January 20, 2024 • 46 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. Get an earful of the stuff in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
How do everyone chuck here on a Saturday bringing you
another fine selection from our back catalog? Is yogurt a
miracle food? This is from November twenty eighteen, And you know,
yogurt's pretty good for you, you guys, it's something you
should be eating, perhaps even a miracle food. Do we
answer that question? Is yogurt a miracle food? Perhaps? Listen
(00:23):
in and find out right now.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Like yogurt or fruit on the bottom yogurt?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I don't like fruit on the bottom, okay, but I do.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Do you like yogurt?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah? I don't like any of the of the fruity ones.
I mean, they taste fine, but I think they're just
like loaded with sugar generally, and sweeteners and things.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
But yeah, it's not fruit. It's like jam on the
bottom jelly. You know. Do you like yogurt compote?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I love yogurt. 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.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Do you eat it regularly?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Uh? Not as much as I should, although I recently
did a blood test and my protein was low strangely,
so I'm gonna start eating more. Okay, what I'll just
get like you sounded like YO believe that when I
see it?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
No, no, no, I was just curious what your yogurt
intike was.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
What about you? You eat it every day? No?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I should, Like. I don't eat yogurt much. I'm constantly
slapping it on my kid's baby plate and she loves it,
and Emily eats it, and I'm like, I need to
eat more yogurt. I mean, I like it. I just
don't think about it much.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
What I do is sometimes in a like a hotel
or anywhere where they have the sort of build your
own parfe thing. Yes, though a little granola yeah, or
granula in there grows 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 day because,
as we will find out, the benefits of eating yogurt,
(02:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
That's that seems to be generally agreed to pind.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It and not like, oh I eight yogurt today, that
means I'm eight percent healthier.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right, Yeah, that's not how it works. Yeah, although I
think it is, like just temporarily you're doing better for
a second than you were before. But you know, whats Yeah,
let me give you a little hint, buddy. Find a
local bee keeper, and I mean local, like no more
than five six miles from your house.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Okay, got one?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Okay, great, Take a little of 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 honey and
in Greek yogret. It's just like you're eating health, is
(03:24):
what it feels like.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
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 throw
some broccoli in there.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Throw a little broccoli in there, the Tonka truck, anything
you can find, just put it onto your yogurt. Start eating.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
And we covered some of the stuff in our probiotics cast. Yeah,
a lot from how many years ago?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Is that for twenty fourteen?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Okay, four years ago? But I felt like yogurt deserved
to live on its own.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I was incredulous at first, but I around. Actually I
was like, chucks, right.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
So let's get into it. I guess we should talk history, yes,
because yogurt is one of those kind of great accidental
discoveries 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 point, many
(04:26):
thousands of years ago in the Middle East, people were
transporting stuff like milk, maybe like a goat's milk or.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Whatever, probably goat and sheep first.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, and they were transporting that and whatever disgusting animal
bladder or whatever they used to transport liquids and things
like that. They got there and they're like, ah, this
stuff has turned it's it's stinks but you know, we're
it's a thousand years from being from being civilized humanity.
(04:59):
So let's just try this stuff, all right, Like who's
gonna who's gonna care or no.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Somebody clarked me some honey.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And one of those ancient Middle Eastern people said, hey,
this is not bad, right.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And I think there's this guy named Adam Maskovich who
wrote a post on the Salt that who basically said
it's not and it's not entirely an understatement to say
like civilization was in part built on yogurt.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
That was pretty neat, it really was.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
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.
I poop all over my saddle basically while we're out riding,
because this is the Mongolian steps, right. But I have
found that this weird tangy version, the sour version of
(06:01):
milk that you call yogurt, like that doesn't affect me
at all. It's the weirdest thing. And so as more
people were able to eat this stuff, which is full
of nutrients, lots of calories, and it has a tantalizing taste,
people kind of gathered around the areas that had yogurt
and other stuff too, he points out, like cheese and
(06:23):
things like that, and bread and beer. It's possible beer
was the real reason that civilization was started. But the
yogurt played no small role in that. In its fermentation,
it has transformed something from something that people who are
lactose in tolerant can't take to something that people who
are lactose intolerant can't actually eat and benefit from.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
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 don't worry about that.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, they said, stop thinking yourself is more than an an, Well,
you're an animal animal.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So it really thrived in the Middle East. They love
the stuff, like you were talking about. It's actually a
Turkish word yogurt is. And it took a little bit
longer to catch up to Europe. I think at the
end of the nineteenth century is really when it started
(07:23):
to spread wide in Europe, and here in the United
States it took to like the middle half of the
twentieth century when it was mass marketed by Dannin. And
it's not like we didn't eat yogurt at all, but
definitely not like I mean, in the Middle East it 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 is
(07:48):
kind of one of the staples of a lot of
Middle Eastern food. So they're doing it right.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, And so the Middle East seems to be the
home of yogurt. It was the home of civilization, and
they think that yogurts is all the civilization maybe a
little older. 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 mak, which is Turkish
(08:15):
meaning to thicken and Turkey. The fact that we in
the English speaking world call it yogurt suggests that it
was the Turks who introduced the West to yogurt, but
they're also pretty sure that Turkey was the ones who
introduced yogurt to India as well. And the neighbors, the
(08:36):
neighboring areas around Turkey, like Bulgaria, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran,
like all these areas are pretty famous for eating a
lot of yogurt and even having their own kind of
yogurt or their own version of it. But something about
Turkey really seems to be the like the pivot point
(08:56):
for the spread of yogurt in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, and I can't fun oh yeah, here it is
even today, it says that Turkish people eat about and
this was like four or five years ago, two hundred
and eighty two cups of yogurt per person per year,
which is definitely more than in the United States.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well it was at the time. We've since caught up
quite quite a.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Bit, I think, yeah, I think that stat for US
is poundage though, right, yes, how many pounds of yogurt
do we eat?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
So we ate four point eight billion pounds of yogurt
in twenty seventeen, four point eight billion pounds in the
United States alone, and yeah, we're not like the highest
yogurt eating civilization on the planet by far, but that's
like about the fifteen pounds per person, thirteen point seven
(09:52):
pounds per person, 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.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Wow. So that's yeah in Turkey two hundred and eighty
two cups.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
That's a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, So Chuck, like you were saying, like yogurt didn't
really make its way over to the States until the
twentieth century, right, Yes, and I think it was And
you said it was Dan and that brought it here.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
That's right, in the Bronx.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, they moved their operations from Spain, Barcelona, I think,
to the Bronx, which is really weird because like America
was not a yogurt eating culture at all, in not
really No, but they brought yogurt to a play said
where in the world would be the hardest place to
get a foothold business wise, Let's move our operations there.
