Everyone wants to eat as healthy as possible and have a lot of energy to get through the long 
days we endeavor. What you put in your body effects everything you do. There are so many choices that we can pick from, which can make it hard to choose what is good and right for you all the time. Every morning I start my day with a Chobani Greek yogurt, apple, and a coffee. Why did I choose greek yogurt over just any other yogurt? Greek yogurt is apparently better for you than regular yogurt, but is it really? Isn’t yogurt just yogurt?
At the basis, yogurt is yogurt and have similar qualities. Kurtis Hiatt and Angela Haupt discuss that really any type of yogurt is healthy for you because they all have low calories and and a lot of calcium. There are many things to compare between Greek and regular yogurt such as protein, carbohydrates, and sodium.
Protein is important because it helps to build and repair tissue in the body. Having a good handle on your proteins will give you many benefits. Recovering quickly after injuries, building lean muscle, curbing hunger, and maintaining a healthy weight can all be owed to having a decent amount of protein in your diet. Greek yogurt is high in protein since one container (8oz) has about 17g while a regular container of yogurt has about 9g. Getting a decent amount of protein with one meal is beneficial so you won’t snack more to get those extra proteins.
Carbohydrates give your body energy. You want to be eating simple carbohydrates because those are the healthy sugars for you. You don’t want to be loading up on sugary foods like candy, but sugary foods like strawberries and fruits are okay to eat. Greek yogurt is considered a low carb food with about 7g compared to about 14g in regular yogurt. Greek yogurt also gets strained which removes the a lot of the lactose and complex sugars.
Having a lot of sodium in your diet isn’t really a good thing because it can block blood flow which can increase blood pressure which can cause other issues. Sodium also holds blood and if you have too much of it in your system, it could be holding too much water which would increase your blood volume which also leads to other bad issues with muscles and nerve functions. A healthy diet consists of less than 2,300mg of sodium a day. Greek yogurt has about 61.2mg as compared to regular yogurt with about 125mg.
As you can see from the nutritional comparisons, Greek yogurt does seem to be the better choice of yogurts. It has a higher nutritional value in just one cup than regular yogurt tends to have. I can only imagine that regular yogurt companies are already on their way in trying to develop or alter their yogurts to make them healthier and give them a higher nutritional value to compete with Greek yogurt. Although, Greek yogurt does have a different taste, and isn’t for everyone, so maybe they possibly aren’t trying to change their ways. Overall, if you want a healthy snack, go Greek.
I actually just had greek yogurt today for breakfast! I had heard about greek yogurt having so many health benefits, so I decided to try it out. I am trying to avoid “The Freshman 15” and your article definitely confirmed that my breakfast was a good decision! In an online article, Judith Rodriquez, PhD, said to skip the extra sugar calories that can be found in normal yogurt and choose greek yogurt to get more protein. http://www.webmd.com/diet/best-foods-you-are-not-eating?page=3.
Holly – Greek yogurt may be one of my favorite things in the world. It’s just as good plain as adding nuts and fruit to it. The study that you suggested was interesting. I had never heard that taking antibiotics with yogurt was a thing. Even though the study failed to show that yogurt prevented getting diarrhoea, maybe it can prevent another sicknesses.
I too am a big fan of greek yogurt. Your blog definitely explains different factors between both things but I thought it would be really cool if you maybe even found a study with two different groups of people testing this theory out. For example maybe for one whole month make one group eat greek and the other eat regular and compare things like weight gain/loss, or even how they feel, do they feel better when fueling their body a bit differently or did it not seem to do anything at all? Even throwing in some expert information from different nutrition doctors and what they have to say about the whole debate.
I believe that eating healthy is just as an important, if not more important, than getting a daily exercise of 60 minutes or more. I try to do both but being on a college campus, it is very easy to not eat healthy and work out because the stress of classes are very real. Personally, I have never been a big fan of Greek Yogurt but after reading this, I will have to give it a shot. I found a great article from the New York Times and I thought it was very informational about staying healthy and how eating less is more important than working out. Hope you enjoy!
I always hated the texture and taste of yogurt of any type, but unfortunately it’s an important part of your edit. As I learned, it is especially important to eat yogurt when you are taking antibiotics. This is further proved with the article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2084134/. After reading your blog I may decide to retry eating greek yogurt as an alternative to regular yogurt. Maybe I will even grow fond of it.
I too have heard that greek yogurt was better for you then regular yogurt, even though regular yogurt is still good for you. I like how you compared the nutritional facts of each to compare and contrast one another. As I was reading this, I was wondering what some benefits yogurt had on your body so I decided to look it up. This link includes great benefits that yogurt has, but what I also liked about it was that it lists what to look for in yogurt and I thought that was pretty interesting.