How do everyone chuck here on a Saturday bringing you another fine selection from our back catalog? Is yogurt a miracle food? This is from November twenty eighteen, And you know, yogurt's pretty good for you, you guys, it's something you should be eating, perhaps even a miracle food. Do we answer that question? Is yogurt a miracle food? Perhaps? Listen in and find out right now.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck, Bryan Jerry, and this is the smooth, creamy, tangy edition Stuff you Should Know. Fruit on the bottom.
Yeah, you don't.
Like yogurt or fruit on the bottom yogurt?
I don't like fruit on the bottom, okay, but I do.
Do you like yogurt?
Yeah? I don't like any of the of the fruity ones. I mean, they taste fine, but I think they're just like loaded with sugar generally, and sweeteners and things.
But yeah, it's not fruit. It's like jam on the bottom jelly. You know. Do you like yogurt compote?
Yeah?
I love yogurt. As a matter of fact. While we were researching this. I was like, I can't, I can't stand it any longer. I got up and got some yogurt.
Do you eat it regularly?
Uh? Not as much as I should, although I recently did a blood test and my protein was low strangely, so I'm gonna start eating more. Okay, what I'll just get like you sounded like YO believe that when I see it?
No, no, no, I was just curious what your yogurt intike was.
What about you? You eat it every day? No?
I should, Like. I don't eat yogurt much. I'm constantly slapping it on my kid's baby plate and she loves it, and Emily eats it, and I'm like, I need to eat more yogurt. I mean, I like it. I just don't think about it much.
Yeah.
What I do is sometimes in a like a hotel or anywhere where they have the sort of build your
own parfe thing. Yes, though a little granola yeah, or granula in there grows maybe a little bit of fresh fruit and mix that all up, and I love it, And I'm like, I should do this every day because, as we will find out, the benefits of eating yogurt, which are sort of up in the air as far as like hard facts, but it seems like sort of regularly eating yogurt is kind of one of the keys to getting the health benefits.
That's that seems to be generally agreed to pind.
It and not like, oh I eight yogurt today, that means I'm eight percent healthier.
Right, Yeah, that's not how it works. Yeah, although I think it is, like just temporarily you're doing better for a second than you were before. But you know, whats Yeah, let me give you a little hint, buddy. Find a local bee keeper, and I mean local, like no more than five six miles from your house.
Okay, got one?
Okay, great, Take a little of that honey, drizzle it on some nice, full fat Greek yogurt, sit back and enjoy. You will be that's all you need. That's it. If you want to add some other stuff like some sliced almonds or whatever on it, that's fine too, or fruit and granola. I find really good raw local honey and in Greek yogret. It's just like you're eating health, is what it feels like.
Yeah, I mean I like to taste on its own. Yeah, but you get the you know, health benefits from that, honey too, you do, yeah, I mean throw some throw some broccoli in there.
Throw a little broccoli in there, the Tonka truck, anything you can find, just put it onto your yogurt. Start eating.
And we covered some of the stuff in our probiotics cast. Yeah, a lot from how many years ago?
Is that for twenty fourteen?
Okay, four years ago? But I felt like yogurt deserved to live on its own.
I was incredulous at first, but I around. Actually I was like, chucks, right.
So let's get into it. I guess we should talk history, yes, because yogurt is one of those kind of great accidental discoveries that came from many many years ago, kind of like a beer and stuff like that. Because people, you know, they think it's pretty clear that at some point, many thousands of years ago in the Middle East, people were transporting stuff like milk, maybe like a goat's milk or.
Whatever, probably goat and sheep first.
Yeah, and they were transporting that and whatever disgusting animal bladder or whatever they used to transport liquids and things like that. They got there and they're like, ah, this stuff has turned it's it's stinks but you know, we're it's a thousand years from being from being civilized humanity. So let's just try this stuff, all right, Like who's gonna who's gonna care or no.
Somebody clarked me some honey.
Yeah, so they clarked themselves a little honey. They ate a little bit of it. It was you know, thicker now, and it had this kind of sour, tangy taste.
Yeah.
And one of those ancient Middle Eastern people said, hey, this is not bad, right.
And I think there's this guy named Adam Maskovich who wrote a post on the Salt that who basically said it's not and it's not entirely an understatement to say like civilization was in part built on yogurt.
That was pretty neat, it really was.