(10:42):
So they moved it to 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. It's sweet. It's not some disgusting, tangy
soured milk. We can put like compote in jam in it,
(11:03):
and it's good. And that 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
what maybe twenty ten or thirteen before we finally started
to shed like all the extra gunk and actually get
into yogurt the way that the rest of the world's
(11:24):
been eating it for thousands of years, with like what
we call Greek yogurt.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
The way the Good Lord intended.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's right, 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.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
All right. So we talked about probiotics in the episode
on probiotics.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Yeah, this was a good episode if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
It was so as a as a brief recap probiotics
and food. They're like culture concentrates and some kind in
some foods. Sometimes they're in dietary supplements. Sometimes they're in
things like yogurt and cheese fermented dairy products, and it's
they're usually bacteria. Sometimes you can yeast connect as a probiotic,
(12:30):
but when you generally think probiotic, you think of good
bacteria used to ferment milk. And then sometimes with things
like yogurt, they add in other bacteria on top of that.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Right, which is great, just add some more bacteria as
long as it's the good kind basically, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
But sometimes they add bacteria that's not considered probiotic too.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Right, I look 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, right, just at
this time, that's all right, That's all I could get
from it. So, and with probiotics, just kind of a
quick overview, it's just basically like it's beneficial bacteria that's
(13:15):
in your gut. And when you're born, you're not born
with your own microbiome. I think you get it from
breast milk and you get a coating of it as
you exit your mother's vagina. Okay, so you you develop
it pretty quickly. But it's kind of like gifted to
you very shortly after birth.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, you build it out exactly so.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
As you 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 pill form
or whether it is a prebiotic like a banana something
that can feed probiotic bacteria, or if it's yogurt, is
(13:57):
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 stabilizes your mood, to digesting
your food and moving poop through your intestines faster, all
the amazing things. I also want to direct people. We
(14:18):
did a microbiome episode which is one of the all
time most fascinating episodes we ever did.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Do you remember that one the poop cast?
Speaker 3 (14:26):
No, No, the one that's our microbiome?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Oh right, that was just on.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
How completely made up. I think like ninety percent of
our cells are actually not ours. They're part of the
microbiome of bacteria that live on us and interact with us.
And that's 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.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, so in order to and we'll get into the
health effects here in a minute, but in order to
get that back toe area and have it survive through
gastric acid. I mean, it's a it's an inhospitable environment
down there in your gut and in your intestines. Well,
first of all, they do think that yogurt might be
(15:13):
just a good vehicle for that period because it's thick
and goofy and 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 are organizations that set minimum standards, and one
of them is the National Yogurt Association of the United States. Right,
(15:34):
you don't want to mess with them, trust me, no't.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Break your legs. It's just for even looking at them.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, they're tough, tough individuals.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
They really are collectively.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
So I believe the requirement is one hundred million bacteria
per gram 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 of gogurt and shove it down your throat and
get a sugar rush. Sure, have at it. But if
you actually want that live and active culture seal stamped
(16:06):
on your yogurt, then you're gonna have to have one
hundred million bacteria per gram.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right, and it has to be specific bacteria too. The
FDA decreed in nineteen eighty one that if you're going
to sell something in the US as yogurt, it has
to contain Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Straptococcus thermophilis. 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
(16:32):
at least one hundred million individual bacterium of those strains
per gram of yogurt or else. Buddy, that ain't yogurt.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That ain't yogurt, That ain't your mom's yogurt, that ain't
your dad's yogurt.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It's nobody's yogurt. No, not as far as the FDA's concerned.
And if you thought the National Yogurt Association was tough, boy, howdy,
the FDA will mess you up.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
So you want to talk a little bit about how
they make yogurt.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yes, but first get this. So you know, you were
talking about how how yogurt or bacteria can Some can
survive in the gut, which can be inhospitable. I was like,
how how did they do that? Some are just coated
in like a polysaccharide. That's fine, that's boring. But some
bacteria actually have pumps that are designed to pump acid
(17:24):
out of the bacteria. So when it's floating around in
this bath of stomach acid and juice and digestive enzymes,
it's just pumping it out and keeping it just happy
as a lark. But it has like a mechanism for
getting rid of the acid that that should otherwise kill it.
I thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Man. Life science is m h what else? What's your
other big one?
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Earth science?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Earth science, life science.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Just science basically. Yeah, yeah, it all floats my boat.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
What kind of science do you hate? Hmmm? Cology?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
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 science is
hate worthy.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
No, don't hate science and be like Josh Clark yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Some Josh, we just spun my head right around.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Did you see that I did? That was strange. But
it is October. It is the month of exorcism.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
It's the Dancing Headstone's best season. What was the name
of the band?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I can't remember.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Oh man, we could have just buzzmarketed that guy.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So well, all right, when you're making yogurt, like you said,
it was many many, many years ago, it was just
this kurdled 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 going to manufacture yogurt, what you want to
do is separate the milk into the and the skim.
(19:01):
And this is automatically going to get a thicker texture
going because it's got a lot of fat and 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
get this to the good yogurty consistent consistency that everybody loves.
(19:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I think so, because homogenizing just basically means stirring. Yeah, pasturization,
there's a lot to that, a lot of history and everything.
But homogenize, I think they've really churched that up. It's
just stirring something.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah, to make it more homogeneous. Right, It's pretty amazing.
The word fits perfectly, it really does. So these high
temperatures that you get through pasteurization is going to help
make it even more thick. But you don't need to
like blast it at three hundred degrees for eight hours
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Now you don't want to do.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's kind of amazing actually that it only takes about
fifteen seconds at one hundred and seventy one degrees fahrenheit
and that'll kill off the bacteria that you don't want there.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
So you know how both of our schedules are just
insane right now? Yes, I was starting to feel a
little worn down, Charrett. It's just the tiniest tickle in
my nose, and I was like, no, I'm not having it,
So I busted out the old netty pot. Yeah, well
I got the double purified tap water out of my
water purifier, and then I put it into a pot
(20:47):
and boiled it for five minutes and stuck the netty
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 cool, I put it through my
nose and I looked it up. I'm like, is that overkill?
Is it not enough?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
It's overkill?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
It is overkilled from what I saw. What you really
need is to once the water gets to a boil,
something like ninety nine point nine percent of any pathogen
is dead. But the I think I can't remember who
recommends it, Maybe the CDC somebody recommends at least letting
(21:26):
it boil for a minute, just to be safe. And
then if you're above two thousand feet over sea level,
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 going to stick with my five
minute boiling thing.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I still don't boil it at all.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Dude, do you know what would happen if you got
just the off chance of a brain eating amba in there.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
No, I know, but I also don't like get scared
walking around during a lightning storm. I don't either, and
I just feel like it's about as unlikely.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Okay, all right, well, then promise me this, uh huh.
You will never netty pot with water that you just
got out of a stagnant creek.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Is that a deal at least?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Sure? But can I still pour that into my open wounds?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
No? Okay, just steer clear of that water all together,
all right, fair enough, all right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
All right. So at this point, Josh has boiled his
water for twenty minutes by milk, let it cool for
an hour, poured it through his nostril system.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Is how I make yogurt.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
No, after they boil for fifteen seconds or heat that
milk up for fifteen seconds, 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
(22:56):
has the consistency of curdling.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
No, you don't, so homogenization just stirring it up so
you're breaking up the 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 smooth or more consistently smooth. Yeah,
because it's homogenized milk that it's made from. Yes, okay,
(23:22):
bam homogenization. We just did the homogenization episode.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
That could have been a short stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
It could have I don't even know if it would
have qualified for that.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, we're gonna start releasing one called shortest Stuff. It's
just like forty five seconds.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's our future.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So here's the most important part. You think your yogurt's done,
but it's not, because if you want it to be yogurt,
you're gonna have to pour some good bacteria back in there.
