The Ugly Truth About Yogurt (You Won’t Like It)

Yogurt is touted as a health food that can help support the gut microbiome, but really, how healthy is yogurt? In this video, discover all the things you didn’t know about yogurt. Your gut health depends on this!

I’m going to share with you today the ugly truth about yogurt. But before I kind of dive into the yogurt, there’s one really important concept that you need to know about consuming cultured or fermented products, especially yogurt. When you consume yogurt, you might think that that bacteria is going to go into your large intestine and start to build it back up. They call that receding. Well, the first thing you need to know is that is extremely extremely rare.

There’s only a very few strains of bacteria that actually can go in there and recede your gut. And those microbes that can recede are rarely in any of your yogurt to start with. Number two, your gut is already densely populated with microbes. Okay? And they’re very territorial.

They don’t want anyone else to come into their space. They form this protective barrier called colonization resistant barrier. And so the question is what is the real benefit of yogurt and other fermented products if it’s not to recede the gut microbiome? Well, the real benefit is to change the environment, the pH, the level of oxygen, the food that they eat, and something called the metabolites. and they’re basically a substance to allow them to survive a lot better in that environment.

When you change the environment for the better for these microbes, you activate dormant microbes that are already there. They’re microbes that have been suppressed by antibiotics, junk food, or whatever. You see, from birth, you’ve been given microbes from breast milk, hopefully if you were breastfed. and the food that you ate, all these microbes kind of came in there and then maybe you had an antibiotic and you ate junk food and then the time goes on and a lot of these microbes have gone into this dormant state and some of them have gotten into a spore state very similar to like in the winter. I live in a farm and the grass isn’t growing in the winter, right?

If you dig into the soil, like the microbes are either frozen or they’re in a spore formation, but they’re not necessarily alive in the winter because it’s too cold, then they’re going to wait for that environment to be a lot better before they come out. So, in other words, chances are you might have a lot of the good bacteria that you need already in your gut in a dormant state. So, when you change the environment, they get reactivated. They start growing. they start to overtake the bad bacteria and now you shifted the entire microbiome balance.

And I really want you to understand that because the terrain, the soil, the environment is so important. It’s even probably more important than the microbes because if you don’t know that, you know, you could be taking probiotics, you could be taking all this fermented food, but it doesn’t really do anything because the environment is not good enough to allow them to live. A lot of the dormant microbes are what’s called keystone microbes. They’re the ones that kind of keep the bad guys in check, but they’re usually dormant if the environment is not right. Now that you have that basic, let’s talk about yogurt.

Okay, most commercial yogurt. When you go in a grocery store, you look at all these yogurts, and rarely do you look at the ingredients, but if you did, you’re going to be shocked. A couple points I want to make just about yogurt. Some of the yogurt has what’s called postpeurization. They start with this pasteurized milk that’s heated that has no bacteria and then they add the bacteria and then they heat it again.

So basically you’re eating the dead corpse of bacteria because it’s been double pasteurized. So unless it says live and active cultures, it’s been double pasteurized. That’s one thing. Number two, if we compare fermentation to typical yogurt or yogurt that you would ferment at home, there’s a huge difference, okay? and the fermentation time.

And fermentation is where you’re just putting microbes in something like milk and you’re allowing to eat and grow and become more concentrated. Well, typically the commercial yogurt fermentss for 1 to two hours whereas the traditional yogurts you might do 8 to 12 hours to 24 hours to sometimes 36 hours. So you have this super concentrated probiotic. And so when you see at the label it has so many billions or millions CFUs, it’s kind of like little colonies of bacteria and then they instead of counting the individual bacteria, they’ll kind of give an estimate of how much bacteria that’s in there. And they made certain estimates that you need at least 100 million of those CFUs to create some type of an effect on the body.

But the problem is maybe they start out with a 100 million CFUs when they make it, but once it’s shipped, it’s sitting on the shelf, and by the time you buy it, the chances of you having those 100 million is less than winning the lottery. Okay? You’re going to have a lot less. In fact, there was a study that I saw in 2017 that tested yogurt in Europe after 6 weeks, and there basically is no viable bacteria left. So, what kills the bacteria?

Number one, the sugar. High fructose corn syrup or modified food starch, which basically is hidden sugar. All of that sugar creates this severe dehydration to the bacteria. And then they add all sorts of pectin and gels and garum. They keep it kind of stuck in one place.

It can’t move. It can’t really do anything. It can’t get nutrition. So then it just dies. And that is because when you start making yogurt, it takes some time to actually have the yogurt thicken, right?

And change all the proteins. Well, they’re doing shortcuts. So, with one or two hours, you’re not going to have thick yogurt. So, then you’re going to have to make it thicker with all these different things to change the texture like the modified food starch or carrageenan or polyorbate 80, which by the way, these two things start to diminish that mucosal layer to the point where you can actually then get a problem with leaky gut and inflammation your gut. So, here you are thinking, I’m going to take something that’s good for my gut when it’s actually going to be harmful for your gut.

And then what about the artificial sweeteners, right? Artificial sweeteners have been known to alter the gut microbiome. And also, if you read the ingredients, sometimes it’ll say contains bioengineered food ingredients. That’s another name for GMO, which could potentially mean it has traces of that Roundup Ready glyphosate, which by the way, it’s been patented as an antibiotic. And if it’s true that there’s traces of an herbicide in there and you’re taking this antibiotic, which is supposed to be a probiotic, that’s not good.

But I think it’s really important the next time you buy yogurt to read the ingredients. I’m going to just read some ingredients of a very common yogurt that you would get at the store. First ingredient is cultured grade a reduced fat milk. Of course, they have to start with, you know, reduced fat milk. They had strawberry in there, sugar, fructose, water, modified food starch, milk protein concentrate, modified cornstarch, kosher, gelatin, natural flavors, ager, which is another gum, carrageenan, carmine.

Carmine is for coloring, and carmine comes from insects. And by the way, sometimes they’ll promote a good source of vitamin D, but if you look up the amounts on it, you’re talking about only 80 international units, okay? The tiniest amount of vitamin D that you could possibly imagine. So, if you think about this, this is a $45 billion industry with yogurt. And the great majority of it is sweetened and they add all these different things.

It is nothing remotely close to traditional yogurt or cultured milk products that they’ve used in other countries in Turkey, in Greece, in India where the