I don't know about you, but I like eating stuff. Over my next few posts I'll share a few food discoveries I made recently with the common lesson of paying attention to what you eat.

So I had to buy some yogurt for an Indian sauce base I was making a few nights ago. No Frills had individual yogurt servings ranging from $0.50 to $1.23 organic Liberte brand so naturally I opted with the Liberte to see what all the fuss was about. Well, the yogurt tasted really creamy in my Tandoori Chicken sauce but I couldn't help but notice this hot fact on the container:

"With Active Acidophilus, Bifidus and L. casei Cultures"

That was it. Honestly, how many consumers actually knows what those things are? Upon internet research it was clear in no time they were active bacteria cultures which, as Wikipedia put it, "intended to assist the body's naturally occurring gut flora to reestablish themselves".

Naturally, the addition of probiotics couldn't make it to the shelves without some science to back it up, or at least one would hope. I immediately pounced on the Criticisms Wikipedia section and was quick to note that it was questionable if these cultures actually make it to the gut in the first place. Science says yes.

Kind of disappointed that there weren't very many criticisms I retired to the boring health benefits section. Reppin' Canada, I'd recommend you check out Dr. Gregor Reid's lab at St. Joseph's Health Center in London, Ontario, otherwise known as the Canadian R&D Centre for Probiotics. They even have a sweet video [40 megs].

So, I got information overload upon discovering a wealth of microbiology papers over my head at Reid's site and decided to call it quits. I even accidentally learned that Acidophilus is also naturally present in vaginas. I'm still not sure why that wasn't listed on the packaging. (Why didn't I go into advertising?)

Actually, advertising is one of the problems with the growing number of yogurts marketed as "Awesomely Probiotic, Dude!". None of them actually state how many bacterias you get per delicious serving size.

CBC Marketplace got together with Dr. Reid and actually tested bacteria levels in yogurts back in 2003.

Scientists say there should be one million to one billion active cultures per gram to be probiotic.

Astro BioBest started with the most - 794 million live bacterial cultures per gram. But near the end of shelf life, almost two-thirds had died. That's still in the ballpark.

Organic Meadow and Danone stayed above the million mark on each test.

"They claim to have active cultures, in which case their claims are correct," Reid noted.

Liberty fared the worst on our test, starting off low at just 118,000 live bacterial cultures per gram — and dropping to just 4,000 after two weeks.

Reid believes there's not much probiotic benefit in that.

Damn Liberty ripped me off on the bacteria count! Now if only I could explain to the grocery store clerk why I want a refund...