And this is like it kind of depends on which
company you work for what kind of yogurt they want,
but they're gonna select their bacteria accordingly dump it in there.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yes that I mean, this is what are the actual
All you have is hot milk up to this point
hot homogenized milk. It's when you add that bacteria into
this warm milk that it starts to happen. And you
want to let the milk cool a little bit first,
because you know, if it's too hot, it's going they're
going to die. But when it cools to something like
(24:19):
I think one hundred and fifteen degrees farentheight or lower,
then you can add your bacteria and they're going to
start to go to work. And all they're doing is
basically fermenting the milk into yogurt. That's it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
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 poops out lactic acid
and you can lactic acid is fine on the body.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah. So not only this is just amazing, This is
when I started to get jazzed by the yogurt. Not
only does it break down lactic or lactose into other
kinds of sh that are more digestible by the human body,
these bacteria actually deposit in your gut when you eat yogurt,
they deposit an enzyme that helps you break down the
(25:11):
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. Yeah, unless you have a severe lactose allergy.
I think it's just intolerance. You can usually eat yogurt.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. And remember I talked about myself and my lactose
intolerance and like, is it am I lactose intolerant or
should I just not eat a pizza and a pint
of ice cream?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:39):
It turns out it's b.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Is there? Right?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah? Man, if I eat a reasonable amount of cheese
and milk, come.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Fine, Yeah, let's farty lot less farty good. The whole
world is thanking you, buddy for coming to that doing that.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Experiment, or at least everyone in this room.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
So pretty amazing that yogurt deposits and 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 people say you should eat yogurt if
you need protein is first of all, is from milk,
so there's tons of protein. But secondly, the acids or
(26:20):
the bacteria and they're actually break down the protein so
it becomes what's called more bioavailable. It's easier for your
body to take in, which normally your body doesn't have
trouble absorbing protein anyway, but if it does yogurt your guy.
But then also it actually synthesizes some vitamins out of
whole cloth. Like there may not be a lot of
(26:42):
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 just some amazing things going on during the
fermentation progret process from milk to yogurt that makes it
its own thing. It's much more than just soured milk.
(27:04):
It's something. It's like a new thing.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
And the fact that they found this accidentally from carrying
sheep's milk around in some animal skin or animal's stomach
ten thousand years ago is just makes it even more fascinating.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
And the fact that you can add fruit on the bottom,
it's really the the ice boy.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Actually, I know the story behind that.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Interactive and fun, that's probably the words they used.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
It was actually was suggested in nineteen forty seven, I
think by a young guy named Jan Metzger, whose dad
was one of the co founders of Danin 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 USDA said, you
can't mix anything with dairy products, it's against the law.
(28:00):
But somehow dan and convinced the USDA that no, no,
the fruit's on the bottom, so it's not really mixing.
If they put it on the top, the USDA 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. It doesn't
make any sense to me. It's like the Jeopardy being
(28:23):
somehow different from the typical quiz show, right, you know,
it's the same thing. Yeah, But they they usdu DA
went along with it, and that's why it was fruit
on the bottom interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, And there wasn't like some senator from South Carolina
and it said, you're counting on the good people of
America to mix their own fruit.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
It's pretty good that was supposed to be. It sounded
like Leonardo DiCaprio and Django Unchained really did like he
was the senator.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Man that movie that that whole sister subplot what don't
even subplot that was so strange in that movie, which
which remember Leo DiCaprio's like sister arrived or whatever.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Oh yeah, and he.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Was just like, where's my beautiful sister And it was
just so over the top and strange, and it was
never explained like are they lovers? Is it?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Like?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
So weird.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I love Quentin Tarantino stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Man, I love hate it.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh really, I don't hate any bit of it. I
love it. Oh.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I think he's far too indulgent these days.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
But you didn't like The Hateful Eight?
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Huh uh? You know, I like the first four endings.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Are you are you looking forward to the Manson family
when he's doing.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, I mean I go, I go see all of them,
and I think they're all worthwhile and they're Tarantino movie,
so I kind of just put my tongue in my
cheek and laugh no matter what.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
But what was his best one in your opinion?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Oh well, I mean probably Reservoir Dogs or pulp fiction
for me.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
But so 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.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
That'll be the day, That'll be the day. Did you
like True Romance?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Well, yeah, but he just wrote that.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, but it's obviously his work. Sure he didn't direct it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
No, I love it. That's one of my faves.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That was a good one. I mean, like, who cass
Gary Oldmin for that? Scott, I guess that's just so bizarre,
but I think it was so cool.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Sit down, have an egg roll.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
It's a good movie.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
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 and how if that's real or not?
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Right after this, all right, chuck yogurt nutrition or just delish?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
All right, So here's the deal. Yogurt has really caught
on in the United States in the last decade more
than ever, largely because it's being touted and sold as
a health food.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Dude, there are studies that are coming in that says
it helps with everything from reducing obesity, type two diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces allergies, improves
bone health, and dental health, basically anything you can think of.
