Thanks for your wonderful comment and for your question. I certainly don’t want to push you to add dairy back into your diet; there are other good ways to take in living foods–sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables, for example. So you don’t need yogurt. But I can tell you this. The link between diet and cholesterol is a questionable one that many have rethought. We all need cholesterol; it is required by our cells and tissues. And the less we eat, the more our bodies make. Further, since you are a woman I will add that there appears to be no correlation between cholesterol and heart disease in women. In fact, according to Uffe Ravnskov, a Swedish researcher, it is more serious for women to have low cholesterol than high cholesterol. Dr. Bernard Forette and a team of French researchers found that old women with very high cholesterol live the longest. The death rate was more than five time higher for women who had very low cholesterol. As for the issue of allergies and intolerances, there are many people who seem to have difficulty with dairy. But I always wonder what dairy they have trouble with–in other words, how pure is the product? The fermentation of milk does break down much of the lactose. And enzymes break down the lactose that’s left. So yogurt is much easier to digest than is ordinary milk. Also, I have been told that if you ferment milk for a full 24 hours, there is no lactose left in the resulting yogurt. If you try this approach, you can hold the milk at 85 degrees instead of 110 degrees. If you decide you want to work yogurt back into your diet, I can tell you that the beauty of making it yourself is the beauty of quality. You can start with the best quality milk available to you. You can ferment it for as long as you like. And you have the freedom to leave out sugar and additives, so you have a very pure product. It also tastes like nothing you can buy; not even the finest store bought yogurt rivals what you can make yourself. So you can always try making one batch and see how you feel after eating it. You can also limit your intake, and have it only every so often if cholesterol remains a worry.

I have to admit I’m a little apprehensive to add yogurt back into my diet. It was a food I ate almost every day and when I found out my cholesterol was high, it was one of the foods I deleted from my diet. I decided to stop eating the 3 foods I ate every day and those were cheese, yogurt and white rice. I also added in lots of healthy foods and started juicing. My cholesterol dropped 39 points in 4 1/2 months, and I have to be honest, I’m not sure what made the difference, but I am feeling pretty darn good too.

Now I’m not saying that the yogurt is was what was elevating my cholesterol, it’s was just one of the foods I ate so much that I decided to try not eating it. I used to eat mainly the greek yogurts, plain.

I do miss it occasionally and would love to add it back it. I hear from many people that yogurt (and dairy in general) is one of the higher food allergens for people, but the way you make homemade yogurt, do you think this will make a difference in the way it reacts to people, the ones who may be dairy sensitive?

Would love to hear your thoughts about it as I would love to add yogurt back in to my diet (your homemade yogurt, that is .

Thanks,
Gina