Yoghurt
Food · Dairy · Food, Typed Supps
Plain yoghurt and flavoured yoghurt are the same food apart from a few teaspoons of sugar.
Stage by stage
- Intake (Mouth): Yoghurt is already a set curd, so it needs almost no chewing before it is swallowed.
- Stomach (Stomach): Acid firms the casein gel; the semi-solid matrix empties more slowly than liquid milk.
- Small intestine (Small intestine): Calcium, protein, iodine and B12 are absorbed. Fermentation has already removed a good share of the lactose.
- Skeleton and colon (Bone and large intestine): Absorbed calcium supports bone mineral; surviving live cultures pass into the colon.
Time to effect
- Under an hour: Sugars in a flavoured tub raise blood glucose within roughly 30 to 60 minutes; bone-related benefits require habitual intake over years.
Allergens
Contains: Milk. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.
Eating patterns
Fits: Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, Gluten-free.
Satiety
139 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — moderate. Modelled from the Holt et al. (1995) measurements.
Environmental footprint
3.2 kg CO2e and 628 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Milk" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.
Cost band
Cheap — roughly £2.5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.
Key nutrients
Nutrition per 100g
- Calories: 98
- Protein: 5g
- Carbohydrate: 14.5g
- of which sugars: 13.5g
- Fat: 1.9g
- of which saturated: 1.3g
- Fibre: 0.2g
- Sodium: 52mg
Food vs. supplement
For calcium, yoghurt is a stronger option than a supplement for most people: absorption is comparable, the dose is spread across the day, and the protein, iodine and B12 come with it. Probiotic capsules are a different question — the strains in standard yoghurt are not the ones most clinical trials used, so a tub should not be treated as a substitute for a specified probiotic, nor a capsule as a substitute for the food.
Kitchen tip
Buying natural yoghurt and adding fruit yourself is the single change that alters this family most: it removes most of the added sugar while keeping the protein, calcium and cultures intact. If a tub is being heated, stir it into a dish off the heat — sustained heat above about 70C splits the curd and kills the cultures.
Common myth
"Low-fat yoghurt is the healthier choice." In reality: Fat removal is usually compensated with sugar and thickeners, so a low-fat flavoured tub can carry more added sugar than a full-fat natural one. The fat level is a weaker signal than whether the tub is flavoured at all.
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