12 Healthy Ways to Eat Greek Yogurt for Breakfast

By Taylor KiserSep 12, 2017

Just wanted to let you know that this post is sponsored by my MOO-velous friends over at Midwest Dairy Association!

Love Greek yogurt? Then you’ll love all 12 of these healthy, protein-packed ways to start your day with it! Plus, I’m sharing details about a recent tour to a local dairy farm!

Are you ready for something MOOvelous!?

A few weeks back, I had the super-fun opportunity to tour the Hiland Dairy Plant here in Springfield, and then go out to a local dairy farm to learn more about how they’re raised, treated, how milking works and ALL that fun stuff!

The plant tour was really informative, and I really LOVED learning about all the criteria that milk has to meet when they receive it from the trucks coming from the farms. It’s not just assumed that farmers are practicing good farming behaviors, and they’re taking the milk willy-nilly.

Dairy Plant and Farm Tour | Foodfaithfitness.com | @FoodFaithFit — All that tested milk gets put into bottles!

It has BIG SHOES to fill before it can go into bottles and into your bellies!

However, I really learned so much from the actual farm tour!

Did you know that the average cow produced 66 lbs of milk PER DAY. <– Can you even imagine if humans did that? SO MUCH.

It was also really interesting to learn how they dry cows up between babies. Which basically just gives them a down time before having to have another calve. They know that Momma’s need rest and they’re not just out to have them keep pushin’ out little cows!

They care for them, love them and treat them well!

We also learned about something a lot of you may be concerned about: antibiotics in milk.

Only 4 or 5 cows out of the 600+ that they had on this farm had to be on some kind of antibiotics. Antibiotics are used in dairy farming only to treat infection or prevent illnesses in cows, and for a prescribed amount of time – JUST like you and I would take them!

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The cows on them also had different milking protocols and they ran a series of tests on them, once they were off the antibiotics, before they put them back in the herd. There are STRICT processes and regulations in place so that Y-O-U can trust that your milk is free from antibiotics!

Fun fact: for the 12-month period ending Sept 30,2015 more than 3.6 million tests were conducted on milk samples, with less than 0.017% testing positive. Any milk testing positive was thrown away —it never reached our food supply!

SO UHHH yah. Those are pretty DARN GOOD odds.

Like I told ya about earlier, there are a lot of tests that are done on milk to check for these things before it’s bottled. It starts with on-farm testing and then moves into testing at the dairy plant.

Double CHECKED fo’ yo’ safety!

We also learned about the difference between “organic” and “conventional.”

Cows labelled as “organic” are exclusively fed organically grown feeds, whose housing meets specifications, are allowed periodic access to the outdoors and direct sunlight, and are not treated with hormones or antibiotics.

However, antibiotics are still used on organic dairy farms – these cows are then just removed from the herd. EXACTLY like a conventional dairy farm.

Fun fact, the sequel: The Journal of the American Dietetic Association published findings from research that compared whole milk samples obtained from retail stores across the U.S. with three label claims related to farm practices: 1.) conventional; 2.) from cows not treated with rbST or bovine somatotropin; and 3.) USDA-certified organic.

The research concluded that all three types of milk are virtually I-D-E-N-T-I-C-A-L in terms of quality, safety, and nutritional composition. None of the samples had detectable levels of antibiotics.

So, all-in-all, I learned that we should HAVE NO FEAR when consuming dairy products– they’re tested and tested and tested again to ensure that it free from antibiotics.

On that note, why don’t we start out day with a little protein-PACKED dairy?!