November 8, 2018 • 45 mins
Yogurt has been touted as a health food, but is it? Maybe. If you eat it every day. We get into the rich and creamy history of this supposed miracle food in today's episode. Take a listen!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck, Bryan Jerry, and this is the smooth, creamy,
tangy edition Stuff you Should Know. Fruit on the bottom
(00:24):
you don't like yogurt or fruit on the bottom yogurt?
I don't like fruit on the bottom. Okay, do you
like yogurt? Yeah, I don't like any of the fruity ones.
I mean they taste fine, but I think they're just
like loaded with sugar generally in sweeteners and things. But yeah,
it's not fruit. It's like jam on the bottom, jelly.
You know. Do you like yogurt compo? Yeah? I love yogurt.
(00:47):
As a matter of fact, while we were researching this,
I was like, I can't I can't stand it any longer.
I got up and got some yogurt. Do you eat
it regularly? Uh? Not as much as I should, although
I recently did a blood tests and my protein was low, strangely,
so I'm gonna start eating more. Okay, what like you
(01:08):
sounded like Yeo'll believe that when I see it. No, no, no,
I was just curious what your yogurt intake was what
about you? You eat it every day? No, I should, Like,
I don't eat yogurt much. I'm constantly slapping it on
my kids baby plate and she loves it, and Emily
eats it, and I'm like, I need to eat more yogurt.
(01:29):
I mean, I like it. I just don't think about
it much. Yeah. What I do is sometimes in a
like a hotel or anywhere where they have the sort
of build your own parfait thing. Yes though a little
granola yeah, or granuela in there, maybe a little bit
of fresh fruit and mix that all up. And I
love it, And I'm like, I should do this every
(01:49):
day because, as we will find out, the benefits of
eating yogurt, which are sort of up in the air
as far as like hard facts, but it seems like
sort of regularly eating yogurt is kind of one of
the keys to getting the health benefits. That's that seems
to be generally agreed upon. Not like, oh I eight
(02:10):
yogurt today, that means healthier, right, Yeah, that's not That's
not how it works. Although I think it is like
just temporarily you're doing better for a second than you
were before. But you know what, let me give you
a hint, buddy, Find a local bee keeper, and I
mean local, like no more than five six miles from
(02:30):
your house. Got one? Okay, great, Take a little that honey,
Drizzle it on some nice, full fat Greek yogurt, sit
back and enjoy. You will be that's all you need.
That's it. If you want to add some other stuff
like some sliced almonds or whatever on it, that's fine too,
or fruit and granola. I find really good raw local
(02:51):
honey and in Greek over It's just like you're eating health.
That's what it feels like. Yeah, I mean I like
to taste on its own. Yeah, but you get the
you know, health benefits from that honey too, you do, Yeah,
I mean throw some uh, throw some broccoli in there.
They're a little broccoli in there, the Tonka truck. Anything
you can find. Just put on your yogurt, start eating.
(03:14):
And we covered uh, we covered some of the stuff
in our probiotics cast yeah, a lot from how many
years ago? Is that? Okay? Four years ago? But uh,
I felt like yogurt deserved to live on its own.
I was incredulous at first, but I came around. Actually,
I I was like, chucks, right, so uh, let's get
(03:35):
into it. Um. I guess we should talk history, yes,
because yogurt is one of those kind of great accidental discoveries,
uh that that came from many many years ago, kind
of like a beer and stuff like that, because people,
you know, they think it's pretty clear that at some
(03:56):
point many thousands of years ago in the Middle East,
people were transporting stuff like milk maybe like a goat's
milk or whatever, probably goat and sheep first, Yeah, and
they were transporting that and whatever disgusting animal bladder or
whatever they used to transport liquids and things like that.
(04:16):
They got there and they're like, ah, this stuff is
turned it's it's it's stinks um. But you know we're uh,
it's it's a thousand years from being uh from being
civilized humanity. So let's just try this stuff, right, Like,
who's gonna who's gonna care or no, somebody clarked me
(04:36):
some honey. Yeah, so they clarked themselves a little honey.
They ate a little bit of it. It was you know,
thicker now and it had this kind of sour tangy
taste and one of those ancient Middle Eastern people said, hey,
this is not bad. And I think there's this guy
named um Adam Maskovitch. She wrote a post on the
(04:59):
salt Um that he basically said, it's not and it's
not entirely an understatement to say like civilization was in
part built on yogurt. That was pretty neat. It really was,
because so all of a sudden, you have milk, and
everybody at the time was like, I can feed this
to my kid, but I can't. I can't keep milk down.
(05:20):
I poop all over my saddle basically while we're out riding. Um,
because this is the Mongolian steps right. Um. But I
have found that this weird, tangy version, the sour version
of milk that you call yogurt, Like I that doesn't
affect me at all. It's the weirdest thing. And so
it's more people were able to eat this stuff, which
(05:41):
is full of nutrients, lots of calories, and has a
tantalizing taste. People kind of gathered around the areas that
had yogurt and other stuff too, he points out, like
cheese and things like that, bread and beer. It's possible
beer was the real reason that civilization was did um.
But the the the yogurt played no small role in that.
(06:06):
In its fermentation, it is transformed, for that something from
something that people who are lactose intolerant can't take to
something that people who are lactose intolerant can actually eat
and benefit from. Yeah. So they had that conversation and
at the end of it one of them said, also,
is it weird that we're humans and we're drinking animal
milk as adults? And they went, don't worry about that. Yeah,
(06:29):
they said, stop thinking yourself is more than an animal.
You're an animal animal. So, um, it's really thrived in
the Middle East. They love the stuff. Like you were
talking about um, it's actually a Turkish word yogurt is um.
And it took a little bit longer to catch up
(06:49):
to Europe. Um. I think at the end of the
nineteenth century is really when it started to spread wide
in Europe and then and here in the United States.
It took to like the middle half of the twentieth
century when it was mass marketed by Dannon for And
it's not like we didn't eat yogurt at all, but
definitely not like I mean, in the Middle East it
(07:10):
was it's not like, Oh, we'll just eat some of
this for breakfast with fruit. I mean, it's in a
lot of great, great dishes and dips and sauces, and
it's it's kind of one of the staples of a
lot of Middle Eastern food. So they're doing it right. Yeah,
And so the Middle East seems to be the home
of yogurt. It was the home of civilization, and they
(07:30):
think that yogurt's oldest civilization maybe a little older. Um
and Turkey seems to be some sort of like kind
of fulcrum for the spread of yogurt throughout the world.
And in fact, the word yogurt is a Turkish word.
It comes from yogurt mok, which is Turkish meaning to
thicken and Turkey. The fact that we in the English
(07:51):
speaking world call it yogurt suggests that it was the
Turks who introduced the West to yogurt. But they're also
pretty sure that Um Turkey was the ones who introduced
yogurt to India as well. And the neighbors, the neighboring
areas around Turkey, like Bulgaria, Georgia, um Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran,
(08:15):
like all these areas are pretty famous for eating a
lot of yogurt and even having their own kind of
yogurt um or their own version of it. But something
about Turkey really seems to be the like the pivot
point for the spread of yogurt in the world. Yeah,
and I can't find oh yeah here it is even today.
It says that uh, Turkish people eat about and this
(08:40):
was like four or five years ago, uh two eighty
two cups of yogurt per person per year, which is
definitely more than in the United States. Well it was
at the time. We've since caught up quite quite a bit,
I think, yeah, I think that stat for us as
poundage though, right, yes, how many pounds of yogurt to eat?
(09:00):
So we ate four point eight billion pounds of yogurt
in two thousand and seventeen, four point eight billion pounds
in the United States ALONEA and yeah, we're not like
the highest yogurt eating um civilization on the planet by far,
but that's like about the fifteen pounds per person thirteen
(09:23):
point seven pounds per person um, which really it sounds
like a lot, but yogurt weighs a lot, so it's
actually just thirty six servings per person per year in
the United States. So that's yeah in Turkey two. Yeah,
that's a lot. Yeah. So Chuck, like you were saying,
like yogurt didn't really make its way over to the
States until the twentieth century, right, and I think it
(09:46):
was and you said it was Dannon that brought it here.
That's right, in the Bronx. Yeah. They moved their operations
from um Spain, Barcelona, I think, to the Bronx, which
is really weird because like America was not a yogurt
eating culture at all, not not really, no, but they
(10:06):
brought yogurt to play, said where in the world would
be the hardest place to get a foothold business wise,
Let's move our operations there. So they moved into the
Bronx and then just started slowly working on America. And
it wasn't until they figured out the fruit on the
bottom thing that America said, Oh, okay, we like this.
(10:26):
It's sweet, it's not some disgusting tangy soured milk. We
can put like compote and jam in it and it's good.
And that when is when it started to take off.
And basically you have Dan and Yogurt to thank for
bringing yogurt to America. And it wasn't until but maybe
two thousand ten or thirteen before we finally started to
(10:49):
shed like all the extra gunk and actually get into
yogurt the way that the rest of the world's been
eating it for thousands of years, with like what we
call Greek yogurt, the way the Good Lord intended. That's right.
