It sort of illustrates the uselessness of the terms. Yogurt is made by sterilizing (likely homogenized) milk and introducing microorganisms that carry out some desired chemical reactions. They produce lactic acid, which is a stabilizer.
Everyone apparently knows that those are good things, so they don't count.
That's right. Kefir is essentially a mesophilic yogurt. I don't pretend to understand why but it seems the difference in texture has to do with the different organisms that produce one vs. the other (although the thermophilic bacteria used in yogurt-making -Lactobacilus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus I think- have also been found in kefir; but I don't know if they are very active given the lower temperature).
To be fair, back when I used to make kefir it often came out quite firm to the point that I could lift it out of a bowl with a perforated laddle and eat it with a spoon. What seemed to make the difference was using non-homogenized milk rather than homogenized. Using unhomogenized milk from Jersey cows also seemed to do the trick but the result was a bit too fatty.
Nobody seems to have noticed the "product" next to "yogurt":
>> * Almost all yogurt products, flavored or otherwise
If we weren't on HN I'd say that's a subtle engagement hack calculated to generate maximum confusion and irate debate in the comments below. But we're on HN and good faith etc.
So, yes, "yogurt products" are all going to be ultra-processed not least because they will have to destroy the gel matrix of yogurt to incorporate whatever other ingredients they must like fruit juice or sugar, stabilisers, emulsifiers etc. Actually I guess they must include the stabilisers and emulsifiers because they mix in flavours and therefore destroy the yogurt gel matrix, which would otherwise result in an unpleasant gloopy mess.
Speaking of course in all this from the privilege of a summer in Greece where I've start every morning since June with a tub of 150g of fresh (not strained) goat's milk yogurt with the skin on and with a (European) teaspoonfull of honey.
Not healthy, you understand. Not with all the saturated fats and sugars. But, boy, is it palatable.
That's the point. The ultra-processing of shelf-stable unsweetened yogurt food products has nothing to do with engineering it for palatability. And yet they're UPFs, and you could easily ship a highly sweetened dessert yogurt product that would be far less healthy without tripping a UPF standard.
No you couldn't. The reason is you can't just mix stuff like sweeteners into yogurt and ship it or you end up with a gloopy goop as I say above.
The thing that people don't get about yogurt is that it's a gel, and one with a very delicate structure to boot. The moment you so much as stick a spoon into yogurt you disturb the gel matrix and that causes whey to seep out, an effect called "syneresis". If you've ever tried the kind of yogurt I say above that I'm having for breakfast, you'd know that if you eat say half a tub and then leave the rest for a while and come back to it later you find it has turned into a watery mush that's not very appetising at all. A lot of good yogurt goes to waste like that because folks who want to maintain their waistline will eat some and leave the rest "for later", and it's a balancing act for producers to make yogurt tubs small enough that people will want to eat them in one go and large enough that it makes sense to sell them [1].
One traditional way to deal with syneresis is straining which produces what everyone else calls "Greek yogurt" and we, Greeks, call "strained yogurt" or "bag yogurt" (because traditionally it was strained through a linen bag). However, even strained yogurt suffers syneresis as long as it retains any moisture and as a result you still can't ship a tub of "Greek yogurt" with say fruit, or honey, mixed in just like that [2]. That's why you never get delicious FAGE yogurt with fruit already mixed in [3].
You also can't make yogurt with stuff in it from the get go, because yogurt starts as milk, therefore a liquid, and whatever you want to mix in it will sink to the bottom or float to the top before the milk has a chance to set. Some yogurts with fruit jams for example have the jams on the bottom because that way you just pour the milk on top and let it ferment and then you get jam with yogurt on top and you can scoop both in one spoonful. I've also seen home-made yogurts with fruit mixed in that stay at the top. But you can't just mix the jam or the fruit in the milk and expect it will stay mixed in when the milk sets.
In order to sell yogurt with admixtures without it turning into a goopy gloop you have to stabilise its structure, so that's where the admixtures come in that cause sweetened yogurts to become UPFs. In other words, you need stabilizers. Then you probably also need emulsifiers to "correct" the texture. I don't eat that kind of stuff but I'm gonna bet that the sweeteners also end up being industrial-style ones like high fructose corn syrup or maltodextrin and so on, just for reasons of economies of scale and whatnot. So you end up with something that's many times removed from fresh yogurt that you can make in your own kitchen with milk, a thermometer and a bit of yogurt [4] and that counts as a "processed food" in NOVA terms.
