Comparing Probiotics Pills To Kefir And Yogurt
Here are some numbers I want to show you.
A man made probiotic supplement in pill form has around 15 billion bacteria. Wow, that is a lot but if you look at yogurt….
Around 500 mL of fresh yogurt has around 1.5 trillion beneficial organisms…that’s like a 100 times more!
Now how about Kefir from Kefir Grains?
At around 500 mL of refreshing Kefir, you get up to 5 trillion beneficial, friendly bacteria.
Bacteria in pill form are in a dormant cycle. The bacteria in both kefir and yogurt are alive and thriving, so they are much more fit to adapt to sudden changes in environment as they enter the body.
Now how can a probiotic pill win against that while being more expensive?
You get Kefir naturally and you can get Kefir grains for just a few bucks and they will last you a life time.
I urge you to check it out. You won’t be disappointed.
You state on this page, “Around 500 mL of fresh yogurt has around 1.5 trillion beneficial organisms…that’s like a 100 times more!”
Perhaps. However, researchers are finding that the bacteria in yogurt doesn’t colonize in the human body (kefir does) and have termed the bacteria in yogurt “transient bacteria”. There may be some benefit as yogurt moves through you, but there is little lasting benefit in eating yogurt. (There is some confusion created when researches use yogurt with no live bacteria or plan milk and manualy add the actual single bacterium they are testing and say subjects are given this “yogurt” and blah, blah, blah….)
The Dannon company has been saying yogurt products are “proven” to regulate digestion and boost immune systems, but, willing paid 45 million dollars to settle a law suit agaisnt them because that simply isn’t true.
Getting probiotics from kefir (and other home fermented foods) is brilliant but limits the varieties of bacteria a person would get. Taking high qualitiy, refridgerated probitics and even chosing various companies (with different named, tested strains in each) ensures we get as many of the neccessary healthful probiotics as possible.
One last note: probiotics offering 15 billion live bacteria are at the low end of the scale. The higher quality companies routinely offer 25-50 billion or more live bacteria per capsule – guaranteed and indepedantly tested – at the last “sale by” date, and, actually contain more than double that amount when fresh and properly shipped and stored.
You have a great website and I enjoy visiting here and using your suggestions. Please allow me to continue doing that by presenting fair, honest facts that don’t put into question all the other wonderful things you’ve shared with us. Thanks for the site!
Great article!! I make and drink goat’s milk kefir every day and feel like it’s one of my pillars of health. I want to share this with my children, but both are sensitive to dairy. Any suggestions?
Is a little kefir (Capsule form) better than no kefir at all?
Tamara, I have a huge sensitivity to dairy but goats milk should not cause a reaction, where cow’s milk will.