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Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

It appears that their nonfat version has 18g of protein: http://www.chobani.com/products/c/nonfat

And their 2% version has 17g of protein: http://www.chobani.com/products/c/lowfat

I imagine the difference is only because the fat displaces some of the protein in the low fat version, not because there is some special "high protein" quality to the nonfat.

I continue to be baffled by Americans' obsession with nonfat products, when nearly all current nutritional research says there is nothing wrong with fat, and that in many cases it's good for you.

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I contend that the lack of fat just makes the product less filling so we eat more. On top of that it tastes terrible so we add a bunch of sugar.

I love plain full-fat yogurt (ex: Fage total or brown cow cream top). Unfortunately non-fat yogurt tastes terrible once you've had the good stuff and is all you can find outside of specialty stores. (I have only ever seen/tried Chobani 0% so I can't rate their 2% fat yogurt)

Anyway, after years of never finding the good stuff I gave up on the system and dropped $30 on a yogurt maker on Amazon. Now Yogurt is $1/half gallon (price of milk) - 2-3 times that price for strained/Greek yogurt since you throw out the whey, it's super-easy to make (pasteurize milk, add culture, let it incubate for 6-12 hrs), and it's always just the way I like it.

My sister makes yogurt herself in a crock pot (?). Haven't tried it myself, but she says it's super simple, all she does is puts in a few ounces of fresh yogurt along with a bunch of milk and lets it sit there while the cultures do their thing.

I'm sure I'm missing something but how can she make yogurt if one of the starting ingredients is already yogurt?

It's used as a starter. You start with a tablespoon or two of plain yogurt (containing live culture) and 1 liter of milk, then you get 1 liter of yogurt.

By the way you don't even need a crockpot, just heat the milk, put in the yogurt then keep it warm for 7+ hours (google it for a more detailed recipe).

ok, thanks. That makes sense.

My entirely unscientific hypothesis is that serving sizes in the USA tend to be larger, and non-fat foods allow Americans to maintain these larger serving sizes while keeping the calorie density low enough that they don't become obese.

I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but it would be interesting to see a comparison of both caloric density and volume of average meals divided by culture, region, etc.

non-fat foods allow Americans to maintain these larger serving sizes while keeping the calorie density low enough that they don't become obese.

It's not working...

Actually in my experience low/nonfat foods have just as much, and usually more calories than their original versions. They need to load in more sugar to get a similar taste as the original. Sugar being worse on your metabolism than fat, you end up fatter as a result. Low/nonfat is purely a marketing strategy to convince people they're eating healthy while stuffing their gullet.

I don't think Americans have anything against fat. If anything now they are anti-carb more than anti-fat. Walk down the aisles of a grocery store and you see way more "low carb" than "low fat".

Fat happens to be the most calorie dense of the required macronutrients, however. At 9 calories a gram versus 4 calories for carbs and protien it's the easy culprit for people trying to cut weight (by reducing calories). For a while it became the diet fad because of its supposed links to heart disease as well. People want a silver bullet to get thin, once it was fat, then carbs and now, probably more sensibly, it's processed foods like HFCS.

In the end it's not that hard: Eat less.

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