Do you want to take a break? Yeah? Cool? All right,
well we're about to take a break and we're gonna
come back with more yogurt. Alright. So we talked about
(11:30):
probiotics in the episode on probiotics. Yeah, it was a
good episode if I remember correctly, it was so as
a as a brief recap. Uh. Probiotics Uh in food
Uh they're like culture concentrates and in some kind in
some foods. Sometimes they're in dietary supplements. Uh. Sometimes they're
(11:52):
in things like yogurt and cheese, fermented dairy products, and
it's they're usually bacteria. Uh. Sometimes you can yeast connect
as a probiotic. But when you generally think probiotic, you
think of good bacteria uh used to ferment milk. Um.
And then sometimes with things like yogurt, they add in
other bacteria on top of that. Right, which is great,
(12:17):
just add some more bacteria as long as it's the
good kind. Basically, Yeah, but sometimes they add bacteria that's
not considered probiotic too, right. I I looked that up.
I couldn't find what they were talking about unless it's
actually a probiotic bacteria that just hasn't been shown to
be probiotic just at this time. That's all I could
(12:40):
get from it. So, and with probiotics is a kind
of a quick overview. It's just basically like it's beneficial
bacteria that's in your gut. And when you're born, you're
not born with your own microbiome. I think you get
it from breast milking. You get a coating of it
as you exit your mother's vagina. Okay, so you you
develop it quickly, but it's kind of like gifted to
(13:02):
you UM very shortly after birth. You build it out
exactly so UM as your as you age and live,
like some stuff dies, some stuff gets pooped out of you,
but it's constantly reproducing. But the point of probiotics, whether
it's in pilform or whether it is a pre biotic
(13:22):
like a banana something that can feed probiotic bacteria or
if it's yogurt, is to replenish the bacteria, this good,
healthy bacteria that lives in your gut and does all
sorts of things, from help you produce serotonin that that
stabilizes your mood, to um, digesting your food and moving
(13:44):
poop through your intestines faster, all the amazing things. I
also want to direct people. We did a microbiome episode
which is one of the all time most fascinating episodes
we ever did. Do you remember that one? No, No,
the one that's our microbiome? Right? That that was just
on how how completely made up. I think, like of
(14:07):
our cells are actually not ours. They're they're part of
the microbiome of bacteria that live on us and interact
with us. And that's what what you're doing when you're
eating yogurt is bringing in some friends, some reinforcements to
the good bacteria. That's the point of probiotics. Yeah, so
in order to um we'll get into the health effects
(14:28):
here in a minute, but in order to get that
bacteria and have it survive through gastric acid, I mean
it's a it's a inhospitable environment down there in your
gut and in your intestines. Uh Well, first of all,
they do think that yogurt might be just a good
vehicle for that period because it's thick and goopy and
(14:49):
it acts like a buffer against that acid. But you
also have to have a lot of it because a
lot of it is going to die off. So there's
there are organizations that set minimum standards, and one of
them is the National Yogurt Association of the United States.
You don't want to mess with them, trust me, no
break your legs. It's just for even looking at them.
(15:11):
They're they're tough, tough individuals, they really are. Collectively. Uh So,
I believe the requirement is a hundred million bacteria per
gram uh, if you want to have that seal on it.
And this is if if you want to eat yogurt,
I mean, if you want to just go get a
stick a go gurt and shove it down your throat
and get a sugar rush, have at it. But if
(15:34):
you actually want that live and active culture seal stamped
on your yogurt, uh, then you're gonna have to have
a hundred million bacteria per gram, right, and it has
to be specific bacteria to the FDA decreed in that
if you're going to sell something in the US as yogurt,
it has to contain Lactobacillus bulgaricus and strepp to Caucus thermophilis.
(15:58):
We'll talk a little more about those later, but you
have to have those, and then you have to have
them in amounts of at least a hundred million individual
bacterium of those strains per graham of yogurt or else. Buddy,
that ain't yogurt. That ain't yogurt. That ain't your mom's yogurt,
That aint your dad's yogurt. There's nobody's yogurt. Not as
(16:20):
far as the FDA is concerned. If you thought the
National Yogurt Association was tough, boy, howdy, the FDA will
mess you up. Uh. So you want to talk a
little bit about how they make yogurt, Yes, but first
get this. So you know you were talking about how
how yogurt or bacteria can Some can survive in the gut,
(16:42):
which can be inhospitable. I was like, how how did
they do that? Some are just coated in like a
polysach ride. That's fine, that's boring. But some bacteria actually
have pumps that are designed to pump acid out of
the bacteria. So when it's it's floating around in this
bath of stomach acid and juice and digestive end times,
(17:03):
it's just pumping it out and keeping just happy as
the lark. But it has like a mechanism for getting
rid of the acid that that should otherwise kill it.
I just thought that was fascinating, man, life science. Iss?
What else? What's your other big one? Earth science or science?
Life science? Just science basically? Yeah, yeah, it all floats
(17:26):
my boat. What kind of science do you hate? M M? Psychology? No,
I find it fascinating. Okay, I don't know, man, I
don't think I hate any science. Yeah, no, I don't
hate any science. See their kids, No sciences hate worthy.
(17:47):
Don't hate science and be like Josh Clark yourself some Josh,
we just spun my head right around. Do you see
that I did? That was strange. But it is October.
It is the month of exorcism. It's the Dancing Headstones
best season. What's the name of the van I can't remember, man,
(18:08):
we could have just buzz marketed that guy. So well,
all right, when you're making yogurt, like you said, it
was many many, many years ago. It was just this
curdled milk. And they were like, if you hold your
nose tight enough, you can still eat the stuff and
it doesn't really upset your stomach that much. But if
you're gonna manufacture yogurt, what you want to do is
(18:29):
separate the milk into the cream and the skim. And
this is automatically going to get a thicker texture going
because it's got a lot of fat and uh, it's evaporation.
It's evaporating some of the liquid anyway during this process.
But then they might say, you know what, let's add
some milk powder or some gelatine. We really need to
(18:49):
get this to the good yogurty consistent, uh consistency that
everybody loves. So now it's pretty thick at this point.
And then they pasteurize it, and we should do a
show on pasteurization and maybe even homogenization. Okay, maybe they
could go together, I think so, because homogenizing just basically
(19:13):
means stirring. Yeah, pasteurization, that's a there's a lot to that,
a lot of history and everything. But homogenized, I think
they've really church that up. It's just stirring something, yeah,
to make it more homogeneous, right, it's pretty amazing. The
word fits perfectly, it really does. So these high high
temperatures that you get through pasteurization is going to help
(19:34):
make it even more thick. But you don't need to
like blasted at three hundred degrees for eight hours or whatever. No,
you don't want to do It's it's kind of amazing
actually that it only takes about fifteen seconds at a
hundred and seventy one degrees fahrenheit and that will kill
off the bacteria that you don't want there. So you
know how both of our schedules are just insane right now. Yes,
(19:56):
I was starting to feel a little worn down. Sure,
it's just the tiny is tickle in my nose, and
I was like, no, I'm not having it. So I
busted out the old Nettie pot. Well, I got the
double purified tap water out of my water purifier, and
then I put it into a pot and boiled it
(20:20):
for five minutes and stuck the Nettie pot in and
left it in for another five minutes boiling. Then I
took that out, boiled more water for five minutes, and
then finally after it cooled, I put it through my
nose and I looked it up. I'm like, is that overkill?
Is it not enough? It is overkilled from what I saw.
What you really need is to once the water gets
(20:43):
to a boil, something like nine point nine of any
pathogen is dead. But the I think I can't remember
who recommends it. Maybe the CDC somebody recommends at least
letting it boil for a minute, just to be safe.
And then if you're above two thousand feet over sea level,
(21:04):
you want to boil it for three minutes because there's
a lower temperature required for boiling at higher altitudes. Right,
So really it's a boil it for a minute is
even overkill. But I'm gonna stick with my five minute
boiling thing. I still don't boil it at all. Dude,
do you know what would happen if you got just
the off chance of a brain eating amiba in there? No?
I know, But I also don't like get scared walking
(21:27):
around during a lightning storm. I don't either, and I
just feel like it's about is unlikely. Okay, all right,
well then promise me this. You will never netty pot
with water that you just got out of a stagnant creek. Okay,
all right? Is that a deal? At least, sure, But
can I still pour that into my open wounds? Okay,
(21:48):
just steer clear that water altogether, all right, fair enough?
All right? Uh? Alright. So at this point Josh has
boiled his water for twenty minutes, my milk, let it
cool for an hour, poured it through his nostril system.
So I make yogurt. Uh. Now, after they boil for
fifteen seconds or heat that milk up for fifteen seconds. Um,
(22:13):
you're you're it's it's. Your cream is separating at that
point just naturally from the milk because of the temperature.
That's when they stir it or homogenize the milk and
create that consistently consistency, because you don't want anything that
has a consistency of curdling, No, you don't. It's a homogenization.
Is just stirring it up, so you're breaking up the
(22:34):
flat of the fat globules so that they're spread evenly
throughout the milk, which it just means it's not lumpy milk.
It's smooth, textured milk. And the same thing I guess
that translates to the yogurt. It makes the yogurt smoother,
more consistently smooth, because it's homogenized milk that it's made from. Yes, okay, bam, homogenization.
