Mediaboss Marketing

Yogurt has a well-deserved wholesome reputation. The presence of probiotics bacteria thought to aid digestive health and other vital nutrients have cemented this view for many people and led to explosive growth in yogurt consumption. Sales have more than doubled in the last decade, spiked by the increasing popularity of Greek-style yogurts.

But not all yogurts are alike. In fact, many branded products are little more than junk foods masquerading as health foods. At least that is the conclusion of a new investigative report, "Culture Wars: How the Food Giants Turned Yogurt, a Health Food, Into Junk Food." The report was released just before Thanksgiving by The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm and food policy research group.

The results of the analysis we conducted were rather shocking to us. Many major yogurt marketers are loading their products with such ingredients as sugar, high fructose corn syrup, questionably safe artificial sweeteners, artificial colors, and emulsifiers. In many cases, moms, who are hoping to provide their children a more nutritious snack, might as well be serving their kids soda pop or a candy bar with a glass of milk on the side.

Flavored varieties of some yogurts (strawberries, for example) contain no actual fruit. Consumers are also growing more sensitive to the addition of high fructose corn syrup in foods. Its use in yogurt may be deceptively labeled on the ingredients list as fructose, leaving off any reference to corn syrup.

"Culture Wars" reports on independent lab testing of a prominent marketing approach employed by the yogurt industry, the Live and Active Cultures label that is displayed on yogurt package containers. The effort purportedly assures a high level of healthful probiotics.

Lab work revealed that many organic yogurt brands which are not part of the industry's Live and Active Cultures marketing campaign actually contain higher levels of beneficial bacteria than some popular brands displaying the industry-promoted seal.

Some yogurt manufacturers add carrageenan to their product as a thickener. Carrageenan is a bioactive ingredient derived from seaweed that has been linked in published research to serious gastrointestinal inflammation and disease. It's bitterly ironic that some individuals with intestinal maladies may unwittingly consume a yogurt product containing carrageenan while believing they are addressing their particular health issues.

As major food manufacturers seek to gain a competitive edge over their rivals, they are turning to even newer processing technologies. Tiny nanoparticles are a novel ingredient added to some yogurts to make their appearance whiter. Due to their incredibly small size, engineered nanoparticles are more likely than larger particles to enter human cells, cross the blood-brain barrier, or move across the placenta from mother to fetus.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration lacks statutory authority to regulate nanoparticles. And because nanoparticles are considered a "manufacturing aid," their listing on ingredient labels is not required.

The good news contained in "Culture Wars" is that there still are wonderful, healthful yogurt options in the dairy cooler. To help consumers sort through the maze of yogurts available in the grocery aisle, Cornucopia created a buyer's guide, rating 114 yogurt brands (viewable at http://www.cornucopia.org). In general, it can be said that the healthiest choices are yogurts with a short list of ingredients, including organic milk and live cultures with limited amounts of added organic fruit or unrefined sweeteners, such as maple syrup.

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Will Fantle: Culture wars: Major brands converting yogurt into junk food