5 Ways To Choose The Best Yoghurt For Your Health

Illustration of how to choose the best yogurt for health (Freepic/pressphoto)

YOGYAKARTA Yoghurt is one of the probiotic foods that is efficacious for the health of the digestive system. Because there are so many yogurt variants in the store, you can choose according to your health condition. How? Here's the guide for choosing the best yogurt for health.

Reading the label is one of the first steps to decide which yogurt is the best. By reading the label, you will know the list of ingredients that are formulated into liquid or creamy textured foods.

In principle, yogurt products are made from the same ingredients. But it contains additional ingredients such as sugar, artificial taste, dye, stabilizer, and preservatives. If possible, select yogurt with a little extra ingredients.

If you consume non-dairy basic yogurt, make sure the list of additional ingredients used is as small as possible. Avoid yogurt that includes sugar at the top, because of course it will weigh higher than placed in the lowest order. Additional sugar, usually including sucrose, high fructose cornferpor, fruit juice, sugar cane, and agave fire.

On the label, you also need to check the nutritional facts. The size of the portion and calories per serving will be included in the packaging section. By knowing the nutritional facts, you can find out how many carbohydrates, fats, protein, and sugar in each dish. Nutritional information also tells how much calcium, vitamin D, and real sugar and additional sugar each serving of yogurt.

Ideally, healthy yogurt contains daily vitamins D and calcium. Usually, what percentage will be met if you consume one portion.

It may be very difficult to get additional sugarless products. So, from the available products, choose the least additional sugar so as not to reduce health levels. On average, additional sugar intake increased by 1.8 kilograms per year to 68.2 kilograms per year in the early 2000s, reported by Healthline.

Every day, according to the CDC report, adults aged 20 years and over consume 17 tablespoons of sugar every day. If you add another drink that is sweetened with additional sugar, such as soda, fruit drinks, sports drinks, and yorhurt, the amount will increase and not be healthy because it is associated with the development of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, metabolic disorders, and liver disease.

Yughurt is plain, usually contains a sektiar 9-12 grams of carbohydrates per 245 grams. But yogurt with additional sweeteners, contains 30 grams or more. So, choose yogurt with at least 7 grams of sugar per cup.

Yogurt based on milk can be made from whole, low-fat, or fat-free milk. Low-fat or fat-free milk, may be lower in calories but more sugar to balance the taste. So, if you choose yogurt from low-fat milk, make sure to find one without additional sugar.

Full or full-fat Yoghurt is also available. The calorie content is more abundant but that doesn't mean it's unhealthy. Because natural processed trans fats may be healthier than trans fats in processed foods.

All yogurt contains probiotics from bacteria or 'life culture' that offers many health benefits. Such as improving the symptoms of lactose intolerance, stimulating the immune system, reducing the risk of diarrhea, and improving symptoms of colon irritation syndrome.

Research has also found that probiotic yogurt can help lower cholesterol, blood sugar, and blood pressure. For this reason, choosing yogurt needs to be selective about the content of life culture. Choose yogurt with the most probiotic content sealed by IDFA (The International Dairy Foods Association). But more importantly, avoid pasteurized yogurt after the probiotics are added. Because by pasteurization, bacteria are profitable to die.