Yogurt making

What’s the Difference Between Yogurt and “Cultured Dairy Blend”?

By Nadia Arumugam

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Posted Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, at 9:01 AM ET

 

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What's the difference between containers labeled "yogurt" and those labeled "cultured dairy blend"?

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

A reader recently asked the Food Explainer, “what precisely defines ‘yogurt’ for the FDA”? As you may have noticed, next to the yogurts in the dairy aisle is a product labeled “cultured dairy blend,” which looks like yogurt and tastes like yogurt. What’s the distinction, then, and is there more or less beneficial bacteria in yogurt than in the dairy blend doppelganger?

At its most basic, yogurt is a dairy product fermented by starter cultures (basically lactic-acid-producing bacteria). These cultures convert lactose—the sugar portion of milk—to acid. The drop in pH in turn causes the milk’s proteins to set, so the liquid thickens into yogurt.

To ensure consistency, however, the FDA has established much more extensive criteria listed in what’s called a “standard of identity.” If a product doesn’t meet these exacting conditions, even if it appears yogurt-like, it can’t legally be called yogurt—so marketers came up with the phrase “cultured dairy blend” to apply to similar products. There’s no FDA standard for products labeled with this phrase, so manufacturers have considerably more leeway with production methods and ingredients.

What exactly is yogurt to the FDA? It must be produced by fermenting cream, milk, partially skimmed milk, or skimmed milk, either alone or in combination. A second set of optional dairy ingredients may be added. These include nonfat dry milk, buttermilk, whey, and lactose. If vitamins A and/or D are added, they have to be present in certain quantities. Yogurt can include a permitted list of sweeteners as well as flavoring ingredients, color additives, and stabilizers.

The FDA regulates yogurt’s composition, too. Before flavorings are thrown into the mix, the mixture must be at least 3.25 percent milkfat and at least 8.25 percent non-fat milk solids. A specific ratio of proteins to milk solids must also be maintained.  

The type of starter culture used in yogurt’s fermentation process is also vital. The culture must contain two specific types of lactic-acid-producing bacteria: Lactobacillus bulgaricus andStreptococcus thermophilus. These bacterial cultures were selected by the FDA because they work especially well in tandem, each one producing compounds that enhance and speed up the productivity of the other. The federal regulations also stipulate that yogurt must contain a certain minimum amount of lactic acid.

Yogurt might also contain other live bacteria, such as probiotics, microorganisms that have been found, through clinical studies, to confer a specific health benefit. Probiotics are added purely because they are supposed to promote digestive well-being and not because they play a role in fermentation. However, yogurt doesn’t have to contain these additional beneficial bacteria—while yogurt must be bacterially fermented, the end product doesn’t legally have to contain any bacteria at all. (Some yogurts are heat-treated to extend their shelf life, a process that kills all the starter cultures.) There are no federal regulations governing the amount or quality of live cultures in yogurts.

So what makes “cultured dairy blends” different? These blends, like Kroger’s CARBmaster, are low-sugar, high-protein alternatives to conventional yogurt, and they’re suitable for diabetics, people who are lactose intolerant, and anyone watching their calories and carbs. Manufacturers lower the carbohydrate content in cultured dairy blends by using so-called fractionated milk products, such as milk protein concentrate, in which the protein percentage of milk has been increased and the sugar portion filtered out. Since such fractionated milk products aren’t permitted in the standard of identity for yogurt—in part because they affect the milk-solid-to-protein ratio—blends that contain them can’t be labeled “yogurt.”

However, cultured dairy blends, like yogurt, are also fermented by bacterial cultures. The only difference is that the starter culture might not contain the same two starter bacteria the FDA stipulates for yogurt. The nutrition label on CARBmaster says it’s made with active starter cultures without specifying which ones. Since different starter cultures produce different types and/or varying quantities of acid during fermentation, the cultured dairy blend might not have the same acid profile as yogurt.

