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Nov 3rd 2025
Yogurt - A Questionable Source of Probiotics
. . . most yogurt available today is not even a healthy food
Although traditionally-made yogurt was a healthy food and a good source of probiotics, yogurts commercially available today are not. Made with milk that’s become a toxic soup (see my article “Milk – Does a Body Good?”), usually loaded with sugar, and packaged in plastic containers, most yogurt is no longer a healthy food, and not even a good source of probiotic bacteria. Although the label may truthfully say “made with active cultures,” if the yogurt has been heat-treated, as most are, many if not most of these live probiotics have been killed. Such yogurts have not been shown to provide beneficial health effects.
An exception is Activia, a yogurt containing a probiotic strain discovered and patented by Dannon: Bifidus regularis. Consuming Activia has been shown to help relieve constipation. But with Activia, you are still consuming a toxic dairy product with added sugars. It would be far better to eat raw sauerkraut or drink sauerkraut juice – a traditional remedy for constipation that is still used in German hospitals.
Yogurt is also a dairy product, and dairy is a common allergen that can cause diarrhea, 
constipation, abdominal pain, gas and bloating – all symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Stephen Wangen, ND, founder of the IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, Washington, reports that patients often tell him that eating Activia and other yogurts made them feel worse. “A large number of our patients who experience IBS are actually suffering from a dairy allergy but don’t realize it,” he says.
If your probiotic population needs some serious rehabilitation (and this would apply to most people living in an industrial society), eat a low-carbohydrate diet including sauerkraut and other raw cultured foods (they must be raw; otherwise the probiotic bacteria will be dead) and take 4-6 capsules of Beyond Health Probiotic Formula daily (2-3 for maintenance).
Each capsule in our probiotic formula contains 5 billion living organisms – ten probiotic strains chosen for their documented effectiveness in either implanting in the intestines or contributing significant benefit while passing through, in either case working synergistically to restore a healthy population of good bacteria in your gut.
Some people make their own yogurt with raw milk from healthy, grassfed cows. If you’re not dairy sensitive, this can be an acceptable and even therapeutic food. The culturing process makes yogurt more digestible than other dairy. In fact, if your problem with dairy is lactose intolerance, you may be able to eat yogurt. Lactose intolerance is caused by a deficiency in lactase, the enzyme that digests lactose. Probiotics in yogurt produce lactase.
Even so, while making homemade yogurt and other cultured foods part of a healthy diet helps to support a healthy probiotic population, they will not supply the full range of synergistic probiotic strains found in our Probiotic Formula, each with documented therapeutic effects.