Yogurt: One of the Oldest Living, Tastiest Cultures

Tales of 120-year-old yogurt eaters with the boundless energy of adolescents made memorable television commercials and fed the notion that even if it is not the key to eternal youth, yogurt sure is healthy.

Hence workers lunching at their desks with little containers of fruit-flavored yogurt, or shoppers choosing frozen yogurt over ice cream, or parents getting their kids to snack on yogurt. Americans eat 4.6 pounds per person annually, a 110% increase in 10 years, according to the National Yogurt Assn.

Yogurt is healthful, but that doesn’t mean it is calorie-, sugar- or fat-free.

To keep down fat consumption, buy low- or nonfat yogurt. Read labels carefully, especially on frozen yogurt containers, to make sure there is no unwanted added fat or sugar.

Add fruit or other flavorings to plain yogurt; use it plain to replace sour cream or mayonnaise in sauces and dips. It also will work in marinades and in many recipes for bread or other baked goods.

However, it will curdle if put into hot liquids. Whipping it can break the curd and make the yogurt watery.

There is a significant difference in calories and fat content among the various types and brands of yogurt. A cup of nonfat plain yogurt has 90 to 110 calories, none from fat. Flavored yogurts can have as many as 270 calories a cup, and some varieties get more than a third of their calories from fat.

Yogurt, fermented milk with living microbes, was not discovered by hippies who made it in communes. It has been eaten for at least 4,000 years in many parts of the world. Throughout the Middle East, women moving to a foreign place traditionally carried a bit of starter culture to ferment milk, the Yogurt Assn. said.

It is the action of live cultures that converts milk into yogurt and the natural bacteria that gives yogurt its distinctive taste. The specific type of culture used needn’t be listed on the label, which will distinguish between living cultures and those that have been killed through pasteurization.

Inactive cultures are thought to lose their therapeutic benefit, Jean Carper said in her book, “The Food Pharmacy.”

No one has documented extraordinary longevity based on yogurt consumption, but early this century, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Elias Metchnikoff argued that eating fermented milk would counteract disease-causing microbial putrefaction in the intestines, Carper said.

People long have used yogurt to ward off or fight intestinal troubles. Carper said some studies have suggested yogurt may help boost the immune system. Research has been initiated into possible links to managing or preventing some forms of cancer.

The calcium in yogurt is helpful to people who are allergic to milk because of a lactose intolerance. Often they can eat yogurt without difficulty. Calcium may help prevent the debilitating bone disease osteoporosis.

One cup of low-fat yogurt provides 415 milligrams of calcium. The recommended dietary allowance is 1,200 milligrams for people ages 11 to 24 and during pregnancy and lactation,, 800 milligrams for people ages 1 to 10 and older than 24, and 400 to 600 milligrams for infants.