(22:54):
We just did the homogenization episode. That could have been
a short stuff and we could have I don't even
know if I would have qualified for that. Well, we're
gonna start releasing one called shortest stuff. It's just like
seconds more. That is our future. Uh so here's the
most important part. You think you're yogurt's done, but it's not,
because if you want it to be yogurt, you're gonna
(23:15):
have to pour some good bacteria back in there. And uh,
this is like it kind of depends on which company
work for what kind of yogurt they want, but they're
gonna select their bacteria accordingly dump it in there. Yes
that I mean this is where the actual all you
have is hot milk up to this point, hot homogenized milk.
(23:37):
It's when you add that bacteria into this warm milk
that it starts to happen. And you want to let
them milk cool a little bit first, because you know
if it's too hot, it's going to if they're gonna die.
But when it cools to something like I think a
hundred and fifteen degrees fahrenheight or lower. Then you can
add your bacteria and they're going to start to go
(23:57):
to work. And all they're doing is basically fermenting the
milk into yogurt. That's it. Yeah, which is why if
you're lactose intolerant, you can still tolerate yogurt because that
bacteria gets in there, metabolizes that milk sugar, the lactose,
and and poops out lactic acid, and you can lactic
(24:18):
acid is fine on the body. Yes, So not only
this is just amazing, This is when I started to
get jazz by the yogurt. Not only does it break
down lactic or lactose into um other kinds of sugars
that are more digestible by the human body, that these
these bacteria actually deposit in your gut when you eat yogurt.
(24:39):
They deposit an enzyme that helps you break down the
lactose that is found in there, So they break it
down themselves, and then they help you break it down too,
which is why people who are lactose intolerant can still
usually eat yogurt unless you have a severe lactose allergy,
I think it's just intolerance. You can usually eat yogurt. Yeah,
(25:00):
And remember I talked about myself and my lactose intolerance
and like, is it am my lactose intolerant or should
I just not eat a pizza and a pint of
ice cream? Right? Uh? It turns out it's b is there? Right? Yeah? Man?
If I if I had a reasonable amount of cheese
and milk, I'm fine. Yeah, less farty lot less farty. Good.
(25:23):
The whole world is thanking you, buddy for coming to
that doing that experiment, or at least everyone in this room.
So so pretty amazing that that yogurt deposits an enzyme
that helps you break down lactose. Right, yeah, okay, it
gets even more amazing. One of the other things. One
of the reasons why why um people say you should
eat yogurt if you need protein is first of all,
(25:45):
it's from milk, so there's tons of protein. But secondly,
the um the acids or the bacteria, and they're actually
break down the protein so it becomes what's called more
um bioavailable. It's easier for your body to take again,
which normally your body doesn't have trouble absorbing protein anyway,
but if it does, yogurt, your your guy. But then
(26:07):
also it actually synthesizes some vitamins out of whole cloth.
Like there there may not be a lot of folate
found in milk, there's more of it found in yogurt
because these bacteria during fermentation produce folate, which is something
that you really want and need, especially if you're pregnant.
So there's there's just some amazing things going on during
(26:27):
the fermentation progress process from milk to yogurt that makes
it its own things. It's much more than just soured milk.
It's something. It's like a new thing. And the fact
that they found this accidentally from carrying sheep's milk around
in some animal skin or animals stomachs ten thousand years ago,
(26:49):
it's just makes it even more fascinating. Yea. And the
fact that you can add fruit on the bottom. It's
really the Americans love a gimmick, and I think that
was all about the gimmick. I'm sure then some boardroom
they were like, it's interactive, it's fun. Actually, I know
the story behind that. Interactive and fun it's probably the
(27:09):
words they used. It was it was actually it was
suggested in nineteen I think by a young guy named
Wan Metzker, whose dad was one of the co founders
of Dannon, and he was just a lowly bottle washer
at the time, but he suggested that as a way
to get Americans to eat it. But at the time,
the U. S d A said, you can't mix anything
(27:29):
with dairy products. It's against the law. But somehow Dannon
convinced the U. S d A that no, No, the
fruits on the bottom, so it's not really mixing. If
they put it on the top, the U. S t
A would have said that's mixing. If they had mixed it,
homogenized it, I guess they would have. They would have
considered that mixing. But the fact that it was on
the bottom that is why they got away with it. Somehow.
(27:50):
It doesn't make any sense to me. It's like the
Jeopardy being somehow different from the typical quiz show. You know,
it's the same thing. But they they US D d
A went along with it, and that's why it was
fruit on the bottom. Interesting, And there wasn't like some
senator from South Carolina and that said, you're counting on
(28:11):
the good people of America to mix their own fruit.
It's pretty good. That was supposed to be uh. It
sounded like Leonardo DiCaprio and Django and really did like
he was the senator man that movie that that whole
sister subplot wasn't even a subplot. That was so strange
(28:33):
in that movie, which which remember Leo DiCaprio's like sister
arrived or whatever, and he was just like, where has
my beautiful sister? And it was just so over the
top and strange, and it was never explained like are
they lovers? Is it? Like? What's going on? Yeah? So weird.
(28:53):
I love Quentin Tarantino stuff, man, I love hate it.
Oh really, I don't hate any bit of it. I
love it. Oh. I think he's far too indulgent these days.
But you didn't like The Hateful Eight? Huh uh? You know,
I like the first four endings. Are you? Are you
(29:14):
looking forward to the Manson Family one he's doing. Yeah,
I mean I go, I go see all of them,
and I think they're all worthwhile. And there Tarantino movies,
so I kind of just put my tongue in my
cheek and laugh no matter what. But what was his
best one in your opinion? Oh? Well, I mean probably
Reservoir Dogs re pulp fiction. For me. Yeah, but so
(29:35):
don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, but there's
clearly no one in his camp that's like, maybe edit
some down, maybe don't be in the movie. Hm, that'll
be the day, That'll be the day. Did you like
True Romance? Yeah? But he just wrote that. Yeah, but
it's obviously his work. Sure he didn't direct it. No,
(29:56):
I love it. That's one of my faves. That was
a good one. I mean, like, who cast Gary Oldmanton
for that? Scott? I guess that's just so bizarre, But
I think it was so cool. Sit down, have an
egg roll. It's a good movie. All right. So let's
take a break and we will get to the bottom
the fruit on the bottom, if you will, about nutrition
(30:18):
and how if that's real or not? Right after this,
(30:41):
all right, chuck yogurt nutrition or just delish? All right?
So here's the deal. Yogurt has really caught on in
the United States in the last like decade more than ever,
largely because it's being outed and sold as a health food. Dude.
(31:04):
There are studies that are coming in that says it
helps with everything from reducing obesity, type two diabetes, cardiovascular
disease of respiratory diseases, improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces allergies, um,
improves bone health and dental health, basically anything you can
(31:24):
think of. There's been a study that has found that.
But from what I'm gathering, either there's not enough studies,
which seems not the case to me, or that there
are other studies that are finding contradictory um evidence to
what the pro yogurt studies are finding. There doesn't seem
to be any study that's like, no, no, put the
(31:44):
ore down, it's gonna kill all of us, nothing like that.
But there's it just seems like the jury is still
out on whether it's actually beneficial to you or not,
at least over any kind of long term. Yeah, so
here's what we know for sure, I mean, just ingreedy
it wise. Um, especially if you're like tose intolerant, you
can get a lot of good calcium from yogurt um
(32:07):
that you wouldn't get if or that you would get
if you drink milk or whatever. But if you like
tose intolerant, you can get it through yogurt um. Vitamin D, protein, potassium, riboflavian,
these are all things that are in yogurt that we
know we're good for you, but it's these it's like
health claims that they're selling people now, which was what
(32:27):
we're really talking about here. Uh. Like you said, like
will it actually help you lose weight? And there have
been some studies that indicate that it could, but it's uh,
there are a lot of like caveats attached. It feels
like like the International Journal of Obesity says that low
fat yogurt could help you lose weight. Uh, but it's
(32:49):
kind of like that's because you're replacing a meal with
some yogurt as a substitution or for a snack, and
it's kind of filling, you're gonna be eating less and
all these things are kind of true, but it's a
little misleading, it is. And actually you also want to
be careful, Like, Okay, if you're on a diet and
(33:10):
you're using low fat yogurt to diet with, but you're
health conscious, you want to be careful because a lot
of the low fat or no fat um yogurts replace
the fat with other stuff like artificial sweeteners like aspartame
and sacharin. There's usually a lot of sodium in there
to try to replace some of the flavor that's lost
when you take all the fat out. So there's there's
(33:33):
a lot of push and pull, and yeah, it does
seem to be where if you are already healthy and
you eat yogurt regularly but a lot, then maybe you'll
start to see some actual health effects. But there's never
been a study that showed, yes, yogurt is such a
powerhouse that it can knock out rheumatoid arthritis. And those
(33:57):
are kind of the claims that people are making, and
there's like some there's some basis, there's some kernel of
truth to it. Like one of the big things now
with dieting is um or not not dieting, but eating
eating right or eating healthy, I guess whatever you want
to call it, is this idea that when you eat,
your body becomes inflamed as part of the immune response,
(34:18):
like what did you just seet? What is that? What
is that? And it goes into kind of like defense
mode to sort things out. Well, the idea is that
over time, if you're if you're eating stuff that sets
off your immune response, your inflammatory response pretty much constantly,
that is a terrible effect on your body and can
manifest itself in things like inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
(34:40):
So the logic is, and they've shown that, yes, yogurt
can actually possibly maybe reduce your inflammatory response. So it's
going from yogurt might be able to lessen your inflammatory
response to some really really bad food, to yogurt can
cure rheumatoid arthritis, and that it's the problem. Yeah, especially
(35:02):
in women. Uh, it seems to have a little bit
better chance at reducing inflammation. They did this one study
at the University of Wisconsin. Madison, go Badgers, right, Wolverines. Boy,
I think it's got to be Badgers, right, it is
the Badgers. I'm just giving him a hard time. I
didn't know if there was Yeah, that's Madison, of course. Uh,
(35:23):
we need to do a show there by the way
we do, or we could just make everybody drive to Milwaukee.