So, no, you can't just ship sweetened yogurt without it turning into a UPF. Or, perhaps you can if you're rally crafty about it, but it's not going to be easy, nor cheap, it's going to turn into a chemical monstrosity anyway, and nobody's gonna bother.
Btw none of the above pertains to Skyr or similar products that I don't know anything about. I'm talking about bovine milk yogurt in the style traditionally made in the Eastern med and the Balkans.
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[1] There's a bit of an exception in ewe's milk yogurt which is much firmer and suffers syneresis more gradually because of the higher protein content of sheep milk. Still, the largest ewe's milk yogurt I used to see was 250g and I don't see them anymore at all though possibly there's other reasons for that. I have never seen ewe's milk yogurt outside of Greece but I believe it's very common throughout the Balkans.
[2] You can strain all the whey out of yogurt. But then you end up with cream cheese, not yogurt.
[3] Btw the scene in Silicon Valley is probably the result of US teaspoons being bigger than European teaspoons. I can totally stick a teaspoon in the little jam tub in Greece.
[4] It takes yogurt to make yogurt. I know. I was endlessly confused about that as a kid.
>> Super clean. No weird chemicals. Worse for you than UPF yogurt.
Ingredients list says it's got 21% sugars. Why is that "worse for you than UPF yogurt"?
I think you have a weird headcanon about what's good and bad for you and that has nothing to do with UPFs. 21g of sugar (of which 11 is honey going by the ingredients list always) is a US teaspoonful and a half. You 're not gonna die younger if that's your daily sugar intake.
Dunno! The thought of sweetened yogurt grosses me out. In fact, all yogurt does, largely because of the name "yo-gurt". I can eat skyr if I mix it into other things or make labneh out of it.
(Following up on your edit)
Because it's more caloric than plain yogurt, for otherwise the same macro profile.
Ewe's milk yogurt is more caloric than plain cow's milk yogurt (because of higher fat content). Does that make ewe's milk yogurt "worse for you than UPF yogurt"?
Put two identically sized servings of yogurt side by side, equal in all aspects except that one is 100kcal and the other, because of added sugar, is 170kcal. The 170kcal serving is less healthful; the other is a UPF.
So, I haven't made any yogurt in a while but from memory it takes about half an hour for milk to set, depending on what milk and what yogurt starter etc. No way you can make an emulsion of e.g. milk, sugar and vanilla that is stable for that long. So either you have to use stabilizers, or you have to accept that your flavourings are not going to be evenly distributed throughout your yogurt.
I can't know the latter since I can't buy that brand in Greece (for rather obvious reasons it's not imported here). If I look at the list of ingredients for e.g. the Vanilla Bean yogurt I see "Pasteurized Whole Milk, Pasteurized Cream..." and that's your stabilizer there.
How much is there? The "Nutrition Facts" label on top lists "Total fat 12g" per serving which is "1 container" of 140 grams. That's ~9% fat, so about 5% more than plain cow's milk (at 4g per 100g). The total fat is more than the fat in ewe's milk (about 6%). I ... guess the extra fat makes the milk and vanilla bean powder emulsion last a bit longer so it gets better mixed in during the fermentation time?
Dunno. The packaging says "Traces of vanilla seeds and marbling on top of the yogurt are the results of a natural infusion process". The other flavours don't have a similar disclaimer but they all have extra fat in the form of pasteurized cream.
So anyway you get both a stabilizer and uneven distribution at least for the vanilla. If you have a strong enough flavour I reckon that's not a problem though.
EDIT: (The fruit-at-the-bottom variants are presumably UPFs).
They don't have to. If you're just mixing some fruit in milk and then fermenting it to make yogurt, that's just processed (going by NOVA AFAIU). But looking at the ingredients list I see e.g. "Corn starch, Natural Flavor, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Pectin" etc. Ew. No, that's a UPF. You don't need to put that stuff in yogurt. Not if the point is to enjoy it.
