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Comment by dxbydt | Hacker News Reader

>so her solution was merely down the drain.

Suppose greek yogurt hadn't taken off in the US & remained a niche product for some health-freaks, then Dannon & Chobani would also throw it down the drain & we'd be none the wiser. The product has taken off in a way no one imagined. At the supermarkets, I see not just athletes but positively obese masses loading up on greek yogurt in some mistaken belief that it can compensate for their other excesses with soda pop & candy. Greek yogurt sells out even after they price it at $6! Clearly, we need an industrial solution to get rid of the byproduct, if we are going to manufacture the damn thing on an industrial scale.

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But remember that much of US Greek Yogurt is Greek Yogurt + SUGAR + JAM + FRUIT

Candy.

I'm glad you brought that up. Sweetened yogurt is one of the worst pseudo health foods on the market. Chobani's strawberry has 20 gm of sugar (4.76 tsp), and Yoplait is worse at 33 gm (7.86 tsp). That's a butt-load of sugar for such a small container.

That's an odd way to count. So fruits are bad pseudo health foods too? 8oz of pure, fresh squeezed orange juice has 22 grams of sugar. It wouldn't make sense to say that is "~5 tsp of sugar".

fruit juice is indeed not very healthy, because of its enormous sugar content. you'd probably never eat for a single meal the number of oranges that go into a single orange juice glass.

Fruit juice is not the best example of a health food. There's as much sugar in most fruit juices than there is in an equal volume of Coke [1]. When we were kids, my brother had to get caps put on all his teeth because he drank too much apple juice, and even though we brushed 2x a day, the sugar rotted his teeth. Plain fruit is better because it has more fiber and about half the sugar in a serving than the juice [2].

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-204_162-673229.html

[2] http://healthland.time.com/2009/08/07/calorie-counter-fruit-...

As Dr. Lustig (the "sugar is poison" guy) says, when nature delivers a poison it often provides the antidote. For fruits, the antidote is fiber. Juice removes much of that fiber.

My grandmother had a seizure and was rushed to the hospital. I happened to be in the area and went to see her. When I got there, she was conscious but catatonic. I said hello to her, but she stared straight ahead, unresponsive. Her blood sugar had dropped really low, so the nurse brought in a cup of orange juice. She drank about half of it - maybe 4 oz. The nurse put the cup down, and a few seconds later my grandmother turned, looked at me, and said, "Hi Nick, what are you doing here?" I'm not trying to exaggerate, but it was like someone flipped a switch. I was amazed at how fast the sugar absorbed into her bloodstream. So I guess the point of my story is that you shouldn't underestimate the power of the sugar in an 8 oz. glass of orange juice.

Hijacking for personal benefit. I'm a long time cold cereal breakfast addict. I eat the store brand equivalent of Life cereal (has actual sugar!) mostly, along with other things like apple cinnamon cheerios. I don't eat anything with a strange color that dies the milk, contains hardtack marshmallow or has a cartoon character on the box.

In an effort to substitute something more nutritious and dense, I was considering trying the Greek yogurt breakfast approach for a few weeks based on some Cleveland Clinic advice I read about better breakfast habits--I don't have time to make omelettes in the morning.

I'm going to be buying this stuff at the grocery store. What am I looking for? I don't like overly sweetened stuff and usually don't like fruit/yogurt. I'm also looking for the real thing. Not any non-fat crap. May add my own granola if I find it too boring over time. I've seen some that comes with honey. Are there any good "common" brands I should look for beyond reading labels? Sounds like you've looked into this and I would appreciate your and anyone else's advice before I hit the store this weekend.

If your local supermarket has Fage get the "Total Classic". Basically stay away from anything that says 0% or 2%. If you have a Trader Joes nearby their Greek yougurt is good as well. I like granola in mine. I have also put craisins in it. Or add your own fruit at home. My faves are raspberries and strawberries.

At that point, aren't you just adding the sugar back in?

(I'm only justifying my own habits, mind you -- when I'm not eating it with dinner, I have a giant dollop of sour cherry jam that's going in.)

There's way less sugar in fruit than there is in HFCS and/or table sugar laden jam. (ex: 1 tbsp of smuckers has 12g sugar, vs approximately 0.08g of sugar per every 1 actual raspberry.)

If you were to put a small dollop of jam on 1 cup of yogurt, then that'd be comparable to putting 150 actual raspberries in, at which point you'd definitely have more raspberries than yogurt to the point of hilarity/incredulity.

