If you ever talk to someone about food there is a good chance that the benefits of yoghurt is going to come up at some point in time. While it is true that probiotics that are naturally found in yogurt do have health benefits such as improving overall gut health, that wasn't enough for the industry and back in 2010 one particular company got into a lot of trouble by stretching the truth in regards to the benefits of using their product.
Dannon also tried to imply that it was only their yogurt that does this when in fact there is almost no way that anyone can make yogurt different from brand to brand.
If you like yogurt go ahead and eat it, you could do worse but just make sure that your yogurt isn't a high-calorie sugar-fest that is masquerading a health food as many of them do.
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I have no beef with yogurt. It tastes good, it's cheap, and it is available everywhere. However, just like any product they need to get the marketing department involved in order to differentiate themselves from the competition. Dannon, in the early 2010's tried to make a push to make people believe that yogurt is good for them. The jury is still out on whether or not that is true because research continues. At the moment it is unclear even to this day if probiotics actually make a meaningful impact on overall health but Dannon didn't want to wait and started making campaigns about how eating Dannon yogurt would help with stomach or gut "regularity" whatever that means and that their yogurt drink DanActive would prevent a person from getting the flu or even catching a cold. They claimed that this had been clinically proven to be true.
There was just one problem with this claim though and that is that it hasn't been proven to be true. There have been some studies that indicated that it could be the case, but the regularity of this happening was so random that it could merely be a coincidence. They cited a particular study that came to the desired results but it was not done in a scientific way. It could have been rigged is what I am saying. There was no control group and lets just say that how the results were obtained was anything other than transparent.
So the FTC forced Dannon to stop advertising this and the yogurt company didn't even put up a fight in regards to this and I think this is because they knew they were lying.
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Something that irritates me just generally speaking about the yogurt industry is that while yogurt, in its natural state, can be a good thing to eat. The stuff that people buy in large quantities is anything but that. There is a huge amount of added sugar in most popular yogurts and some of these are advertised as being healthy. The problem with the word "healthy" is that this is a relative thing. You can call a salad healthy if you want to even if it has 1000 calories of cheese, dressing, bacon bits, and croutons on it because other than that, it's just a pile of vegetables right?
In the United States the yogurt sugar content is even worse because most companies in the USA don't even use sugar but instead will go for the far cheaper corn syrup option. I am very afraid of this sort of sweetener because it hasn't been around long enough for us to really know what it does to the human body. Is it a coincidence that we are seeing an increase in cancer and heart disease right around the time that we started to see an increase in processed food products? I have no proof of this and the industry certainly wouldn't allow that information to get out if it was true but the timing is a bit suspicious, don't you think?
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The thing I find most concerning about not just yogurt, but grocery store food items in general is look at all this crap that is in a cup of yogurt. I don't even know what most of those things are and I am fearful to find out.
Generally speaking I think that if you are buying a product that you should look at the ingredients. Once we start to venture into chemical names in a food that you are purchasing, it might not be a terrible idea but to skip that product.
I rarely eat yogurt but when I do it is a greek one because of the high protein content. I am fearful of words on food products when I can't pronounce them or have never heard of it. I think most people should strive to eat as much whole foods (not products for Whole Foods Store) as they possibly can afford to. The food industry is a huge one and I think organizations like the FTC only pretend to be looking out for the common man. The entire industry is rigged to be deceptive. The government isn't going to do your work for you so you must remain focused and vigilant.
When Dannon decided to market that eating yogurt means you wont get sick sounded too good to be true that was just because it wasn't true.
I don't have an educational background that qualifies me to be more enlightened than other people. What I do have is a near 30 year experience of doing things incorrectly and learning from those mistakes. Perhaps you can learn from my mishaps and never make them yourself
There's a lot of claims made about various foods with some saying they help 'gut health'. I would think a good mix of less processed foods could do that. People tend to want quick fixes and will do for what appear to be easy options. Marketing is a big part of that and we all love a sweet treat, me included.
My son is into his fitness and is now a physical trainer. He does some recipes on Insta, but I think they use fresh ingredients. He has encountered some people using dodgy substances at the gyms, but he doesn't do that stuff.
That's great that your son is natty. I see people at my gym frequently that are clearly using PED's. I think that once your upper body gets seriously veiny that you are no longer looking good. It's just weird.
I think he will stay clean as he needs to set a good example. He's trying to build up a set of clients.
I do think there is a big difference between naturally grown yoghurt compared to shop bought flavored and sweetened crap. You can make your own through culturing which does have all the health benefits and why people think yoghurt is good for you.
as it is with almost all things, the companies that mass produce it do it in the cheapest and likely least healthy way.