<p>Yeah but I’m a college student and the nearest Indian grocer is a 40 min. bus ride away (two transfers) – so about 1 and a half hours just to make a shopping trip!</p>
<p>Wutang I also like “full fat” yogurt. I refuse to buy fat free ones. I need the fat for my brain 
My favorite yogurts are stonyfield and Rachel’s.
It’s unfortunate that so many stores sell mostly fat free yogurts.</p>
<p>Yeah when did this movement take over? Cuz I swear in 1995 my family could still find normal yogurt. </p>
<p>I feel like suing random supermarkets for discrimination against people that don’t go on unhealthy crash diets =(</p>
<p>Not sure if anyone else mentioned it, but Stonyfield Farm has some delicious non-fat or low-fat choices that are about 120 or 130 calories per 6-oz. cup. They do not contain wretched-tasting artificial sweeteners nor are they as flavorless (and punitive!) as eating plain yogurt without sugar. </p>
<p>Another option is to buy the plain, fat-free stuff and add two teaspoons of–gasp–sugar to it. Sugar has a whopping 15 calories per teaspoon. Brown sugar is especially yummy. One cup of the plain yogurt that I buy has 45% of the RDA of calcium, lots of protein, and those active cultures that are supposed to aid in digestion. No way am I giving that up because I happen to like the taste of a little sugar. And 150 calories is hardly anything at all, especially since it’s part of my breakfast. Don’t people realize that Americans are fat because they drink so much Coke, gobble Big Macs and eat restaurant meals so ginormous that they are probably too big for the average middle linebacker? </p>
<p>I just don’t get the hysteria over sugar (unless we’re talking about a diabetes diagnosis). Nutritionists’ constant preaching that we must live on unsalted, unsugared fruits and vegetables with only tiny amounts of meat just provokes binges as a response to the misery (and hunger!) of constant dieting.</p>
<p>Trust me–when I was 18 I was 128 pounds, five feet tall, and miserable. After allowing myself to eat moderate amounts of food that actually tastes good, I lost thirty pounds and never looked back–even after pregnancy. At 53, I’m five feet and holding (thanks to all the calcium in that yummy yogurt–my favorite food), and 98 pounds. Just very sorry I didn’t get it figured out when I was 14–it would have made those teenage years much happier! And sorry that I didn’t figure out a way to grow a few inches! ;)</p>
<p>europa, ditto Wallaby yogurt - a 6-oz cup of delicious pineapple yougurt has 130 calories and tastes sweet without any artificial sweeteners:</p>
<p>[Wallaby</a> Yogurt - Product Specifications](<a href=“http://www.wallabyyogurt.com/html/product.php?ID=6]Wallaby”>Wallaby Organic Dairy Products)</p>
<p>Comes in strawberry guava flavor, too!</p>
<p>Guava flavor…I love that too…thanks!</p>
<p>Thanks for the Wallaby tip–I’ve seen it but never tried it. Sounds great!</p>
<p>Mommusic, Dannon Coffee low-fat yogurt is my long-time favorite, too. I know exactly what you mean by “can’t live without”. Maybe it’s the caffeine content that makes it so addictive?</p>
<p>Wu Tang –</p>
<p>Better yet, it sounds like a market gap…</p>
<p>You could open a business and call it “Full Fat Food”! You could sell French cheeses, butter, Haagen Dasz, heavily-marbled meat, etc.</p>
<p>I would be a customer!