It's late and I have to go to sleep so answering here.
>> No. Pasteurization isn't a UPF technique. See the problem?
My argument is that the extra fat is used as a stabilizer that wouldn't need to be included if the maker wasn't trying to force their yogurt to hold other stuff in it than milk. The use of a stabilizer makes it a UPF, not the fact that the cream is pasteurised- that makes no difference as you say.
I'm exclusively commenting here about how the label "UPF" is problematic. Pasteurization doesn't make something ultra-processed, despite its stabilizing effect.
Nobody said that pasteurization makes anything ultra-processed.
Pasteurised milk is classified as Group 1 (Unprocessed or minimally processed food) in NOVA. Pasteurised cream is the same thing [1].
Pasteurisation doesn't have any stabilising effect.
I argued that the pasteurised cream added to the ingredients of the lafermiere yogurts is a stabiliser. The stabilisation effect comes from the increased viscosity of milk with added fat that helps the emulsion of milk and flavourings keep stable for longer than normal while milk sets during yogurt making.
I did not argue that the stabilisation effect comes from the fact that cream is pasteurised.
I argued that the lafermiere yogurt is a UPF because of the addition of pasteurised cream as a stabiliser.
I did not argue that the lafermiere yogurt is a UPF because of the pasteurisation of the added cream; or the milk itself for that matter.
And now I have to ask: in what sense could anything I said before be taken as a claim that pasteurisation is ultra-processing or that the lafermiere yogurts are UPFs because of pasteurisation?
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[1] If anything it has the opposite in that pasteurised milk tends to produce looser, softer curds than raw milk because it weakens protein bonds and causes calcium to leak out (soorta), hence the addition of calcium chloride to milk when making cheese.
Cream is usually made by centrifuging milk to separate the fat out, which should count as minimal processing and then pasteurisation itself is minimal processing on top. I doubt pasteurised cream counts as a UPF.
To be fair that doesn't really matter in yogurt making because milk is boiled anyway, which denatures milk proteins and we don't care if they leak calcium or not because we're not trying to make curd, as such, but yogurt. Not withstanding the fact that people in the Indian subcontinent call yogurt, "curd". Just a linguistic quirk.
The fact that lafermiere list milk and cream as "pasteurised" in their ingredients is probably something to do with marketing, to make it clear they aren't using raw milk, for whatever reason that might be necessary to clarify.
My fresh Rodopi ewe's milk yogurt lists as ingredient "full organic ewe's milk". They say nothing about pasteurisation and I doubt they even bother to pasteurise it since they're going to blast it with considerably more heat than for pasteurisation anyway. OtoH the difference may not be marketing but the fact that Rodopi get their milk directly from producers while lafermiere buy it second hand from dairy companies that sell it already-pasteurised. I mean the pasteurisation doesn't hurt. It's just unnecessary. So it's a bit weird that they clarify it in the list of ingredients.
You've lost me completely, sorry. I'm backing out now. The only reason we were talking was that you seemed to be asserting that it wasn't possible to do a non-UPF sweetened yogurt product, which, obviously no.
Yes that was my argument and it stands. The Kalona yogurt you showed is not UPF but I think the honey might be only in the bottom. The lafermiere yogurts are UPF.
You're not confused. You're right. That's my point. "UPF" is not a useful health labeling system. Whether or not something qualifies as a UPF doesn't tell you whether it's a healthy choice.
The most unhealthy food choices tend to be UPFs. But that's not a causal relationship.
I think the confusion is that you're loosening up the relation: food can be unhealthy without it being UPF. The relation is an implication, not an equivalence: UPF implies unhealthy. Unhealthy doesn't imply UPF.
So e.g. food with too many calories as in your example can be unhealthy because it can make you fat without it having to be a UPF.
Are you saying that you want a classification that flags up every kind of unhealthy food?
Yeah, this is totally true. A Greek yogurt is considered minimally processed, not ultra processed. The problem is, far and away, the majority of yogurt sold is fruit-flavored yogurt, which is considered ultra-processed. Icelandic yogurt and Greek yogurt are premium niche yogurts.
