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Boston Globe
3 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
With so many kinds of yogurt available, how do you choose?
Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up In the United States, dairy yogurt is made primarily from cow's milk, and from any type and combination of whole, low fat, or nonfat milk, cream, and dry milk powder. In many European and Middle Eastern countries, sheep's milk and goat's milk yogurts are also available. Advertisement To make yogurt, milk is heated, then cooled to a warm temperature so bacterial cultures, specifically Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus , can be introduced. The cultured milk is left to sit for several hours in a warm environment, which causes fermentation to take place. The resulting lactic acid sours and thickens the milk and gives yogurt its tangy taste. (Look for recipes online and in cookbooks to make your own dairy and plant milk yogurts.) Advertisement Dairy yogurt is a nutrient-rich food, a good source of naturally occurring protein, calcium, phosphorus, riboflavin, and vitamin B12. Many brands contain added vitamin D. The beneficial bacteria used to ferment milk, as well as any other added strains, are a potential source of probiotics, which have been associated with improved digestive health. The most healthful plant-based yogurts have been fortified with desirable nutrients that the specific plant milks lack. Strawberry yogurt parfaits. Sally Pasley Vargas 'The main reasons why people eat yogurt are the protein, calcium, and live cultures,' says Nancy Oliveira, a registered dietitian and manager of the Nutrition and Wellness Service at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Classic plain yogurt has about 10 grams of protein and 20 percent of the daily value of calcium per serving, says Oliveira. Greek-style yogurt is strained of its liquid whey, which concentrates the protein but removes some calcium; one serving can have as much as 20 grams of protein and 10 percent to 30 percent daily value of calcium. Oliveira says many people All dairy yogurts and most nondairy yogurts are made with live active cultures for fermentation. The Food and Drug Administration's most recent ruling on yogurt labeling is the following: a yogurt product can be (voluntarily) labeled with the phrase 'contains live and active cultures' if the product contains a minimum of 10 million colony forming units per gram at the time of manufacture, with a reasonable expectation of 1 million CFU/g throughout the manufacturer's assigned shelf life of the product. Advertisement It is not guaranteed cultures will be active at the time you consume the yogurt nor in adequate quantities. While there is some evidence that probiotics, like those found in yogurt, can help improve the symptoms of some digestive problems, Oliveira says there are still questions as to how much survive our stomach acids to get into our intestines." She says she wouldn't recommend people eat yogurt just for the cultures. If 'variety is the spice of life,' today's yogurt options will certainly keep breakfasts interesting. You'll find yogurts made from cow, sheep, and goat milk; whole, low-fat, nonfat, lactose-free, and grass-fed cow's milk; and nut, seed, soy, oat, and coconut milk. There are Greek, Icelandic, French, Turkish, Middle Eastern, and Indian styles. Many brand names sound exotic — Noosa, Chobani, Siggi's, Icelandic Provisions, Fage, Oui, Ellenos, and Wallaby — but are made here in the United States. Want a local brand without a catchy name? Try the quality yogurts from Stonyfield Farm of Londonderry, N.H., and Sidehill Farm in Hawley. Homemade yogurt strawberry yogurt parfaits. Michele McDonald for The Boston Yogurt flavors run the gamut from plain (without added flavors or sweeteners), vanilla, coffee, lemon, and berry to the more unusual passion fruit, cloudberry, Key lime, and even Boston cream pie. Containers range from single-serving (about 5.3 ounces) to 2 pounds (32 ounces). You'll find French styles in glass jars. Textures vary widely, from thick Greek- and Icelandic-styles to drinkable yogurt. Labneh, with a texture between strained yogurt and cream cheese, is a staple in Middle Eastern countries, mostly used for dips and spreads. For plant-based yogurts to have a thick and creamy consistency like their dairy counterparts, most contain thickeners and stabilizers, such as starches, gums, and pectin. According to Oliveira, most of these additives have been used for years and are deemed safe, although people with digestive issues might be sensitive to them. Advertisement So what's a yogurt eater to choose? Your first decision is dairy or plant. The reasons for choosing one over the other include allergies, dietary needs and preferences, taste, cost, and environmental concerns. Second, decide what nutrients you're looking to get from 'Consumers should look for properties of yogurt that are important to them, such as protein, calcium, and vitamin D,' says Oliveira. For the industry as a whole, she says, 'Manufacturers are trying to replicate the nutritional profile of what's in old-fashioned dairy yogurt.' Another important consideration is your personal health or dietary issues. Oliveira has patients who must limit saturated fat, others need to reduce carbs and added sugars. 