(I am 5’4" and I weigh 112 and yes I use real butter!)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Hey I eat big meals too!</p>
<p>I think it’s about bioavailability – simple calorie tables don’t reflect this. Simple sugars and carbohydrates have the highest bioavailability. </p>
<p>“Fats” are biochemical storages of animals and humans, but that is body-produced fat. A lot of fat, being not very water-soluble and all, goes undigested. On the other hand, fat activates fat sensors (when you eat) that activate satiation pathways.</p>
<p>An interesting line that hasn’t really come out in full force (still in development) is “triglyceride imitators” – molecules that taste like fat, and signal all the fat-satiation pathways, without actually containing a calorie as their dissociation into free fatty acids is sterically hindered and thus can’t be absorbed. Their fatty acid tails however, trigger all the right signals.</p>
<p>If you keep HDL cholesterol levels are very high, a lot of that fat goes into breakdown. (That’s the other thing: most cholesterol in the body is endogenous and not absorbed.) </p>
<p>Having high LDL cholesterol levels is a perfect excuse to go work out – it’s supposedly “bad”, one way to look at it is that LDL cholesterol is an anabolic steroid – the kind athletes want because it builds muscle, more powerful bodies, etc. So your workout effectiveness (in terms of muscle gain) will be higher than people with low LDL levels. </p>
<p>So yeah that’s my rationale for pooh-poohing low-fat products. </p>
<p>Never really got dieting. Starvation mode puts the body in a state of stress where it shuts down excess metabolism and tries to stem energy expenditure, fighting the very goal you’re trying to achieve. The effect is rather like watching the body go into an energy recession. If you eat a balanced diet, interconversion pathways won’t go to one extreme or the other. Low-fat, high-something diets result in the body trying to convert that something into whatever the input is low in.</p>
<p>FYI, there is a yogurt cookbook you may find interesting: Stonyfield Farm Yogurt Cookbook, by Meg Cadoux Hirshberg.</p>
<p>It has recipes for breakfast, breads, smoothies, dips, spreads, sauces, salads, soups, main dishes (meat, poultry, seafood, vegetarian) and desserts. </p>
<p>I’ve been happy with the recipes from the book that I have tried. For those of you living in the Seattle area, I bought my copy late summer '09 at Half Price Books for $8.95. I’m sure there a similar bookstore nationwide - or check out your local library.</p>
<p>WuTang,</p>
<p>While I agree that a balanced diet is the best diet, I don’t think getting one’s fats from dairy products is the best way to add fat to the diet. So, while I eat butter rather than margarine, I eat it sparingly. If I make something with sour cream, I use real sour cream, but it is rare that I cook with it; ditto whipped cream and so on. Since I eat a lot of yogurt, everyday, non-fat is what I go with, because eating full-fat yogurt would require me to cut back on other sources of fat calories such as nuts, whole grains.</p>
<p>I note that you are a college student. When I was your age I had to work hard to avoid falling below 112 pounds, at 5’ 6’'. I sure didn’t worry about fat or anything else in my diet. Be warned that adding a few decades and a few pregnancies can change your metabolism, and you just might be singing a different tune about fat calories some day. I’m still slender but now I have to work at it, and hard. </p>
<p>Balance is good. For us old folks, non-fat yogurt is great.</p>
<p>I am 50, I eat fatty yogurt every day. I bake with butter. I eat nuts and an avocado almost daily. I am still 100 pounds. I don’t exercise except for walking, which I do to avoid taking public transportation.
I never keep the pounds I gained during pregnancy.
The only reason I think that I don’t gain weight is probably because I eat 3 meals a day and don’t snack.</p>
<p>^I’m jealous…</p>
<p>very very jealous!</p>
<p>I grow my own kefir, both varieties, milk & sugar. I use the sugar water kefir as a sweetener sometimes, gets the good bacteria into my gut, sweet but most of the sugar is gone. I had been traveling and neglecting my sugar kefir a bit and I think I just killed them. :(</p>
<p>I love kefir.</p>
<p>ontheedge. That’s amazing! Would you please share your diet for your breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Some examples please…</p>
<p>At 52 and after having 2 kids I’m still thin, although being in the throes of menopause I’m finding that I have to be more careful about what I eat than I used to be. Much of that is due to good genes - both of my parents were thin. The other part is portion control. I simply don’t enjoy eating a whole lot at once, so unlike ontheedge I do snack. But they’re healthy snacks - yogurt, nuts, fruit, etc. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, I don’t drink soda or eat too many ‘empty calories’, and I’ve never bought anything at a Starbucks. I use real butter (and olive oil) when I cook and real mayonnaise on my sandwiches. Since I’m a pedant about spelling I refuse, on both linguistic and nutritional grounds, to buy anything labeled ‘lite’. :)</p>
<p>Genetics is part of it, but genes can be regulated too. </p>
<p>Will things change when I become rich enough to get my own car and I join the adult world and have to start commuting to work? (Although it’s likely I’ll be a metro person with a bike.)</p>
<p>ontheedge - careful there - body weight doesn’t tell the whole story. my mother weighted 100 lbs and got heart disease. Hopefully you have had your cholesterol (LDL and HDL) checked as well as triglycerides.
Nuts and avacados are great for you - walnuts have omega 3’s and avacados have mono-unsaturated fats and plant sterols all of which keep your heart healthy.
The problem with regularly eating whole milk yogurt is the milk fat. Dairy fat is saturated and should be eaten sparingly - even in kids and young adults.</p>