One thing I never say no to is yogurt. If I order a smoothie, I’ll happily accept an extra dollop. A bowl of granola always keeps me going when I’m feeling peckish. Tzatziki with my pita? Of course. Between chocolate-covered pretzels and their yogurt-dipped cousins, the latter wins every time.
No matter what form it comes in, yogurt seems to be the healthy choice. Yogurt has long been considered a wholesome, nutritious food, the elixir of the dairy aisle. Over the past 25 years, yogurt consumption in the United States has increased 142 percentand sales are expected to increase further. Yogurt has all the right qualities: It’s high in protein, which has recently made it a particularly popular option among people on obesity medication looking for a filling snack. Famous for its good bacteria, yogurt is the epitome of the widespread obsession with gut health. And in March, the FDA gave yogurt a boost by allowing brands to advertise certain claims about its link to a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
We trust yogurt. But most of the yogurt Americans eat isn’t exactly healthy. Among the low-fat and plain varieties in the dairy aisle, many products are actually desserts. Danone sells YoCrunch tubs, flavored yogurts with toppings like M&Ms and Snickers pieces. One of the top-selling yogurt options on Target’s website is a Chobani tub with cookie dough pieces. There are also versions with other toppings: s’more, mint chocolate chip, cookies and cream. If all of these products sound like sundaes, that’s because they should. The line between yogurt and ice cream is a lot blurrier than you might think.
Yogurt is just fermented milk, but it’s much more than the sum of its parts. It contains the nutrients of milk (namely protein and calcium) and beneficial metabolites, vitamins, and organic acids produced by certain types of bacteria. There’s a reason yogurt—and not milk, ricotta, or sour cream—is sometimes considered a weight-loss food. Regular yogurt consumption is associated with better blood pressure and diabetes control, a stronger immune system, and better weight management, Penny Kris-Etherton, professor emeritus of nutrition at Penn State University, told me.
It’s no wonder yogurt continues to sell. But the levels of sugar, fat, protein, calcium, and calories in supermarket yogurts vary widely. Flavors and sweet additives make for something that resembles ice cream, such as the squeezable packets of cotton candy-flavored yogurt (which several Brands offer Greek yogurt (like fermented milk). A cup of maple-honey Greek yogurt contains about as much sugar as five Oreo cookies. These yogurts are still generally considered better than ice cream, if only because yogurt is made from fermented milk, but even that is disputed. As David Merritt Johns reported in Atlantic Last year, a major nutritional study found that the health effects of yogurt and ice cream are surprisingly similar.
Read: The Most Absurd Result in Nutritional Science
Even yogurts that don’t seem like desserts can be loaded with sugar. A cup of Chobani Blueberry may seem like a good breakfast option, but it contains 14 grams of sugar. Not all additives are bad. Some varieties of Oikos Pro, with added protein, have more protein than three eggs. But for food marketers, yogurt’s virtues are especially valuable for giving a nutritional boost to products that lack it. The fact that yogurt is associated with so many healthy qualities helps “provide a more complete indulgence product, while still remaining a sweet treat,” as a CoBank report puts it.
But even low-fat and sugar-free yogurts aren’t always what they seem. The usual health benefits “don’t apply” to all products that contain the word yogurt “Probiotics are foods that aren’t in their name,” Elena Comelli, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto, told me. Not all yogurt contains probiotics, the live bacteria associated with gut health. Depending on how the yogurt is processed, especially if it’s heat-treated, it may contain few or none. In the case of yogurt-dipped snacks like pretzels and raisins, the yogurt is essentially a glaze.
Some yogurts are fortified with probiotics after they’re made, so Kris-Etherton suggests looking for labels that explicitly state that the product contains “live and active cultures.” However, according to Comelli, the number of live microorganisms in a product declines as it’s stored. And as I’ve noted before, it’s not entirely clear whether the bacteria in probiotic yogurt have a significant impact on your gut. The probiotic effects of yogurt, if any, can only last if you eat it regularly.
As New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle has written, “Yogurt seems to have performed a marketing miracle: It’s a fast-selling dessert with the aura of a health food.” Classifying foods with this aura of health is convenient, a heuristic that helps time-poor people make good food decisions, or so people think. Yogurt—like kale, quinoa, and chia—makes us feel good about what we’re eating, especially when it’s actually tasty. But if a food or nutrient has a “health halo,” people will eat pretty much anything associated with it: sugary protein bars, greasy plant-based burgers, kale chips.
Yogurt embodies the best and worst of the American approach to food: the desire to maximize health without giving up junk food. “Healthy indulgences” have become an American necessity, spawning paradoxical inventions like probiotic sodas, keto gummy bears, and diet margaritas. Maybe we’d be happier without all the glitz. A yogurt sprinkled with M&Ms won’t make you healthier, so just enjoy it for what it is: dessert.