It's an hour away. I did like Milwaukee. That was
a great show. That was That was cool town. So
they did a study where they had sixty women, um,
half of whom were obese, and they had them eat
twelve ounces of low fat yogurt every day for nine
(35:44):
weeks than a control group. Of course, uh, with eating
uh non dairy pudding. So they have, which is like, what,
what is that like snack packs? I don't know. Um.
And they measured levels of proteins uh it says, excreted
by immune cells to determine how much inflammation was in
their body. So they're they're trying to measure the imflament
(36:06):
inflammatory response that you're talking about. And they did find
that the yogurt yogurt ladies as I like to be called,
saw improvements and some markers of inflammation. But again that's
that's a long way from saying it can help your
rheumatoid arthritis. That's part of the problem. I think people
(36:28):
just want it. It's just such a great idea, this,
this natural thing that's been with humanity since the dawn
of civilization can actually help help cure some of these
modern ailments from our modern world. People want that to
be the truth so bad. I don't see anything wrong
with that, but it's it's it's not necessarily the case.
I think, yes, And it was also this study was
(36:50):
funded by the National Dairy Council UM. And again the
guy uh that the doctor who performed it, of course,
he was like, it doesn't to where the money came from.
The same conclusion, so you know you can take him
at his word. I guess I'm not saying he's like
in the pocket of big Dairy, right, but which we laugh.
(37:10):
But I'm sure that's the thing. Well, the Yogurt Association,
they're the front there, the they're the the leg breakers
for the dairy Association. Uh. But like I said earlier,
because there's a lot of protein and yogurt, it will
make you feel more full and you might have fewer
unhealthy snacks. So it's one of those you know things
(37:31):
like is it really making that difference or it is
just causing you to change patterns, right, which is fine? Yeah,
oh yeah. Again, there's nobody who's saying no, eating yogurt's
bad for you. You do want to watch it if
you are trying to lose weight. Um, eating full fat yogurt,
too much full fat yogurt, especially if you're eating it
in addition to other stuff rather than using it to
(37:53):
replace something you can gain weight. Um. The I think
the average weight game in that one study you were
talking about from both the yogurt and the putting cohorts
was like a kilogram I think, yeah, a couple of pounds. Yeah,
over like nine weeks or something like that. So that's
(38:14):
that's a significant amount of weightking But they were eating
like twelve ounces. It's two full servings of yogurt every day.
That's a lot of yogurt. I mean, it's a lot.
I like yogurt, but it's not the kind of food
you sit down and eat a bowl of, you know, no, no,
you definitely you wanted in its own little amount. It's
it's like a grape nuts bowl, you know. Yeah. And
(38:34):
for parents, you know, gogurt. Not to pick on them,
but they definitely market that. I used to do. I
did a couple of yogurt commercials back in the day
as a p A and uh, you know, they definitely
mark it towards kids. It's packaged in a little kid
friendly fun way to eat um. And we're not saying
yogurt it's bad for kids, but that stuff is loaded
(38:55):
with sugar and calories from sugar. Yeah, So just know
that going in from what I understand, the closest thing
to actual yogurt that you can get in the United
States is something like Greek yogurt. That's only kind of
eat I think it tastes best. It is. It's fantastic,
like playing Greek yogurt and then you just add a
little honey. Don't forget the honey, Chuck, I know, I
gotta I gotta call my beekeeper. There's also something called
(39:17):
there's traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Bulgaria is very well known for
its yogurt love. They have something called cassello milako, which
means soured milk. And I just think of Balky Bartakamos
saying it is that his last name? Yeah? From Perfect Strangers?
What was it, Balky bar Takamos, bartak a moose Bartakamos.
(39:40):
I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, I didn't
watch that show though, Oh you were missing out the
episode where they were moving a piano up up like
a couple of flights of stairs. Yes, it was Chuck,
and I am. I would put my money on this.
It is one of the greatest examples of physical comedy
in television history. I mean, that's an old thing. Like
(40:01):
Friends had an episode of moving a couch upstairs. These
guys make Friends look like piles of walking poop. That's
how good. That's how good this Perfect Strangers episode was.
Like Friends doesn't even want to talk about it, oh man,
But I mean that's a classic bit like the March
Brothers are you know probably or Buster Keaton probably first
(40:25):
came up with it. Yeah, he moved to piano or
two in his day. You want to talk about the
in Soviet Georgia um Yogurt campaign real quick? Yeah, I
actually did not get to see that, so you can
teach me. Okay. So in ninety seven Dannon, who really
is almost single handedly responsible for bringing yogurt and making
(40:46):
it popular in America in the seventies, they came out
with an ad campaign called in Soviet Georgia where they
went to Georgia, one of the Soviet Union's republics at
the time, and found like a hundred US year old
people who were still vital and active and said, hey,
can we film you like bailing hey, and then afterward
(41:08):
you'll eat like a nice cup of dan and yogurt
and people will say, hey, that's great. I want to
be bailing hey at a hundred and five like this person.
And it was kind of risky at the time because
this is the Cold War the late seventies, the Soviet
Union in the United States were not friends. But to
advertise to the United States, they sent their add people
to the Soviet Union and it just went off. It
(41:31):
was total hit. Like dan In, their sales were in
the gutter and all of a sudden there's just back
on top. And it's actually credited with kicking off this
what we think of now is like normal. But the
yogurt craze that started in late seventies early eighties and
continued on and it's finally gotten to the point where
we're actually starting to eat healthy yogurt. That was that
(41:53):
commercial in Soviet Georgia. Crazy, Yeah, it's crazy. They found
one guy who was eighty nine and they said his
mother was a hundred and fourteen, and they filmed them
in one of the commercials and they said he he
ate two cups and it made his mother very proud,
but he's eighty nine. That was the big joke. D
and fourteen man. Yeah, all for meeting yogurt. I need
(42:16):
to get on it. You got anything else? If I
want to live to be a hundred and fourteen, you
gotta start eating some yogurt and don't forget the honey.
Could you imagine me at a hundred and fourteen? Yeah,
actually I can now that you mentioned it. Nobody wants that.
I could totally see you'd be like, I'm back to
the whole pizza and the whole thing ice cream thing.
(42:36):
You might want to stand back. Wow, this one had
a lot of fart and poop jokes. Yeah, well that happens. Well,
if you want to know more about yogurt, go eat
some yogurt, Eat the good stuff, learn to love it,
and your stomach will be happy, whether science can prove
that it is or not. And since I said that,
it's time for a listener Mayo, all right, I'm gonna
(42:59):
call this self fest medievalist. This guy Stephen Gray wrote
in and he's from Melbourne, Australia but living in London now,
and he says, I'm writing for some extra info, to
give you extra info for the robin Hood episode. First
of all, Josh talks about uh Rich slash Johnny Sitch
(43:21):
and says that Richard was King of England for two
years and that john was the natural heir. Richie was
actually king for ten years, but spent only six months
of his reign in England while he was off on
the Third Crusade. He left his chancellor William of long
Champ as regent but his brother John was cranky about
it and schemed against him and citing a rebellion. When
(43:42):
rich eventually got back, he forgave Johnny named him heir
to the throne. So the bad King John good King
Richard bit of the R. H. Cannon is actually based
in fact. Perhaps more interesting, he says, I set up
by the way, when the robin Hood story started come
out during the reign of Henry the Third is during
(44:02):
a period where Henry was waging war for his lands
and Gascony France. Henry was not a very strong willed
or charismatic king, so he didn't get along super well
with his nobles, and as a result, to raise funds
for the war effort, he had to rely more heavily
on his foresters and sheriffs to raise some mega taxes.
So the robin Hood stories pitt our hero against these
(44:24):
uh extortionate representatives of a nasty, villainous king. But of
course you can't directly suggest that's the current king, so
you have to be not so subtle and point to
a recent but previous scenario which everyone will draw the
parallels from. Wow, this guy is not just a self proclaimedievalist.
I officially confirm him as a medievalist. He says, hopes
(44:47):
this helps. Uh, hope this solves your insatiable appetite to
keep learning as your podcast as mine. I love you guys.
That is Stephen Gray. Thanks a lot, Stephen, that was
a great email. We love you too. Let's hug. Yeah.
Hey guys, Stephen. If you want to get in touch
with us, like Stephen did, we want to hear from you.
