People usually eat yoghurt when they want to look after themselves, and especially their gut.
Live-culture yoghurt is beneficially probiotic, and it is this probiotic benefit which we intend to receive when we buy yoghurt for ourselves and our loved ones.
However, market forces have hijacked our gut ignorance, and we now have shelves and shelves of yoghurt-like substances with little benefit. In fact, many will actually cause harm.
Once it has its shelf/fridge life extended by adding preservatives or irradiating it, its wonderful probiotic benefit disappears.
Preservatives and the multitude of ultra-processed ingredients added to make this less-than-beneficial-food-like substance more palatable actually harm your gut health and that of the ones you care for by providing them with “yogurt”.
Some well-known brands even add “emulsifiers” to their yogurt, and emulsifiers are well known to contribute significantly to gut-health harm.
Some hide harmful ingredients behind “E-codes”.
Some don’t list any preservatives, but their yogurt is irradiated, another way of killing off microbes. This will not cause harm to your gut microbes, but it means there is no probiotic value in the yogurt.
There is no point in buying yoghurt other than live-culture yoghurt and if it does not say “Live culture” on the label it is not live-culture yogurt inside the container.
Although most of us know this, we do not know what to look out for. Sometimes the label will say “yogurt culture” but with added preservatives, meaning the culture was used to make it, but then killed off to extend fridge stability.
I feel so deeply disappointed that I have not been able to find a single live-culture yoghurt in any supermarket I visited in Gauteng nor on the Garden Route since late last year.
This coming week I challenge to you find live culture yogurt in your local stores, and put pressure on retailers to source gut-healthy food.
If possible, take a photo and let us know where you bought it.
We get our yogurt from “The Cheese Shop” Costa’s wonderful “Hoekplaas Cheesery”, but if it was not for having this gem on our doorsteps, our only option would have been to make our own.
As you walk this journey, inspire everyone to become more gut-conscious.