The Yoghurt Guide

• Greek-style and skyr usually get there. Most regular yoghurts don't.
• Compare per 100 g, never per tub. Pot sizes vary between brands and between countries, so two tubs that look the same on the shelf can hold quite different amounts of food. The per 100 g column is the only fair comparison, and every label has one.

Note: 9 g is my working rule of thumb, not an official cut-off. It's just a useful line in the sand for spotting a yoghurt that will actually hold you until lunch.

• Plain yoghurt contains lactose, the sugar that occurs naturally in milk. That isn't added sugar, and it isn't something to worry about.
• How much you'll see depends on the style: regular plain yoghurt, roughly 4 to 6 g per 100 g; strained Greek and skyr, lower, often around 3 g per 100 g.

Note: On US labels, look at the Added Sugars line specifically and keep it low. On Australian labels there is no added sugars line; the panel gives you total sugars only. Instead you can use the ingredients list since they are listed in order of weight, so if sugar, honey, syrup, fruit concentrate or anything ending in "ose" sits near the top, you're buying dessert. Which is completely fine, as long as that's what you meant to buy.

• This is the reason a lot of people buy yoghurt in the first place, and it's the easiest thing on the pack to verify.
• Look for the words "live and active cultures" or "live cultures" or for bacteria names such as Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus casei.

Heat-treated yoghurts and most shelf-stable yoghurt-style products don't contain live cultures. If it doesn't need refrigeration, it almost certainly doesn't have them.

• Milk, cream, live cultures, maybe fruit. That's the whole recipe.
• If a flavoured tub is low in sugar, check how. It's usually sweeteners doing the work, natural or artificial. Neither is a dealbreaker. Just know that real fruit gives you fibre and nutrients that a sweetener never will.

Remember that convenience still beats skipping breakfast altogether.

• When fat comes out, sugar or thickeners often go back in. Check what replaced it.
• Full-fat, 2% and 0% are all legitimate choices. The fat content matters far less than the sugar and the ingredients list.

• Yoghurt is one of the easiest calcium sources in the diet. A plain Greek yoghurt like FAGE gives you around 120 mg per 100 g, so a 170 g tub is roughly 200 mg.
• Australian recommended dietary intake for calcium is 1000 mg a day for most adults, rising to 1300 mg for women over 50 and for everyone over 70.
• So one tub covers close to a fifth of the day for most adults, and about a sixth if you're in the higher group.

That's a reason to eat yoghurt that has nothing to do with protein, and it matters more than most people realise, particularly for women.

• If dairy usually bothers you, the style of yoghurt matters.
• Strained yoghurts, meaning Greek and skyr, contain less lactose than regular yoghurt, because straining removes much of the whey. The live cultures also break down some of the remaining lactose during fermentation.
• That's why a lot of people who react to milk find strained yoghurt considerably easier to tolerate. It's also why it's worth investigating what's actually going on before you cut dairy out altogether.