I guess all I'm saying is that for the majority of people eating yogurt, it's an ultra-processed food.
No. And the way you're wrong about this is important. Any plain whole milk yogurt thickened or stabilized with starches or pectin is a UPF; Kroger's Plain Whole Milk, for instance, is a UPF and it isn't sweetened.
(For what it's worth, I really dislike yogurt and would not in 1000 years consume a sweetened yogurt product, though I do work skyr into every other meal these days for protein-maxxing reasons).
Western Europe has been mostly stagnant or declining while real incomes for most workers have actually grown in the same period (and for a significant proportion of the population to a very large degree).
That might be a mirage temporarily made reality by outsourcing defense to the US, manufacturing to China and the work required for GDP growth to refugees.
How is locally producing military equipment versus buying extremely expensive US uberl33t overkill hardware suppose to hurt the EU? It not like the US was just giving Europe free armaments.
Yeah sure they won't be producing any F35s or million dollar per shot missiles, but was that a good idea to start with? Are they worth the money when once again lots of inexpensive arms are shown to be more useful in modern wars than a few handfuls of expensive ones? Both Iran and Ukraine have shown that one side being a few steps ahead in military technology and willing to dump money on equipment still has limited returns. There is no "I win" technology apart from indiscriminately killing most of the entire population, which just makes you an existential enemy to the rest of the planet and erases 95% of the value in taking that territory.
Its really not that obvious to you? Because not having US bases on site and technology sharing and agreements takes money away from entitlements. France tried to cut entitlements by a tiny bit and the yellow vest movement was born. In the long run the Yellow Vests might end up losing everything as a result.
Regardless of the tech stack the work still needs to be done and now the EU has to do it. The Eu does not have infinite money, in fact they have less than the US so there will be cuts elsewhere.
Before outsourcing defense to the US... sorry, but have you ever read a history book? Europe was "exporting defense" around the world before the US got involved in the world wars :-))
Before outsourcing manufacturing to China Europe was making a third of all industrial things on this planet, so Europe will be just fine.
> the work required for GDP growth to refugees
I don't get this one. Do you think the European economy is propped up by refugees? I think there are 5 million of them in total in Europe, most of them Ukrainians and it's likely Ukraine will become a EU member at some point in the future...
>Before outsourcing defense to the US... sorry, but have you ever read a history book? Europe was "exporting defense" around the world before the US got involved in the world wars :-))
And they will continue to do so. Just at a higher cost with no US to maintain bases and do technology cost sharing. That extra money has to come out from somewhere...it will be entitlements. Combine that with terrible demographics and that remaining manufacturing base will be built on a bed of sand. :)
>Before outsourcing manufacturing to China Europe was making a third of all industrial things on this planet, so Europe will be just fine.
Europe can insource everything that China makes. They are not stupid people. You mistake the benefit westerners got from outsourcing. It held back inflation in products because the value came from the living standards difference between chinese and EU people. Remove that disparity by bringing back everything and EU will be living with a lower quality of life because all those products will be significantly more expensive with no alternatives.
>I don't get this one. Do you think the European economy is propped up by refugees? I think there are 5 million of them in total in Europe, most of them Ukrainians and it's likely Ukraine will become a EU member at some point in the future...
Same point I have been making. The consequences of demographic collapse can be hidden away by having young tax paying peoples do the shit jobs that run the economy at low wages. Same thing the US does with illegal migrants. Remove that and the hidden costs are now dumped onto the population. Result: Lower living standards for those who remain.
If they did, they would have done it already. Instead when there was an attempt, some protested wearing yellow vests. There will be more. Whether or not the governments force the issue or they lose to the voters does not matter: Either way quality of life will suffer.
I don’t understand this mentality which I see over and over again on here. It’s not like the US frontier labs are beacons of morality and transparency.
It’s also pretty accepted within this community that a lot of data fed to US tech companies ends up with the Israeli government.
Meanwhile the current US government headed by Donny Tango has done a very thorough job of proving itself to be about as predictable and dependable as a rabid dog on crack.
Throughout the events which have transpired since a certain orange charlatan took office it is objectively true that the Chinese government has portrayed itself as a much more stable and sane entity.
We really need to stop this elitism and recognise the reality.
