaspoonful of fermented cod-liver oil in a gel that's mixed with a high-vitamin A butter oil made by Green Pastures. Mid-day and evenings I take a less expensive D3 gel cap.

A good breakfast had fallen by the wayside too, giving way to something high-carb and/or high sugar with my 2nd cup of coffee. I picked up 2 dozen farm eggs (from chickens fed NON-GMO feed) and some decent organic bacon this weekend, but not enough for the whole month because I didn't intend to start this until January, after the holidays. (It may still be just half-measures over the holidays.)

I'll need to make another trip to the nearest natural foods store (80-90 miles one way) later in the month to re-stock, plus buy some fresh yogurt to inoculate/make my own. I should order some kefir grains too. Mine were stored in milk in the fridge but unmarked, and I accidentally discarded them. Probiotics are an important part of a good food regime for me.

I don't expect the first several weeks will be easy, and I know that every time I nosh on something not good for me, it will just lengthen the time of adjustment back to well-being. No doubt I'll be cranky as a bear much of the time, but the Vitamin D3 should help.

I can't promise this change won't affect my every-other-day postings for the next few weeks. I will do my best, but they may contain some rants against the food companies where their designed use of addiction additives helped my fall from the wagon.

When is Yogurt no longer a Probiotic?

Many yogurt manufacturers in the USA seem to have made a change in the yogurt sold in stores. Is this change to increase their profits by eliminating live cultures in the yogurt?

Yogurt is widely touted as probiotic... According to Wikipedia, "Probiotics are live microorganisms thought to be healthy for the host organism. Probiotics are commonly consumed as part of fermented foods with specially added active live cultures; such as in yogurt, or as dietary supplements." We all know to eat more yogurt to replenish good bacteria in the intestines after we have taken a round of antibiotics, but those days may be over in many locations.

I know the "trend" is the small snack-size yogurt cups with lots of HFCS-sweeetened fruit/flavor which add unhealthy calories to the diet, but I thought at least they also contained some live cultures. (I don't buy them; they're just a snack-size candy bar.)

I generally make my own yogurt, which is an easy process that gives me a healthy probiotic at a much lower cost than buying it from a store. The ingredients are simple: milk, and a store-bought yogurt to use as a starter (which is nothing more than a small portion of yogurt containing active live cultures). My preference for a yogurt to use as a starter is the Greek FAGE yogurt, but there is not a store within a hundred miles that carries that brand. So, typically I have used Dannon's plain yogurt, which has always stated it contained live cultures.

Over the last 6-8 months a local friend and I both have had trouble making yogurt; we concluded the commercial yogurt available around here (including Dannon) must contain fewer live cultures than they did previously. Then just last week I looked in the Kroger store for more yogurt to use as a starter. Not a single container stated it contained live cultures, not even the Dannon brand! Even the "Greek-style" yogurts on the shelf had no live cultures.

Most of the yogurt brands did contain some form of a thickening agent, but no live cultures. That's not much of a problem for me since I can plan ahead and save one jar of homemade yogurt from the last batch to use as a starter for the next batch. I can also buy dried yogurt culture on the internet even though I have been told it really isn't as good as using live cultures.

However, this may be a problem for folks who don't read the labels every time. They may think the yogurt still has live cultures simply because it used to, and fail to read the label.

Update: 

Checked another store in another town this week; they carried 2 brands containing live cultures: Stoneyfield, and Brown Cow. However, there were not many tubs of either... in fact just 3 of the Brown Cow.