Homemade Healthy Yogurt Drink - Positive Gut (2024)

If you’re craving a refreshing, healthy, and satiating drink you have to try making your own yogurt drink! Yogurt drinks from the supermarket are often filled with sweeteners, sugar, or additives. Not the best choice if you want to have a healthy drink. So today I will provide you with some healthy yogurt drink recipes. Easy, healthy, and delicious!

When you make your own yogurt drink, you have complete control over the taste and the ingredients. Do you like lime? Add it! You don’t like raspberries? Don’t use them. Do you prefer a sour taste? Add some pomegranate or lime. The possibilities and variations are endless if you make the drink yourself! And that’s what makes it so much fun.

Healthy Probiotic Yogurt Drink

You don’t need a lot of supplies to make your own yogurt drink. A blender will do the trick!

For a healthy homemade yogurt drink, it is important to choose healthy (organic) ingredients. Pick a basic whole fat organic yogurt that still contains live bacteria, these bacteria are good for your gut (follow this link for my article on bacteria and gut health).

A good yogurt will generally mention the bacteria on the packaging of the yogurt, often you can recognize them as:

• Biogarde culture
• Lactobacillus acidophilus
• Bifidobacterium lactis
• With live ferments

If your yogurt doesn’t have this mentioned on the packaging I would recommend searching for one that does.

According to Dutch food laws, a yogurt can only call itself yogurt when the bacteria Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus are present. It doesn’t say if the yogurt can be pasteurized after the production with the bacteria, and I really have my doubts about live bacteria in many yogurt products if they don’t mention them specifically.

If the product still has live bacteria you should be able to notice a change in consistency and flavor over time, because the bacteria will keep fermenting the product. And frankly, in many brands of yogurt, I don’t see this happening.

When you add fruit, vegetables, or spices to the yogurt you make sure that you get vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and even fiber. This will support your gut microbiome!

Kefir or Yogurt Drink?

When you make a yogurt drink, you can also choose a different base than yogurt. Kefir is a great product to use as a base for your drink. Kefir is a fermented milk drink, that will generally still contain live bacteria and is runnier than yogurt. If you use kefir you don’t have to use extra water, because it already has a drinkable consistency.

If you don’t have time to make a yogurt drink, plain kefir is already a healthy drink to use!

Yogurt Drink from the Supermarket

In the supermarket, there are pretty good yogurt drink options for sale if you don’t have time to make something yourself.
As mentioned above, plain kefir is an option. Kefir is often also for sale with a fruity flavor. If you’re interested in those, it is important to take a look at the ingredients. Make sure it does not have too many extra additives. Pick one that only contains fruit (concentrate) and preferably no extra starch, sugar, or additives.

Cultured buttermilk is also a good option, the more acidic a milk product is, the less sugar it contains. In order to make a milk product acidic, fermentation has to take place. During fermentation, the sugars are converted into acids. If you like cultured buttermilk with a flavor, the same rules apply as to the kefir. So check the label!

Would you like more information about healthy products? Are you not sure what to look for on those little ingredient labels on products? I can help you! Schedule a free symptom assessment and I’ll show you how.

The FODMAP diet

Even when you’re following the FODMAP diet, you can make your own yogurt drink. Just make sure to swap the yogurt for a lactose free one and only add low FODMAP fruits and/or vegetables. Most herbs are free to use during the FODMAP diet, so you will be able to add mint for example.

Yogurt Drink Recipe

The yogurt drink recipe is a really easy recipe, where you just mix 2 parts yogurt with 1 part water and your desired fruits, vegetables, or herbs. If you use kefir, don’t add the water, the kefir has a drinkable consistency on its own.

Once you know the base of the recipe, you can add whatever you want. And customize your yogurt drink!
Personally, I really enjoy playing with flavor variations. Maybe add green tea instead of water to the yogurt drink? Ginger? Vanilla or lavender? If a taste seems interesting to you, it is definitely worth a try!