High Protein Option For People Living In USA

[Dr. B]

Anybody eating skyr these days??

I started it recently. I do think its superior to greek yogurt. This icelandic provisions brand its like a solid glob of yogurt, theres no water buildup on the top like other yogurts.
They apparently use traditional icelandic heirloom bacterial cultures. So it’s different bacteria than whats in greek and other yogurts. It seems less sour than greek yogurt.

The issues with this skyr and other skyrs in the market is there dont seem to be organic, grass fed, A2 options for skyr. I dont think the cows milk used for it is from iceland, if its american cows its likely A1 protein and non organic, corn or soy or wheat fed cows. Maybe A1 protein is more digestible in a yogurt or skyr or cheese form though.
Some of their flavors do use carob bean gum, but it is considered a safer gum.
Chobani often uses guar gum which is more inflammatory than most other gums.
Both skyr and greek yogurt products seem to use pectin. But i dont think thats as big an issue as any of the gums.
The Icelandic provisions brand doesnt seem to use any citric acid which is good. It is low fat so maybe that negates some of the effects of the cows not being grass fed.

I dont know if these skyr products sell well to begin with, and they are already fairly expensive due to the added fruits in them. I doubt we will see an actual all organic, 100% grass fed A2 skyr product. I have seen A2 organic grass fed greek yogurts before but they are plain, and also full fat. I think they have even more fat relative to protein than whole milk. So it becomes pointless bothering with those.


@Jennifer do you know of any good skyr or greek yogurt products that are A2 organic?

 

[AlphaCog]

Dried seafood is convenient and provide natural salt.

 

[Jennifer]

@Jennifer do you know of any good skyr or greek yogurt products that are A2 organic?

I know of local ones but unfortunately, not major brands, no. Greek from A2 milk is available to order through these farms in PA:

Shop Now - Buffalo Valley Pastures

bvpmarket.com

Shop Now - Dutch Meadows Farm

dutchmeadowsfarm.com

Plain Greek A2 Yogurt

Made with 100% A2 milk and live active cultures. Greek style yogurt is regular yogurt with whey drained off to a creamy consistency.

millersbiofarm.com

And Alexandre Family Farm, which I’ve purchased at Whole Foods before, makes an A2 yogurt that can be strained:

A2/A2 Organic Yogurt & Kefir

Certified regenerative A2/A2 organic yogurt and kefir from Alexandre Family Farm. Including 100% grass-fed full fat, lowfat, and vanilla yogurt, plain whole yogurt, and 100% grass-fed whole and lowfat kefir.

alexandrefamilyfarm.com

For skyr, I was only able to find these pastured products, no A2:

Organic Skyr Yogurt — Painterland Sisters

Our organic yogurt, rich in billions of probiotics, is the ONLY Skyr in the US made with organic whole milk from real family farms.

www.painterlandsisters.com

Norr Organic – Organic and fresh ingredients. Quite Simple.

nōrr organic is made from organic milk from grass fed cows. Crafted in America, high in protein, low in carbs and infused with curative Nordic botanicals.

norrorganic.com

Shumway Farms | Icelandic Skyr

Our skyr will have you re-thinking yogurt! This decadant, protein-rich treat is a product you will find hard to come by!

www.shumwayfarms.com

 

[Ainaga]

Hi all,

I currently reside in the US and have been constantly trying to come up with ways to eat a diet close to Peat's principles (especially high protein), while minimizing time and cost spent in getting it. While there is no substitute for home-made food, often I have so little free time available that I would prefer if I could just grab a ready product and not spend time preparing it. The main problem that I have with Ray's diet is that it is just not always easy for me to obtain 150g+ of protein in a form ready for ingestion or packaged in a way that can be taken to work. I still can't get used to the routine of drinking a galon of milk a day, as it is not very convenient to carry this every day to work as well as deflect questions from pesky coworkers.
I think Ray has said several times that yogurt is OK to eat as long as it is strained so that both the lactic acid and the acidic whey are removed from the final product. I think I have found jut such a product that is quite high in protein and it sold in my local CVS. Here is a link to their product line:
http://bmoreorganic.com/products/