'I would recommend a low or nonfat yogurt if someone needs to control their cholesterol.' But she adds, yogurts with low protein and/or low fat are less likely to keep people satisfied very long. Protein can vary from zero to 20 grams per serving. Non-dairy yogurts containing soy or pea protein have more protein than products made from oats, almonds, or coconut. If adding calcium to your diet is important, look for products with 15 percent or more daily value, DV, of calcium. Fat content is highest in whole milk dairy yogurts, coconut, and some nut-based varieties. All yogurts have carbohydrates from naturally occurring sugar (or starch) in milk, nuts, seeds, soy, fruit, and oats and from any added sugars. Oliveira advises patients to look for products with less than 7 grams of added sugars per serving. 'It's not excessive and very doable,' she says. Be wary of products labeled zero sugar; instead of cane sugar, these contain alternative sweeteners, usually stevia extract, which has an aftertaste you may or may not like. Advertisement Let's compare some nutrition profiles: a ¾-cup serving of Stonyfield plain lowfat yogurt has 90 calories, 1.5 grams of total fat, 10 grams of total carbs (zero added sugars), 7 grams of protein, and 20 percent of the DV of calcium. Cabot Greek plain reduced fat yogurt has 130 calories, 3.5 grams of fat, 8 grams of carbs (zero added sugars), and a high 16 grams of protein and 30 percent DV of calcium. The sweetened Dannon blueberry fruit on the bottom yogurt has 120 calories, 2 grams of fat, 19 grams of carbs (11 grams added sugars), only 5 grams of protein, and 15 percent DV of calcium. Plant-based yogurts generally have less protein, calcium, and vitamin D than dairy yogurts unless they're fortified. Most have low levels of fat, except for coconut yogurt, which also has minimal protein and calcium. For those reasons, Oliveira doesn't recommend coconut yogurt, the exception being Siggi's plant-based coconut blend, which has an intriguing combination of coconut milk, pea protein, sugar, coconut oil, macadamia nut butter, starches, and flavorings. A 5.3-ounce container has 190 calories, 11 grams of fat, 12 grams of carbs (8 grams added sugars), 10 grams of protein, and 4 percent DV of calcium. Silk Almondmilk peach yogurt has 180 calories, 11 grams of fat, 19 grams of carbs (13 grams added sugars), 5 grams of protein, and 10 percent DV of calcium. Most non-dairy yogurts are flavored and sweetened. Advertisement A bowl of yogurt with granola and fruit. CHRISTOPHER TESTANI/NYT If you're eating yogurt for a healthful breakfast, lunch, or snack, choose plain yogurt or one with low added sugars. Yes, the tangy, sour flavor is an acquired taste; it's no wonder food companies introduced all kinds of tempting sweetened flavors to appeal to more consumers. But you're better off sweetening plain yogurt to your taste, adding a drizzle of honey, maple syrup, or jam, and pairing it with fruit and/or a spoonful of granola or nuts. Sweetened yogurts, particularly those that come with sprinkles, cookie pieces, or fruit purees, end up being a high-calorie, high-carb dessert rather than a healthful meal. With the multitude of yogurts on store shelves and their vastly different nutritional profiles, Oliveira says, 'You've got to be a label reader. People should know what they're eating. That's really what matters if you're eating for health. And find one you like so you'll enjoy it as well.' Lisa Zwirn can be reached at . Lisa Zwirn can be reached at
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
By brewing with 100 percent quinoa, Meli is ‘giving beer a wellness makeover'