(31:53):
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 evidence to what the pro
yogurt studies are finding. There doesn't seem to be any
study that's like, no, no, put the yogurt down, it's
(32:14):
going to kill all of those 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.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, so here's what we know for sure. I mean,
just ingredient wise, especially if you're lactose intolerant, you can
get a lot of good calcium from yogurt that you
wouldn't get or that you would get if you'd drink
milk or whatever, but if you lyctose intolerant, you can
get it through yogurt. Vitamin D, protein, potassium, riboflabin These
(32:47):
are all things that are in yogurt that we know
are good for you. But it's these it's like health
claims that they're selling people now, which is what we're
really talking about here. Like you said, will it actually
help you lose weight? And there have been some studies
that indicate that it could, but there are a lot
(33:08):
of caveats attached. That feels like, like the International Journal
of Obesity says that low fat yogurt could help you
lose weight, but it's 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, so you're
gonna be eating less. And all these things are kind
(33:31):
of true, but it's a little misleading.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
It is. And actually you also want to be careful, Like, Okay,
if you're on a diet and 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 yogurts replace the fat with other stuff
like artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sacharine. There's usually a
(33:55):
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 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
(34:19):
is such a powerhouse that it can knock out rheumatoid arthritis, right,
And those 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 or not not dieting, but eating
eating right or eating healthy I guess, whatever you want
(34:40):
to call it, is this idea that when you eat,
your body becomes inflamed as part of the immune response
like what did you just eat? What is that? What
is that? And it goes into a kind of like
defense mode to sort things out. Well, the idea is
that over time. If you're eating stuff that sets off
your immune response, your inflammatory response pretty much constantly, that
(35:01):
is a terrible effect on your body and can manifest
itself in things like inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. 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
(35:22):
to some really really bad food, to yogurt can cure
rheumatoid arthritis. And that's the problem.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, especially in women, it seems to have a little
bit better chance at reducing inflammation. They did this one
study at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Go Badgers, right, Wolverines.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Boy, I think it's got to be Badgers, right, it.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Is the Badgers. I'm just giving them a hard time.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I didn't know if that was. Yeah, that's Madison. Of
course we need to do a show there by the
way we do, or we.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Could just make everybody drive to Milwaukee. It's an hour away.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I did like Milwaukee.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It was a great show.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
That was That was cool town. So they did a
study where they had sixty women, half of whom were obese,
and they had them eat twelve ounces of low fat
yogurt every day for nine weeks, then a control group
of course with eating non dairy pudding, so they.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Have which is like, what is that like snack packs?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I don't know. And they measured levels of proteins it says,
excreted by immune cells to determine how much inflammation was
in their bodies. So they're they're trying to measure the
inflamma inflammatory response that you're talking about. And they did
find that the yogurt yogurt ladies as they like to
be called, saw improvements in some markers of inflammation. But
(36:48):
again that's that's a long way from saying it can
help your rheumatoid arthritis.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Right, That's part of the problem. I think people 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.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I think, yes, And it was also this study was
funded by the National Dairy council. And again the guy,
the doctor who performed it. Of course he was like,
it doesn't matter where the money came from, 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, But I'm
(37:39):
sure that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Well, the Yogurt Association, they're the front, they're they're the
the leg breakers for the dairy Association.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
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 like really making that difference
or is just causing you to change patterns, right, which
is fine?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
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 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
replace something. You can gain weight. The I think the
(38:26):
average weight gain in that one study you were talking
about from both the yogurt and the pudding Cohorts was
like a kilogram I think, yeah, a couple of pounds. Yeah,
over like nine weeks or something like that. So that's
a significant amount of weight aain. But they were eating
like twelve ounces. It's two full servings of yogurt every day.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
No, no, you definitely you want it in its own
little amount. It's like a grape nuts bowl, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah. And for parents, you know, yogurt. Not to pick
on them, but they definitely market that. I used to do.
I did a couple of gogurt commercials back in the
day as a PA, and you know, they definitely mark
it towards kids. It's packaged and a little kid friendly,
fun way to eat. And we're not saying yogurt it's
bad for kids, but that stuff is loaded with sugar
(39:24):
and calories from sugar. Yeah, So just know that going in.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
From what I understand, the closest thing to actual yogurt
that you can get in the United States is something
like Greek yogurt.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
That's only kind of eat. I think it tastes best
it is.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
It's fantastic, like plaining Greek yogurt, and then you just
add a little honey. Don't forget the honey chup.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
No, I gotta call my beekeeper.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
There's also something called there's both traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Bulgaria
is very well known for its yogurt love. They have
something called cassello mill yaco, which means soured milk. And
I just think of Balki Bartaka of saying it.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Is that his last name?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah? From Perfect Strangers.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, what was it?
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Balki Bartakomos Bartaca Moose Bartaka Moose.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, I didn't
watch that show though.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Oh you were missing out the episode where they were
moving a piano up up like a couple of flights
of stairs.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Is that a real episode?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I mean, that's an old thing. Like Friends had an
episode of moving a couch upstairs.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
These guys make Friends look like piles of walking poop.
That's how good. That's how good this perfect Stranger's episode
was like Friends doesn't even want to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Oh man, But I mean that's a classic bit like
the uh March Brothers or you know or something.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Or Buster Keaton probably first came up with it.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah, he moved a piano or two in his day.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
You want to talk about the in Soviet Georgia Yogurt
campaign real quick?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah? I actually did not get to see that, so
you can teach me.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Okay. So in nineteen seventy seven, Dan and who really
is almost single handedly responsible for bringing yogurt and making
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 one hundred plus year old
(41:29):
people who were still vital and active and said, hey,
can we film you like Bailing Hay and then afterward
you'll eat like a nice cup of dan and yogurt
and people will say, hey, that's great. I want to
beat Bailing Hay at one 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
(41:50):
Union in the United States were not friends, but to
advertise to the United States, they sent their ad people
to the Soviet Union and it just went off. It
was a total hit, like Dan and 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
(42:13):
the yogurt craze that started in the late seventies early
eighties and continued on and has finally gotten to the
point where we're actually starting to eat healthy yogurt. That
was that commercial in Soviet Georgia. Crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.
They found one guy who was eighty nine and they
said his mother was one hundred and fourteen, and they
filmed them in one of the commercials and they said
(42:34):
he ate two cups and it made his mother very proud,
but he's eighty nine. That was the big joke.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
One hundred and fourteen man.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, all from eating yogurt.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I need to get on it.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (42:47):
If I want to live to be one hundred and fourteen, you.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Got to start eating some yogurt. And don't forget the
honey God.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Could you imagine me at one hundred and fourteen?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, actually I can now that you mentioned it.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Nobody wants that.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I could totally see it. You'd be like, I'm back
to the whole pizza and the whole thing ice cream thing.
You might want to stand back. Wow, this one had
a lot of fart and poop jokes.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah, well it happens.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
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 the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
All right, I'm gonna call this self profess 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 rich
(43:47):
slash Johnny Sitch 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. That spent only
six months of his reign in England, he was off
on the Third Crusade. He left his chancellor, William of
Longchamp as regent, but his brother John was cranky about
(44:08):
it and schemed against him and citing a rebellion. When
rich eventually got back, he forgave Johnny named him heir
to the throne. So the bad King John good King
Richard Bitt of the rh canon is actually based in fact. Wow,
that's interesting, perhaps more interesting, he says, I set up,
by the way, thank you, when the Robinhood story started
(44:28):
coming out during the reign of Henry. Their It was
during a period where Henry was waging war for his
lands in 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.
(44:49):
So the Robinhood stories pit our hero against these extortionate
representatives of a nasty villainus 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 our recent
but previous scenario, which everyone will draw the parallels from.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Wow, this guy's not just a self proclaimed medievalist. I
officially confirm him as a medievalist.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
He says. Hope this helps, Uh, hope this helps your
insatiable appetite to keep learning, as your podcast does mine.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
I love you guys. That is Stephen Gray.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Thanks a lot, Steven, that was a great email.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
We love you too.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Let's hug. Yeah, Hey go Stephen. If you want to
get in touch with us, like Stephen did, we want
to hear from you. 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 HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
How do everyone chuck here on a Saturday bringing you
another fine selection from our back catalog? Is yogurt a
miracle food? This is from November twenty eighteen, And you know,
yogurt's pretty good for you, you guys, it's something you
should be eating, perhaps even a miracle food. Do we
answer that question? Is yogurt a miracle food? Perhaps? Listen
(00:23):
in and find out right now.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
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.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, you don't.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
Like yogurt or fruit on the bottom yogurt?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
I don't like fruit on the bottom, okay, but I do.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Do you like yogurt?
Speaker 1 (00:58):
Yeah? I don't like any of the of the fruity ones.
