Frozen Chocolate Yogurt

Today is National Frozen Yogurt Day. Frozen Yogurt was first introduced by H.P. Hood as “Forgurt” in 1970 as a healthier alternative than ice cream. The reasoning back then was the fat was bad for you and we needed an alternative. As the “hippies of the ’60’s” were leaving their drugs behind and instead insisting on healthy foods, yogurt was then becoming one of the “in” foods. Frozen yogurt was a natural progression of that demand.

Is it Healthier?

I used one of the recipes from the National Day Calendar site, which they pulled from All Recipes. In my opinion, it not healthy food, but it does have its benefits over ice cream.

Probiotics

The first benefit is that if you’re going to eat all that sugar, having some good probiotics to offset all that sugar is beneficial to your gut. The probiotics will eat away at that sugar. That being said, you don’t know when you pull a carton of frozen yogurt off the shelf if it has live cultures or not. Making your own with a brand known to have live cultures ensures that you do have live cultures in your yogurt.

Fat

The recipe from All Recipes calls for lowfat yogurt. While this sounds good, fat helps us feel full and natural fats feed the brain and do good in our body. The American Heart Association has backpeddled on the dangers of natural fat. Fat doesn’t make you fat, as the thousands who have lost a lot of weight very fast on the Keto diet will attest to.

I am at my thinnest when I rely on meat and fat and leave behind the grains. On Sunday when I wrote about African Heritage Week, I explained why for me those should make up the bulk of my diet. That may not be true for everyone.

I glance over to my bookshelf and see books such as, Eat Fat, Look Thin by Bruce Fife and Fat for Fuel by Dr. Joseph Mercola. While others on the shelves of books may not say it in their titles, many others explain the reason why we need fat in our diet. The number one reason is to feed the brain. The second reason is that it helps us feel full. Don’t we want to feel full?

Sugar or Diet Sweeteners?

This recipe had a good amount of sugar in it, but not nearly as much as you’d find in a traditional ice cream product. Party because you expect frozen yogurt to be tart, not ultra sweet. It is still less sugar than you’d get in a slice of chocolate cake. That shoudl be a plus.

I’d stay away from the “sugar-free” versions as they contain Splenda (sucralose) and/or Nutrisweet (Aspartame). I won’t have either in my house. To learn more about the dangers of artificial sweeteners I HIGHLY suggest reading the book Sweet Deception by Dr. Joseph Mercola. And for this recipe, if you substitute an artificial sweetener you may change the texture so much the product will be undesirable.

I worked for the food industry back in the 1980’s when aspartame first came out. From how sick we got when we drank soda using it, the food journals explaining why it was bad, and the controversy back then, it was decided that the manufacturer I worked for would never make a product with aspartame in it. And as far as I know, they never did.

Sucralose is another product that makes me sick. From what I’ve read, it’s not good for you, either. Recent research concurs with the wisdom of the past and what many naturalists have said for years: chemical sweeteners just aren’t good for you and there’s no evidence that they help you lose weight. In fact, some of them turn off the receptors in the brain that signal you are full. Then you eat more that you would have if you had used regular sugar. As these artificial sweeteners have increased in usage, so have our waistlines.

Add-ins

This is where ice cream and frozen treats become a seriously sweet and unhealthy food. Moose Tracks, Snickers, Cotton Candy, Birthday Cake… There are aisles of choices. Usually these ingredients are very sweet. The addition of plain nuts may not be as bad, but they are still additional fat and calories. Fruit usually needs to be sweetened beofre adding to a dessert, which means more sugar.

The Bottom Line

I am not against any delicious food in moderation. When I was a healthy size 4/6 people in my BNI group would laugh because I knew the flavor of the day for the entire upcoming month at our local custard shop (or at least the flavors I liked). They would ask how I could eat custard regularly and be thin. It was easy. When I got the pints home, I would scoop one scoop per container and freeze it. This ensured that I was getting just a small serving – about 100-150 calories, not a bowlful and hunreds of calories. It also allowed me to have an abundance of flavors on hand to pick from. I wasn’t denying myself a treat. I was just eating a healthy portion.

The Recipe

The recipe I used was from All Recipes. I made chocolate frozen yogurt. I made a huge change to the recipe instructions right away. I used a double boiler so the chocolate wouldn’t burn. The instructions said to cook the chocolate, sugar, cornstarch and evaporated milk in a saucepan stirring constantly to prevent burning. This is a disaster waiting to happen. If the flame is too high and you turn to measure the remaining ingredients, a child distracts you, or any other distraction, and it burns. Just be safe and make it over a double boiler. It adds a couple of minutes but in the end, you don’t have a burned recipe and if you do get distracted, it’s not a disaster.

Instructions

I will do the instructions in picture form. You can read the instructions on the recipe as posted in All Recipes.

I have a Dovier manual ice cream maker. A few turns every few minutes for 20 minutes and you have soft serve ice cream or frozen yogurt. Mine is old but it’s perfect. No salt needed. No electricity needed. You just put the insert in the freezer overnight (I actually have it in the freezer all the time ready to go).

It tastes very good. It does have the tang of yogurt, as expected. It’s not overly sweet. You could vary the flavor by using different chocolate chips. I had some espresso chocolate chips here that I may use at another time. For the initial recipe, though, I wanted to use the ingredients just as they were in the recipe.

#chocolate #chocolatefrozenyogurt #frozenyogurt #homemade #madefromscratch #dessert

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