'That beer in Peru didn't have the typical characteristics that I associated with beer,' says Oster. 'The flavor was crisp and light, with none of the malty or bitter aftertaste that I had come to expect of beer. I also loved the health halo of a beer made from quinoa — it caught my attention and drew me in, when I normally wouldn't have been interested in drinking a beer. Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up 'The only issue was that the beer in Peru contained barley, and I was reducing gluten from my diet.' Advertisement Oster set out to brew a 100 percent quinoa beer. 'The first challenge we encountered at homebrew-scale was what type of quinoa to use. Quinoa exists in red, black, and white varieties, and quinoa grown in one part of the world has completely different nutritional features than quinoa from other parts of the world. So, identifying a quinoa that both tasted good and efficiently produced an alcoholic beverage was a challenge,' says Oster. Advertisement It took more than 20 test batches to brew a beer that satisfied those requirements. And then another challenge arose: because quinoa is such a small grain, adapting a recipe to fit commercial brewing equipment wasn't straightforward. It took nearly 100 formulations, according to Oster, to get it right. Brew Theory Brewery in Lowell currently brews Meli. The beer is gluten-free, has zero sugar, and contains the proteins and essential vitamins and minerals such as iron and B6 typically found in quinoa. A can of Meli even contains about 7 percent of your daily potassium. One noticeable aspect of the beer is that it tastes a little spicy, the result of using an herbaceous grain rather than the typical barley. Meli is light and crisp, like Oster says, and should make an interesting pairing with all kinds of food. Oster is 'committed to winning in our own backyard,' meaning Massachusetts. Meli beer is available at select restaurants including Uni, Catalyst, Alma Nove, and Shy Bird, as well as at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods. Gary Dzen can be reached at
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
The sweet (but not too sweet) story of how Mary Alisa's chocolate cake went from family favorite to famous
Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up More than 1,300 cakes later, Sherman is as happy making the chocolate confections as she was when the restaurant opened in the fall of 2021. 'I L-O-V-E it!' she says. 'I can be corny, but I feel like I'm living in a Christmas Hallmark movie. I love making people happy with it. Advertisement To maintain quality, Sherman makes each cake individually. The ingredients are: King Arthur flour, high-quality cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, Kosher salt, oil, whole milk, pricey Nielsen-Massey vanilla, and white eggs. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff 'The best time is in the restaurant — people don't know who I am — I will see someone eating it or sharing it, and they have smiles on their faces.' Before it made the menu, Sherman's cake was vetted by Cosmo Goss, The Winsor House's executive chef. It was never meant to be a permanent menu item. Advertisement 'I frankly thought it was a special thing we could do for the opening,' says Chris Sherman. 'My biggest fear was that people wouldn't like it. Then we started reading reviews and online comments where people said, 'You have to try the cake.' After four years, it's still a hit.' The cakes are prepared at The Winsor House kitchen well before the restaurant opens. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff Sherman is becoming known around this historic shipbuilding town as the 'Cake Lady.' 'My only claim to fame is I've made a few whole cakes for Steve Carrell,' she says. 'I've never met him, but he has a house on the South Shore and he orders around Christmas.' (Attempts to reach the A-List actor for his take on the cake were unsuccessful.) The cakes are prepared at The Winsor House kitchen well before the restaurant opens. Sherman makes at least 4 cakes every week — and up to 8, depending on demand. Summertime, when folks head to ICO's nearby outdoor raw bar for its famous oysters, often brings more customers to the restaurant. (The cake is not sold at the Island Creek Raw Bar in In the kitchen of The Winsor House restaurant, Mary Alisa Sherman bakes the layers of her chocolate cake. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff To maintain quality, Sherman makes each cake individually. The ingredients are: King Arthur flour, high-quality cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder, Kosher salt, oil, whole milk, pricey Nielsen-Massey vanilla, and white eggs. 'It's easier to find egg shells in batter with white eggs,' she says. (The cake also includes a secret ingredient that can't be divulged.) The frosting consists of sifted powdered sugar, cream cheese, Land O'Lakes unsalted butter, and the aforementioned vanilla. Sherman buys her own ingredients (stocking up at area grocery stores when items go on sale and relying on Amazon) and brings them in Tupperware containers to The Winsor House for mixing. Advertisement The cake layers are baked for one hour and 15 minutes. After cooling, Sherman assembles the cake and gives it a Cake pans cool in The Winsor House kitchen. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff Sherman's daughters are delighted at this new stage in their mom's life. 