Everyday Systems

There are two big borderline foods that seem to come up a lot: yogurt and "grown up" (but still very sugary) cereal (like granola). And there's a very easy way to keep them well on the virtuous side of the border.

1) buy plain yogurt and add your own sugar/honey. However much sugar you put in, it won't come near what they'd put in pre-sweetened yogurt. You'll also probably wind up with better yogurt, since the really good stuff seems to only come in plain. There is no sacrifice here. It's dead easy and, if you're not too stingy with the sugar, will taste better.

2) cut super sweet but virtuous seeming granola with a non-sweetened cereal like grape nuts (or my favorite, Ezekial 4:9 -- grape nuts with divine mandate ). At 50/50, it'll still be plenty sweet. In fact, as with the yogurt, I find it tastes better this way.

Reinhard

The best way I've found to sweeten yogurt is with some really good jam. It doesn't take much--a small spoonful--to create a sweet, but not too sugary, taste.

Since we're talking about yogurt, I'll bring out my dirty secret, even though you probably will all think I'm a freak: sometimes I eat my yogurt with Marmite, the dark salty yeast spread. It's got to be really good, non-sour plain yogurt. It's sort of like eating it with honey, only salty, and I add a much smaller amount of Marmite than I would of honey.

That sounds interesting. A friend of mine used to eat Marmite with a spoon. I like the stuff, but that's a bit far even for me. I have nothing further of interest to say on this topic, as I dislike both yoghurt and cereal bars. Bleh.

For my money, Seven Stars yogurt is the best. They add just a little maple syrup to sweeten their vanilla flavor, but it's about 1/3 the added sugar of other vanilla yogurts.

Another idea is to blend "lowfat vanilla" with "whole-milk plain" so that you get a semi-sweet yogurt.

I find that non-fat yogurt does not leave me feeling full until lunchtime. A little fat with each meal seems helpful for feeling satiated.

I think I'm going to call this subsystem "BYOS" (bring your own sugar).

Maybe I'll add it to the Intelligent Dietary Defaults page if I ever get around to compiling that...

Reinhard

This has been my approach with iced tea as a substitute for soda pop. It would be difficult to put enough sugar in 12 oz. of iced tea to equal the sugar in a can of soda--I don't even think you could get it all to dissolve.

B.Y.O.S. is a good way to state the concept!

--david

Interesting discussion.

In another vein, I make a couple of treats for my son that are technically No-S compliant, but that just feel too much like sweets for me to eat.

The first is frozen yogurt. Instead of buying frozen yogurt products, I freeze tubes of regular flavored yogurt. Less sugar and fillers that way. So, it's two ounces of yogurt, which I'd eat unfrozen... but somehow, it just feels wrong once it's frozen. Like a dessert.

Similarly, I make popsicles out of plain juice or juice mixed with vanilla yogurt. Again, I'd drink the juice, but popsicles are sweets to me. Even healthy ones.

I actually thought about this one for a while, because technically these are both okay... but since they didn't feel right, I decided they were habit-undermining and should be avoided.

(PS - David, you have not had Iced Tea as it's made in the South [USA] if you think you can't get too much sugar in it. It's sweetened when it's brewed, before cooling, so it's super-saturated.)

People try to put sugar in iced tea when it's *cold*? How very strange. Quite unthinkable.

Yes, of course I've had "sweet tea!" Hush your mouth!



Even homemade sweet tea doesn't seem to have nearly the sugar that pop has. Regular iced tea with the sugar added afterward is even less sugar-laden.

--david

OK, let's get this straight: Sugar cannot be added to iced tea. What do you mean, "Regular iced tea with the sugar added afterward"??

This must be some manner of Northern blasphemy. Paugh!

Back to Reinhard's first post in this thread, when he links to the best yogurts (thick, Greek) available in the States, the best one I've found in Canada is Mediterranee, made by LIBERTY. I have found it both in Quebec and in BC, so imagine it's available cross-country - probably mostly in health food stores. Nothing else compares.

Judy

I've been eating a Greek-style yogurt lately and very much enjoying it over the American style.

Recently I bought a few vanilla yogurts and my favorite brand of granola. I hadn't had either for six months or more. Both tasted entirely too sweet to me, and even worse than that, they tasted like artificial sweeteners instead of sugar or honey or even HFCS. I actually checked the ingredients list to see if they were sweetened artificially. They weren't, but I'm now completely turned off by them.

So, back to the Greek yogurt I like with my own added fruit and maybe some honey and on a search for a new brand of granola. Shoot, maybe I'll even make it myself!

I like plain yogurt, a little bit of jam, and a whole lot of wheat germ.

Not so good when the yogurt goes moldy, like it was this morning. Bleh.

My Indian background means that I find the concept of yoghurt as a sweet bizarre. For me, it's something I eat with curry or a drink (half yoghurt, half water, coriander, ground cumin, black pepper and salt whizzed in a blender, called a "salted lassi" if you order it in a restaurant though they don't always go the whole way and put all the spices in.)