In keeping with my ongoing efforts to be more conscious of what I eat, I decided to substitute kefir for my usual yogurt purchase at the grocery store yesterday. I was expecting it to taste kind of like yogurt; that was a mistake. If you’re expecting a substance to taste like yogurt when, in fact, it tastes like yogurt gone terribly, terribly bad, the outcome is rarely good.
But I exaggerate, it doesn’t taste that bad. It’s not something I would consume by itself for the pure pleasure of the drink, but mixed with a delicious assortment of berries it’s actually quite palatable.
The nutritional greatness of kefir is twofold. First, it has but two ingredients: organic partly skimmed milk and bacterial cultures. Compare this to the Activia, source of fiber, fat free strawberry, kiwi and cereals probiotic yogurt:
- skim milk, concentrated skim milk, fructose, sugar, strawberries, inulin, kiwi puree, corn starch, milk protein concentrate, cream, modified corn starch, rolled oat, white wheat flakes, gelatin, natural and artificial flavours, active bacterial cultures, pectin, malic acid, natural colour, potassium sorbate, calcium lactate, sodium citrate, vitamin A and D.
Dosly, that delectable je ne sais quoie sour milk taste is a function of a longer fermentation time and the additional fermentation power of yeast. This means more sugar is consumed during fermentation, and more bacteria are present in the end product. And apparently the type of bacteria used to make kefir stay in your intestine for extended periods of time (compared to yogurt) and do all sorts of good things for you.
The nutrition facts on the two containers are not in entirely comparable units, but going on the estimate that kefir has approximately the same density as water, here’s what’s what:
| KEFIR | YOGURT | |
| calories | 90 | 140 |
| fat | 3.5 g | 0.525 g |
| saturated fat | 2g | 0.35 g |
| carbohydrates | 8 g | 28 g |
| sugars | 6 g | 22.75 g |
| protein | 6 g | 7 g |
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