Because so all of a sudden, you have milk, and everybody at the time was like, I can feed this to my kid, but I can't. I can't keep milk down. I poop all over my saddle basically while we're out riding, because this is the Mongolian steps, right. But I have found that this weird tangy version, the sour version of milk that you call yogurt, like that doesn't affect me
at all. It's the weirdest thing. And so as more people were able to eat this stuff, which is full of nutrients, lots of calories, and it has a tantalizing taste, people kind of gathered around the areas that had yogurt and other stuff too, he points out, like cheese and things like that, and bread and beer. It's possible beer was the real reason that civilization was started. But the
yogurt played no small role in that. In its fermentation, it has transformed something from something that people who are lactose in tolerant can't take to something that people who are lactose intolerant can't actually eat and benefit from.
Yeah, So they had that conversation and at the end of it one of them said, also, is it weird that we're humans and we're drinking animal milk as adults and they don't worry about that.
Yeah, they said, stop thinking yourself is more than an an, Well, you're an animal animal.
So it really thrived in the Middle East. They love the stuff, like you were talking about. It's actually a Turkish word yogurt is. And it took a little bit longer to catch up to Europe. I think at the end of the nineteenth century is really when it started to spread wide in Europe, and here in the United States it took to like the middle half of the
twentieth century when it was mass marketed by Dannin. And it's not like we didn't eat yogurt at all, but definitely not like I mean, in the Middle East it was. It's not like, oh, we'll just eat some of this for breakfast with fruit. I mean it's in a lot of great, great dishes and dips and sauces and is kind of one of the staples of a lot of Middle Eastern food. So they're doing it right.
Yeah, And so the Middle East seems to be the home of yogurt. It was the home of civilization, and they think that yogurts is all the civilization maybe a little older. And Turkey seems to be some sort of like kind of fulcrum for the spread of yogurt throughout the world. And in fact, the word yogurt is a Turkish word. It comes from yogurt mak, which is Turkish
meaning to thicken and Turkey. The fact that we in the English speaking world call it yogurt suggests that it was the Turks who introduced the West to yogurt, but they're also pretty sure that Turkey was the ones who introduced yogurt to India as well. And the neighbors, the neighboring areas around Turkey, like Bulgaria, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, like all these areas are pretty famous for eating a lot of yogurt and even having their own kind of
yogurt or their own version of it. But something about Turkey really seems to be the like the pivot point for the spread of yogurt in the world.
Yeah, and I can't fun oh yeah, here it is even today, it says that Turkish people eat about and this was like four or five years ago, two hundred and eighty two cups of yogurt per person per year, which is definitely more than in the United States.
Well it was at the time. We've since caught up quite quite a.
Bit, I think, yeah, I think that stat for US is poundage though, right, yes, how many pounds of yogurt do we eat?
So we ate four point eight billion pounds of yogurt in twenty seventeen, four point eight billion pounds in the United States alone, and yeah, we're not like the highest yogurt eating civilization on the planet by far, but that's like about the fifteen pounds per person, thirteen point seven pounds per person, which really it sounds like a lot, but yogurt weighs a lot, so it's actually just thirty six servings per person per year in the United States.
Wow. So that's yeah in Turkey two hundred and eighty two cups.
Yeah, that's a lot.
That's a lot.
Yeah, So Chuck, like you were saying, like yogurt didn't really make its way over to the States until the twentieth century, right, Yes, and I think it was And you said it was Dan and that brought it here.
That's right, in the Bronx.
Yeah, they moved their operations from Spain, Barcelona, I think, to the Bronx, which is really weird because like America was not a yogurt eating culture at all, in not really No, but they brought yogurt to a play said where in the world would be the hardest place to get a foothold business wise, Let's move our operations there. So they moved it to the Bronx and then just
started slowly working on America. And it wasn't until they figured out the fruit on the bottom thing that America said, oh, okay, we like this. It's sweet. It's not some disgusting, tangy soured milk. We can put like compote in jam in it, and it's good. And that is when it started to take off. And basically you have Dan and Yogurt to
thank for bringing yogurt to America. And it wasn't until what maybe twenty ten or thirteen before we finally started to shed like all the extra gunk and actually get into yogurt the way that the rest of the world's been eating it for thousands of years, with like what we call Greek yogurt.
The way the Good Lord intended.