It’s really about incentives more than morals. I know that, being in the US, if Anthropic steals my company’s trade secrets through model inputs contrary to our policy that I will (in theory) have legal standing and enforceable contracts against them. The same is not true against DeepSeek, and especially not against “Stealth”.
> It’s not like the US frontier labs are beacons of morality and transparency.
they are businesses, so respect wishes of customers who give them money, if someone learn they intentionally leak private information, its over for them.
they leaked ordinary citizens (meta)-data by government request, majority of who doesn't care about privacy. Its very different to leaking raw trade secret of large and powerful corporations.
To be fair to GP, they didn’t complain the model isn’t from the US. A “stealth” American model should be treated with the same suspicion, I think. The base of the argument isn’t affected by country of origin.
Some of it is miss information ( Turkey), some of it simply never happened. US is not dictatorship, one blah blah person(trum) can't do everything he wants.
Real military conflicts you mentioned are direct impact of chinese policies. They willing to fuel any evil government unless they are against west. Without Iran doing proxy wars middle east would be at peace.
Now the dry results of China VS US policies in regions since modern communist china establishment. What their policy produce.
cause-and-effect relationships 101.
What Evil China produce , and how that's related even to some invasions your mentioned.
General overview :
The post world war II period was the most peaceful time in modern history, leaded by US policies. with some mistakes like vietnam. but China did the same mistake and invaded Vietnam too anyways. Right now china goes into power. what their policies , their world looks like?
Korea. Their first action. Direct military invasion by Mao. The Result: terrorist state, that officially supports stealing, human trafficking, selling drugs, arms to middle east etc. It now directly destroying part of Europe sending giant, not precise ballistic missiles, that killing children , woman etc. the also send troops to kill more europeans, just because Putin paid them some money. North Korea would not exist without china nor from inception, nor up until recently. Due to that support we also have one extra nuclear country who's will even the most evil one will be blindly followed by their people.
The opposite of is ... South Korea, that brings to the world peace, technology, cars, phones. Poster child of china's policies vs poster child of USA policies.
Next Poster child is Iran.
Iran would not survive without China's support neither economically neither technology wise. Iran supports tons of proxies in middle east. Creating entire instability in the region, fueling number of wars. They killing their own people who are not happy with the government, and attacking everyone around taking entire world as a hostage. Also involved in all shady operations. Spreading arms, including drones, infamous Shaheds that killed so many people in Europe. China provide all equipment from military to cellphone so that body government can control and kill everyone who disagree with their policies. Compare that to USA policies, who removed major threads like Iraq who invaded countries around.
Moving forward :
Poster child russia. Russia would not survive it's war without China's support. And now it sending drones with China's made electronics to number of countries of Europe. The opposite ? USA supported Ukraine, and Russia lost it power in war-torn Siria and right now finally there is some shaky peace over there.
To me it's very obvious what china produces as a government.
USA is ugly reacting trying to save the world from another half crazy government that is trying to create nuclear weapons. The free world needs a new super power to protect themself probably, since we have an evil super power like china. Unfortunately, usa can't protect free world anymore.
The Hungary that JD Vance tried to influence elections in, in favour of an autocratic asshole that peddles antisemitism and FUD regarding Ukraine?
> Canada,
The Canada currently harassed by the sad joke of a POTUS with a trade war?
> half of the Africa ,
The half hit by Ebola with retracted USAID, or the other half? Like that one that includes South Africa, the only African country the USA grants asylum right now--to white farmers over racism concerns? Or the half including Sudan or the Kongo, ravaged by civil war, enabled with American weapons and strategic neglect?
> war in Ukraine ,
The war enabled by no-one but the USA's support for Russia? Remember the red carpets for Putin?
> North Korea ,
You mean the country that only exists because of the USA's Korean War? The country led by "a good friend" of the American president?
> Iran
The Iran currently under siege by the USA and Israel in an unsanctioned attack war?
> you name it .
Oh sure! We can gladly continue with Gaza, Vietnam, Cuba, Bhutan, South Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Denmark and Iceland, Mexico, Panama, Venezuela, ... there are so many more places fucked up by the USA and its agencies!