I mean, they taste fine, but I think they're just
like loaded with sugar generally, and sweeteners and things.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
But yeah, it's not fruit. It's like jam on the
bottom jelly. You know. Do you like yogurt compote?
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
I love yogurt. 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.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Do you eat it regularly?
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Uh? Not as much as I should, although I recently
did a blood test and my protein was low strangely,
so I'm gonna start eating more. Okay, what I'll just
get like you sounded like YO believe that when I
see it?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
No, no, no, I was just curious what your yogurt
intike was.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
What about you? You eat it every day? No?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
I should, Like. I don't eat yogurt much. I'm constantly
slapping it on my kid's baby plate and she loves it,
and Emily eats it, and I'm like, I need to
eat more yogurt. I mean, I like it. I just
don't think about it much.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
What I do is sometimes in a like a hotel
or anywhere where they have the sort of build your
own parfe thing. Yes, though a little granola yeah, or
granula in there grows 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 day because,
as we will find out, the benefits of eating yogurt,
(02:22):
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.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
That's that seems to be generally agreed to pind.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
It and not like, oh I eight yogurt today, that
means I'm eight percent healthier.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right, Yeah, that's not how it works. Yeah, although I
think it is, like just temporarily you're doing better for
a second than you were before. But you know, whats Yeah,
let me give you a little hint, buddy. Find a
local bee keeper, and I mean local, like no more
than five six miles from your house.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Okay, got one?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
Okay, great, Take a little of 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 honey and
in Greek yogret. It's just like you're eating health, is
(03:24):
what it feels like.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
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 throw
some broccoli in there.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Throw a little broccoli in there, the Tonka truck, anything
you can find, just put it onto your yogurt. Start eating.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
And we covered some of the stuff in our probiotics cast. Yeah,
a lot from how many years ago?
Speaker 3 (03:50):
Is that for twenty fourteen?
Speaker 1 (03:52):
Okay, four years ago? But I felt like yogurt deserved
to live on its own.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
I was incredulous at first, but I around. Actually I
was like, chucks, right.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
So let's get into it. I guess we should talk history, yes,
because yogurt is one of those kind of great accidental
discoveries 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 point, many
(04:26):
thousands of years ago in the Middle East, people were
transporting stuff like milk, maybe like a goat's milk or.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Whatever, probably goat and sheep first.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, and they were transporting that and whatever disgusting animal
bladder or whatever they used to transport liquids and things
like that. They got there and they're like, ah, this
stuff has turned it's it's stinks but you know, we're
it's a thousand years from being from being civilized humanity.
(04:59):
So let's just try this stuff, all right, Like who's
gonna who's gonna care or no.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
Somebody clarked me some honey.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
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.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And one of those ancient Middle Eastern people said, hey,
this is not bad, right.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And I think there's this guy named Adam Maskovich who
wrote a post on the Salt that who basically said
it's not and it's not entirely an understatement to say
like civilization was in part built on yogurt.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
That was pretty neat, it really was.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
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.
I poop all over my saddle basically while we're out riding,
because this is the Mongolian steps, right. But I have
found that this weird tangy version, the sour version of
(06:01):
milk that you call yogurt, like that doesn't affect me
at all. It's the weirdest thing. And so as more
people were able to eat this stuff, which is full
of nutrients, lots of calories, and it has a tantalizing taste,
people kind of gathered around the areas that had yogurt
and other stuff too, he points out, like cheese and
(06:23):
things like that, and bread and beer. It's possible beer
was the real reason that civilization was started. But the
yogurt played no small role in that. In its fermentation,
it has transformed something from something that people who are
lactose in tolerant can't take to something that people who
are lactose intolerant can't actually eat and benefit from.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
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 don't worry about that.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, they said, stop thinking yourself is more than an an, Well,
you're an animal animal.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So it really thrived in the Middle East. They love
the stuff, like you were talking about. It's actually a
Turkish word yogurt is. And it took a little bit
longer to catch up to Europe. I think at the
end of the nineteenth century is really when it started
(07:23):
to spread wide in Europe, and here in the United
States it took to like the middle half of the
twentieth century when it was mass marketed by Dannin. And
it's not like we didn't eat yogurt at all, but
definitely not like I mean, in the Middle East it 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 is
(07:48):
kind of one of the staples of a lot of
Middle Eastern food. So they're doing it right.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Yeah, And so the Middle East seems to be the
home of yogurt. It was the home of civilization, and
they think that yogurts is all the civilization maybe a
little older. 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 mak, which is Turkish
(08:15):
meaning to thicken and Turkey. The fact that we in
the English speaking world call it yogurt suggests that it
was the Turks who introduced the West to yogurt, but
they're also pretty sure that Turkey was the ones who
introduced yogurt to India as well. And the neighbors, the
(08:36):
neighboring areas around Turkey, like Bulgaria, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran,
like all these areas are pretty famous for eating a
lot of yogurt and even having their own kind of
yogurt or their own version of it. But something about
Turkey really seems to be the like the pivot point
(08:56):
for the spread of yogurt in the world.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, and I can't fun oh yeah, here it is
even today, it says that Turkish people eat about and
this was like four or five years ago, two hundred
and eighty two cups of yogurt per person per year,
which is definitely more than in the United States.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Well it was at the time. We've since caught up
quite quite a.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Bit, I think, yeah, I think that stat for US
is poundage though, right, yes, how many pounds of yogurt
do we eat?
Speaker 3 (09:29):
So we ate four point eight billion pounds of yogurt
in twenty seventeen, four point eight billion pounds in the
United States alone, and yeah, we're not like the highest
yogurt eating civilization on the planet by far, but that's
like about the fifteen pounds per person, thirteen point seven
(09:52):
pounds per person, 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.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Wow. So that's yeah in Turkey two hundred and eighty
two cups.
Speaker 3 (10:05):
Yeah, that's a lot.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
That's a lot.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, So Chuck, like you were saying, like yogurt didn't
really make its way over to the States until the
twentieth century, right, Yes, and I think it was And
you said it was Dan and that brought it here.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
That's right, in the Bronx.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, they moved their operations from Spain, Barcelona, I think,
to the Bronx, which is really weird because like America
was not a yogurt eating culture at all, in not
really No, but they brought yogurt to a play said
where in the world would be the hardest place to
get a foothold business wise, Let's move our operations there.