In addition to starter cultures used for fermentation, CARBmaster cultured dairy blend contains two common probiotics, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium bifidum, which are added specifically to help maintain a healthy gut environment and aid digestion.

Since yogurt might not contain any beneficial bacteria (depending on whether it’s heat-treated), while cultured dairy blends might indeed contain probiotics, what’s a probiotic-seeker to do? Look for the National Yogurt Association (NYA) seal. To qualify, at the time of manufacture, a yogurt or cultured dairy product must contain at least 100 million bacteria per gram, since live and active cultures are only effective if they are consumed in such large numbers. Keep one thing in mind, though: While cultured dairy products sit on refrigerated shelves, the number of beneficial bacteria will become depleted as microorganisms die or become inactive. To maximize the amount of live bacteria you ingest, try to eat the yogurt or cultured dairy blend soon after purchase, and certainly before the sell-by date.

King Boehner?

From Forbes op-ed page.  Not sure if this analysis holds up or not, but if it's true, Boehner has pulled off a major coup for the American taxpayer and even the economy:

Official portrait of United States House Speaker (R-Ohio). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The House, under the leadership of Speaker John Boehner, has precipitated a postponement in the debt ceiling fight until May. This represents a strategic choice by Boehner to make the Sequester fight, not the debt ceiling fight, the next major engagement. Much of the mainstream media now is accusing Congress of “kicking the can down the road.” They are missing the strategic implications.

In retrospect, at the Battle at Fiscal Cliff, Boehner took President Obama to the cleaners. He did it suavely, without histrionics. While Obama churlishly, and in a politically amateurish manner, publicly strutted about having forced the Republicans to raise tax rates on “the wealthiest Americans” Boehner, quietly, was pocketing his winnings.

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Dazzled by Obama’s Ozymandias-scale sneer most liberals failed to notice that Boehner quietly made 99% of the Bush tax cuts permanent. As Boehner himself dryly observed, in an interview with TheWall Street Journal’s editorial board member Steve Moore, “”Who would have ever guessed that we could make 99% of the Bush tax cuts permanent? When we had a Republican House and Senate and a Republican in the White House, we couldn’t get that. And so, not bad.’”

“Not bad” is a resounding understatement. Dealt a weak hand, Boehner managed to 99% outfox, on tax policy, a president who had the massive apparatus of the executive branch, the Senate majority, and a left-leaning national elite media whooping it up for a whopping tax increase. Even more impressively, Boehner pulled it off with steady nerves while under heavy pressure from the anti-spending hawks in his own caucus.

Boehner, deftly, also dramatically raised the threshold, on which Obama had campaigned, at which the modest 3.6% rate increase kicked in. Yet his biggest win may have been in making the Alternative Minimum Tax patch permanent. This changes the baseline with profoundly positive implications for future tax reform and economic growth.

Boehner thereby won a triple jackpot, a bonanza for conservatives and supply-siders … while Obama, giving up all that for a trivial symbolic victory, lost his Progressive shirt. The mainstream media, with a few exceptions such as Howard Kurtz at the Daily Beast, was too deep in the tank to report that the Emperor has no clothes.

But Obama ended up, at least, shirtless. Next … off come the pants. Here come the real spending cuts. As reported by Moore, Boehner privately told Obama “’Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.’ He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: ‘I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.’”

Boehner, last week, again bested Obama by pushing the debt ceiling fight back to May. This is a double whammy by Boehner. According to specialists, by structuring the law to allow new borrowing only to the extent of obligations “outstanding on May 19, 2013, exceeds the face amount of such obligations outstanding on the date of the enactment of this Act” Boehner effectively instituted a spending freeze. This, in the face of Obama’s relentless demand for even more spending, is a victory for anti-profligacy hawks.

There’s a much bigger whammy embedded. Pushing the debt ceiling fight back to May, as the New York Times put it, “re-sequenced” the fight. Re-sequencing was not an idle gesture. It was a major tactical win by the House. The Times reported that “’The president stared down the Republicans. They blinked,’ said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.” Schumer speaks with macho naiveté.