My typical breakfast is:

- 1.1 cup of plain greek yogurt (brand doesn't matter for me, I just make sure that it has only milk and bacteria),

- 1 oz of granola (currently it's Pumpkin Flax Granola from Costco),

- 5 oz of fresh berries.

- 1 cup of milk or juice.

Get's me about 500 Cal with 30 g of protein. And I actually like this stuff. But I am big on yogurts, had it for breakfast every day for last 20 years.

Also, I don't really care about fat levels. 0% fat is Ok for me as long as they don't substitute it with some crap.

I've been getting the Mountain's High brand, mostly because it's cheapest ($2.50ish for a decent size container). It may be seen in this (somewhat bewildering) piece of fine art: https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/p480x480/551892_...

I just get the normal kind, I don't like low-fat or non-fat versions of pretty much anything. I get store brand granola for $2-3 a box to put on it, and will occasionally add a tiny bit of honey if I feel like something faintly sweetened.

I absolutely hate sweet food. I thought, for the longest time, that I hated yogurt, too.

When I discovered real, nonsweetened yogurt, I was mad that I'd been missing out all these years. There's so damn much of the sugared crap in the yogurt aisle that I never even realized that it didn't taste like that normally.

Why is so much of it non-fat?! The 2% milk fat Greek yogurt is so much richer, adds a trivial number of calories, and requires almost no sugar to taste "good".

Because most people are poorly educated about diet. They think fat makes you fat. While fat has higher calories per gram than protein or carbs it also has a high satiety factor.

0%-fat is a lot thicker (in my experience). Nicer to eat with fruit :) Not everything low-fat has to be for health reasons!

Yeah, usually because it's thickened with gelatin. Enjoy your boiled hoof.

Man, you had me worried for a second.

But I just googled '0% fat greek yogurt ingredients' and the top four brands (Fage, Total, Liberté and Chobani) contain only skimmed milk and bacterial cultures.

Same with the brand I use here in Catalonia.

As a diet thing maybe it's bigger in North America. I'm in Canada.

I'm glad, for your sake, that I was wrong here.

Even if it did have gelatin (which it doesn't), why would that be a problem? If, as a society, we're going to kill animals for food, then I'm all for making sure we at least make full use of the animal and let nothing go to waste. Anything less than that would be doing the animal a disservice, don't you think?

No, that's vacuous and "spiritual". The disservice is in killing it.

I doubt you'd be okay with being mugged just because I also sold your shoes and organs.

Another problem with gelatin in your food is that it's empty filler, used only because having already killed the animal it's nearly free. You pay for yogurt and get worthless hoof squeezings.

It's not vacuous nor "spiritual", just pragmatic -- but I respect your opinion that killing animals is wrong on principle. I'm not trying to persuade you otherwise! I just disagree that gelatin is worthless (it's put in food for a reason), and I don't like unnecessary waste. Given that the animals are being killed anyway (which they are), what would you suggest is done with the hooves?

And for the record, as radio4fan said, greek yoghurt doesn't contain gelatin anyway, at least in the UK (where I am).

No, my opinion is that talking about doing the animal a disservice is incredibly rude and misleading. It's been killed. It's gone. The end. Nothing.

Praying over it, or cleaning your plate, is irrelevant to the animal.

If you were being pragmatic you wouldn't have brought up the animal, just money.

Perhaps we just look at these things in different ways -- as an analogy, when I die, I'll be happy to know my organs will be donated to those who need them so that some good can come from my death. Even if I had no knowledge that my organs were being donated, it doesn't change the benefit they'd make to someone in need; likewise, an animal may have no knowledge of the fact it'll be of benefit to people after it dies, but that doesn't change the fact it will be. The manner of my death (and whether some other person is responsible) doesn't change the fact that something good can come of it. That doesn't justify my death, of course, or forgive anyone who may be responsible! If someone had murdered me, they'd still be guilty of murder. But that doesn't mean my organs weren't useful, and money doesn't even come into it.

But I'm not trying to change your mind here, just offering up an alternative perspective.

If I was hit by a car if be happy to know my organs were helping unrelated people. Sure.

But you're postulating the murderer gets my organs.

That's insult to injury. If I was an animal I'd want you to choke on me, not eat your fill and use my remains for odd jobs.

> some mistaken belief that it can compensate for their other excesses with soda pop & candy

I had no idea that the obesity epidemic could be solved by taking away soda pop and candy! Surely some nutritionist here is wondering, "why didn't I think of that?!"

Every nutritionist in the world suggests not consuming soda and candy. The problem is people don't listen.

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