As you can see from the labels, the product is organic, has no fat, just protein and "sugar" and only a handful of actual ingredients all of which are known to me. The products are made with Skyr, which is a type of Icelandic milk product representing a hybrid between yogurt and cottage cheese:
Skyr - Wikipedia
"...The skyr is then strained through fabric to remove the whey (mysa in Icelandic) and the milk solids retained."
In summary, Skyr is more like cottage cheese (b/c it has been processed with rennet and has had whey removed) with some yogurt bacteria added (not sure why the bacteria is even added as it doesn't seem to add anything). So, if the above Wikipedia statement is true then it looks like we have a candidate for high-protein Peat-approved type of food (Skyr) with some commercial offerings available in CVS.
Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with the company that makes the Skyr products, and in fact I do have some reservations about the product. I don't make any money from writing about their products or any other product for that matter. I don't mention the company name or product name on purpose so that Google does not pick up on this blog post and raise their rankings based on our discussions here.

I have bought the products from CVS and they are indeed a lot less sour than regular yogurt but I can still feel some acidity. I do feel fine when I drink that Skyr product, with the exception of a mild headache which clears up within 30min of ingesting the product. I am not sure if this is due to any lactic acid leftover or the yogurt bacteria inside. Ray wrote in one of his articles how yogurt bacteria gave him headaches and how the yogurt bacteria may be a cause of SLE (lupus). Since casein raises insulin 2-3 times more than meat protein does, my headache may be also due to a drop in blood sugar. The product only contains leftover sugar from the fermentation process and also some stevia, so it is essentially sugarless and does need to be taken with a lot of sugar.
I will continue to experiment with this product and see if I can get the headache to disappear. I hope it is b/c of low sugar since that would be very easy to remediate. Otherwise I will also try to somehow get rid of the bacteria in the product, which can be done either by taking small amounts of antibiotic or adding the antibiotic in the product itself. Yet another method would be to heat the product to 75 degrees Celsius for 30 seconds. In a regular yogurt the heating method would cause syneresis, but since Skyr is also a cheese the syneresis should not occur in this case.
So far I have been drinking 3-4 of these a day and eating very little other food so that I can isolate the effects of this product on any health paramaters. If nothing else, with 120g+ of protein from the Skyr products at least satiety is where it should be and I don't get random urges during the day to binge eat this or that kind of food.
I will keep everybody posted on how the experiment progresses.
Thoughts?

not meaning to offend any sensitivities, but weren't peat's last words “i ate too much protein”, or something to that effect.

since the stevia is an extract with an excipient, and not actual stevia leaf, might not that be problematic?

skyr is made by the addition of bacteria, either commercial bacteria or from a previous batch; but RENNET is also added, meaning curdling can be achieved without full bacterial development. cottage cheese does not use rennet, it uses an acid. so the acidity that normally curdles the milk naturally in many other cheeses -and which can come from native bacteria in the milk or added bacteria in the form of a concentrated natural or commercial (cheesemaking) culture transforming native milk sugar- in the case of cottage cheese instead comes from adding vinegar or lemon. traditionally you want to add enough acid to curdle the milk, while affecting the taste as little as possible. cottage cheese is generally much more acidic than ricotta, which is made from whey and is curdled by heat not the addition of rennet or acid. generally too cottage cheese is not cultured or fermented, although some commercial brands of cottage cheese use bacterial cultures. skyr is traditionally fermented, albeit slightly and quickly. less time, less acidity, curds are softer. curds from cottage cheese are strained inside a tightened cheese cloth, so it is pressed, although typically without added weight. skyr on the other hand is strained, not pressed, so whey does remain. the remaining whey, being sweet in nature, further makes the product less acidic. you could then -and i'm sure historically it has also been done this way in iceland- let it “age”, and this would make it more acidic; per batch, less lactose (more time) = more acid, until all the sugar has been had.
you can kill the bacteria with heat, but that's no longer gonna change the lactic acid content, unless lactic acid is degraded by heat. not the case, right? furthermore, it's the acid that tastes acidic, not the bacteria. pasteurized yogurt still tastes acidic. are you mostly worried about the lactic acid in the product, or about bacteria in the product you reckon will produce even more lactic acid in your stomach, or somehow increase endotoxin? what heat (pasteurization) can do is prevent skyr from fermenting longer and producing more lactic acid bacteria. since comercial fermented dairy products (whether pasteurized or not) are kept in refrigerators, little further fermentation if any occurs after storage.