(10:42):
So they moved it to 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. It's sweet. It's not some disgusting, tangy
soured milk. We can put like compote in jam in it,
(11:03):
and it's good. And that 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
what maybe twenty ten or thirteen before we finally started
to shed like all the extra gunk and actually get
into yogurt the way that the rest of the world's
(11:24):
been eating it for thousands of years, with like what
we call Greek yogurt.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
The way the Good Lord intended.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's right, 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.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
All right. So we talked about probiotics in the episode
on probiotics.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Yeah, this was a good episode if I remember correctly.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
It was so as a as a brief recap probiotics
and food. They're like culture concentrates and some kind in
some foods. Sometimes they're in dietary supplements. Sometimes they're in
things like yogurt and cheese fermented dairy products, and it's
they're usually bacteria. Sometimes you can yeast connect as a probiotic,
(12:30):
but when you generally think probiotic, you think of good
bacteria used to ferment milk. And then sometimes with things
like yogurt, they add in other bacteria on top of that.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
Right, which is great, just add some more bacteria as
long as it's the good kind basically, yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
But sometimes they add bacteria that's not considered probiotic too.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Right, I look 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, right, just at
this time, that's all right, That's all I could get
from it. So, and with probiotics, just kind of a
quick overview, it's just basically like it's beneficial bacteria that's
(13:15):
in your gut. And when you're born, you're not born
with your own microbiome. I think you get it from
breast milk and you get a coating of it as
you exit your mother's vagina. Okay, so you you develop
it pretty quickly. But it's kind of like gifted to
you very shortly after birth.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, you build it out exactly so.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
As you 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 pill form
or whether it is a prebiotic like a banana something
that can feed probiotic bacteria, or if it's yogurt, is
(13:57):
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 stabilizes your mood, to digesting
your food and moving poop through your intestines faster, all
the amazing things. I also want to direct people. We
(14:18):
did a microbiome episode which is one of the all
time most fascinating episodes we ever did.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
Do you remember that one the poop cast?
Speaker 3 (14:26):
No, No, the one that's our microbiome?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Oh right, that was just on.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
How completely made up. I think like ninety percent of
our cells are actually not ours. They're part of the
microbiome of bacteria that live on us and interact with us.
And that's 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.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, so in order to and we'll get into the
health effects here in a minute, but in order to
get that back toe area and have it survive through
gastric acid. I mean, it's a it's an inhospitable environment
down there in your gut and in your intestines. Well,
first of all, they do think that yogurt might be
(15:13):
just a good vehicle for that period because it's thick
and goofy and 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 are organizations that set minimum standards, and one
of them is the National Yogurt Association of the United States. Right,
(15:34):
you don't want to mess with them, trust me, no't.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Break your legs. It's just for even looking at them.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, they're tough, tough individuals.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
They really are collectively.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
So I believe the requirement is one hundred million bacteria
per gram 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 of gogurt and shove it down your throat and
get a sugar rush. Sure, have at it. But if
you actually want that live and active culture seal stamped
(16:06):
on your yogurt, then you're gonna have to have one
hundred million bacteria per gram.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right, and it has to be specific bacteria too. The
FDA decreed in nineteen eighty one that if you're going
to sell something in the US as yogurt, it has
to contain Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Straptococcus thermophilis. 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
(16:32):
at least one hundred million individual bacterium of those strains
per gram of yogurt or else. Buddy, that ain't yogurt.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
That ain't yogurt, That ain't your mom's yogurt, that ain't
your dad's yogurt.
Speaker 3 (16:47):
It's nobody's yogurt. No, not as far as the FDA's concerned.
And if you thought the National Yogurt Association was tough, boy, howdy,
the FDA will mess you up.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
So you want to talk a little bit about how
they make yogurt.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yes, but first get this. So you know, you were
talking about how how yogurt or bacteria can Some can
survive in the gut, which can be inhospitable. I was like,
how how did they do that? Some are just coated
in like a polysaccharide. That's fine, that's boring. But some
bacteria actually have pumps that are designed to pump acid
(17:24):
out of the bacteria. So when it's floating around in
this bath of stomach acid and juice and digestive enzymes,
it's just pumping it out and keeping it just happy
as a lark. But it has like a mechanism for
getting rid of the acid that that should otherwise kill it.
I thought that was fascinating.
Speaker 1 (17:44):
Man. Life science is m h what else? What's your
other big one?
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Earth science?
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Earth science, life science.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Just science basically. Yeah, yeah, it all floats my boat.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
What kind of science do you hate? Hmmm? Cology?
Speaker 3 (18:01):
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 science is
hate worthy.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
No, don't hate science and be like Josh Clark yourself.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
Some Josh, we just spun my head right around.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
Did you see that I did? That was strange. But
it is October. It is the month of exorcism.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
It's the Dancing Headstone's best season. What was the name
of the band?
Speaker 1 (18:34):
I can't remember.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
Oh man, we could have just buzzmarketed that guy.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So well, all right, when you're making yogurt, like you said,
it was many many, many years ago, it was just
this kurdled 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 going to manufacture yogurt, what you want to
do is separate the milk into the and the skim.
(19:01):
And this is automatically going to get a thicker texture
going because it's got a lot of fat and 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
get this to the good yogurty consistent consistency that everybody loves.
(19:23):
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.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I think so, because homogenizing just basically means stirring. Yeah, pasturization,
there's a lot to that, a lot of history and everything.
But homogenize, I think they've really churched that up. It's
just stirring something.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
Yeah, to make it more homogeneous. Right, It's pretty amazing.
The word fits perfectly, it really does. So these high
temperatures that you get through pasteurization is going to help
make it even more thick. But you don't need to
like blast it at three hundred degrees for eight hours
or whatever.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Now you don't want to do.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
It's kind of amazing actually that it only takes about
fifteen seconds at one hundred and seventy one degrees fahrenheit
and that'll kill off the bacteria that you don't want there.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
So you know how both of our schedules are just
insane right now? Yes, I was starting to feel a
little worn down, Charrett. It's just the tiniest tickle in
my nose, and I was like, no, I'm not having it,
So I busted out the old netty pot. Yeah, well
I got the double purified tap water out of my
water purifier, and then I put it into a pot
(20:47):
and boiled it for five minutes and stuck the netty
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 cool, I put it through my
nose and I looked it up. I'm like, is that overkill?
Is it not enough?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
It's overkill?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
It is overkilled from what I saw. What you really
need is to once the water gets to a boil,
something like ninety nine point nine percent of any pathogen
is dead. But the I think I can't remember who
recommends it, Maybe the CDC somebody recommends at least letting
(21:26):
it boil for a minute, just to be safe. And
then if you're above two thousand feet over sea level,
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 going to stick with my five
minute boiling thing.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I still don't boil it at all.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Dude, do you know what would happen if you got
just the off chance of a brain eating amba in there.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
No, I know, but I also don't like get scared
walking around during a lightning storm. I don't either, and
I just feel like it's about as unlikely.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Okay, all right, well, then promise me this, uh huh.
You will never netty pot with water that you just
got out of a stagnant creek.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Is that a deal at least?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Sure? But can I still pour that into my open wounds?
Speaker 3 (22:16):
No? Okay, just steer clear of that water all together,
all right, fair enough, all right.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
All right. So at this point, Josh has boiled his
water for twenty minutes by milk, let it cool for
an hour, poured it through his nostril system.
Speaker 3 (22:31):
Is how I make yogurt.
Speaker 1 (22:34):
No, after they boil for fifteen seconds or heat that
milk up for fifteen seconds, 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
(22:56):
has the consistency of curdling.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
No, you don't, so homogenization just stirring it up so
you're breaking up the 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 smooth or more consistently smooth. Yeah,
because it's homogenized milk that it's made from. Yes, okay,
(23:22):
bam homogenization. We just did the homogenization episode.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
That could have been a short stuff.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
It could have I don't even know if it would
have qualified for that.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Well, we're gonna start releasing one called shortest Stuff. It's
just like forty five seconds.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's our future.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
So here's the most important part. You think your yogurt's done,
but it's not, because if you want it to be yogurt,
you're gonna have to pour some good bacteria back in there.