> They will fund any sick sycophantic government if they let them build their plants .
You mean like in Venezuela, Gaza, or whatever the clown in chief has planned for Iran?
JD Vance visiting Hungary was hilarious. You could gather 150 million Americans and not a single one would be able to pinpoint Hungary on a map. Whose interests was Vance serving? Russia’s?
Are you seriously brought up North Korea here? In both USSR and USA of that time there was no hunger for another conflict that could end up in the new war. North Korean's were pushed by China's Mao despite Kim Soviet Army roots. And they attacked first. The result is very obvious a terrorist state with nuclear power. China could easily keep them away from nuclear power but they didn't .
>Ukraine
Seriously? despite my hate to Trump, he was trying to stop corruptionist North stream to occur, since it was a clear war precursor, and he was the first president to sell Ukraine lethal weapons. Current administration is incompetent but even so they approved the sell of ATACAMS from Turkey to ukraine just few weeks ago. But the fact that Ukraine still exist is only due to Biden administration. Modern peace in Syria is also due to same fact actually.
>Iran
Are you going to cry that Hitler was attacked? Iran as a country brought sooo much troubles to the entire region directly and indirectly. List of proxies : Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestinian territories, Bahrain, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia.
>Oh sure!
some random list mostly. How south Korea was screw up? or ... Mexico, or Venezuela? even Afghanistan with all the respect. If we are talking of China they also tried to attack vietnam. What happened to Denmark, Iceland are they art war?
Ghaza : same Iran proxy said story multiplied by 1000 years conflict. How us is related here at all?
Cuba? The poster child of communism mismanagement, I wish people of Cuba finally to have liberation.
>Hungary
this is one is funny, despite been a clear china/russian proxy, JD decided to support, i guess out of hate to EU, not sure what was the real angle. But right now, there are real deep corruption investigation that goes to both Russia and China.
1. In the US on that item, it's ~50/50 or whatever.
2. In China, aren't even the biggest business leaders, the most famous celebrities, etc. simply "disappeared" if they won't support the party-line? Or even being "disappeared" for something like accusing a former vice-premier of sexual assault? For example, the BBC headline/article "Why do Chinese billionaires keep vanishing?"
I posted above why china is bad, it's yes people disappearing, and sponsoring anyone who tries do destabilize current world , and hence fueling the war, North Korea, Iran, Russia is on that list of their proxies.
1. I'm generally against any countries "disappearing" anyone, including western countries - and my parent comment explicitly said that it happened to more than just billionaires - famous artists and actors were also disappeared, and the person I mentioned being disappeared for accusing an official of sexual assault was a top female athlete.
2. But if a country is willing to regularly "disappear" the highest profile members of society, they probably are not going to be too concerned about "disappearing" significantly larger groups of ordinary people, poor people, etc. who are willing to verbally disagree with the government, agreed? Or who are an ethnic minority like the Uyghurs.
3. I don't understand your "china bad" comment though - if the US was disappearing billionaires (or celebs/artists/athletes or whomever) if they wouldn't agree with Trump, would you have similarly said "is that your metric for 'america bad', disappearing people for not agreeing with the government?"?
Yes and no. It would make the test fair but it would also mean losing any optimizations the vendors have made specifically for their model. They're all trained differently so they should be used differently to get maximum benefit. It makes sense to use each vendor's harness to get the most of their models, and compare the results that way. Additionally, it's not easy to use all the models in all the harnesses. Anthropic's subscription only covers claude code for example.
I don’t know that the methodology of the experiment is testing what it intends to test. With the current method we’re essentially testing each AI lab’s ability to efficiently extract data from their version of a transformer model.
To objectively test all models the harness would need to be the same and ideally independent. Failing that, all three models should be tested in all three harnesses and the output verified on a model x harness level and on an overall aggregated model x all harnesses level.
Agreed. An experiment is only as accurate as the methodology is sound.
Testing each lab’s model in its own harness just tells us how well the lab has performed. For the model’s performance we need a control and the only way to get the control is to either test all models in all harnesses or all models in the same harness
The Forth Road Bridge stopped having tolls in 2008 and was effectively replaced more recently by a new bridge, the Queensferry Crossing, that has never had tolls.
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