i've always wondered what would happen if you left an unopened tub of yogurt at room temperature for one year, granted that it doesn't explode.

haidut: you can try to find (or you can easily make at home) cheese that is made with fat-free pasteurized milk and curdled with rennet. low fat, low acid, no bacteria, decent protein.

 

[Dr. B]

not meaning to offend any sensitivities, but weren't peat's last words “i ate too much protein”, or something to that effect.

since the stevia is an extract with an excipient, and not actual stevia leaf, might not that be problematic?

skyr is made by the addition of bacteria, either commercial bacteria or from a previous batch; but RENNET is also added, meaning curdling can be achieved without full bacterial development. cottage cheese does not use rennet, it uses an acid. so the acidity that normally curdles the milk naturally in many other cheeses -and which can come from native bacteria in the milk or added bacteria in the form of a concentrated natural or commercial (cheesemaking) culture transforming native milk sugar- in the case of cottage cheese comes from adding vinegar or lemon. traditionally you want to add enough acid to curdle the milk, while affecting the taste as little as possible. cottage cheese is generally much more acidic than ricotta, which is made from whey and is curdled by heat not the addition of rennet or acid. generally too cottage cheese is not cultured or fermented, although some commercial brands of cottage cheese use bacterial cultures. skyr is traditionally fermented, albeit slightly and quickly. less time, less acidity, curds are softer. curds from cottage cheese are strained inside a tightened cheese cloth, so it is pressed, although typically without added weight. skyr on the other hand is strained, not pressed, so whey does remain. the remaining whey, being sweet in nature, further makes the product less acidic. you could then -and i'm a sure historically it has also been done this way in iceland- let it “age”, and this would make it more acidic.
you can kill the bacteria with heat, but that's not gonna change the lactic acid content, unless lactic acid is degraded by heat. not the case, right? furthermore, it's the acid that tastes acidic, not the bacteria. pasteurized yogurt still tastes acidic. are you mostly worried about the lactic acid in the product, or about bacteria in the product you reckon will produce even more lactic acid in your stomach, or somehow increase endotoxin? what heat (pasteurization) can do is prevent skyr from fermenting longer and producing more lactic acid bacteria. since comercial fermented dairy products are kept in refrigerators, little further fermentation if any occurs after storage.

i've always wondered what would happen if you left an unopened tub of yogurt at room temperature for one year, granted that it doesn't explode.

you can try to find (or you can easily make at home) cheese that is made with fat-free pasteurized milk and curdled with rennet. low fat, low acid, no bacteria, with decent protein.

Is all skyr using rennet? Because the icelandic provisions brand and siggis brand, commonly found in the US, don’t mention rennet in the ingredients.

I actually dont want to have any rennet containing products. Rennet is usually from bad sources, and I specifically narrowed down my options to skyr or greek yogurt (instead of cheeses), because they dont list rennet in the ingredients. If skyr secretly contains rennet somehow, that’s concerning.

I believe mascarpone cheese, ricotta cheese, and rarely mozzarella cheese, dont contain rennet and instead use just vinegar. But the problem with those is they are high in fat. Ricotta is like 1:1 fat to protein. Mascarpone I think is like the equivalent of heavy cream or half and half. I think it has like triple the fat compared to protein. Also those cheeses are whey based, which some say is worse than casein due to higher tryptophan.

Also the skyr i have seen has no water, its like a solid glob of creme. Greek yogurts have that runny texture to them and the water that builds up on the top. But skyr has no water. You can flip the container upside down and no liquid comes out. The low fat skyr also seems to taste better than low fat greek yogurt.

