This Popular Yogurt Brand Isn't As Healthy As You Thought

Yogurt packs a ton of nutrition in just a cup. Whether you choose nonfat yogurt, whole milk yogurt, or Greek yogurt, you'll get about 300 milligrams of calcium per cup. Yogurt also feeds your gut with probiotics to balance your digestive system.

On top of all that, it is a pretty versatile food item. You can add berries and nuts to make a tasty and nutritious parfait, and yogurt can add some texture and protein to a smoothie. Plain yogurt can make a great substitute for sour cream for dips, and Greek yogurt can replace high-fat butter and oil in some of your baked goods.

Yogurt can be unhealthy, though; some popular brands of nonfat yogurt can have a ton of sugar to make it more palatable. The added sugar might encourage you and your little ones to eat more yogurt, but too much added sugar can lead to conditions like acne, weight gain, depression, and type 2 diabetes. Although Stonyfield tends to have healthy yogurt options, you'll want to pass on Stonyfield's Organic Chocolate Underground yogurt cups.

Stonyfield's Organic Chocolate Underground yogurt cups are fat-free, which might get you to snatch them off the shelf. Who wouldn't want fat-free chocolate? A 150-gram tub (about 5 ounces) of this yogurt is just 110 calories and not a trace of fat or cholesterol. It's also low in sodium and provides 200 milligrams of calcium.

Fat-free food isn't as healthy as you think because the fat is replaced by added sugar. Sure enough, Stonyfield's fat-free chocolate yogurt has 13 grams of added sugar. The American Heart Association suggests keeping your added sugars to less than 6% of your daily calories. If you're keeping your calorie intake to 1,800 calories, that's just 27 grams of added sugar. A serving of Stonyfield's chocolate yogurt will put you at almost half your limit of added sugar for the day.

Because this yogurt has no fat and less than a gram of fiber, you might not feel very full. Fat, fiber, and protein help keep you satisfied so you're not reaching for another snack an hour later. This yogurt has 6 grams of protein, which might help fill you up. However, dieticians at Cedars Sinai say that the amount of protein should exceed the amount of added sugar for a food to be healthy.

Stonyfield isn't the only brand that offers yogurt with an unhealthy amount of added sugar. Dannon's low-fat vanilla yogurt has 2 grams of fat in a 140-calorie serving. You're still getting 13 grams of added sugar with 7 grams of protein and no fiber. Yoplait has a decadent cherry low-fat yogurt with chocolate shavings that has 18 grams of added sugar and 5 grams of protein. Chobani's Greek yogurt offerings will naturally have more protein, but the Chobani Flip Almond Coco Loco has 10 grams of protein to its 18 grams of added sugar. It also has 8 grams of fat (4 grams of saturated fat) plus 2 grams of fiber to fill you up.

Chobani and other brands of yogurt offer low-sugar and zero-sugar products, but it might be best to push these aside as well. According to a 2021 review in Frontiers in Nutrition, artificial sweeteners might be harmful to the bacteria in your gut. The World Health Organization said that long-term use of artificial sweeteners can put you at risk for cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Don't give up yogurt altogether. Stonyfield's plain, low-fat yogurt has just 1.5 grams of fat with no added sugar in a 170-gram serving. You'll still get plenty of gut-healthy probiotics, 260 milligrams of calcium, and 7 grams of protein. To add flavor, pop ½ cup of berries in the microwave for about 30 seconds and mix it into your yogurt.