And this is like it kind of depends on which
company you work for what kind of yogurt they want,
but they're gonna select their bacteria accordingly dump it in there.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yes that I mean, this is what are the actual
All you have is hot milk up to this point
hot homogenized milk. It's when you add that bacteria into
this warm milk that it starts to happen. And you
want to let the milk cool a little bit first,
because you know, if it's too hot, it's going they're
going to die. But when it cools to something like
(24:19):
I think one hundred and fifteen degrees farentheight or lower,
then you can add your bacteria and they're going to
start to go to work. And all they're doing is
basically fermenting the milk into yogurt. That's it.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
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 poops out lactic acid
and you can lactic acid is fine on the body.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Yeah. So not only this is just amazing, This is
when I started to get jazzed by the yogurt. Not
only does it break down lactic or lactose into other
kinds of sh that are more digestible by the human body,
these bacteria actually deposit in your gut when you eat yogurt,
they deposit an enzyme that helps you break down the
(25:11):
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. Yeah, unless you have a severe lactose allergy.
I think it's just intolerance. You can usually eat yogurt.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah. And remember I talked about myself and my lactose
intolerance and like, is it am I lactose intolerant or
should I just not eat a pizza and a pint
of ice cream?
Speaker 3 (25:38):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:39):
It turns out it's b.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
Is there? Right?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
Yeah? Man, if I eat a reasonable amount of cheese
and milk, come.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
Fine, Yeah, let's farty lot less farty good. The whole
world is thanking you, buddy for coming to that doing that.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Experiment, or at least everyone in this room.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
So pretty amazing that yogurt deposits and 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 people say you should eat yogurt if
you need protein is first of all, is from milk,
so there's tons of protein. But secondly, the acids or
(26:20):
the bacteria and they're actually break down the protein so
it becomes what's called more bioavailable. It's easier for your
body to take in, which normally your body doesn't have
trouble absorbing protein anyway, but if it does yogurt your guy.
But then also it actually synthesizes some vitamins out of
whole cloth. Like there may not be a lot of
(26:42):
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 just some amazing things going on during the
fermentation progret process from milk to yogurt that makes it
its own thing. It's much more than just soured milk.
(27:04):
It's something. It's like a new thing.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
And the fact that they found this accidentally from carrying
sheep's milk around in some animal skin or animal's stomach
ten thousand years ago is just makes it even more fascinating.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
And the fact that you can add fruit on the bottom,
it's really the the ice boy.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
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.
Speaker 3 (27:34):
Actually, I know the story behind that.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Interactive and fun, that's probably the words they used.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
It was actually was suggested in nineteen forty seven, I
think by a young guy named Jan Metzger, whose dad
was one of the co founders of Danin 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 USDA said, you
can't mix anything with dairy products, it's against the law.
(28:00):
But somehow dan and convinced the USDA that no, no,
the fruit's on the bottom, so it's not really mixing.
If they put it on the top, the USDA 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. It doesn't
make any sense to me. It's like the Jeopardy being
(28:23):
somehow different from the typical quiz show, right, you know,
it's the same thing. Yeah, But they they usdu DA
went along with it, and that's why it was fruit
on the bottom interesting.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah, And there wasn't like some senator from South Carolina
and it said, you're counting on the good people of
America to mix their own fruit.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
It's pretty good that was supposed to be. It sounded
like Leonardo DiCaprio and Django Unchained really did like he
was the senator.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Man that movie that that whole sister subplot what don't
even subplot that was so strange in that movie, which
which remember Leo DiCaprio's like sister arrived or whatever.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
Oh yeah, and he.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Was just like, where's my beautiful sister And it was
just so over the top and strange, and it was
never explained like are they lovers? Is it?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Like?
Speaker 1 (29:19):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (29:20):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
So weird.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I love Quentin Tarantino stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Man, I love hate it.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
Oh really, I don't hate any bit of it. I
love it. Oh.
Speaker 1 (29:30):
I think he's far too indulgent these days.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
But you didn't like The Hateful Eight?
Speaker 1 (29:35):
Huh uh? You know, I like the first four endings.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Are you are you looking forward to the Manson family
when he's doing.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Yeah, I mean I go, I go see all of them,
and I think they're all worthwhile and they're Tarantino movie,
so I kind of just put my tongue in my
cheek and laugh no matter what.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
But what was his best one in your opinion?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Oh well, I mean probably Reservoir Dogs or pulp fiction
for me.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
But so 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.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
That'll be the day, That'll be the day. Did you
like True Romance?
Speaker 1 (30:19):
Well, yeah, but he just wrote that.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Yeah, but it's obviously his work. Sure he didn't direct it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
No, I love it. That's one of my faves.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
That was a good one. I mean, like, who cass
Gary Oldmin for that? Scott, I guess that's just so bizarre,
but I think it was so cool.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Sit down, have an egg roll.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
It's a good movie.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
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 and how if that's real or not?
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Right after this, all right, chuck yogurt nutrition or just delish?
Speaker 1 (31:18):
All right, So here's the deal. Yogurt has really caught
on in the United States in the last decade more
than ever, largely because it's being touted and sold as
a health food.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Dude, there are studies that are coming in that says
it helps with everything from reducing obesity, type two diabetes,
cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces allergies, improves
bone health, and dental health, basically anything you can think of.
(31:53):
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 evidence to what the pro
yogurt studies are finding. There doesn't seem to be any
study that's like, no, no, put the yogurt down, it's
(32:14):
going to kill all of those 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.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Yeah, so here's what we know for sure. I mean,
just ingredient wise, especially if you're lactose intolerant, you can
get a lot of good calcium from yogurt that you
wouldn't get or that you would get if you'd drink
milk or whatever, but if you lyctose intolerant, you can
get it through yogurt. Vitamin D, protein, potassium, riboflabin These
(32:47):
are all things that are in yogurt that we know
are good for you. But it's these it's like health
claims that they're selling people now, which is what we're
really talking about here. Like you said, will it actually
help you lose weight? And there have been some studies
that indicate that it could, but there are a lot
(33:08):
of caveats attached. That feels like, like the International Journal
of Obesity says that low fat yogurt could help you
lose weight, but it's 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, so you're
gonna be eating less. And all these things are kind
(33:31):
of true, but it's a little misleading.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
It is. And actually you also want to be careful, Like, Okay,
if you're on a diet and 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 yogurts replace the fat with other stuff
like artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sacharine. There's usually a
(33:55):
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 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
(34:19):
is such a powerhouse that it can knock out rheumatoid arthritis, right,
And those 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 or not not dieting, but eating
eating right or eating healthy I guess, whatever you want
(34:40):
to call it, is this idea that when you eat,
your body becomes inflamed as part of the immune response
like what did you just eat? What is that? What
is that? And it goes into a kind of like
defense mode to sort things out. Well, the idea is
that over time. If you're eating stuff that sets off
your immune response, your inflammatory response pretty much constantly, that
(35:01):
is a terrible effect on your body and can manifest
itself in things like inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. 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
(35:22):
to some really really bad food, to yogurt can cure
rheumatoid arthritis. And that's the problem.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, especially in women, it seems to have a little
bit better chance at reducing inflammation. They did this one
study at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Speaker 3 (35:40):
Go Badgers, right, Wolverines.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Boy, I think it's got to be Badgers, right, it.
