Yogurt as a Substitute for Butter and Sour Cream?

As you know, La Jolla Mom is hosting a Stonyfield YoBaby Meals giveaway.  Because I’ve been a loyal patron of Stonyfield for years and, therefore, am excited about all the new things I’ve recently learned on the Stonyfield website, I thought I’d share a few here.

I must add the disclaimer that I absolutely love butter and sour cream. Period.

Stonyfield has a recipe section on their site.  A recipe for fish tacos caught my eye because Stonyfield is an east coast company and fish tacos, as I know them, are a very Southern California “thing”.  But then I saw yogurt in substitution for the usually sour cream based sauce and my radar went up.  Is substituting yogurt better for you? Off I went to Google.

If you compare whole milk yogurt to regular sour cream, yogurt has less calories, fat and more importantly cholesterol. There’s more calcium in yogurt than sour cream, and the probiotics aid your digestive system, build immunity, etc.  There are obviously low and nonfat versions of both yogurt and sour cream. Experts say that yogurt IS the healthier choice but none that I saw recommend using whole milk yogurt regularly.  I don’t think these days you need to because low and non fat yogurt is so good!

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I don’t buy whole milk yogurt for myself, but go with low or non fat so I cook with whatever I’ve got in the fridge.  This, so far, seems to work ok.  The one thing we almost always use yogurt in is waffles and pancakes now instead of buttermilk.  I don’t feel like I’m sacrificing taste at all.  I didn’t care that the fish taco sauce was yogurt because there were so many herbs in it you couldn’t tell.  I used non fat yogurt for that even. 

Stonyfield has a yogurt substitution chart on their site.   I know I’m not eating enough calcium rich foods so I’m going to make a conscious effort to sneak yogurt into my recipes where I can. My problem is remembering to substitute.  Here is the chart.

Hope this info helps you to feel healthier!

Tagged as: Food, Organic, Recipes