Tue, May-07-19, 07:30
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Senior Member
Posts: 1,901
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Plan: Atkins-ish (hypoglycemia)
Stats: 000/000/000
BF:
Progress: 50%
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by CityGirl8
Well, 1/2 cup of fruit has about 17g of carbs (of which 15g is sugar) and 1/2 cup of plain low-fat yoghurt (the type usually recommended in these schemes) has 8g of carbs, all sugar. So, that's a total of 25g of carbs. By comparison, 1 cup of Dreyer's (aka Edy's) vanilla ice cream has 30g of carbs (28g is sugar). Strawberry is 32g (28g sugar). None of these items have any fiber to net out. So, you're saving about 5 g of carbs. (Though, I should note that if you eat ice cream like Ben & Jerry's or Haagen Daz, or a gelato-style ice cream the numbers are a lot higher because there's less air mixed in--so the ice cream is more dense.)
Usually, "a serving" of ice cream is officially only 1/2 cup, but I wanted to compare the same amounts and also an amount that people might realistically eat.
It's not the yoghurt in this scenario that's the huge problem. Also, the type of yogurt most of us would eat--whole milk--has even fewer carbs with about 5g in 1/2 cup.
These programs recommend the yogurt-fruit replacement, because it's low fat, not because you're giving kids a lot less sugar.
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Yes, I'm sure they feel confident that recommending plain yogurt and fruit will mean the kids will be fed LF or fat free yogurt because it can be downright difficult (impossible in some stores) to find full fat yogurt.
The real difference I see is that if you buy a container of fruited yogurt, the whole container is a little less than 1/2 cup, and the total carbs is still going to be in the 20-25 carb range, because of all the added sugar. Assuming the parents don't combine standard serving sizes of plain yogurt and fruit (ending up with a total of a full cup of fruit and yogurt), and instead stick to the total serving of about 1/2 cup for the total of the combination, it'll still be a far sight lower in carbs than what most kids are being fed today, because there's sooo much added sugar in most everything these days.
Having said that, I think the main purpose they're trying to accomplish is to lessen the expectation that every single meal or treat needs to be sugary sweet - plain yogurt (of any fat level) will still be tart, even with some unsweetened fruit added to it. If the child eats yogurt that way from the time they're eating yogurt and fruit, and then tries a cup of commercially fruited yogurt, they're going to find the sweetened stuff to be inedibly sweet.
As far as the allowance of ice cream twice a week - of course that's not any better than providing potatoes and pasta at every meal. Obviously if the only carb reduction is switching from sweetened yogurt to a combined similar sized serving of plain yogurt and fruit, it's not going to result in what we'd ever consider to be a LC diet, but I still see it as a step (albeit a very small step) along the way to a better diet than a lot of kids are being fed these days. The wheels of progress turn slowly, very slowly, especially when it comes to changing recommendations about diet.
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