That's right, You want to take a break, Yeah, cool, All right, Well we're about to take a break and we're gonna come back with more yogurt.
All right. So we talked about probiotics in the episode on probiotics.
Yeah, this was a good episode if I remember correctly.
It was so as a as a brief recap probiotics and food. They're like culture concentrates and some kind in some foods. Sometimes they're in dietary supplements. Sometimes they're in things like yogurt and cheese fermented dairy products, and it's they're usually bacteria. Sometimes you can yeast connect as a probiotic, but when you generally think probiotic, you think of good bacteria used to ferment milk. And then sometimes with things like yogurt, they add in other bacteria on top of that.
Right, which is great, just add some more bacteria as long as it's the good kind basically, yeah.
But sometimes they add bacteria that's not considered probiotic too.
Right, I look that up. I couldn't find what they were talking about unless it's actually a probiotic bacteria that just hasn't been shown to be probiotic, right, just at this time, that's all right, That's all I could get from it. So, and with probiotics, just kind of a quick overview, it's just basically like it's beneficial bacteria that's in your gut. And when you're born, you're not born with your own microbiome. I think you get it from breast milk and you get a coating of it as
you exit your mother's vagina. Okay, so you you develop it pretty quickly. But it's kind of like gifted to you very shortly after birth.
Yeah, you build it out exactly so.
As you as you age and live. Like, some stuff dies, some stuff gets pooped out of you, but it's constantly reproducing. But the point of probiotics, whether it's in pill form or whether it is a prebiotic like a banana something that can feed probiotic bacteria, or if it's yogurt, is
to replenish the bacteria. This good, healthy bacteria that lives in your gut and does all sorts of things, from help you produce serotonin that stabilizes your mood, to digesting your food and moving poop through your intestines faster, all the amazing things. I also want to direct people. We did a microbiome episode which is one of the all time most fascinating episodes we ever did.
Do you remember that one the poop cast?
No, No, the one that's our microbiome?
Oh right, that was just on.
How completely made up. I think like ninety percent of our cells are actually not ours. They're part of the microbiome of bacteria that live on us and interact with us. And that's what you're doing when you're eating yogurt. Is bringing in some friends, some reinforcements to the good bacteria. That's the point of probiotics.
Yeah, so in order to and we'll get into the health effects here in a minute, but in order to get that back toe area and have it survive through gastric acid. I mean, it's a it's an inhospitable environment down there in your gut and in your intestines. Well, first of all, they do think that yogurt might be just a good vehicle for that period because it's thick and goofy and it acts like a buffer against that acid. But you also have to have a lot of it because a lot of it is going to die off.
So there are organizations that set minimum standards, and one of them is the National Yogurt Association of the United States. Right, you don't want to mess with them, trust me, no't.
Break your legs. It's just for even looking at them.
Yeah, they're tough, tough individuals.
They really are collectively.
So I believe the requirement is one hundred million bacteria per gram if you want to have that seal on it. And this is if if you want to eat yogurt, I mean, if you want to just go get a stick of gogurt and shove it down your throat and get a sugar rush. Sure, have at it. But if you actually want that live and active culture seal stamped on your yogurt, then you're gonna have to have one hundred million bacteria per gram.
Right, and it has to be specific bacteria too. The FDA decreed in nineteen eighty one that if you're going to sell something in the US as yogurt, it has to contain Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Straptococcus thermophilis. We'll talk a little more about those later, but you have to have those, and then you have to have them in amounts of at least one hundred million individual bacterium of those strains per gram of yogurt or else. Buddy, that ain't yogurt.
That ain't yogurt, That ain't your mom's yogurt, that ain't your dad's yogurt.
It's nobody's yogurt. No, not as far as the FDA's concerned. And if you thought the National Yogurt Association was tough, boy, howdy, the FDA will mess you up.
So you want to talk a little bit about how they make yogurt.
Yes, but first get this. So you know, you were talking about how how yogurt or bacteria can Some can survive in the gut, which can be inhospitable. I was like, how how did they do that? Some are just coated in like a polysaccharide. That's fine, that's boring. But some bacteria actually have pumps that are designed to pump acid out of the bacteria. So when it's floating around in this bath of stomach acid and juice and digestive enzymes, it's just pumping it out and keeping it just happy
as a lark. But it has like a mechanism for getting rid of the acid that that should otherwise kill it. I thought that was fascinating.
