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Same food, different carbs?

MrsA2

Expert
Messages
6,932
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Today I bought the same plain greek style yoghurt I usually do (Lidl)
It was in a different shaped pack, so as I still had some left from a previous purchase I checked to see if the quantity had changed. It hadn't but the nutritional info had.
Both show just the one ingredient, milk, so how can nutritional info, especially carbs, change?

(I know the changes are relatively minor, but it's not the "what" that I'm querying but the "how". I'm often bemused by differences across more complex products such as sausages but yoghurt?)
 

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I buy the Lidl individual pots…..different figures again! I wonder if it depends on the batch of milk they are using at the time. Can it vary due to time of year, feed, tripe of cow?
 

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It might be an error, so worth contacting them to check, but from what I can make out on the labels the two pots come from different dairies so possibly different herds of cows. The quality of milk does depend on time of year and type of feed as well as type of cow - although labels usually ignore this.

EDIT - a USA study so different milk herds but the rest is relevant https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218193/
 
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Just checked mine....and it's 4.5g carbs of which 4g sugars.......though I get the 75% milk, 25% cream version...
 
If the yoghurt (or any of it) is Greek, it may be strained which results in a thicker yoghurt by separating some of the whey from the main yoghurt. The whey contains some carbs.

When I make my own yoghurt, it is quite often thick enough without straining, but then I do add some whole milk powder to the concoction at the outset.
 
I always thought cows were, well cows that was until I dated a dairy farmer and sat with the cows during milking. Lovely animals but very disruptive when hanging out washing!
 
Does the yoghurt still have the same impact on BG or does your body struggle with the extra grams of carbs?
 
In Response said:
Does the yoghurt still have the same impact on BG or does your body struggle with the extra grams of carbs?
Click to expand...
In this instance probably not, but plain full fat yoghurt can vary by 5 or more grams per 100, some are double others, and if someone has large portions it can soon mount up.
As I said I'm not so bothered about these particular difference but more interested in how carbs are calculated, and reported
 
My guess is different dairies which are supplied by different herds with different cow breeds making up their “mix”. It’s also possible that different starter cultures were used or different straining techniques. These would all result in different nutritional values.
 
Looking at the values, the one with the higher fat content has the lower carbs, so that makes sense, but as it is a 'natural' product from live animals, I'd be more suspicious if the values never changed.
 
Carb values are allowed a certain percentage of error. I doubt any two foods of the same kind and weight contain exactly the same amount of carbs, likewise for raw foods such as vegetables and fruit - some taste sweeter than others depending on ripeness etc. Now that I'm low-carb, I can even taste the sweetness in celery ! Nevertheless, knowing carb content is an extremely useful tool for us, just as are blood sugar readings. It comes down to close-approximation estimating.
 
In the UK, most milk is skimmed and then fat added back in as appropriate, so in standardised semi-skimmed milk is 1.7% fat, whole milk is 3.5%. I'm pretty sure the same process goes on when making yoghurt etc. - they use skim milk and add the amount of fat they want.

There are a very few dairy farms selling their own milk that don't standardise the full-fat version.
 

Goodness I didn’t know this. I’m constantly disillusioned by the food industry.
 
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