Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dahdum 784 days ago
Aren’t there are a ton of live culture yogurts available in most supermarkets? Noosa, Siggis, Fage, Yoplait, and Chobani for example.

They just genrally have too much sugar.

1 comments

Yes, but even among those there is some deception.

Take Yoplait, it is made with pasteurized milk, so it doesn’t have the naturally occurring cultures. Like the added sugar they just add cultures/probiotics in, what’s important in this is that there are 1000s of species of probiotics and “added probiotics” is not the same as naturally occurring probiotics, which are generally limited to just a few species. In other words it’s a marketing stunt to market “probiotics” as if it were natural, but to reuse the word it is a bastardization of naturally occurring cultures.

Where are you getting unpasteurized milk that you could make yogurt with it? I don't know anyone who has eaten yogurt made from raw cow's milk and wouldn't know where to get it.
In California it's often sold at farmers markets. It's usually a stall or two selling yogurt and raw milk.

You can also just ask a dairy directly.

That’s the point, the yogurt purchased in stores is processed to the point it loses the very benefits that make yogurt “healthy.”

To answer your specific question, farmers that have dairy cows. It’s not so common these days, but neither is healthy yogurt. Another example of a probiotic food would be kimchi, which in the US most people probably purchase in stores (pasteurized), but in SKorea many make at home so it’s raw with naturally occurring cultures and enzymes.

Yogurt from “raw milk” doesn’t even make any sense. The pasteurization step during yogurt production isn’t to make the milk safe for consumption. It’s to kill the other bacteria so the one that is deliberately introduced can thrive.
Yogurt has been around for thousands of years, pasteurized milk for less than 200.

And yes the pasteurization of milk is to make it safe and it’s required by law in the US (if the milk/yogurt crosses state lines, interstate commerce).

You are right in that yogurt made with raw milk, the bacteria of the raw milk will typically overtake the bacteria introduced for the fermentation. Now we have come full circle to the point that modern store bought yogurt doesn’t have the same health benefits.

This may all sound counterintuitive that milk is pasteurized for health/safety reasons but pasteurized milk/yogurt doesn’t contain the health benefits of raw milk, or yogurt made from raw milk, but it’s rather straight forward: it contains health benefits but simultaneously potential risks.

What are the health benefits from drinking raw milk?
Depends on the animal, but in general milk is nutrient dense, contains fat, protein, carbs, vitamins and minerals.

Like all dietary/nutrition sciences there are plenty of studies for both sides of arguments (e.g. coffee is healthy/unhealthy, eggs are healthy/unhealthy), so you can easily find studies that contradict the benefits of bacteria in raw milk (certainly there is a potential safety risk) but here’s an NIH study supporting raw milk’s association with promotion of bacteria in the microbiome beneficial to physical/mental outcomes: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7285075/