(45:07):
You can go to stuff you should Know dot com
and find all of our social links there, and you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck, Bryan Jerry, and this is the smooth, creamy,
tangy edition Stuff you Should Know. Fruit on the bottom
(00:24):
you don't like yogurt or fruit on the bottom yogurt?
I don't like fruit on the bottom. Okay, do you
like yogurt? Yeah, I don't like any of the fruity ones.
I mean they taste fine, but I think they're just
like loaded with sugar generally in sweeteners and things. But yeah,
it's not fruit. It's like jam on the bottom, jelly.
You know. Do you like yogurt compo? Yeah? I love yogurt.
(00:47):
As a matter of fact, while we were researching this,
I was like, I can't I can't stand it any longer.
I got up and got some yogurt. Do you eat
it regularly? Uh? Not as much as I should, although
I recently did a blood tests and my protein was low, strangely,
so I'm gonna start eating more. Okay, what like you
(01:08):
sounded like Yeo'll believe that when I see it. No, no, no,
I was just curious what your yogurt intake was what
about you? You eat it every day? No, I should, Like,
I don't eat yogurt much. I'm constantly slapping it on
my kids baby plate and she loves it, and Emily
eats it, and I'm like, I need to eat more yogurt.
(01:29):
I mean, I like it. I just don't think about
it much. Yeah. What I do is sometimes in a
like a hotel or anywhere where they have the sort
of build your own parfait thing. Yes though a little
granola yeah, or granuela in there, maybe a little bit
of fresh fruit and mix that all up. And I
love it, And I'm like, I should do this every
(01:49):
day because, as we will find out, the benefits of
eating yogurt, which are sort of up in the air
as far as like hard facts, but it seems like
sort of regularly eating yogurt is kind of one of
the keys to getting the health benefits. That's that seems
to be generally agreed upon. Not like, oh I eight
(02:10):
yogurt today, that means healthier, right, Yeah, that's not That's
not how it works. Although I think it is like
just temporarily you're doing better for a second than you
were before. But you know what, let me give you
a hint, buddy, Find a local bee keeper, and I
mean local, like no more than five six miles from
(02:30):
your house. Got one? Okay, great, Take a little that honey,
Drizzle it on some nice, full fat Greek yogurt, sit
back and enjoy. You will be that's all you need.
That's it. If you want to add some other stuff
like some sliced almonds or whatever on it, that's fine too,
or fruit and granola. I find really good raw local
(02:51):
honey and in Greek over It's just like you're eating health.
That's what it feels like. Yeah, I mean I like
to taste on its own. Yeah, but you get the
you know, health benefits from that honey too, you do, Yeah,
I mean throw some uh, throw some broccoli in there.
They're a little broccoli in there, the Tonka truck. Anything
you can find. Just put on your yogurt, start eating.
(03:14):
And we covered uh, we covered some of the stuff
in our probiotics cast yeah, a lot from how many
years ago? Is that? Okay? Four years ago? But uh,
I felt like yogurt deserved to live on its own.
I was incredulous at first, but I came around. Actually,
I I was like, chucks, right, so uh, let's get
(03:35):
into it. Um. I guess we should talk history, yes,
because yogurt is one of those kind of great accidental discoveries,
uh that that came from many many years ago, kind
of like a beer and stuff like that, because people,
you know, they think it's pretty clear that at some
(03:56):
point many thousands of years ago in the Middle East,
people were transporting stuff like milk maybe like a goat's
milk or whatever, probably goat and sheep first, Yeah, and
they were transporting that and whatever disgusting animal bladder or
whatever they used to transport liquids and things like that.
(04:16):
They got there and they're like, ah, this stuff is
turned it's it's it's stinks um. But you know we're uh,
it's it's a thousand years from being uh from being
civilized humanity. So let's just try this stuff, right, Like,
who's gonna who's gonna care or no, somebody clarked me
(04:36):
some honey. Yeah, so they clarked themselves a little honey.
They ate a little bit of it. It was you know,
thicker now and it had this kind of sour tangy
taste and one of those ancient Middle Eastern people said, hey,
this is not bad. And I think there's this guy
named um Adam Maskovitch. She wrote a post on the
(04:59):
salt Um that he basically said, it's not and it's
not entirely an understatement to say like civilization was in
part built on yogurt. That was pretty neat. It really was,
because so all of a sudden, you have milk, and
everybody at the time was like, I can feed this
to my kid, but I can't. I can't keep milk down.
(05:20):
I poop all over my saddle basically while we're out riding. Um,
because this is the Mongolian steps right. Um. But I
have found that this weird, tangy version, the sour version
of milk that you call yogurt, Like I that doesn't
affect me at all. It's the weirdest thing. And so
it's more people were able to eat this stuff, which
(05:41):
is full of nutrients, lots of calories, and has a
tantalizing taste. People kind of gathered around the areas that
had yogurt and other stuff too, he points out, like
cheese and things like that, bread and beer. It's possible
beer was the real reason that civilization was did um.
But the the the yogurt played no small role in that.
(06:06):
In its fermentation, it is transformed, for that something from
something that people who are lactose intolerant can't take to
something that people who are lactose intolerant can actually eat
and benefit from. Yeah. So they had that conversation and
at the end of it one of them said, also,
is it weird that we're humans and we're drinking animal
milk as adults? And they went, don't worry about that. Yeah,
(06:29):
they said, stop thinking yourself is more than an animal.
You're an animal animal. So, um, it's really thrived in
the Middle East. They love the stuff. Like you were
talking about um, it's actually a Turkish word yogurt is um.
And it took a little bit longer to catch up
(06:49):
to Europe. Um. I think at the end of the
nineteenth century is really when it started to spread wide
in Europe and then and here in the United States.
It took to like the middle half of the twentieth
century when it was mass marketed by Dannon for And
it's not like we didn't eat yogurt at all, but
definitely not like I mean, in the Middle East it
(07:10):
was it's not like, Oh, we'll just eat some of
this for breakfast with fruit. I mean, it's in a
lot of great, great dishes and dips and sauces, and
it's it's kind of one of the staples of a
lot of Middle Eastern food. So they're doing it right. Yeah,
And so the Middle East seems to be the home
of yogurt. It was the home of civilization, and they
(07:30):
think that yogurt's oldest civilization maybe a little older. Um
and Turkey seems to be some sort of like kind
of fulcrum for the spread of yogurt throughout the world.
And in fact, the word yogurt is a Turkish word.
It comes from yogurt mok, which is Turkish meaning to
thicken and Turkey. The fact that we in the English
(07:51):
speaking world call it yogurt suggests that it was the
Turks who introduced the West to yogurt. But they're also
pretty sure that Um Turkey was the ones who introduced
yogurt to India as well. And the neighbors, the neighboring
areas around Turkey, like Bulgaria, Georgia, um Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran,
(08:15):
like all these areas are pretty famous for eating a
lot of yogurt and even having their own kind of
yogurt um or their own version of it. But something
about Turkey really seems to be the like the pivot
point for the spread of yogurt in the world. Yeah,
and I can't find oh yeah here it is even today.
It says that uh, Turkish people eat about and this
(08:40):
was like four or five years ago, uh two eighty
two cups of yogurt per person per year, which is
definitely more than in the United States. Well it was
at the time. We've since caught up quite quite a bit,
I think, yeah, I think that stat for us as
poundage though, right, yes, how many pounds of yogurt to eat?
(09:00):
So we ate four point eight billion pounds of yogurt
in two thousand and seventeen, four point eight billion pounds
in the United States ALONEA and yeah, we're not like
the highest yogurt eating um civilization on the planet by far,
but that's like about the fifteen pounds per person thirteen
(09:23):
point seven pounds per person um, which really it sounds
like a lot, but yogurt weighs a lot, so it's
actually just thirty six servings per person per year in
the United States. So that's yeah in Turkey two. Yeah,
that's a lot. Yeah. So Chuck, like you were saying,
like yogurt didn't really make its way over to the
States until the twentieth century, right, and I think it
(09:46):
was and you said it was Dannon that brought it here.
That's right, in the Bronx. Yeah. They moved their operations
from um Spain, Barcelona, I think, to the Bronx, which
is really weird because like America was not a yogurt
eating culture at all, not not really, no, but they
(10:06):
brought yogurt to play, said where in the world would
be the hardest place to get a foothold business wise,
Let's move our operations there. So they moved into the
Bronx and then just started slowly working on America. And
it wasn't until they figured out the fruit on the
bottom thing that America said, Oh, okay, we like this.
(10:26):
It's sweet, it's not some disgusting tangy soured milk. We
can put like compote and jam in it and it's good.
And that when is when it started to take off.
And basically you have Dan and Yogurt to thank for
bringing yogurt to America. And it wasn't until but maybe
two thousand ten or thirteen before we finally started to
(10:49):
shed like all the extra gunk and actually get into
yogurt the way that the rest of the world's been
eating it for thousands of years, with like what we
call Greek yogurt, the way the Good Lord intended. That's right.