Man. Life science is m h what else? What's your other big one?
Earth science?
Earth science, life science.
Just science basically. Yeah, yeah, it all floats my boat.
What kind of science do you hate? Hmmm? Cology?
No, I find it fascinating. Okay, I don't know, man, I don't think I hate any science. Yeah, no, I don't hate any science. See their kids, No science is hate worthy.
No, don't hate science and be like Josh Clark yourself.
Some Josh, we just spun my head right around.
Did you see that I did? That was strange. But it is October. It is the month of exorcism.
It's the Dancing Headstone's best season. What was the name of the band?
I can't remember.
Oh man, we could have just buzzmarketed that guy.
So well, all right, when you're making yogurt, like you said, it was many many, many years ago, it was just this kurdled milk and they were like, if you hold your nose tight enough, you can still eat the stuff and it doesn't really upset your stomach that much. But if you're going to manufacture yogurt, what you want to do is separate the milk into the and the skim. And this is automatically going to get a thicker texture going because it's got a lot of fat and it's evaporation.
It's evaporating some of the liquid anyway during this process. But then they might say, you know what, let's add some milk powder or some gelatine. We really need to get this to the good yogurty consistent consistency that everybody loves. So now it's pretty thick at this point, and then they pasteurize it and we should do a show on pasteurization and maybe even homogenization. Okay, maybe they could go together.
I think so, because homogenizing just basically means stirring. Yeah, pasturization, there's a lot to that, a lot of history and everything. But homogenize, I think they've really churched that up. It's just stirring something.
Yeah, to make it more homogeneous. Right, It's pretty amazing. The word fits perfectly, it really does. So these high temperatures that you get through pasteurization is going to help make it even more thick. But you don't need to like blast it at three hundred degrees for eight hours or whatever.
Now you don't want to do.
It's kind of amazing actually that it only takes about fifteen seconds at one hundred and seventy one degrees fahrenheit and that'll kill off the bacteria that you don't want there.
So you know how both of our schedules are just insane right now? Yes, I was starting to feel a little worn down, Charrett. It's just the tiniest tickle in my nose, and I was like, no, I'm not having it, So I busted out the old netty pot. Yeah, well I got the double purified tap water out of my water purifier, and then I put it into a pot and boiled it for five minutes and stuck the netty pot in and left it in for another five minutes boiling.
Then I took that out, boiled more water for five minutes, and then finally, after cool, I put it through my nose and I looked it up. I'm like, is that overkill? Is it not enough?
It's overkill?
It is overkilled from what I saw. What you really need is to once the water gets to a boil, something like ninety nine point nine percent of any pathogen is dead. But the I think I can't remember who recommends it, Maybe the CDC somebody recommends at least letting it boil for a minute, just to be safe. And then if you're above two thousand feet over sea level, you want to boil it for three minutes because there's
a lower temperature required for boiling at higher altitudes. Right, So really it's a boil it for a minute is even overkill, But I'm going to stick with my five minute boiling thing.
I still don't boil it at all.
Dude, do you know what would happen if you got just the off chance of a brain eating amba in there.
No, I know, but I also don't like get scared walking around during a lightning storm. I don't either, and I just feel like it's about as unlikely.
Okay, all right, well, then promise me this, uh huh. You will never netty pot with water that you just got out of a stagnant creek.
Okay, all right.
Is that a deal at least?
Sure? But can I still pour that into my open wounds?
No? Okay, just steer clear of that water all together, all right, fair enough, all right.
All right. So at this point, Josh has boiled his water for twenty minutes by milk, let it cool for an hour, poured it through his nostril system.
Is how I make yogurt.
No, after they boil for fifteen seconds or heat that milk up for fifteen seconds, your cream is separating at that point, just naturally from the milk because of the temperature. That's when they stir it or homogenize the milk and create that consistently consistency. Because you don't want anything that has the consistency of curdling.
No, you don't, so homogenization just stirring it up so you're breaking up the flat of the fat globules so that they're spread evenly throughout the milk, which it just means it's not lumpy milk. It's smooth, textured milk. And the same thing I guess that translates to the yogurt. It makes the yogurt smooth or more consistently smooth. Yeah, because it's homogenized milk that it's made from. Yes, okay, bam homogenization. We just did the homogenization episode.