'I love how my mom can now share this piece of our childhood with her community,' says Elise Sherman. Adds Devon Daley, Elise's twin: 'It was a sacrifice for my mom to stay home with us. It was meaningful, but it's nice to see when people can pursue roles they're passionate about. Second lives can happen organically.' Sherman grew up in Connecticut, moving to Duxbury in the '80s. Her professional career included a stint at a software company and a graduate degree in education and certification to teach Spanish. She's an active volunteer Duxbury history guide for schoolchildren and local assisted-living residents. Mary Alisa Sherman frosts her chocolate cake. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff For 20 years, she was a South Shore representative for the Friendly Towns arm of The Fresh Air Fund, a nonprofit that paired underserved New York City children with families during the summer. (The fund this year began placing kids only in camps.) She and her 'crazy, supportive high school-sweetheart' husband, Chris senior, regularly hosted a child in their home. Advertisement Now it's Chris junior who's her boss and who signs Sherman's paycheck. He always includes a message in the memo spot: 'Hey Mom, Hope you're having fun!' Mary Alisa's Dank Chocolate Cake, $13 per slice, available at The Winsor House at Island Creek Oyster Farm, 390 Washington St., Duxbury, 781-934-0991. Peggy Hernandez can be reached at . Follow her on Instagram @peggy_hernandez Mary Alisa Sherman decorates her chocolate cake. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
The chef at Gift Horse in Providence wins a James Beard Award; Sullivan's Castle Island also honored
Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Elsewhere in New England, Wolf Tree in White River Junction, Vt., was a nominee for Outstanding Bar. The award went to Kumiko in Chicago. And Advertisement Harrison Oches, 5, of Wakefield enjoys fries on opening day at Sullivan's Castle Island on March 1 this year. John Tlumacki/Globe Staff Advertisement However, Sullivan's Castle Island in South Boston did win a previously announced In a release, the awards committee called Sullivan's a 'Boston institution that has served working-class Bostonians for generations,' adding, 'Every Bostonian has a story about Sully's — whether from working there after school as a teenager, having their sports team or fundraiser supported by Sully's, taking their children for some crinkle cuts like their grandparents took them, or simply enjoying it as a nostalgic seaside gathering place for locals.' Kara Baskin can be reached at
Boston Globe
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
This year's hot new tool for chefs? ChatGPT.
If all goes according to plan, he will keep prompting the program to refine one of Jill's recipes, along with those of eight other imaginary chefs, for a menu almost entirely composed by artificial intelligence. Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up 'I want it to do as much as possible, short of actually preparing it,' Achatz said. Advertisement As generative AI has grown more powerful and fluent over the past decade, many restaurants have adopted it for tracking inventory, scheduling shifts, and other operational tasks. Chefs have not been anywhere near as quick to ask the bots' help in dreaming up fresh ideas, even as visual artists, musicians, writers, and other creative types have been busily collaborating with the technology. That is slowly changing, though. Few have plunged headfirst into the pool in quite the way Achatz is doing with his menu for Next, but some of his peers are also dipping exploratory toes into the water, asking generative AI to suggest spices, come up with images showing how a redesigned space or new dish might look, or give them crash courses on the finer points of fermentation. Advertisement 'I'm still learning how to maximize it,' said Aaron Tekulve, who finds the technology helpful for keeping track of the brief seasonal windows of the foraged plants and wild seafood from the Pacific Northwest that he cooks with at Surrell, his restaurant in Seattle. 'There's one chef I know who uses it quite a bit, but for the most part I think my colleagues don't really use it as much as they should.' Goat sausage with butter beans and focaccia croutons at Houseman in Manhattan, May 29, 2025. Ned Baldwin, the restaurant's chef and owner, asked for ChatGPT's help in understanding the technical details of sausage-making. EMON HASSAN/NYT The pinball-arcade pace of a popular restaurant can make it hard for chefs to break with old habits. Others have objections that are philosophical or aesthetic. 'Cooking remains, at its core, a human experience,' chef Dominique Crenn wrote in an email. 