Soy Yogurt

If I hadn’t known about a new study of yogurt for properties that can help us keep our diabetes and high blood pressure in check, I wouldn’t be enjoying soy yogurt now.

I love yogurt, but have preferred a dairy product, plain nonfat yogurt from Straus Family Creamery, a family-owned farm just north of San Francisco. This yogurt is surprisingly thick for being nonfat. It is also quite sour, but is delicious when I add a non-caloric sweetener.

After eating more than my share of soy cheese, I couldn’t imagine that soy yogurt could taste anything like the real thing. I was wrong, at least for two of the three soy yogurts that I was able to find in the places where I buy my food, Whole Foods and Wild Oats, the two biggest natural food chains.

Two soy yogurts taste great and offer health benefits. One comes from WholeSoy & Co., an independently owned company in San Francisco. The other comes from Stonyfield Farms, in Londonderry, New Hampshire. The French food giant, Groupe Danone, owns 85 percent of Stonyfield Farms. Both Whole Foods and Wild Oats carry these delicious soy yogurts.

On the other hand, Silk Soy Yogurt tastes too much like soy. It’s not at all smooth or creamy. The carton says that it comes from Boulder, Colorado, where I live. But Silk is actually a subsidiary of White Wave Foods, which in turn is a subsidiary of another food giant, Dean Foods Company of Dallas.

If this sounds like a corporate takeover of the organic foods industry, you haven’t begun to see how far it’s gone. If you study a chart on Organic Industry Structure developed by the Organic Consumers Association, you might be surprised.

The only brand of soy yogurt tested in the new study was the great tasting WholeSoy yogurt from the small San Francisco company. Dr. Kalidas Shetty, professor of food biology in the University of Massachusetts’s department of food science, spoke to me about his research. He also kindly sent me a pre-print of his study, “Potential of Select Yogurts for Diabetes and Hypertension Management that the Journal of Food Biochemistry will publish in an upcoming issue.

Dr. Shetty and his associates also bought three brands of dairy yogurt in a local supermarket. The brands were Dannon (the name that Group Danone uses in the U.S.), Stonyfield, and Stop ’n Shop, the house brand of a New England supermarket chain.

What the scientists looked for was activity of enzymes that help to moderate blood glucose levels. They found that fruit-enriched yogurts – especially those made with soy or blueberries – have active natural compounds that may help us to control our diabetes.

Blocking two of these enzymes – alpha-amylase and alpha-glucosidase – slow the body’s absorption of carbohydrates. Blocking another enzyme – angiotensin-I converting enzyme or ACE-I – helps to control high blood pressure, which many people with diabetes have.

Earlier research by Dr. Shetty and his associates and others found that certain plant compounds play a role in blocking all three of these enzymes. They decided to study how well yogurt can block these enzymes, Dr. Shetty told me, because the “probiotics” in yogurt can treat gastrointestinal disorders and improve immune function.