Yogurt diet 🆙

What

What is the yogurt diet?

The yogurt diet is yet another attempt to standardize a slimming diet, which can appeal to an audience of people who are poorly trained on the subject and likely dissatisfied with their body image.

The yogurt diet, like many other "disposable diets", is a nutritional strategy that revolves around the chemical composition of a single product and allows the use of few other foods - just enough that dovrebbe enough to "dodge" the most significant side effects. As rich and nutritious as it is, any food alone cannot be enough to survive or keep an active organism healthy.

The objectives of this diet are exclusively of an aesthetic nature; who suggests it describes:

an improvement in the skin's appearance
a reduction in abdominal swelling
rapid weight loss and increased intestinal regularity.

The nutritional imbalance of the yogurt diet is evident and will be described more accurately in the last chapter. For the moment, let's try to understand what is the real role of yogurt in human nutrition.

Yogurt - How to make Yogurt at home

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Nutrition and Diet

Introduction: use and abuse of yogurt

It is truly a shame that the "reputation" of a rich, delicious and useful food like yogurt is compromised for such trivial reasons.

By practicing the yogurt diet, one realizes from the earliest days of the impracticability and monotony that characterize it. This is to the detriment of the nutritional habits of the ill who, most of the time, after having swallowed 3 to 7,5 kg of yogurt in a week, delete it from their diet even for long periods.

On the contrary, yogurt is an extremely useful food in the nutrition of the human being, whether young, adult or elderly. For mildly intolerant people, yogurt replaces animal milk thanks to its lower (almost zero) lactose content; obviously, this cannot happen for those who manifest more important and annoying gastro-intestinal toxic symptoms.

Nutritional function of yogurt

That said, many readers will ask, "What is the nutritional function of yogurt?" The answer is complex, since there are several positive aspects of the right consumption of yogurt; let's see them one at a time.

Yogurt and high biological value proteins

Yogurt is an excellent source of high biological value protein - casein and whey protein. This parameter measures the content of essential amino acids, so defined because the body is unable to synthesize them independently in sufficient quantities.

Yogurt and minerals: calcium and phosphorus

Yogurt is an excellent source of calcium and phosphorus. Like all milk derivatives, it contains excellent concentrations of these salts involved in bone mineralization. This means that the dietary function of yogurt acquires greater importance in skeletal development - prevention of osteoporosis - and following menopause - possible slowing of the osteoporotic process.

Yogurt and vitamins: vit B2 and vit A

Yogurt is an excellent source of Vit B2 or riboflavin. This water-soluble vitamin, also called lactoflavin, is the essential precursor of two coenzymes (FMN and FAD) necessary for various cellular reactions. There are also good concentrations of retinol or vitamin A or retinol (fat-soluble), involved in cell differentiation and in the maintenance of visual function and the immune system.

Yogurt and fat

Yoghurt, despite being a food that provides good doses of cholesterol and which has a prevalence of saturated fatty acids, is also produced from partially skimmed or skimmed milk. This significantly improves its dietary relevance as: it does not affect the overall atherogenic potential and helps to moderate the total energy intake of the diet (an aspect that should not be underestimated in calorie regimes for the treatment of obesity).

Yogurt and probiotics

Yogurt is a "live" food, as it is fermented by bacterial strains commonly called "lactobacilli". These microorganisms, in addition to reducing the lactose content with the production of lactic acid, favor a sort of pre-digestion (hydrolysis) of proteins; both of these characteristics - even more so in skimmed products - significantly favor the digestibility coefficient. Furthermore, it seems that this kind of bacteria is responsible for the compositional improvement of the intestinal bacterial flora. To tell the truth, with the reduction of gastric pH (necessary for protein digestion), a large part of these "probiotic" microorganisms is destroyed and it is not yet clear how much traditional yogurt can affect "intestinal health". An exception could be yogurt and dietary fermented milks exceptionally rich in probiotics, advertised for their beneficial function on intestinal regularization and health.

Yogurt and water

Yogurt is rich in water, a crucial aspect in maintaining body hydration. To most people, this feature may seem superfluous; in reality, in the context of certain unbalanced diets characterized by the scarce presence of fresh vegetable foods, yogurt helps to reduce the risk of dehydration. Note: many believe that yogurt, being denser than milk, is more concentrated and therefore low in water. In truth, this greater texture arises from the activity of certain microorganisms which, due to their metabolism, release water-soluble factors that thicken the liquid.

Homemade Greek Yogurt

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Controversy

Controversies over the yogurt diet

After a brief introduction on the poor suitability of the yogurt diet for human consumption, let's see in more detail how it should be structured and why it is not recommended. The yogurt diet lasts for 5 days and "should" facilitate the reduction of body weight (they say, up to 3kg in 7 days). In reality, as can be easily deduced, it is not a real weight loss and it is probable that a good part of the weight lost is made up of body fluids; in this case, it is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED especially for those suffering from low blood pressure! The yogurt diet includes 2 model days, of which: the first repeated only once and the second 4 times. In summary (taken from the text: "Anthology of Diets"):

Day 1

As soon as you wake up: a glass of warm water
Breakfast: unsweetened tea, 300g of low-fat yogurt
Lunch: vegetable broth, 300g of low-fat yogurt
Mid afternoon: 300g of low-fat yogurt, unsweetened tea, 1 fruit
Dinner: vegetable soup, 300g of low-fat yogurt
Before going to bed: sugar-free chamomile, 3 prunes

Day 2

As soon as you wake up: a glass of plain water
Breakfast: bitter tea, 300g of low-fat yogurt with 2 tablespoons of cereals
Lunch: vegetable broth, 300g of low-fat yogurt, 1 fruit
Mid afternoon: 300g of low-fat yogurt, unsweetened tea, 1 fruit
Dinner: 200g of fish baked in foil, green salad with 1 tablespoon of olive oil, juice without sugar, 1 wholemeal sandwich
Before going to bed: sugar-free chamomile, 3 prunes.

Conclusions: because it is unbalanced

It is clear that this is an unbalanced diet. It does not provide sufficient amounts of carbohydrates, lipids, many mineral salts such as iron and vitamins such as vitamin E, K etc. Given the poor energy intake, it can seriously compromise the health of a person who plays sports; moreover, it is even more risky for pregnant women and nurses. Deficiency in iron, folic acid and cobalamin favors or worsens the risk of anemia and, if continued during pregnancy, the yogurt diet can impair the nervous development of the unborn child.

Advice on using yogurt in the diet

Ultimately, everyone is not advised to follow the yogurt diet; at the same time, I invite readers to dwell on the nutritional properties of the food which, if consumed naturally and partially (or totally) skimmed, is widely used both in the formulation of breakfast and in the choice of the right morning and afternoon snack. The daily ration of yogurt, if not associated with any portions of milk, can reach 250-450g per day (depending on the specific case).