Eat Healthy: YOGURT

Goat milk or cow milk, soy or coconut, Greek or Arabic, yogurt is in the gourmet. In India, yogurt is a must have meal accompaniment; famous because of its benefits to digestive system. Be it chaat, pani puri or Korma, Indian cuisine cannot do without it. This same curd/dahi in now trending in a number of flavors, milk sources, fat content, textures, sweeteners and so on.

A bowl of yogurt garnished with fruit and mint – Licensed Image: CC BY-SA

What makes it a health food? Yogurt has special healing properties. It is an anti – fungal food that builds your body, restores your health and soothes you. Nutritionists recommend a daily 200 – 300 gm serving of curd. The yogurt and the milk from which it is prepared both have the same levels of calcium content and other nutrients. Then what’s different? Yogurt contains proteins, fats and sugars in simple forms and so it is rightly called the predigested food. This makes it a suitable food for children. Yogurt contains vitamin D too which helps in the absorption of calcium. Therefore, if consumed liberally in childhood, it can prevent osteoporosis in later life.

What more? It has all the good bacteria (probiotics) required to boost body’s immunity and smoothen and clean the digestive tract. However always make sure that you don’t prepare curd from milk containing full fat as it has very high calorie and fat content. It is its versatility that has made it popular throughout the world. We have yogurt in different varieties even for the vegans. We mean ‘mock yogurt’. It’s a non – dairy yogurt extracted from coconut and soy, like mock meat. These soy yogurts (called yofu or soygurt) don’t have lactose in it )because of which dairy products are palatable). But these yogurts provide you an equal amount of protein as compared to their dairy counterparts. Nowadays we often hear about Greek yogurt. This one is strained multiple times to take out some liquid whey, sugar and lactose giving it a tangy flavor and thick consistency.

Greek yogurt has high nutritive values and it can be prepared at home by mixing hung curd with some cheese. Chefs are indeed intrigued by this wonder ingredient. They have come with their own fancier flavors. Delhi’s chef Saby has his Baked Saffron yogurt which he uses in his Mishti Doi cheesecake and other brunch recipes. Weight watchers have this item on their top list. But it is better to go with the homemade regular yogurt since the ones sold in market have high amount of artificial sweeteners.