Is Eating Dessert for Breakfast a Key to Staying Slim?

"Could yogurt be a key to staying slim?" asks the Washington Post. They look to Harvard for answers. But instead of looking to the priests of nutrition, let's see if we can answer this for ourselves.

What is yogurt? According to this fact sheet from Dannon,

The basic yogurt recipe is simply fresh milk, sweeteners, cultures and flavors or fruit.

Plus acesulfame K , Aspartame, cornstarch, fructose, gelatin, malic acid, pectin and/or phosphates.

According to this site, 4 oz (half of cup) of Dannon Activia yogurt contains 110 calories and 19 grams of carbohydrate, 17 of which are sugar, none of which are fiber.

Compare the yogurt to 4 oz of ready-to-eat chocolate pudding: 153 calories and 25 grams of carb, 19 of which are sugar. Except for a few extra calories (think two bites), these products are comparable.

While I'm loathe to quote doctors, one of them told me that I should take lactinex (a probiotic) while on antibiotics, and that the quantity in yogurt wasn't enough to do any good. I doubt that food that's basically pudding plus cultures makes a health food. It's more like chocolate cake for breakfast.

Want a healthier dessert for breakfast? Try making custard or flan (the night before) with a sweetener like Splenda. Custard made this way has eggs(!) and cream(!) and a fraction of the sugars, without the cornstarch, Aspartame or fructose.

Comments

Judith said…

Or, if you want to take it one step further and go dairy-free, you could try these delicious little breakfast custards: http://www.lowcarbcooking.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=212:coconut-custard-pots-a-coconut-chocolate-custard-pots&catid=66:breakfast&Itemid=67

June 26, 2011

Lori Miller said…

That looks tasty.

I should have made it clear that traditional, full-fat, unsweetened yogurt is different from the defatted sugar bombs at the grocery store. Personally, though, I prefer cultured sour cream to soured milk (yogurt). It's heaven in a carton.

June 27, 2011

This Just In: Yogurt Doesn't Improve Health

A recent study from Spain finds "In comparison with people that did not eat yogurt, those who ate this dairy product regularly did not display any significant improvement in their score on the physical component of quality of life, and although there was a slight improvement mentally, this was not statistically significant," states López-García. Most yogurt is pretty much pudding with a little bacteria . Pudding is a sugar bomb. Hard to believe the stuff doesn't improve health outcomes, isn't it? But as usual, researchers are calling for...more research. "For future research more specific instruments must be used which may increase the probability of finding a potential benefit of this food."

Paleo Diet: Eating Differently from Everyone Else is Fine!

I've been seeing more and more articles by women (it's always women) whose heads have exploded trying to figure out life without yogurt and cupcakes. Oh, the shenanigans they get up to: bathroom problems from stuffing themselves with vegetables, paleo baked goods that don't taste the same as ones from the bakery, and especially the irresistible urge to eat "normally." The technical problems aren't hard to sort out: substitutes like baked goods will taste different because they are different, but an adjustment period of a few months will make those foods taste normal. And whatever you eat, don't stuff yourself. First, though, read a book by Loren Cordain or Mark Sisson to learn about the paleo diet before diving in. The articles I keep reading, though, have more to do with attitude: the urge to be exactly like everybody else or the urge to be helpless. If you're in the second category, I can't, by definition, help you. If you'd rather be Lu

Decongestant Ineffective; Vibration Plate Works

A common ingredient in many cold medicines has been shown so ineffective that the FDA recently proposed taking it off the market. The ingredient, phenylephrine, "failed to outperform placebo pills in patients with cold and allergy congestion," say researchers from the University of Florida. "The same researchers also challenged the drug's effectiveness in 2007, but the FDA allowed the products to remain on the market pending additional research," according to CNBC . Mostly placebos. Photo from Pixabay . I can attest that phenylephrine doesn't work. Before I stopped eating wheat, I constantly had nasal and sinus congestion. I helped keep Sudafed in business when the active ingredient was pseudoephedrine, but I noticed the PE (phenylephrine) variety didn't work at all. The only other decongestants I've found helpful are guaifenesin (Mucinex) and spicy food. Mucinex is expensive because it works! (The cheaper store brands work just as well, though.) Su

Robert F. Kennedy shows up at the FDA

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder .

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog