The Healthy Benefits of Dairy Products
Calcium
It’s difficult to believe that an adult’s body contains 1kg of calcium. The skeleton contains 99% of the body’s calcium. Bones are composed of a framework of proteins on which are fixed calcium crystals, and this is what makes up their strength. A bone is a living organ that collects calcium everyday in order to build up new cells. A bone is a calcium bank from which the body draws to ensure the stability of its calcium rate. When lacking a daily intake of calcium, the body draws its calcium needs from the skeleton, thus leading to bone weakness. That’s why the daily consumption of dairy products, physical activity and being exposed to the sunlight (for vitamin D) are so essential and important to build up and maintain our bone structure.
Dairy proteins
Of excellent nutritional value, they are rich in essential amino acids. Half a litre of milk provides 16g of Protein, as much as a small steak or 2 eggs! Proteins form part of the basic building elements of the body. They are also valuable for elderly people who often suffer from malnutrition and can’t eat meat. Milk is a source of protein that’s within everyone’s reach.
Lactose
Milk’ s only carbohydrate (sugar), the lactose has nutritional attributes that increase calcium’s intestinal absorption. It has a low glycemic index (20 to 40) and is barely cariogenic. Without lactose, there would be no cheese, nor curdled milk, nor yogurt. Lactose is the energy-giving substrate of lactic ferments that assimilates them and transforms them into lactic acid.
Lactic ferments
Living micro organisms that transform the milk into yogurt. A yogurt is a living product.
Qualifying as a yogurt
A yogurt is a fermented milk, and to qualify for the «yogurt» trade mark, 2 specific lactic ferments must be present (Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus).
These bacilli must be alive, at a rate of 10 millions per gram of yogurt until the use-by date. It’s the presence of living ferments that gives the yogurt its specificity, such as being more easily digestible than milk, as well as to contribute to the intestinal flora‘s equilibrium.
These specific bacilli of the yogurt are probiotics. They are known as probiotics as they exert beneficial effects on regular consumers, and contribute, for example, to restore one’s intestinal equilibrium.
DEFINITION OF PROBIOTIC
Probiotics are living micro organisms (bacterium or yeast) that, when added in adequate quantity to some food products, such as yogurts , exert a beneficial effect on the recipient’s health.