 

[Ainaga]

Is all skyr using rennet? Because the icelandic provisions brand and siggis brand, commonly found in the US, don’t mention rennet in the ingredients.

I actually dont want to have any rennet containing products. Rennet is usually from bad sources, and I specifically narrowed down my options to skyr or greek yogurt (instead of cheeses), because they dont list rennet in the ingredients. If skyr secretly contains rennet somehow, that’s concerning.

I believe mascarpone cheese, ricotta cheese, and rarely mozzarella cheese, dont contain rennet and instead use just vinegar. But the problem with those is they are high in fat. Ricotta is like 1:1 fat to protein. Mascarpone I think is like the equivalent of heavy cream or half and half. I think it has like triple the fat compared to protein. Also those cheeses are whey based, which some say is worse than casein due to higher tryptophan.

Also the skyr i have seen has no water, its like a solid glob of creme. Greek yogurts have that runny texture to them and the water that builds up on the top. But skyr has no water. You can flip the container upside down and no liquid comes out. The low fat skyr also seems to taste better than low fat greek yogurt.

yougurt is not strained, skyr is.

i do believe commercial skyr IS made with rennet, but i could be wrong. meaning some comercial skyrs could be free of rennet. i do know for a fact that traditionally rennet (whether animal or plant sourced) was used.

short fermentation time also ensures low acidity. low acidity also means soft curds.

mozzarella and whey use heat, not acid. mascarpone uses acid and straining plus light pressing to remove excess liquid from cream, turning cream into a paste.

ricotta: the word literally means “recooked”. it means you take left over whey from making other cheese and recook it at high heat until curds start to magically appear from the liquid whey. you get very little cheese like this, which is why ricotta is so valuable, and often expensive. if your ricotta lists cream as one of the ingredients -and most commercial brands now do- then it is not traditionally prepared ricotta. cream is added as a filler, because its creaminess and sweetness resemble that of ricotta. comercial ricotta is therefore higher in fat than traditional ricotta -made only from whey- is. liquid whey, what you strain out when you make cheese, has little fat. most of that fat remains in the curds of the cheese you just made and pressed. additionally, many comercial ricottas now use gums. in italy you might find good comercial ricotta. anywhere else, doubtful. for example look at the ingredients in organic valleys's ricotta: Organic Whole Milk, Organic Skim Milk, Organic Vinegar, Salt. this is completely wrong. the fat (cream) can only come from the whole milk, listed as the first ingredient, which goes to show there's quite a bit of cream (that shouldn't be) in there.

if anything, comercial ricotta resembles more a mixture of mascarpone (cream + acid) and ricotta (whey + heat).

yogurt is not strained, hence the liquid, akin to whey, except that the lactose in the whey has now been transformed into acid.

buttermilk: the leftover liquid (containing both whey and casein) that remains when you inoculate cream to make butter. that is, not churned butter, which is made by purely mechanical means.

 

[Dr. B]

yougurt is not strained, skyr is.

i do believe commercial skyr IS made with rennet, but i could be wrong. meaning some comercial skyrs could be free of rennet. i do know for a fact that traditionally rennet (whether animal or plant sourced) was used.

short fermentation time also ensures low acidity. low acidity also means soft curds.

mozzarella and whey use heat, not acid. mascarpone uses acid and straining plus light pressing to remove excess liquid from cream, turning cream into a paste.

ricotta: the word literally means “recooked”. it means you take left over whey from making other cheese and recook it at high heat until curds start to magically appear from the liquid whey. you get very little cheese like this, which is why ricotta is so valuable, and often expensive. if your ricotta lists cream as one of the ingredients -and most commercial brands now do- then it is not traditionally prepared ricotta. cream is added as a filler, because its creaminess and sweetness resemble that of ricotta. comercial ricotta is therefore higher in fat than traditional ricotta -made only from whey- is. liquid whey, what you strain out when you make cheese, has little fat. most of that fat remains in the curds of the cheese you just made and pressed. additionally, many comercial ricottas now use gums. in italy you might find good comercial ricotta. anywhere else, doubtful. for example look at the ingredients in organic valleys's ricotta: Organic Whole Milk, Organic Skim Milk, Organic Vinegar, Salt. this is completely wrong. the fat (cream) can only come from the whole milk, listed as the first ingredient, which goes to show there's quite a bit of cream (that shouldn't be) in there.