Do you want to take a break? Yeah? Cool? All right,
well we're about to take a break and we're gonna
come back with more yogurt. Alright. So we talked about
(11:30):
probiotics in the episode on probiotics. Yeah, it was a
good episode if I remember correctly, it was so as
a as a brief recap. Uh. Probiotics Uh in food
Uh they're like culture concentrates and in some kind in
some foods. Sometimes they're in dietary supplements. Uh. Sometimes they're
(11:52):
in things like yogurt and cheese, fermented dairy products, and
it's they're usually bacteria. Uh. Sometimes you can yeast connect
as a probiotic. But when you generally think probiotic, you
think of good bacteria uh used to ferment milk. Um.
And then sometimes with things like yogurt, they add in
other bacteria on top of that. Right, which is great,
(12:17):
just add some more bacteria as long as it's the
good kind. Basically, Yeah, but sometimes they add bacteria that's
not considered probiotic too, right. I I looked that up.
I couldn't find what they were talking about unless it's
actually a probiotic bacteria that just hasn't been shown to
be probiotic just at this time. That's all I could
(12:40):
get from it. So, and with probiotics is a kind
of a quick overview. It's just basically like it's beneficial
bacteria that's in your gut. And when you're born, you're
not born with your own microbiome. I think you get
it from breast milking. You get a coating of it
as you exit your mother's vagina. Okay, so you you
develop it quickly, but it's kind of like gifted to
(13:02):
you UM very shortly after birth. You build it out
exactly so UM as your as you age and live,
like some stuff dies, some stuff gets pooped out of you,
but it's constantly reproducing. But the point of probiotics, whether
it's in pilform or whether it is a pre biotic
(13:22):
like a banana something that can feed probiotic bacteria or
if it's yogurt, is to replenish the bacteria, this good,
healthy bacteria that lives in your gut and does all
sorts of things, from help you produce serotonin that that
stabilizes your mood, to um, digesting your food and moving
(13:44):
poop through your intestines faster, all the amazing things. I
also want to direct people. We did a microbiome episode
which is one of the all time most fascinating episodes
we ever did. Do you remember that one? No, No,
the one that's our microbiome? Right? That that was just
on how how completely made up. I think, like of
(14:07):
our cells are actually not ours. They're they're part of
the microbiome of bacteria that live on us and interact
with us. And that's what what you're doing when you're
eating yogurt is bringing in some friends, some reinforcements to
the good bacteria. That's the point of probiotics. Yeah, so
in order to um we'll get into the health effects
(14:28):
here in a minute, but in order to get that
bacteria and have it survive through gastric acid, I mean
it's a it's a inhospitable environment down there in your
gut and in your intestines. Uh Well, first of all,
they do think that yogurt might be just a good
vehicle for that period because it's thick and goopy and
(14:49):
it acts like a buffer against that acid. But you
also have to have a lot of it because a
lot of it is going to die off. So there's
there are organizations that set minimum standards, and one of
them is the National Yogurt Association of the United States.
You don't want to mess with them, trust me, no
break your legs. It's just for even looking at them.
(15:11):
They're they're tough, tough individuals, they really are. Collectively. Uh So,
I believe the requirement is a hundred million bacteria per
gram uh, if you want to have that seal on it.
And this is if if you want to eat yogurt,
I mean, if you want to just go get a
stick a go gurt and shove it down your throat
and get a sugar rush, have at it. But if
(15:34):
you actually want that live and active culture seal stamped
on your yogurt, uh, then you're gonna have to have
a hundred million bacteria per gram, right, and it has
to be specific bacteria to the FDA decreed in that
if you're going to sell something in the US as yogurt,
it has to contain Lactobacillus bulgaricus and strepp to Caucus thermophilis.
(15:58):
We'll talk a little more about those later, but you
have to have those, and then you have to have
them in amounts of at least a hundred million individual
bacterium of those strains per graham of yogurt or else. Buddy,
that ain't yogurt. That ain't yogurt. That ain't your mom's yogurt,
That aint your dad's yogurt. There's nobody's yogurt. Not as
(16:20):
far as the FDA is concerned. If you thought the
National Yogurt Association was tough, boy, howdy, the FDA will
mess you up. Uh. So you want to talk a
little bit about how they make yogurt, Yes, but first
get this. So you know you were talking about how
how yogurt or bacteria can Some can survive in the gut,
(16:42):
which can be inhospitable. I was like, how how did
they do that? Some are just coated in like a
polysach ride. That's fine, that's boring. But some bacteria actually
have pumps that are designed to pump acid out of
the bacteria. So when it's it's floating around in this
bath of stomach acid and juice and digestive end times,
(17:03):
it's just pumping it out and keeping just happy as
the lark. But it has like a mechanism for getting
rid of the acid that that should otherwise kill it.
I just thought that was fascinating, man, life science. Iss?
What else? What's your other big one? Earth science or science?
Life science? Just science basically? Yeah, yeah, it all floats
(17:26):
my boat. What kind of science do you hate? M M? Psychology? No,
I find it fascinating. Okay, I don't know, man, I
don't think I hate any science. Yeah, no, I don't
hate any science. See their kids, No sciences hate worthy.
(17:47):
Don't hate science and be like Josh Clark yourself some Josh,
we just spun my head right around. Do you see
that I did? That was strange. But it is October.
It is the month of exorcism. It's the Dancing Headstones
best season. What's the name of the van I can't remember, man,
(18:08):
we could have just buzz marketed that guy. So well,
all right, when you're making yogurt, like you said, it
was many many, many years ago. It was just this
curdled milk. And they were like, if you hold your
nose tight enough, you can still eat the stuff and
it doesn't really upset your stomach that much. But if
you're gonna manufacture yogurt, what you want to do is
(18:29):
separate the milk into the cream and the skim. And
this is automatically going to get a thicker texture going
because it's got a lot of fat and uh, it's evaporation.
It's evaporating some of the liquid anyway during this process.
But then they might say, you know what, let's add
some milk powder or some gelatine. We really need to
(18:49):
get this to the good yogurty consistent, uh consistency that
everybody loves. So now it's pretty thick at this point.
And then they pasteurize it, and we should do a
show on pasteurization and maybe even homogenization. Okay, maybe they
could go together, I think so, because homogenizing just basically
(19:13):
means stirring. Yeah, pasteurization, that's a there's a lot to that,
a lot of history and everything. But homogenized, I think
they've really church that up. It's just stirring something, yeah,
to make it more homogeneous, right, it's pretty amazing. The
word fits perfectly, it really does. So these high high
temperatures that you get through pasteurization is going to help
(19:34):
make it even more thick. But you don't need to
like blasted at three hundred degrees for eight hours or whatever. No,
you don't want to do It's it's kind of amazing
actually that it only takes about fifteen seconds at a
hundred and seventy one degrees fahrenheit and that will kill
off the bacteria that you don't want there. So you
know how both of our schedules are just insane right now. Yes,
(19:56):
I was starting to feel a little worn down. Sure,
it's just the tiny is tickle in my nose, and
I was like, no, I'm not having it. So I
busted out the old Nettie pot. Well, I got the
double purified tap water out of my water purifier, and
then I put it into a pot and boiled it
(20:20):
for five minutes and stuck the Nettie pot in and
left it in for another five minutes boiling. Then I
took that out, boiled more water for five minutes, and
then finally after it cooled, I put it through my
nose and I looked it up. I'm like, is that overkill?
Is it not enough? It is overkilled from what I saw.
What you really need is to once the water gets
(20:43):
to a boil, something like nine point nine of any
pathogen is dead. But the I think I can't remember
who recommends it. Maybe the CDC somebody recommends at least
letting it boil for a minute, just to be safe.
And then if you're above two thousand feet over sea level,
(21:04):
you want to boil it for three minutes because there's
a lower temperature required for boiling at higher altitudes. Right,
So really it's a boil it for a minute is
even overkill. But I'm gonna stick with my five minute
boiling thing. I still don't boil it at all. Dude,
do you know what would happen if you got just
the off chance of a brain eating amiba in there? No?
I know, But I also don't like get scared walking
(21:27):
around during a lightning storm. I don't either, and I
just feel like it's about is unlikely. Okay, all right,
well then promise me this. You will never netty pot
with water that you just got out of a stagnant creek. Okay,
all right? Is that a deal? At least, sure, But
can I still pour that into my open wounds? Okay,
(21:48):
just steer clear that water altogether, all right, fair enough?
All right? Uh? Alright. So at this point Josh has
boiled his water for twenty minutes, my milk, let it
cool for an hour, poured it through his nostril system.
So I make yogurt. Uh. Now, after they boil for
fifteen seconds or heat that milk up for fifteen seconds. Um,
(22:13):
you're you're it's it's. Your cream is separating at that
point just naturally from the milk because of the temperature.
That's when they stir it or homogenize the milk and
create that consistently consistency, because you don't want anything that
has a consistency of curdling, No, you don't. It's a homogenization.
Is just stirring it up, so you're breaking up the
(22:34):
flat of the fat globules so that they're spread evenly
throughout the milk, which it just means it's not lumpy milk.
It's smooth, textured milk. And the same thing I guess
that translates to the yogurt. It makes the yogurt smoother,
more consistently smooth, because it's homogenized milk that it's made from. Yes, okay, bam, homogenization.
