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Comment by throwway120385 | Hacker News Reader

throwway120385

It's marked as "plain" yogurt. You can still find adulterants in it, just not added sugars. For example Trader Joe's "plain yogurt" is a mixture of yogurt and buttermilk.

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I don't understand your comment. Trader Joe's sells plain yogurt with no added buttermilk.

https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/greek-whole-mil...

Or you can buy essentially the same thing for less at Walmart.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mountain-High-Low-Fat-Yogurt-Vani...

While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of finding healthy food don't align with reality.

Even if they did add buttermilk, it would almost undoubtedly be cultured buttermilk, which is really nothing more than very thin yogurt. So I'm not seeing what the issue would be with Trader Joe's adding yogurt to yogurt.

Not sure if they carry it anymore but yogurt marketed as "European style" often has buttermilk: https://oatmel.com/products/European_Style_Smooth__Creamy_Pl...

But not sure I would consider fermented milk to be an "adulterant" in a different fermented milk product...

FWIW, Greek Yogurt is not the same as Yogurt, it's a different product. Those two items are not "essentially the same thing". Also, low/zero-fat yogurts dominate the market in the US. Plain Whole-Milk traditional yogurt is more available now than it was a decade or two ago, but it's still nowhere as common as the high-sugar flavored ones.

It's the same thing with the additional step of straining out some whey

the original is, but in the usa 'greek' yogurt is often thickened with additives instead.

In Europe it's also Greek (as in, literally from Greece) milk, or else labelled 'Greek-style'.

I am continually astounded that zero fat/low fat yogurt is just seen as normal. Ditto for oatmeal with added sugar.

I hate the obsession with low/no fat that has stuck around for decades here. Taking out the fat makes the food less tasty and less satiating. Not to mention that extra sugar tends to be added to try to compensate for the taste, thus making it at least as bad for you if not worse than if had more fat.

The Walmart thing has pectin in it as a stabilizer/thickener, which, benign as it may be, qualifies as an adulterant. And it's not permitted in plain yogurt in Germany (though usually added in fruit/flavored yogurt).

> While there are some people who live in "food deserts" with very limited options, complaints by most HN users about the difficulty of finding healthy food don't align with reality.

Some… Most…

You’ve made some broad assumptions here. I’ve lived in various neighbordhoods in one of the largest cities in this country and near and far suburbs of the same. Only when I’ve lived in ritzy or trendy areas have I had no issue eating healthy (according to my definition of healthy), and always at significantly greater financial cost.

My guess is either your concerns are less restrictive than mine annd others’ on this thread. Or you’ve been privileged enough to not have a clear perspective on just how large, dispersed and discontinuous, the American “food desert” truly is.

I haven't made any broad assumptions. You can buy healthy food like frozen vegetables, raw chicken, ground beef, potatoes, beans, rice, apples, olive oil, plain yogurt, etc pretty much anywhere. I travel a lot and have seen these foods widely available in neighborhoods that are not remotely ritzy or trendy. They are usually inexpensive, and if you have a little storage space then you can stock up when stores have discounts to save even more.

There are a small fraction of people who do live in food deserts and we ought to help them out. Probably the best thing we could do to make many food deserts "bloom" would be to fund the police and strictly enforce shoplifting laws, especially against organized retail theft gangs. Good grocery stores have been driven out of some neighborhoods partly by high shrinkage rates (not the only problem but a major contributing factor).

Plain yogurt is strictly defined by the FDA. It's when you have flavored versions that the rules get loose.

For example this contains only milk, cream, bacteria: https://www.traderjoes.com/home/products/pdp/plain-whole-mil...

This is basically sugary milk with thickeners added to make it vaguely like yogurt: https://www.yoplait.com/products/original-single-serve-straw...

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