Monday Wellness Reflection

I thought having a Monday wellness about probiotics would be something interesting and new for the class students because we would have them taste homemade yogurt. I was inspired to do this idea because ever since I was young my mom used to make homemade yogurt and I found it really interesting how milk could become a solid from a liquid just by heating it. The process of heating the milk is necessary to change the protein structure in milk so it sets as a solid instead of separating. This process of heating and then gives the chance for the milk to ferment and by adding a live culture, from a previous yogurt sample, the milk will transform into yogurt, The yogurt now has new properties that include taste, texture, and scientific benefits.  I also find it fascinating that my family has been using the same ongoing culture for decades, from great-grandparents to me. We got it from India in 1998, when I was born, and that's when the India culture mixed with American milk. Because of this I feel like the culture has brought this kind of unity among my extended family, who also use the same culture. By using a small spoonful of the previous batch of yogurt and mixing it into the heated milk before it solidifies you are preserving the culture, a piece of your past.
While I was researching the probiotics, the most interesting thing I found was the some of the indirect benefits of it. I hadn't known yogurt could help in allergies and asthma. I found it cool and ironic that yogurt helps with lactose intolerance and then I found out that it helps build immunity to lactose if taken in small doses.  Learning about the benefits of yogurt is really beneficial for our class in terms of health and wellness because most students don't acknowledge probiotics as part their diet, when it is really essential to keep your digestive and excretory systems clean and healthy. A lot of students also eat junk foods, like fatty foods or preservatives, and yogurt can help cleanse all the toxins from the stomach from the bad ones. The "good" bacteria will help fight off the "bad" bacteria. I also found it interesting that most store bought yogurts do not in fact contain the active cultures homemade yogurts and even if they do they contain so many preservatives and artificial colors and sugars that it kills culture thus negating its benefits.
On the scale of 1-10, I would rate myself a 7 because our presentation did not go as I hoped. I hadn't known how hard it would be to make yogurt in class; it a difficult process that requires a lot of home utensils and things that a laboratory class does not have. Plus the making of yogurt is not specially an interactive one, a lot of it is just waiting around. It was hard to come up with other ideas for in class discussion and activities relating to probiotics. I fell like as presenters we ran out of ideas to engage the audience, but I genuinely was interested about the topic.
Through my research I also figured out that there are other types of probiotics like sauerkraut, miso soup, and even some cheeses that provide the same benefits as yogurt. I wish to try them in the future and be aware of its benefits.