My Yogurt Rant

People are often surprised when I talk about homemade yogurt. They always want to know how it is made. After this rant, I promise to post my yogurt recipe with pictures - as if you need a recipe; it is so easy!

I remember back in high school, I had a math teacher who talked about making homemade yogurt. I thought he was crazy; I just couldn't imagine how homemade yogurt would taste. It sounded too healthy and just a little too "crunchy" to appeal to the me back then - why the Hell would one make yogurt anyway?

Well that was decades ago. I have changed and grown. So cliché, isn't?

How did my own yogurt making  begin? It is a long story.

A few years ago, I became SO enraged about a strange phenomenon. Yogurt is the only food product I have ever found where the smaller-sized, single-serving packaging is actually CHEAPER than the  larger-sized tub. Really, it is the only item I have found that works this way - aren't we always taught we save money on the larger sized, bulk purchase?

Grey-Bruce Public Health have a little cost comparison called "The Cost of Convenience." Mind you, most these products we don't buy ourselves and it isn't incredibly detailed, but you get the idea. Yogurt is the only item that is consistently cheaper in the single-servings. The document I linked to doesn't  explain that single serving packs in our area (since I can only comment on that) area nearly always on sale for a few dollars off. I would say that nearly every week 12 packs of yogurt are about $3.99 - the selection and brand vary, but if you aren't picky, you can pretty much count on that price when you need it. That makes a serving about $0.33.

That is only half the story too. Consider these other issues:

• A real serving of yogurt according to Canada's Food Guide is 175g / 3/4 cup - single servings are 113g. We are being forced to eat the smaller serving by producers - who actually asked for the smaller size? I would suggest that since this reduction happened over time, it is motivated by profits and nutritional compliance, just like cereal servings (to conform to sugar, fat and other rules - something might be now low-fat, lower sugar because the serving is smaller, without the producer actually changing anything).
• 12-packs of yogurt are not stamped with a PIC (plastics identification code). Because of this, it is not recyclable - before you respond by stating that it is picked up when you put it in your blue box, remember picking up in only part of the process, really the easy part. Once they get to the sorting centre, a large volume of items are rejected and sent to the land fill.  See McMaster University's list of non-recyclables
• 12-packs have a greater variety of flavours and types than tubs rather than the other way around. This would indicate to me that the 12-pack is now considered the "regular" size as opposed to the larger tub.

Making yogurt myself seemed like the only way out of this for me, since writing to companies really doesn't help unless you have a gazillion others doing so as well. Making my own, I have the serving size *I* want, unlimited flavours and styles AND I don't have to recycle or throw away anything.

In the next post I will include my recipe and tutorial of making yogurt.