Yoghurts and fermented milks

Yoghurts and fermented milks (lebne, lassi, kefir, skyr…) are simple and healthy foods.

Simple foods

These dairy products are made with few ingredients: milk and bacteria. The production process is identical: the milk is inoculated with bacteria and heated to a low temperature. The main difference is the type of bacteria used to develop each of them. All bacteria act in the same way: they grow in milk and make lactic acid from lactose (milk sugar). The acidity of lactic acid causes coagulation of milk proteins, which thickens it. Some yoghurts and fermented milks are liquid: after thickening of the milk, the yoghurt (or fermented milk) is beaten, which breaks the coagulation and makes it more liquid than the traditional product.

Healthy foods

These dairy products have all the nutritional benefits of milk: they are an important source of calcium and provide good quality protein. They are more digestible than milk because the lactose (sometimes poorly tolerated) is transformed by bacteria.

Bacteria used in yoghurt (or fermented milk) have other benefits:

• they promote a good intestinal transit, which is of interest for people suffering from chronic constipation
• they contribute to the good balance of the intestinal flora
• in cases of infectious diarrhea or antibiotic-related diarrhea, they reduce their intensity and duration by restoring the intestinal flora they might relieve irritable bowel syndrome.

These bacteria are unable to sustainably colonize the digestive tract and are eliminated in a few days. Therefore, a regular consumption of yoghur (daily) is required to maintain these probiotic properties.

Choose the ideal yoghurt that can be consumed every day

To make your choice in the supermarket’s fresh food aisle, read the product labels.

The ideal product…

• Contains whole, semi-skimmed or skimmed milk
• Contains bacteria: milk ferments, lactic ferments, culture
• Does not contain cream
• Contains less than 20 g of sugars per serving.

To verify this, read the nutritional values, but be careful as they are often indicated for 100 g of product. It’s up to you to calculate the amount of sugars per serving if this is not indicated. Yoghurt naturally contains sugar (from the transformation of lactose) so a little sugar is found even in plain yoghurt. By choosing a plain yoghurt or homemade yoghurt, you have the advantage of being able to season it to your liking. Take care to not be too “heavy hand” with sweet products: it should not exceed 10 g of added sugar per serving.

Discover and try: my recipe for « Homemade yoghurt » without yoghurt maker