(22:54):
We just did the homogenization episode. That could have been
a short stuff and we could have I don't even
know if I would have qualified for that. Well, we're
gonna start releasing one called shortest stuff. It's just like
seconds more. That is our future. Uh so here's the
most important part. You think you're yogurt's done, but it's not,
because if you want it to be yogurt, you're gonna
(23:15):
have to pour some good bacteria back in there. And uh,
this is like it kind of depends on which company
work for what kind of yogurt they want, but they're
gonna select their bacteria accordingly dump it in there. Yes
that I mean this is where the actual all you
have is hot milk up to this point, hot homogenized milk.
(23:37):
It's when you add that bacteria into this warm milk
that it starts to happen. And you want to let
them milk cool a little bit first, because you know
if it's too hot, it's going to if they're gonna die.
But when it cools to something like I think a
hundred and fifteen degrees fahrenheight or lower. Then you can
add your bacteria and they're going to start to go
(23:57):
to work. And all they're doing is basically fermenting the
milk into yogurt. That's it. Yeah, which is why if
you're lactose intolerant, you can still tolerate yogurt because that
bacteria gets in there, metabolizes that milk sugar, the lactose,
and and poops out lactic acid, and you can lactic
(24:18):
acid is fine on the body. Yes, So not only
this is just amazing, This is when I started to
get jazz by the yogurt. Not only does it break
down lactic or lactose into um other kinds of sugars
that are more digestible by the human body, that these
these bacteria actually deposit in your gut when you eat yogurt.
(24:39):
They deposit an enzyme that helps you break down the
lactose that is found in there, So they break it
down themselves, and then they help you break it down too,
which is why people who are lactose intolerant can still
usually eat yogurt unless you have a severe lactose allergy,
I think it's just intolerance. You can usually eat yogurt. Yeah,
(25:00):
And remember I talked about myself and my lactose intolerance
and like, is it am my lactose intolerant or should
I just not eat a pizza and a pint of
ice cream? Right? Uh? It turns out it's b is there? Right? Yeah? Man?
If I if I had a reasonable amount of cheese
and milk, I'm fine. Yeah, less farty lot less farty. Good.
(25:23):
The whole world is thanking you, buddy for coming to
that doing that experiment, or at least everyone in this room.
So so pretty amazing that that yogurt deposits an enzyme
that helps you break down lactose. Right, yeah, okay, it
gets even more amazing. One of the other things. One
of the reasons why why um people say you should
eat yogurt if you need protein is first of all,
(25:45):
it's from milk, so there's tons of protein. But secondly,
the um the acids or the bacteria, and they're actually
break down the protein so it becomes what's called more
um bioavailable. It's easier for your body to take again,
which normally your body doesn't have trouble absorbing protein anyway,
but if it does, yogurt, your your guy. But then
(26:07):
also it actually synthesizes some vitamins out of whole cloth.
Like there there may not be a lot of folate
found in milk, there's more of it found in yogurt
because these bacteria during fermentation produce folate, which is something
that you really want and need, especially if you're pregnant.
So there's there's just some amazing things going on during
(26:27):
the fermentation progress process from milk to yogurt that makes
it its own things. It's much more than just soured milk.
It's something. It's like a new thing. And the fact
that they found this accidentally from carrying sheep's milk around
in some animal skin or animals stomachs ten thousand years ago,
(26:49):
it's just makes it even more fascinating. Yea. And the
fact that you can add fruit on the bottom. It's
really the Americans love a gimmick, and I think that
was all about the gimmick. I'm sure then some boardroom
they were like, it's interactive, it's fun. Actually, I know
the story behind that. Interactive and fun it's probably the
(27:09):
words they used. It was it was actually it was
suggested in nineteen I think by a young guy named
Wan Metzker, whose dad was one of the co founders
of Dannon, and he was just a lowly bottle washer
at the time, but he suggested that as a way
to get Americans to eat it. But at the time,
the U. S d A said, you can't mix anything
(27:29):
with dairy products. It's against the law. But somehow Dannon
convinced the U. S d A that no, No, the
fruits on the bottom, so it's not really mixing. If
they put it on the top, the U. S t
A would have said that's mixing. If they had mixed it,
homogenized it, I guess they would have. They would have
considered that mixing. But the fact that it was on
the bottom that is why they got away with it. Somehow.
(27:50):
It doesn't make any sense to me. It's like the
Jeopardy being somehow different from the typical quiz show. You know,
it's the same thing. But they they US D d
A went along with it, and that's why it was
fruit on the bottom. Interesting, And there wasn't like some
senator from South Carolina and that said, you're counting on
(28:11):
the good people of America to mix their own fruit.
It's pretty good. That was supposed to be uh. It
sounded like Leonardo DiCaprio and Django and really did like
he was the senator man that movie that that whole
sister subplot wasn't even a subplot. That was so strange
(28:33):
in that movie, which which remember Leo DiCaprio's like sister
arrived or whatever, and he was just like, where has
my beautiful sister? And it was just so over the
top and strange, and it was never explained like are
they lovers? Is it? Like? What's going on? Yeah? So weird.
(28:53):
I love Quentin Tarantino stuff, man, I love hate it.
Oh really, I don't hate any bit of it. I
love it. Oh. I think he's far too indulgent these days.
But you didn't like The Hateful Eight? Huh uh? You know,
I like the first four endings. Are you? Are you
(29:14):
looking forward to the Manson Family one he's doing. Yeah,
I mean I go, I go see all of them,
and I think they're all worthwhile. And there Tarantino movies,
so I kind of just put my tongue in my
cheek and laugh no matter what. But what was his
best one in your opinion? Oh? Well, I mean probably
Reservoir Dogs re pulp fiction. For me. Yeah, but so
(29:35):
don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, but there's
clearly no one in his camp that's like, maybe edit
some down, maybe don't be in the movie. Hm, that'll
be the day, That'll be the day. Did you like
True Romance? Yeah? But he just wrote that. Yeah, but
it's obviously his work. Sure he didn't direct it. No,
(29:56):
I love it. That's one of my faves. That was
a good one. I mean, like, who cast Gary Oldmanton
for that? Scott? I guess that's just so bizarre, But
I think it was so cool. Sit down, have an
egg roll. It's a good movie. All right. So let's
take a break and we will get to the bottom
the fruit on the bottom, if you will, about nutrition
(30:18):
and how if that's real or not? Right after this,
(30:41):
all right, chuck yogurt nutrition or just delish? All right?
So here's the deal. Yogurt has really caught on in
the United States in the last like decade more than ever,
largely because it's being outed and sold as a health food. Dude.
(31:04):
There are studies that are coming in that says it
helps with everything from reducing obesity, type two diabetes, cardiovascular
disease of respiratory diseases, improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces allergies, um,
improves bone health and dental health, basically anything you can
(31:24):
think of. There's been a study that has found that.
But from what I'm gathering, either there's not enough studies,
which seems not the case to me, or that there
are other studies that are finding contradictory um evidence to
what the pro yogurt studies are finding. There doesn't seem
to be any study that's like, no, no, put the
(31:44):
ore down, it's gonna kill all of us, nothing like that.
But there's it just seems like the jury is still
out on whether it's actually beneficial to you or not,
at least over any kind of long term. Yeah, so
here's what we know for sure, I mean, just ingreedy
it wise. Um, especially if you're like tose intolerant, you
can get a lot of good calcium from yogurt um
(32:07):
that you wouldn't get if or that you would get
if you drink milk or whatever. But if you like
tose intolerant, you can get it through yogurt um. Vitamin D, protein, potassium, riboflavian,
these are all things that are in yogurt that we
know we're good for you, but it's these it's like
health claims that they're selling people now, which was what
(32:27):
we're really talking about here. Uh. Like you said, like
will it actually help you lose weight? And there have
been some studies that indicate that it could, but it's uh,
there are a lot of like caveats attached. It feels
like like the International Journal of Obesity says that low
fat yogurt could help you lose weight. Uh, but it's
(32:49):
kind of like that's because you're replacing a meal with
some yogurt as a substitution or for a snack, and
it's kind of filling, you're gonna be eating less and
all these things are kind of true, but it's a
little misleading, it is. And actually you also want to
be careful, Like, Okay, if you're on a diet and
(33:10):
you're using low fat yogurt to diet with, but you're
health conscious, you want to be careful because a lot
of the low fat or no fat um yogurts replace
the fat with other stuff like artificial sweeteners like aspartame
and sacharin. There's usually a lot of sodium in there
to try to replace some of the flavor that's lost
when you take all the fat out. So there's there's
(33:33):
a lot of push and pull, and yeah, it does
seem to be where if you are already healthy and
you eat yogurt regularly but a lot, then maybe you'll
start to see some actual health effects. But there's never
been a study that showed, yes, yogurt is such a
powerhouse that it can knock out rheumatoid arthritis. And those
(33:57):
are kind of the claims that people are making, and
there's like some there's some basis, there's some kernel of
truth to it. Like one of the big things now
with dieting is um or not not dieting, but eating
eating right or eating healthy, I guess whatever you want
to call it, is this idea that when you eat,
your body becomes inflamed as part of the immune response,
(34:18):
like what did you just seet? What is that? What
is that? And it goes into kind of like defense
mode to sort things out. Well, the idea is that
over time, if you're if you're eating stuff that sets
off your immune response, your inflammatory response pretty much constantly,
that is a terrible effect on your body and can
manifest itself in things like inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.
