Three Things To Consider When Choosing The Best Yogurt For Your Health
Everyday, it is said that when you consume two Glasses of Yogurt, Berries and GranolaYogurt, then whoa, you have an healthy food.
However, the sugar and flavorings added to many yogurts can make them more like junk food. For this reason, navigating the yogurt aisle of your grocery store can be confusing.
Follow this guide to find out what to look for and what to avoid when shopping for healthy yogurt.
Always Read the Label
Reading the label should always be your first step when deciding what food to buy. According to Nutrition authority, it is because reading the label is essential to knowing what is really in your food.
On the outside, it may seem like all yogurts are the same. However, if you know what to look for, the label on each yogurt can tell a different story.
Ingredients List
Although all yogurts start out as plain yogurt, they often contain a variety of added ingredients, such as sugar, artificial flavors, dyes, stabilizers and preservatives.
When possible, choose a yogurt without large amounts of added ingredients. Instead, try to choose a yogurt with few ingredients. These ingredients should include milk, the bacterial cultures used to turn milk into yogurt and not much else.
Ingredients are listed by weight, so avoid yogurts that have sugar listed near the top. Better yet, simply avoid all yogurts that have any type of added sugar on the ingredients list.
Sugar can be listed under a number of different names, including sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, cane sugar and agave nectar.
Nutrition Facts
The nutrition facts on the label can give you some of the most specific information. Then watch out for the serving size and calories per serving that are listed at the top. The nutrition facts can also tell you how many carbs, fat, protein and sugar are in each serving.
Note that there may be more than one serving per container, meaning there are more calories too.
Right now, the nutrition label does not distinguish added sugar from naturally occurring sugar, which can make it difficult to tell how much sugar has been added.
However, labeling guidelines have recently changed so that the grams of added sugar per serving will also be listed on labels in the future.
The nutrition information will also tell you how much calcium and vitamin D each yogurt serving contains.
Ideally, your yogurt will contain vitamin D and a significant part of your daily calcium needs. This will be listed as percentage of daily value (% DV) on the label.
So, the next time you are going for that yogurt, try and consider this three awesome factors.