Yogurt is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Remember those Dannon® yogurt commercials with the really old Russian people who credited their longevity to yogurt? If you’re old enough to remember those commercials, you know the message: You, too, can live long and wear a babushka if you eat yogurt.

    Yogurt is a great source of protein, calcium, riboflavin, vitamin B12, phosphorous, magnesium, and potassium. While scientists cannot explain how yogurt manufacturers fit all those things in that little plastic container – especially the Yoplait® brand because that opening is so narrow – their research seems to indicate that yogurt prevents and treats gastrointestinal infections, boosts the immune system, fights cancer, and prevents osteoporosis.

    The key disease-fighting ingredients in yogurt are live and active cultures. “Why would it be good to eat Live and Active Cultures?” you ask. “I don’t want a rock band performing in my stomach!”
Live and active cultures do not play rock and roll, not even Led Zeppelin. Nor do they play classical music, which might be more soothing in your stomach than “Stairway to Heaven.” Live and active cultures are living organisms that convert pasteurized milk to yogurt during fermentation, and do a lot of good things while they are in your stomach and intestines.

    However, not all brands of yogurt contain live and active cultures. That doesn’t mean they contain dead and immobile cultures. They contain no cultures whatsoever. You probably have some neighbors like that, but it’s not what you want from your yogurt.

    If yogurt doesn’t contain live and active cultures, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it’s not yogurt. The two live and active cultures that the FDA requires yogurt to have are Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus. Many yogurt manufacturers also add other cultures to the mix, including Lactobacillus acidophilus. These words may sound bad – or they may sound like the name of jazz musician Thelonious Monk – but they are not bad nor do they play jazz, although jazz music demonstrates the true benefits of mixing cultures.

    The FDA has not yet been sued for discrimination by any “no-yos,” but litigation is not out of the question as the non-cultured products get more organized and unionized, and then call Jesse Jackson. The National Yogurt Association supports the FDA’s yogurt bias, and takes it one step further. To put the NYA’s “Live and Active Cultures” label on their packages, yogurt must contain at least 100 million cultures per gram at the time it is manufactured. Yogurt makers want that seal on their labels, just like teenage girls want Calvin Klein’s name on the pockets of their jeans, so the manufacturers pack in the live and active cultures.

    Live and active cultures are good bacteria – Superbugs, really – that fight the bad bugs that invade the digestive tract. If you put Streptococcus thermophilus in the ring with Streptococcus pyogenes, or strep throat, thermophilus would take pyogenes down for the count. Don King could take over the event, move it to Las Vegas, call it “Strep vs. Strep on the Strip,” and show it on pay-per-view television.

    Also thanks to Superbugs, yogurt is one dairy product that many people with lactose intolerance can tolerate, because live and active cultures help the body digest milk protein. However, yogurt does not help intolerant people be more accepting of other races, lifestyles, or stupid people.

    You also can find the “Live and Active Cultures” label on many brands of frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt, which you might mistake for ice cream if you’re not paying close attention, can be as good for you as regular yogurt, but not if you eat a half-gallon of it while watching “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.” In addition to the health benefits the cultures add to your dessert, frozen yogurt typically is lower in fat than ice cream. It’s definitely lower in fat than Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which is Swedish for “Fat with fat.” Or maybe it’s Danish, because a good cheese Danish is not one of the healthiest foods for you, even if you top it with yogurt and eat it while wearing a babushka.