(34:40):
So the logic is, and they've shown that, yes, yogurt
can actually possibly maybe reduce your inflammatory response. So it's
going from yogurt might be able to lessen your inflammatory
response to some really really bad food, to yogurt can
cure rheumatoid arthritis, and that it's the problem. Yeah, especially
(35:02):
in women. Uh, it seems to have a little bit
better chance at reducing inflammation. They did this one study
at the University of Wisconsin. Madison, go Badgers, right, Wolverines. Boy,
I think it's got to be Badgers, right, it is
the Badgers. I'm just giving him a hard time. I
didn't know if there was Yeah, that's Madison, of course. Uh,
(35:23):
we need to do a show there by the way
we do, or we could just make everybody drive to Milwaukee.
It's an hour away. I did like Milwaukee. That was
a great show. That was That was cool town. So
they did a study where they had sixty women, um,
half of whom were obese, and they had them eat
twelve ounces of low fat yogurt every day for nine
(35:44):
weeks than a control group. Of course, uh, with eating
uh non dairy pudding. So they have, which is like, what,
what is that like snack packs? I don't know. Um.
And they measured levels of proteins uh it says, excreted
by immune cells to determine how much inflammation was in
their body. So they're they're trying to measure the imflament
(36:06):
inflammatory response that you're talking about. And they did find
that the yogurt yogurt ladies as I like to be called,
saw improvements and some markers of inflammation. But again that's
that's a long way from saying it can help your
rheumatoid arthritis. That's part of the problem. I think people
(36:28):
just want it. It's just such a great idea, this,
this natural thing that's been with humanity since the dawn
of civilization can actually help help cure some of these
modern ailments from our modern world. People want that to
be the truth so bad. I don't see anything wrong
with that, but it's it's it's not necessarily the case.
I think, yes, And it was also this study was
(36:50):
funded by the National Dairy Council UM. And again the
guy uh that the doctor who performed it, of course,
he was like, it doesn't to where the money came from.
The same conclusion, so you know you can take him
at his word. I guess I'm not saying he's like
in the pocket of big Dairy, right, but which we laugh.
(37:10):
But I'm sure that's the thing. Well, the Yogurt Association,
they're the front there, the they're the the leg breakers
for the dairy Association. Uh. But like I said earlier,
because there's a lot of protein and yogurt, it will
make you feel more full and you might have fewer
unhealthy snacks. So it's one of those you know things
(37:31):
like is it really making that difference or it is
just causing you to change patterns, right, which is fine? Yeah,
oh yeah. Again, there's nobody who's saying no, eating yogurt's
bad for you. You do want to watch it if
you are trying to lose weight. Um, eating full fat yogurt,
too much full fat yogurt, especially if you're eating it
in addition to other stuff rather than using it to
(37:53):
replace something you can gain weight. Um. The I think
the average weight game in that one study you were
talking about from both the yogurt and the putting cohorts
was like a kilogram I think, yeah, a couple of pounds. Yeah,
over like nine weeks or something like that. So that's
(38:14):
that's a significant amount of weightking But they were eating
like twelve ounces. It's two full servings of yogurt every day.
That's a lot of yogurt. I mean, it's a lot.
I like yogurt, but it's not the kind of food
you sit down and eat a bowl of, you know, no, no,
you definitely you wanted in its own little amount. It's
it's like a grape nuts bowl, you know. Yeah. And
(38:34):
for parents, you know, gogurt. Not to pick on them,
but they definitely market that. I used to do. I
did a couple of yogurt commercials back in the day
as a p A and uh, you know, they definitely
mark it towards kids. It's packaged in a little kid
friendly fun way to eat um. And we're not saying
yogurt it's bad for kids, but that stuff is loaded
(38:55):
with sugar and calories from sugar. Yeah, So just know
that going in from what I understand, the closest thing
to actual yogurt that you can get in the United
States is something like Greek yogurt. That's only kind of
eat I think it tastes best. It is. It's fantastic,
like playing Greek yogurt and then you just add a
little honey. Don't forget the honey, Chuck, I know, I
gotta I gotta call my beekeeper. There's also something called
(39:17):
there's traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Bulgaria is very well known for
its yogurt love. They have something called cassello milako, which
means soured milk. And I just think of Balky Bartakamos
saying it is that his last name? Yeah? From Perfect Strangers?
What was it, Balky bar Takamos, bartak a moose Bartakamos.
(39:40):
I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, I didn't
watch that show though, Oh you were missing out the
episode where they were moving a piano up up like
a couple of flights of stairs. Yes, it was Chuck,
and I am. I would put my money on this.
It is one of the greatest examples of physical comedy
in television history. I mean, that's an old thing. Like
(40:01):
Friends had an episode of moving a couch upstairs. These
guys make Friends look like piles of walking poop. That's
how good. That's how good this Perfect Strangers episode was.
Like Friends doesn't even want to talk about it, oh man,
But I mean that's a classic bit like the March
Brothers are you know probably or Buster Keaton probably first
(40:25):
came up with it. Yeah, he moved to piano or
two in his day. You want to talk about the
in Soviet Georgia um Yogurt campaign real quick? Yeah, I
actually did not get to see that, so you can
teach me. Okay. So in ninety seven Dannon, who really
is almost single handedly responsible for bringing yogurt and making
(40:46):
it popular in America in the seventies, they came out
with an ad campaign called in Soviet Georgia where they
went to Georgia, one of the Soviet Union's republics at
the time, and found like a hundred US year old
people who were still vital and active and said, hey,
can we film you like bailing hey, and then afterward
(41:08):
you'll eat like a nice cup of dan and yogurt
and people will say, hey, that's great. I want to
be bailing hey at a hundred and five like this person.
And it was kind of risky at the time because
this is the Cold War the late seventies, the Soviet
Union in the United States were not friends. But to
advertise to the United States, they sent their add people
to the Soviet Union and it just went off. It
(41:31):
was total hit. Like dan In, their sales were in
the gutter and all of a sudden there's just back
on top. And it's actually credited with kicking off this
what we think of now is like normal. But the
yogurt craze that started in late seventies early eighties and
continued on and it's finally gotten to the point where
we're actually starting to eat healthy yogurt. That was that
(41:53):
commercial in Soviet Georgia. Crazy, Yeah, it's crazy. They found
one guy who was eighty nine and they said his
mother was a hundred and fourteen, and they filmed them
in one of the commercials and they said he he
ate two cups and it made his mother very proud,
but he's eighty nine. That was the big joke. D
and fourteen man. Yeah, all for meeting yogurt. I need
(42:16):
to get on it. You got anything else? If I
want to live to be a hundred and fourteen, you
gotta start eating some yogurt and don't forget the honey.
Could you imagine me at a hundred and fourteen? Yeah,
actually I can now that you mentioned it. Nobody wants that.
I could totally see you'd be like, I'm back to
the whole pizza and the whole thing ice cream thing.
(42:36):
You might want to stand back. Wow, this one had
a lot of fart and poop jokes. Yeah, well that happens. Well,
if you want to know more about yogurt, go eat
some yogurt, Eat the good stuff, learn to love it,
and your stomach will be happy, whether science can prove
that it is or not. And since I said that,
it's time for a listener Mayo, all right, I'm gonna
(42:59):
call this self fest medievalist. This guy Stephen Gray wrote
in and he's from Melbourne, Australia but living in London now,
and he says, I'm writing for some extra info, to
give you extra info for the robin Hood episode. First
of all, Josh talks about uh Rich slash Johnny Sitch
(43:21):
and says that Richard was King of England for two
years and that john was the natural heir. Richie was
actually king for ten years, but spent only six months
of his reign in England while he was off on
the Third Crusade. He left his chancellor William of long
Champ as regent but his brother John was cranky about
it and schemed against him and citing a rebellion. When
(43:42):
rich eventually got back, he forgave Johnny named him heir
to the throne. So the bad King John good King
Richard bit of the R. H. Cannon is actually based
in fact. Perhaps more interesting, he says, I set up
by the way, when the robin Hood story started come
out during the reign of Henry the Third is during
(44:02):
a period where Henry was waging war for his lands
and Gascony France. Henry was not a very strong willed
or charismatic king, so he didn't get along super well
with his nobles, and as a result, to raise funds
for the war effort, he had to rely more heavily
on his foresters and sheriffs to raise some mega taxes.
So the robin Hood stories pitt our hero against these
(44:24):
uh extortionate representatives of a nasty, villainous king. But of
course you can't directly suggest that's the current king, so
you have to be not so subtle and point to
a recent but previous scenario which everyone will draw the
parallels from. Wow, this guy is not just a self proclaimedievalist.
I officially confirm him as a medievalist. He says, hopes
(44:47):
this helps. Uh, hope this solves your insatiable appetite to
keep learning as your podcast as mine. I love you guys.
That is Stephen Gray. Thanks a lot, Stephen, that was
a great email. We love you too. Let's hug. Yeah.
Hey guys, Stephen. If you want to get in touch
with us, like Stephen did, we want to hear from you.
(45:07):
You can go to stuff you should Know dot com
and find all of our social links there, and you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com
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