There's Greek yogurt. There's Swiss style yogurt. They also have an Icelandic style yogurt. I haven't yet seen an American style yogurt, but I bet it loves guns, kicks ass, and takes pride in its political ignorance.
On television commercials, yogurt lovers savor each bite like they're getting a body massage in a porn movie. To be fair, though, nobody really loves yogurt. Rather, we accept it as a wholesome food source that satisfies your hunger. We'd much rather be eating Cool Ranch Doritos. But as healthy food goes, you could do worse. Have you had tofu? It literally tastes like toe. So F you.
Yogurt is produced using the bacterial fermentation of milk. Apparently, bacteria can be healthy. If only the same could be said for the bacteria in our drinking water. Or the rat head I found in my Mountain Dew.
Fancier yogurts market themselves by the amount of live active cultures listed in the ingredients. You wouldn't think "live active cultures" would make food sound more appealing. Live active cultures sounds a little like "flesh-eating viruses." Aren't live active cultures the scientific term for sea monkeys?
Yogurt has become the hip new trend, surpassing even man buns, genital tats, and pretending to enjoy Coachella. Gone are the days where a supermarket shelf limited itself to basic flavors of Dannon yogurt. Today, even the most blue-collar supermarkets carry elite, fashionable brands such as Fage and Noosa and Siggi and Trump. And each company offers so many non-traditional flavors. Yoplait, for example, has dozens of yogurt options, including Triple Berry Torte, Chocolate Cherry Cupcake, and Blackberry Pomegranate. (my three favorite rap artists, coincidentally)
Most yogurt brands still offer a "plain" flavor (or, to be more precise, a lack of flavor). Younger consumers purchase plain yogurt so that they can add their own fruit and toppings. Elderly people purchase plain yogurt because they're convinced it's vanilla.
There are so many different kinds of yogurt now: probiotic, prebiotic, organic, democratic socialist, yogurt in a tube, yogurt in a bottle, yogurt in a boot, kefir, skyr, etc.
Probiotic yogurt is very popular. You've probably seen the Activia commercials, in which Jamie Lee Curtis harasses strangers at the supermarket and asks them about their bowel movements. Probiotic yogurt includes extra beneficial bacteria -- like L. Blugaricus and S. Thermophilus and the mighty Hercules -- to help regulate one's digestive system. Basically, the way the science works is that you consume yogurt, releasing an army of tiny microscopic animals into your stomach entrails, where it does battle with a squadron of stomachache-causing little demons. I'm currently working on the screenplay for Pixar.
Greek yogurt has been dominating store shelves lately. The Greeks are unable to control their nation's unstable economy, creating financial chaos around the world, but at least they know how to make a thick creamy yogurt with over ten grams of protein per container. Chobani, Voskos, and Dannon's Oikos are among the best-selling brands. None of these products are made in Greece. They're American. But an ethnic-sounding word adds to the authenticity of what you're selling. Take, for example, Kardashian. Would anyone have bought a leaked sex tape starring Kim Jones? Or maybe that's a bad example.
Some yogurts are blended, which means the flavor is in the yogurt itself. But sometimes the fruit is on the bottom. Yeah, like I have time to scoop the bottom of the container and mix it in with the yogurt. News flash, Millennials; some of us work for a living.
Yogurt used to be sold with solid plastic caps covering the top of the containers. But now, most yogurt is sold with a flimsy aluminum foil top that you peel off. This is better for the environment, although leading Republican scientists are still not convinced that more waste creates more waste. Nevertheless, this packaging does tend to create more moments of getting home and unpacking your shopping bags to discover "Why are my groceries all wet and slimy? What is... oh, crap." Sometimes the foil rips open.
Yogurt is a strange word. In Latin, I believe it means "I'm hungry and there's nothing else in the fridge." If you stare at the word for a minute, it starts to look kind of strange. When writing Rocky, if Sylvester Stallone named his love interest character Gertie, it would've put a different spin on the classic line. "Yo, Gert!"
And don't get me started on frozen yogurt. Frozen yogurt is one of the world's great lies, like "fifty is the new forty," Twitter serves a useful purpose, and you look good in those jeans. Frozen yogurt is not yogurt frozen. Frozen yogurt is ice cream. If I put my Stonyfield strawberry yogurt in the freezer, it tastes like strawberry yogurt harder; it doesn't taste like ice cream. It's like selling cold Snickers bars and calling them "frozen chia seeds." Frozen yogurt is not healthy. You've been duped.
If yogurt disappeared tomorrow, we'd get by. And, yet, I think we'd miss it... not every day, not even every month. But every once in a rare while we'd look into the sky, ponder the meaning of life, and think, "You know what? I could go for some yogurt right now." So next time you're eating a yogurt, appreciate the experience. And tell your yogurt thank you for making our time on this planet just a tad bit better. But not out loud, of course. That would make you a crazy person.