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Food for fitness: Great Greek yogurt instead of sour cream

posted by ChickSpeak
Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 5:27pm CST

Spicy Mexican cuisine, a plethora of dips, and the classic baked potato all seem to taste better crowned with a dollop of sterling white sour cream.

With its generally mild flavor and consistently rich, thick texture, sour cream is made when pasteurized light cream is introduced to certain bacteria cultures.

Despite its tastiness and compatibility with many savory dishes, regular sour cream has 60 calories in a serving size of 2tbsp, 50 of those calories from fat. It also has 6 grams of fat, 3.5 grams of saturated fat, and 20mg of cholesterol according to the Cass-Clay Sour Cream Nutritional Chart.

The same chart shows that fat-free sour cream has 25 calories in a 2tbsp serving, no grams of fat, and less than 5mg of cholesterol. However, in that small serving there is 85mg of sodium which is a necessary mineral, however, a diet that is high in sodium can contribute to high blood pressure.

I have always enjoyed adding sour cream to certain dishes, but as I noted in my last article, my fiancé and I have been trying to improve our diets. By this we have been looking for ways to add more foods that are low in saturated fats, sugars, and high in fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

One day as I was out doing my beloved grocery shopping, I stumbled across this delightful treat. Chobani yogurt can be found in virtually any grocery store all over the nation. The words “non-fat” caught my eye, as I was browsing over the variety of yogurts offered at my local grocery store.

So I picked up a container of the plain yogurt, flipped it to the back as I always do with any foods I buy, and continued to read. One serving size is 6 ounces with 100 calories, 18 grams of protein, and only 7 carbohydrates. Oh yeah and did I mention has no fat?

I put it in my cart and checked out. That night I had decided to make baked potatoes for dinner. One large baked potato has roughly 278 calories, 63 carbohydrates, 0.4 grams of fat, 30mg of sodium, and about 7.5 grams of protein.

I wanted to try out my new non-fat yogurt on my plain baked potato just to see how it tastes. I was surprised at how tasty it was. It has a similar flavor to sour cream, but using a 2tbsp serving that has less than 20 calories it still has less calories than the fat-free sour cream which has 25 calories in a 2tbsp serving.

Chobani yogurt also offers other tantalizing flavors that can be eaten plain or used to make smoothies. Chobani yogurts are all natural, probiotic, gluten free, kosher certified, safe for people with nut, corn, and soy allergies among other things, and contain no fat, cholesterol, and no synthetically grown hormones.

So the next time you are considering a recipe that calls for sour cream, consider using this flavorful Greek yogurt instead.

Fatima Meadows attends Appalachian State University. Her favorite room in her home is her kitchen, and she enjoys creating divine dishes from scratch by trying new ingredients.

Photo from here.