That could have been a short stuff.
It could have I don't even know if it would have qualified for that.
Well, we're gonna start releasing one called shortest Stuff. It's just like forty five seconds.
That's our future.
So here's the most important part. You think your yogurt's done, but it's not, because if you want it to be yogurt, you're gonna have to pour some good bacteria back in there. And this is like it kind of depends on which company you work for what kind of yogurt they want, but they're gonna select their bacteria accordingly dump it in there.
Yes that I mean, this is what are the actual All you have is hot milk up to this point hot homogenized milk. It's when you add that bacteria into this warm milk that it starts to happen. And you want to let the milk cool a little bit first, because you know, if it's too hot, it's going they're going to die. But when it cools to something like I think one hundred and fifteen degrees farentheight or lower, then you can add your bacteria and they're going to
start to go to work. And all they're doing is basically fermenting the milk into yogurt. That's it.
Yeah, which is why if you're lactose intolerant, you can still tolerate yogurt because that bacteria gets in there, metabolizes that milk sugar the lactose, and poops out lactic acid and you can lactic acid is fine on the body.
Yeah. So not only this is just amazing, This is when I started to get jazzed by the yogurt. Not only does it break down lactic or lactose into other kinds of sh that are more digestible by the human body, these bacteria actually deposit in your gut when you eat yogurt, they deposit an enzyme that helps you break down the lactose that is found in there, so they break it down themselves, and then they help you break it down too, which is why people who are lactose intolerant can still
usually eat yogurt. Yeah, unless you have a severe lactose allergy. I think it's just intolerance. You can usually eat yogurt.
Yeah. And remember I talked about myself and my lactose intolerance and like, is it am I lactose intolerant or should I just not eat a pizza and a pint of ice cream?
Right?
It turns out it's b.
Is there? Right?
Yeah? Man, if I eat a reasonable amount of cheese and milk, come.
Fine, Yeah, let's farty lot less farty good. The whole world is thanking you, buddy for coming to that doing that.
Experiment, or at least everyone in this room.
So pretty amazing that yogurt deposits and enzyme that helps you break down lactose. Right, yeah, Okay, it gets even more amazing. One of the other things, one of the reasons why why people say you should eat yogurt if you need protein is first of all, is from milk, so there's tons of protein. But secondly, the acids or the bacteria and they're actually break down the protein so
it becomes what's called more bioavailable. It's easier for your body to take in, which normally your body doesn't have trouble absorbing protein anyway, but if it does yogurt your guy. But then also it actually synthesizes some vitamins out of whole cloth. Like there may not be a lot of folate found in milk, there's more of it found in yogurt because these bacteria during fermentation produce folate, which is something that you really want and need, especially if you're pregnant.
So there's just some amazing things going on during the fermentation progret process from milk to yogurt that makes it its own thing. It's much more than just soured milk. It's something. It's like a new thing.
Yeah.
And the fact that they found this accidentally from carrying sheep's milk around in some animal skin or animal's stomach ten thousand years ago is just makes it even more fascinating.
Yeah, that's awesome.
And the fact that you can add fruit on the bottom, it's really the the ice boy.
Americans love a gimmick, and I think that was all about the gimmick. I'm sure then some boardroom they were like, it's interactive, it's fun.
Actually, I know the story behind that.
Interactive and fun, that's probably the words they used.
It was actually was suggested in nineteen forty seven, I think by a young guy named Jan Metzger, whose dad was one of the co founders of Danin and he was just a lowly bottle washer at the time. But he suggested that as a way to get Americans to eat it. But at the time, the USDA said, you can't mix anything with dairy products, it's against the law. But somehow dan and convinced the USDA that no, no, the fruit's on the bottom, so it's not really mixing. If they put it on the top, the USDA would
have said that's mixing. If they had mixed it, homogenized it, I guess they would have. They would have considered that mixing. But the fact that it was on the bottom that is why they got away with it. Somehow. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's like the Jeopardy being somehow different from the typical quiz show, right, you know, it's the same thing. Yeah, But they they usdu DA went along with it, and that's why it was fruit on the bottom interesting.
Yeah, And there wasn't like some senator from South Carolina and it said, you're counting on the good people of America to mix their own fruit.
It's pretty good that was supposed to be. It sounded like Leonardo DiCaprio and Django Unchained really did like he was the senator.