Speaker 3 (35:45):
Is the Badgers. I'm just giving them a hard time.
Speaker 1 (35:48):
I didn't know if that was. Yeah, that's Madison. Of
course we need to do a show there by the
way we do, or we.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Could just make everybody drive to Milwaukee. It's an hour away.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I did like Milwaukee.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
It was a great show.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
That was That was cool town. So they did a
study where they had sixty women, half of whom were obese,
and they had them eat twelve ounces of low fat
yogurt every day for nine weeks, then a control group
of course with eating non dairy pudding, so they.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
Have which is like, what is that like snack packs?
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I don't know. And they measured levels of proteins it says,
excreted by immune cells to determine how much inflammation was
in their bodies. So they're they're trying to measure the
inflamma inflammatory response that you're talking about. And they did
find that the yogurt yogurt ladies as they like to
be called, saw improvements in some markers of inflammation. But
(36:48):
again that's that's a long way from saying it can
help your rheumatoid arthritis.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
Right, That's part of the problem. I think people 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.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
I think, yes, And it was also this study was
funded by the National Dairy council. And again the guy,
the doctor who performed it. Of course he was like,
it doesn't matter where the money came from, 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, But I'm
(37:39):
sure that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Well, the Yogurt Association, they're the front, they're they're the
the leg breakers for the dairy Association.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
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 like really making that difference
or is just causing you to change patterns, right, which
is fine?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
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 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
replace something. You can gain weight. The I think the
(38:26):
average weight gain in that one study you were talking
about from both the yogurt and the pudding Cohorts was
like a kilogram I think, yeah, a couple of pounds. Yeah,
over like nine weeks or something like that. So that's
a significant amount of weight aain. But they were eating
like twelve ounces. It's two full servings of yogurt every day.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (38:55):
No, no, you definitely you want it in its own
little amount. It's like a grape nuts bowl, you know.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah. And for parents, you know, yogurt. Not to pick
on them, but they definitely market that. I used to do.
I did a couple of gogurt commercials back in the
day as a PA, and you know, they definitely mark
it towards kids. It's packaged and a little kid friendly,
fun way to eat. And we're not saying yogurt it's
bad for kids, but that stuff is loaded with sugar
(39:24):
and calories from sugar. Yeah, So just know that going in.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
From what I understand, the closest thing to actual yogurt
that you can get in the United States is something
like Greek yogurt.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
That's only kind of eat. I think it tastes best
it is.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
It's fantastic, like plaining Greek yogurt, and then you just
add a little honey. Don't forget the honey chup.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
No, I gotta call my beekeeper.
Speaker 3 (39:44):
There's also something called there's both traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Bulgaria
is very well known for its yogurt love. They have
something called cassello mill yaco, which means soured milk. And
I just think of Balki Bartaka of saying it.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Is that his last name?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah? From Perfect Strangers.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Yeah, what was it?
Speaker 3 (40:05):
Balki Bartakomos Bartaca Moose Bartaka Moose.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, I didn't
watch that show though.
Speaker 3 (40:12):
Oh you were missing out the episode where they were
moving a piano up up like a couple of flights
of stairs.
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Is that a real episode?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
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.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I mean, that's an old thing. Like Friends had an
episode of moving a couch upstairs.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
These guys make Friends look like piles of walking poop.
That's how good. That's how good this perfect Stranger's episode
was like Friends doesn't even want to talk about it.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Oh man, But I mean that's a classic bit like
the uh March Brothers or you know or something.
Speaker 3 (40:52):
Or Buster Keaton probably first came up with it.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah, he moved a piano or two in his day.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
You want to talk about the in Soviet Georgia Yogurt
campaign real quick?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah? I actually did not get to see that, so
you can teach me.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Okay. So in nineteen seventy seven, Dan and who really
is almost single handedly responsible for bringing yogurt and making
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 one hundred plus year old
(41:29):
people who were still vital and active and said, hey,
can we film you like Bailing Hay and then afterward
you'll eat like a nice cup of dan and yogurt
and people will say, hey, that's great. I want to
beat Bailing Hay at one 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
(41:50):
Union in the United States were not friends, but to
advertise to the United States, they sent their ad people
to the Soviet Union and it just went off. It
was a total hit, like Dan and 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
(42:13):
the yogurt craze that started in the late seventies early
eighties and continued on and has finally gotten to the
point where we're actually starting to eat healthy yogurt. That
was that commercial in Soviet Georgia. Crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.
They found one guy who was eighty nine and they
said his mother was one hundred and fourteen, and they
filmed them in one of the commercials and they said
(42:34):
he ate two cups and it made his mother very proud,
but he's eighty nine. That was the big joke.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
One hundred and fourteen man.
Speaker 3 (42:42):
Yeah, all from eating yogurt.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
I need to get on it.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (42:47):
If I want to live to be one hundred and fourteen, you.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
Got to start eating some yogurt. And don't forget the
honey God.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Could you imagine me at one hundred and fourteen?
Speaker 3 (42:56):
Yeah, actually I can now that you mentioned it.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
Nobody wants that.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
I could totally see it. You'd be like, I'm back
to the whole pizza and the whole thing ice cream thing.
You might want to stand back. Wow, this one had
a lot of fart and poop jokes.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
Yeah, well it happens.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
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 the listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
All right, I'm gonna call this self profess 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 rich
(43:47):
slash Johnny Sitch 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. That spent only
six months of his reign in England, he was off
on the Third Crusade. He left his chancellor, William of
Longchamp as regent, but his brother John was cranky about
(44:08):
it and schemed against him and citing a rebellion. When
rich eventually got back, he forgave Johnny named him heir
to the throne. So the bad King John good King
Richard Bitt of the rh canon is actually based in fact. Wow,
that's interesting, perhaps more interesting, he says, I set up,
by the way, thank you, when the Robinhood story started
(44:28):
coming out during the reign of Henry. Their It was
during a period where Henry was waging war for his
lands in 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.
(44:49):
So the Robinhood stories pit our hero against these extortionate
representatives of a nasty villainus 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 our recent
but previous scenario, which everyone will draw the parallels from.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Wow, this guy's not just a self proclaimed medievalist. I
officially confirm him as a medievalist.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
He says. Hope this helps, Uh, hope this helps your
insatiable appetite to keep learning, as your podcast does mine.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
I love you guys. That is Stephen Gray.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Thanks a lot, Steven, that was a great email.
Speaker 1 (45:26):
We love you too.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Let's hug. Yeah, Hey go Stephen. If you want to
get in touch with us, like Stephen did, we want
to hear from you. 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 HowStuffWorks dot com.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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