if anything, comercial ricotta resembles more a mixture of mascarpone (cream + acid) and ricotta (whey + heat).

yogurt is not strained, hence the liquid, akin to whey, except that the lactose in the whey has now been transformed into acid.

buttermilk: the leftover liquid (containing both whey and casein) that remains when you inoculate cream to make butter. that is, not churned butter, which is made by purely mechanical means.

Thanks for the additional info. Why do you say orgsnic valleys ingredients list is wrong if they list whole milk first? Are you saying they add cream but dont list it?

How is cold processed whey made? So whey wont have any rennet? I thought whey is separated using rennet which separates the whey from casein?

So is ricotta cheese the highest quality dairy product even more so than skyr and greeo yogurt? It seems some greek yogurts are strained perhaps? The fage brand compared to others seems more creamy?

 

[Ainaga]

Thanks for the additional info. Why do you say orgsnic valleys ingredients list is wrong if they list whole milk first? Are you saying they add cream but dont list it?

How is cold processed whey made? So whey wont have any rennet? I thought whey is separated using rennet which separates the whey from casein?

So is ricotta cheese the highest quality dairy product even more so than skyr and greeo yogurt? It seems some greek yogurts are strained perhaps? The fage brand compared to others seems more creamy?

because if they list whole milk first, it means -because they're also listing skim milk- that they're using cream, because whey can be obtained from whole and skim milk. that's the first wrong. so yes, i suspect they're using the whole milk for the cream, and not listing cream. the second wrong is, as mentioned above, ricotta is not curdled with acid, it's curdled with heat. so the cream is also there to add compensatory sweetness, that is to balance the acid added, as ricotta should have 0 acidity.

yes you can make cold process whey. you take milk and you let it curdle of itself. that's how butter, or something more akin to ghee is made traditionally in certain parts of china such as the north of yunnan, tibet, and inner mongolia. but that whey, being that it's cold processed, and therefore that you need a longer time than normal to make, will be much more acidic than the sweet whey that is obtained almost instantaneously in the european tradition. this “chinese” whey is a mixture that contains both buttermilk and whey liquid -a whey liquid that is now no longer sweet by the end, due to the extended action of bacteria on the lactose containing whey. also, the “cake” that remains at the bottom of the buckets these ghee-making chinese save after this whole process is essentially cheese, which is then pressed densely, sold cheaply, and is extremely sour like no other cheese you've ever tasted before. again, because the bacteria have had a chance to exhaust all the sugar in the milk, something that never happens with european cheese.

i wouldn't say ricotta is the highest quality dairy product, it's just the most scarce. because it takes a lot of liquid whey to make just a little ricotta. that's another reason they add acid, because acid aids coagulation, helps the heat achieve that, obtains more curds. in india and in china the highest quality dairy product is ghee. the process i described above to make ghee in china is done really only for the ghee that floats at the top of the bucket after a week's worth of slow separation; everything else -the sour cheese, and the liquid remaining- are byproducts that are either fed to animals or, in the case of the cheese only, had with only limited enjoyment.

creaminess in yogurt can also be achieved by vigorous mixing (which you can do at home), and in the worse case by this and the subsequent addition of a stabilizing gum.

 

[CaptJim]

Buy your A2 Greek yogurt. Empty contents into a cheese cloth bag.
Fill yogurt container with water. place on top of cheesecloth bag for an hour or three.

When its strained enough dump water, put strained yogurt into container. Put in fridge.
Homemade A2 Skyre.
Put salt in it and make a creamy yogurt cheese if you like.
Wash cheesecloth.