Man that movie that that whole sister subplot what don't even subplot that was so strange in that movie, which which remember Leo DiCaprio's like sister arrived or whatever.
Oh yeah, and he.
Was just like, where's my beautiful sister And it was just so over the top and strange, and it was never explained like are they lovers? Is it?
Like?
What's going on?
Yeah?
So weird.
I love Quentin Tarantino stuff.
Man, I love hate it.
Oh really, I don't hate any bit of it. I love it. Oh.
I think he's far too indulgent these days.
But you didn't like The Hateful Eight?
Huh uh? You know, I like the first four endings.
Are you are you looking forward to the Manson family when he's doing.
Yeah, I mean I go, I go see all of them, and I think they're all worthwhile and they're Tarantino movie, so I kind of just put my tongue in my cheek and laugh no matter what.
But what was his best one in your opinion?
Oh well, I mean probably Reservoir Dogs or pulp fiction for me.
Yeah.
But so don't get me wrong, I'm not a hater, but there's clearly no one in his camp that's like, maybe edit some down, maybe don't be in the movie.
That'll be the day, That'll be the day. Did you like True Romance?
Well, yeah, but he just wrote that.
Yeah, but it's obviously his work. Sure he didn't direct it.
No, I love it. That's one of my faves.
That was a good one. I mean, like, who cass Gary Oldmin for that? Scott, I guess that's just so bizarre, but I think it was so cool.
Sit down, have an egg roll.
It's a good movie.
All right. So let's take a break and we will get to the bottom, the fruit on the bottom, if you will, about nutrition and how if that's real or not?
Right after this, all right, chuck yogurt nutrition or just delish?
All right, So here's the deal. Yogurt has really caught on in the United States in the last decade more than ever, largely because it's being touted and sold as a health food.
Dude, there are studies that are coming in that says it helps with everything from reducing obesity, type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory diseases, improves pregnancy outcomes, reduces allergies, improves bone health, and dental health, basically anything you can think of.
There's been a study that has found that. But from what I'm gathering, either there's not enough studies, which seems not the case to me, or that there are other studies that are finding contradictory evidence to what the pro yogurt studies are finding. There doesn't seem to be any study that's like, no, no, put the yogurt down, it's
going to kill all of those nothing like that. But there's it just seems like the jury is still out on whether it's actually beneficial to you or not, at least over any kind of long term.
Yeah, so here's what we know for sure. I mean, just ingredient wise, especially if you're lactose intolerant, you can get a lot of good calcium from yogurt that you wouldn't get or that you would get if you'd drink milk or whatever, but if you lyctose intolerant, you can get it through yogurt. Vitamin D, protein, potassium, riboflabin These are all things that are in yogurt that we know are good for you. But it's these it's like health claims that they're selling people now, which is what we're
really talking about here. Like you said, will it actually help you lose weight? And there have been some studies that indicate that it could, but there are a lot of caveats attached. That feels like, like the International Journal of Obesity says that low fat yogurt could help you lose weight, but it's kind of like that's because you're replacing a meal with some yogurt as a substitution or for a snack, and it's kind of filling, so you're
gonna be eating less. And all these things are kind of true, but it's a little misleading.
It is. And actually you also want to be careful, Like, Okay, if you're on a diet and you're using low fat yogurt to diet with, but you're health conscious, you want to be careful because a lot of the low fat or no fat yogurts replace the fat with other stuff like artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sacharine. There's usually a lot of sodium in there to try to replace some of the flavor that's lost when you take all the fat out. So there's there's a lot of push and pull.
And yeah, it does seem to be where if you are already healthy and you eat yogurt regularly but a lot, then maybe you'll start to see some actual health effects. But there's never been a study that showed, yes, yogurt is such a powerhouse that it can knock out rheumatoid arthritis, right, And those are kind of the claims that people are making, and there's like some there's some basis, there's some kernel
of truth to it. Like one of the big things now with dieting is or not not dieting, but eating eating right or eating healthy I guess, whatever you want to call it, is this idea that when you eat, your body becomes inflamed as part of the immune response like what did you just eat? What is that? What is that? And it goes into a kind of like defense mode to sort things out. Well, the idea is
that over time. If you're eating stuff that sets off your immune response, your inflammatory response pretty much constantly, that is a terrible effect on your body and can manifest itself in things like inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis. So the logic is, and they've shown that, yes, yogurt can actually possibly maybe reduce your inflammatory response. So it's going from yogurt might be able to lessen your inflammatory response to some really really bad food, to yogurt can cure
rheumatoid arthritis. And that's the problem.