The Democrats, apparently, still don’t know what Boehner has hit them with. Thanks to the Sequester anti-profligacy conservatives now negotiate from strength. What are the implications of putting the Sequester fight before the debt ceiling fight? Steve Moore:

“The Republicans’ stronger card, Mr. Boehner believes, will be the automatic spending sequester trigger that trims all discretionary programs—defense and domestic. It now appears that the president made a severe political miscalculation when he came up with the sequester idea in 2011.

“As Mr. Boehner tells the story: Mr. Obama was sure Republicans would call for ending the sequester—the other ‘cliff’—because it included deep defense cuts. But Republicans never raised the issue. ‘It wasn’t until literally last week [columnist’s note: just before the deadline] that the White House brought up replacing the sequester,’ Mr. Boehner says. ‘They said, ‘We can’t have the sequester.’ They were always counting on us to bring this to the table.”

“Mr. Boehner says he has significant Republican support, including GOP defense hawks, on his side for letting the sequester do its work. ‘I got that in my back pocket,’ the speaker says. He is counting on the president’s liberal base putting pressure on him when cherished domestic programs face the sequester’s sharp knife. Republican willingness to support the sequester, Mr. Boehner says, is ‘as much leverage as we’re going to get.’”

Will the support of the defense hawks hold? It appears Boehner’s not bluffing. Although Obama’s outgoing defense secretary, Leon Panetta, infamously called the sequester “catastrophic,” the secretary obviously is falling back on the old bureaucratic tactic called “squealing louder than it hurts.” TheWashington Post afterward called Panetta “the former (emphasis added) deficit hawk.”

As the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and nobody’s patsy,crisply notes about the Sequester: “This cut is significant to be sure, but it does not reach that of previous postwar drawdowns.”

Catastrophic? Oh please. Panetta surely knows better. The Post reprised a younger Panetta who, at a 1992 hearing (when the deficit was less than half its current size), stated “I think the most dangerous threat to our national security right now is debt, very heavy debt, that we confront in this country.”

“As chairman of the House Budget Committee and later as budget director in the Clinton administration, Panetta was an unforgiving enforcer of the bottom line as the United States grappled with record-size debts. As the largest government agency, the Pentagon found itself a frequent target of his whip, especially as it struggled to justify its missions in the aftermath of the Cold War.

“’I think the most dangerous threat to our national security right now is debt, very heavy debt, that we confront in this country,’ Panetta lectured then-Defense Secretary Richard B. Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a hearing in 1992.”

It now should be clear to every Tea Party Patriot that Boehner is acting with integrity, with acute political sophistication, as an authentic conservative serious about reducing the debt by reducing spending. His claim, to Moore, that “he has significant Republican support, including GOP defense hawks … for letting the sequester do its work,” promises to be a game changer.

Given the assessments by sober defense analysts — and according to other, private, reports from Capitol Hill — there is no reason to think that Boehner is bluffing about having the support he needs to take the Sequester or barter it for even better cuts. And Boehner’s abhorrence of debt appears completely authentic. Moore: “He sees debt as almost a moral failing, noting that when he grew up in a little middle-class, blue-collar neighborhood’ outside of Cincinnati, ‘nobody had debt. It was unheard of. I just don’t do debt’.”

Boehner, having shrewdly identified the conservatives’ point of maximum leverage, appears poised for an historic victory. Boehner may prove himself to be the guy big enough and smart enough finally to engineer something that eluded even the great Reagan: pushing federal spending onto a downward trajectory.

If Boehner succeeds in closing the deal as he, with a critical assist from Senate Minority Leader McConnell, seems about to do he will go down in history as having brought about “the moment when the rise of the oceans (of debt) began to slow” … and our republic “began to heal.” If so John Boehner will deserve to be more than a Republican, conservative, and tea party, hero. He will go up in popular esteem, and down in history, as the master who staunched Washington’s hemorrhaging of America’s wealth.