'It's not something I believe can or should be replicated by a machine.' Crenn said she has no intention of inviting a computer to help her with the menus at Atelier Crenn in San Francisco. It is true that generative AI consumes vast amounts of electricity and water. Then there are the mistakes. According to OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT, 500 million people a week use the program. But it is still wildly prone to delivering factual errors in a cheerily confident tone. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft, the creators of ChatGPT and other AI programs, alleging they violated copyright law by training their chatbots with millions of Times articles. The two companies have denied that.) Advertisement None of the chefs I interviewed takes the chatbot's information at face value, and none will blindly follow any recipe it suggests. Then again, they don't trust most of the recipes they find in cookbooks or online, either. Cooks, like other humans, are forgetful, distracted, and hemmed in by their own experiences. AI has its shortcomings, but these aren't among them. Chefs who consult the big electronic brain when they're devising a new dish or dining room find it helpful for the same reason bands like working with producer Brian Eno: Some of its suggestions are so unexpected that it can jolt them out of a creative rut. 'You can get really hyper-specific ideas that are out of the box,' said Jenner Tomaska, a chef in Chicago. For the Alston, a steakhouse he opened last month, Tomaska wanted a variation on the Monégasque fried pastry known as barbajuan. ChatGPT's earliest suggestions were a little basic, but as he fed it more demanding prompts — for instance, a filling that would reflect Alain Ducasse's style, steakhouse traditions, and local produce — the fillings got more interesting. How about Midwestern crayfish, white miso, and fresh dill, with pickled celery root on the side? 'It's a little bizarre, because I like to talk through these things with people, and I'm doing it with something that doesn't exist, per se,' Tomaska said. But arming himself with ideas from his solitary talks with ChatGPT, he said, 'does help bring better conversation to the creative process when I do have someone in front of me.' Visual renderings from AI helped chef Dave Beran talk to the architect and designer of his latest restaurant, Seline, in Santa Monica, Calif. He wanted a vibe that drew something from the shadowy, dramatic interiors of Aska in Brooklyn and Frantzén in Stockholm, but held more warmth. He kept prompting Midjourney to get closer to the feeling he wanted, asking it, for example: What if we had a fireplace that I wanted to curl up beside? Advertisement 'That was the mood we were trying to capture,' Beran said. 'Not dark and moody, but magical and mysterious.' Midjourney's images looked like fantasy artwork, he thought. But the program acted as what he called 'a translator' between him and his designer, giving them a common language. At the moment, AI can't build a restaurant or cook a piece of Dover sole. Humans have to interpret and carry out its suggestions, which makes the dining rooms and dishes inspired by AI in restaurants less unsettling than AI-generated art, which can go straight from the printer to a gallery wall. True, some chefs may put a half-baked idea from ChatGPT on the menu, but plenty of chefs are already doing this with their own half-baked ideas. For now, AI in restaurants is still inspiration rather than the final product. Since Achatz's first serious experiments with ChatGPT, about a year ago, it has become his favorite kitchen tool, something he used to say about Google. Its answers to his questions about paleontology and Argentine cuisine helped him create a dish inspired by Patagonian fossils at his flagship restaurant, Alinea. Before opening his latest restaurant, Fire, in November, he consulted ChatGPT to learn about cooking fuels from around the world, including avocado pits and banana peels. It has given him countless ideas for the sets, costumes, and story lines of a theatrical dining event somewhat in the mode of 'Sleep No More' that he will present this summer in Beverly Hills, Calif. Advertisement Asked to evaluate how well Jill had integrated her training from Escoffier and Adrià in the dishes she proposed for Next, Achatz responded in an email. 'Jill knows or researched important chefs and their styles, which very few chefs under 40 process today,' he wrote. 'She is young, and while experienced, does not yet have the understanding of how to blend them seamlessly.' Years ago, he had similar blue-sky conversations at the end of the night with the talented cooks who worked with him at Alinea and Next, including Beran. He finds that batting ideas back and forth is 'not of interest' for some of his current sous-chefs. 'That dialogue is something that simply does not exist anymore and is the lifeblood of progress,' he said. ChatGPT, though, will stay up with him all night. This article originally appeared in .