Yeah, especially in women, it seems to have a little bit better chance at reducing inflammation. They did this one study at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Go Badgers, right, Wolverines.
Boy, I think it's got to be Badgers, right, it.
Is the Badgers. I'm just giving them a hard time.
I didn't know if that was. Yeah, that's Madison. Of course we need to do a show there by the way we do, or we.
Could just make everybody drive to Milwaukee. It's an hour away.
I did like Milwaukee.
It was a great show.
That was That was cool town. So they did a study where they had sixty women, half of whom were obese, and they had them eat twelve ounces of low fat yogurt every day for nine weeks, then a control group of course with eating non dairy pudding, so they.
Have which is like, what is that like snack packs?
I don't know. And they measured levels of proteins it says, excreted by immune cells to determine how much inflammation was in their bodies. So they're they're trying to measure the inflamma inflammatory response that you're talking about. And they did find that the yogurt yogurt ladies as they like to be called, saw improvements in some markers of inflammation. But again that's that's a long way from saying it can help your rheumatoid arthritis.
Right, That's part of the problem. I think people just want it. It's just such a great idea, this, this natural thing that's been with humanity since the dawn of civilization can actually help help cure some of these modern ailments from our modern world. People want that to be the truth so bad. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it's it's it's not necessarily the case.
I think, yes, And it was also this study was funded by the National Dairy council. And again the guy, the doctor who performed it. Of course he was like, it doesn't matter where the money came from, same conclusion. So you know, you can take him at his word. I guess I'm not saying he's like in the pocket of big Dairy, right, but which we laugh, But I'm sure that's the thing.
Well, the Yogurt Association, they're the front, they're they're the the leg breakers for the dairy Association.
But like I said earlier, because there's a lot of protein and yogurt, it will make you feel more full and you might have fewer unhealthy snacks. So it's one of those you know things like really making that difference or is just causing you to change patterns, right, which is fine?
Yeah, oh yeah. Again, there's nobody who's saying no, eating yogurt's bad for you. You do want to watch it if you are trying to lose weight eating full fat yogurt, too much full fat yogurt, especially if you're eating it in addition to other stuff rather than using it to replace something. You can gain weight. The I think the average weight gain in that one study you were talking about from both the yogurt and the pudding Cohorts was like a kilogram I think, yeah, a couple of pounds. Yeah,
over like nine weeks or something like that. So that's a significant amount of weight aain. But they were eating like twelve ounces. It's two full servings of yogurt every day.
That's a lot of yogurt. I mean it's a lot. I like yogurt, but it's not the kind of food you sit down and eat a bowl of, you know.
No, no, you definitely you want it in its own little amount. It's like a grape nuts bowl, you know.
Yeah. And for parents, you know, yogurt. Not to pick on them, but they definitely market that. I used to do. I did a couple of gogurt commercials back in the day as a PA, and you know, they definitely mark it towards kids. It's packaged and a little kid friendly, fun way to eat. And we're not saying yogurt it's bad for kids, but that stuff is loaded with sugar and calories from sugar. Yeah, So just know that going in.
From what I understand, the closest thing to actual yogurt that you can get in the United States is something like Greek yogurt.
That's only kind of eat. I think it tastes best it is.
It's fantastic, like plaining Greek yogurt, and then you just add a little honey. Don't forget the honey chup.
No, I gotta call my beekeeper.
There's also something called there's both traditional Bulgarian yogurt. Bulgaria is very well known for its yogurt love. They have something called cassello mill yaco, which means soured milk. And I just think of Balki Bartaka of saying it.
Is that his last name?
Yeah? From Perfect Strangers.
Yeah, what was it?
Balki Bartakomos Bartaca Moose Bartaka Moose.
I don't think I ever heard that. Yeah, I didn't watch that show though.
Oh you were missing out the episode where they were moving a piano up up like a couple of flights of stairs.
Is that a real episode?
Yes, it was Chuck and I am. I would put my money on this. It is one of the greatest examples of physical comedy in television history.
