John Myers
Buttermilk is considered refreshing, healthy, and delicious. It has fewer calories than milk, is high in protein and low in fat. Find out here how the sour milk drink is made and everything you need to know about the nutritional values.
How Healthy Buttermilk Really Is
Buttermilk is considered a particularly healthy food due to certain properties. The milk drink acquires these properties through the manufacturing process. How to make buttermilk:
- In the process of making butter, which is derived from cream, milk liquid is left over. The remaining milk liquid is enriched with lactic acid bacteria and the sour-tasting buttermilk is produced.
- If already acidified cream is used for the production of sour cream butter, no lactic acid bacteria are subsequently added.
- A special feature of buttermilk is its low fat content, which contains a maximum of 1 percent. At the same time, the buttermilk contains all the valuable nutrients of milk despite its low fat content.
Healthy Nutritional Values of Buttermilk
How healthy foods like buttermilk are for our body also depends heavily on the nutritional values. These are very healthy, especially with buttermilk:
- Buttermilk is low in fat and has only half as many calories as whole milk: There are only about 35 kilocalories in 100 ml of buttermilk.
- Four grams of protein per 100 milliliters ensure a longer feeling of satiety. In addition, the high protein content also supports muscle building and maintenance.
- Buttermilk also contains healthy minerals like calcium and zinc. Calcium can stimulate metabolism by activating certain hormones and enzymes. The high zinc content contributes to improved regulation of insulin levels.
Health Benefits of Buttermilk
You can ideally integrate buttermilk into a balanced diet. There are quite a few health benefits for your body that can come from the nutritional values and ingredients in buttermilk.
- Mineral supplier: The body is supplied with important minerals such as calcium, potassium, magnesium and iron. Half a liter of the milk drink can already cover 75 percent of your daily requirement.
- Probiotic effect: Thanks to the lactic acid bacteria, buttermilk can have a positive effect on the bacteria in the intestine when consumed regularly. This probiotic effect on the intestinal flora can improve digestion.
- Protein supplier: The high protein content also supports muscle growth and maintenance. It also causes a longer-lasting feeling of satiety. This also prevents unexpected food cravings.
- Beauty kick: B vitamins and the high zinc content promote cell growth. Regular consumption of buttermilk ensures shinier hair and stronger nails. In addition, the protein fibers support collagen formation and can give your skin more firmness and firmness.
- Strong Bones: The high calcium content is linked to promoting bone density. Calcium-rich dairy products like buttermilk can strengthen your bones.
- More digestible than milk: During the fermentation of milk, some of the lactose it contains is converted into lactic acid. For lactose -intolerant people, the milk drink is therefore often more digestible than milk. This applies at least to the “pure buttermilk” (without additives). 100 grams of buttermilk contains four grams of lactose.
Not all buttermilk is healthy
But be careful: Not every buttermilk is suitable as a healthy fit drink. There are some strains that can even prevent you from losing weight. When buying and selecting buttermilk, you should therefore pay attention to a few important criteria:
- A number of sweetened fruit and buttermilk drinks can be found in the supermarket. These have far more calories and often high added sugars, which have a negative effect on fat burning.
- Ideally, you should choose products with a low sugar content. A little tip if you don’t want to do without fruit: simply make your own fruit buttermilk. All you have to do is stir selected fruit and buttermilk in a blender until creamy. Here is a recipe for a berry buttermilk shake .
- By the way: Buttermilk is also great for baking or cooking. Here are some delicious buttermilk recipes for waffles , toffifee muffins , strawberry shortcake , lemon mint ice cream and even passion fruit schnapps with buttermilk.
The Buttermilk Diet
So buttermilk is pretty healthy nutritionally. The buttermilk diet also takes these findings as a basis. The buttermilk diet uses buttermilk as a staple food to help regulate weight without cravings.
- The good properties of buttermilk are used in a buttermilk diet to lose weight. With this type of diet, you use buttermilk (depending on the program) as the sole food, as a supplement, or as a replacement for meals.
- There are different concepts: in some forms you drink buttermilk with every meal and otherwise you stick to a healthy diet. Other programs have pure buttermilk phases, such as a full day or a specific time of day.
- In the strictest variant, you feed yourself exclusively on buttermilk for a certain period of time. However, the principle is always the same: you lose weight by reducing your calorie intake.
- But be careful: the strictest form, in which you only eat buttermilk, is less recommended: important nutrients such as enough carbohydrates and fats, but also vitamins and magnesium are then missing. In extreme cases, your body could slip into an undersupply. There is also a great risk of a yo-yo effect, since it is not a sustainable change in diet.