I mean, that's an old thing. Like Friends had an episode of moving a couch upstairs.
These guys make Friends look like piles of walking poop. That's how good. That's how good this perfect Stranger's episode was like Friends doesn't even want to talk about it.
Oh man, But I mean that's a classic bit like the uh March Brothers or you know or something.
Or Buster Keaton probably first came up with it.
Yeah, he moved a piano or two in his day.
You want to talk about the in Soviet Georgia Yogurt campaign real quick?
Yeah? I actually did not get to see that, so you can teach me.
Okay. So in nineteen seventy seven, Dan and who really is almost single handedly responsible for bringing yogurt and making it popular in America in the seventies, they came out with an ad campaign called in Soviet Georgia where they went to Georgia, one of the Soviet Union's republics at the time, and found like one hundred plus year old people who were still vital and active and said, hey, can we film you like Bailing Hay and then afterward you'll eat like a nice cup of dan and yogurt
and people will say, hey, that's great. I want to beat Bailing Hay at one hundred and five like this person. And it was kind of risky at the time because this is the Cold War the late seventies, the Soviet Union in the United States were not friends, but to advertise to the United States, they sent their ad people to the Soviet Union and it just went off. It was a total hit, like Dan and their sales were in the gutter, and all of a sudden there's just
back on top. And it's actually credited with kicking off this what we think of now is like normal. But the yogurt craze that started in the late seventies early eighties and continued on and has finally gotten to the point where we're actually starting to eat healthy yogurt. That was that commercial in Soviet Georgia. Crazy, Yeah, it's crazy.
They found one guy who was eighty nine and they said his mother was one hundred and fourteen, and they filmed them in one of the commercials and they said he ate two cups and it made his mother very proud, but he's eighty nine. That was the big joke.
One hundred and fourteen man.
Yeah, all from eating yogurt.
I need to get on it.
You got anything else?
If I want to live to be one hundred and fourteen, you.
Got to start eating some yogurt. And don't forget the honey God.
Could you imagine me at one hundred and fourteen?
Yeah, actually I can now that you mentioned it.
Nobody wants that.
I could totally see it. You'd be like, I'm back to the whole pizza and the whole thing ice cream thing. You might want to stand back. Wow, this one had a lot of fart and poop jokes.
Yeah, well it happens.
Well, if you want to know more about yogurt, go eat some yogurt, Eat the good stuff, learn to love it, and your stomach will be happy, whether science can prove that it is or not. And since I said that, it's time for the listener mail.
All right, I'm gonna call this self profess medievalist. This guy, Stephen Gray wrote in and he's from Melbourne, Australia but living in London now, and he says, I'm writing for some extra info, to give you extra info for the Robin Hood episode. First of all, Josh talks about rich slash Johnny Sitch and says that Richard was king of England for two years and that John was the natural heir. Richie was actually king for ten years. That spent only six months of his reign in England, he was off
on the Third Crusade. He left his chancellor, William of Longchamp as regent, but his brother John was cranky about it and schemed against him and citing a rebellion. When rich eventually got back, he forgave Johnny named him heir to the throne. So the bad King John good King Richard Bitt of the rh canon is actually based in fact. Wow, that's interesting, perhaps more interesting, he says, I set up, by the way, thank you, when the Robinhood story started
coming out during the reign of Henry. Their It was during a period where Henry was waging war for his lands in Gascony, France. Henry was not a very strong willed or charismatic king, so he didn't get along super well with his nobles, and as a result, to raise funds for the war effort, he had to rely more heavily on his foresters and sheriffs to raise some mega taxes. So the Robinhood stories pit our hero against these extortionate
representatives of a nasty villainus king. But of course you can't directly suggest that's the current king, so you have to be not so subtle and point to our recent but previous scenario, which everyone will draw the parallels from.
Wow, this guy's not just a self proclaimed medievalist. I officially confirm him as a medievalist.
He says. Hope this helps, Uh, hope this helps your insatiable appetite to keep learning, as your podcast does mine.
Nice.
I love you guys. That is Stephen Gray.
Thanks a lot, Steven, that was a great email.
We love you too.
Let's hug. Yeah, Hey go Stephen. If you want to get in touch with us, like Stephen did, we want to hear from you. You can go to stuff you should Know dot com and find all of our social links there, and you can send us an email to Stuff podcast at HowStuffWorks dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.