(Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images)
Entrepreneur Evan Sims is part of a growing group of people with a controversial new definition of healthful eating. At the heart of it is an impassioned belief that excess sugar and refined carbs are threats to our diet, not delivering enough nutrition for their caloric load. The controversial part: He says we should replace them with fat instead.
Sims is the founder of Peak Yogurt, a line of organic and Greek “triple-cream” yogurts scheduled to hit shelves by February 2016 in Northern California, and with any luck, nationally. His plan is to make creamier, more satisfying yogurts with zero added sugar, only organic dairy, and up to 18 percent milkfat content—that’s three times the amount of a typical whole milk yogurt. His Indiegogo campaign which is asking for $25,000 to help cushion his first run in California retailers such as Bi-Rite markets, went live just yesterday.
Sims, a longtime rock climber, says he came to the idea of a higher-fat diet by way of needing fuel for long climbs, and not wanting to rely on “those sugary gel packs” and other high-sugar, high-carb products offered as energy foods in the sports market. He took a short foray into the Paleo diet, and the idea to try fat as a more substantial percentage of his caloric intake stuck. This, paired with over four years working as a fermentation engineer for a company which created microbial enzymes for products like laundry detergents, fuel ethanol, textile bleaching, and, yes, yogurt (though Sims did not work on that market directly), helped inspire him to look towards yogurt as a source. It also didn’t hurt that he happened to love the stuff, and saw a lack of unsweetened, high-fat versions in the market.
“Many nonfat and low-fat yogurts are marketed as health foods,” Sims says, “but 35 to 55 percent of the total calories in most of them comes from sugar,” he claims. “To me, that is a junk food.” Sims also claims that the existing whole milk yogurts and unsweetened options on the market don’t have the flavor and texture of Peak, which has a richness and thickness similar to crème fraîche with a slightly more yogurt-y tang.
In part, recent buzz in the media has helped open the door to products like Sims’. For one, an exhaustive meta-analysis by a team of scientists, which questioned the supposed link between saturated fat and heart disease, gave the fat debate a spotlight in mainstream media in early 2014. About one year later, a report by the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to the federal government created more stirrings about the need to reexamine whether or not the current recommended limits on fat consumption were warranted.
But Kristy Del Coro, registered dietitian and culinary nutritionist at SPE Certified says many of the resulting “butter is back” headlines failed to address some key points of the debate: namely, the types of fat that are under reconsideration, and how fat fits into your individual diet needs, like gender, age and activity level. “The latest research findings do suggest that cutting back on fat in general and replacing it with low-nutrient, highly processed carbohydrates can be just as bad or even worse for heart health and inflammation as fat is,” Del Coro says. “But what a lot of the recent media is not acknowledging is that saturated fat [like the kind found in dairy and other animal fats] is still not necessarily the healthiest form of fat.” Among other experts, Del Coro still favors unsaturated fats from olive oil, fatty fish and avocado as the best options, and warns about falling back on fat as a go-to in the diet. “If you are trying to cut back on added sugars and refined carbohydrates in your diet, fat is not the only option for replacing them. Whole grains, beans, and fruits and vegetables are also great sources of energy that provide the added bonus of fiber and varied vitamins and minerals. We shouldn’t just be calling for raising your intake of fat as a blanketed statement.” While it will be unclear until the dietary guidelines come out later this year, right now just one of Sims’ yogurts will meet somewhere around 85 percent of the full recommended daily intake of saturated fat for adults.
Controversial or not, a product like Sims’ seems like it will be welcomed with open arms as the fat-phobes wane and the fat embracers grow in number in the mainstream. While Sims says followers of the Paleo and Ketogenic diets certainly could hold promise of being early consumers and supporters of Peak, he stresses that his yogurt is not only for people with special diets and special exercise regimens. Across the board, he thinks his high-fat yogurts will be a better option than what he says are sugar-laden nonfat and low-fat yogurts on the market. If he’s right, then it may be the beginning of the end for these long-beloved breakfast staples. Here’s what Sims had to say.
What gave you the idea to do a yogurt with three times the fat? For most of my life, I was a carb junkie and didn’t have control over my appetite. I was never overweight, but I did suffer from tiredness and sugar cravings. I spent five or six years studying the science, history and politics of nutrition, and at the same time I was making changes to my own diet. When I began to replace a lot of those sugars and carbs with what I saw to be good fats, my mood was better, I had higher confidence and endurance, and I didn’t get food cravings like I used to. It’s a better way of existing in the world if you’re not hungry and constantly thinking about the next meal you need to satisfy yourself.
There are a variety of ways to work fat into one’s diet. Why did you choose yogurt? Well first of all, because I like yogurt. But I had been working as a fermentation engineer at a biotech company, so I was familiar with the process and equipment and principles you use to develop products [like yogurt] and scale them up. When I started experimenting with recipes in September of 2014, I had a fairly quick and easy time making tasty yogurt. I also just wanted to challenge the dominance of nonfat and high sugar foods as healthy foods. After researching it a lot, I think dairy fat from grass-fed cows is a safe and healthy source of energy.
(Early trials of Peak Yogurt. The product's final packaging is pending. Photo courtesy of Peak Yogurt)
(Early trials of Peak Yogurt. The product’s final packaging is pending. Photo courtesy of Peak Yogurt)
Why not just make a whole milk yogurt? Why does yours have three times the fat? If the goal is to make the best-tasting yogurt without adding sugar to it, to me the obvious answer was to add cream. Fat carries flavor very well, plus it has a nice texture and mouthfeel. It also has the benefits of energy and nutrition. You have to take in a certain amount of energy throughout the day, and in the grocery stores we shop in, it’s so easy to fall into getting a lot of that from carbohydrates and sugar. I sought to replace sugar with dairy fat because grass-fed milk fat is a great source of fat-soluble vitamins and nutrients. I won’t name them all, but for example there is vitamin K2, which works in synergy with calcium and vitamin D for bone and teeth health, and helps decalcify your arteries to prevent heart disease. Grass-fed dairy is also a source of butyric acid, which is a short-chain fatty acid that mimics the effects of soluble fiber from vegetables (which gets converted to short-chain fatty acids eventually). And another big one is conjugated lineolic acid (CLA), sometimes known as “the good trans fat”. It has anti-cancer properties.
What do you think is lacking about the nonfat yogurts currently on the market? There are several companies out there that are making good whole milk yogurts from grass-fed milk. And there are a number of startups that are making lower sugar yogurts, but they tend to be nonfat or low-fat. In the Greek yogurt market, most of these turn out pasty or chalky, but the added milkfat [in our version] makes for a creamier texture. We also chose a mild yogurt culture, which has the same levels of probiotics, but it’s less sour flavor doesn’t require extra sugar to make it taste good.
What has the response been from people who have tasted your yogurt? There is a rise in people trying to avoid sugary foods, so the response to our yogurt has been really strong. I haven’t encountered many people that still believe in the total crusade against fat. And those that I do encounter are easy to convince with science and history. Right now, the ketogenic crowds and the people who are already all about butter and cream are easy customers to win, because they are already thinking about and recognize what I’m doing. You need to target your most interested audience, of course. But I think the product has mass appeal because it tastes great, and avoiding foods filled with sugar will be a major and extremely broad shift in the way people think about diet. But all this said, the real motivation for starting this company is that it’s a product I love and eat every day, and I wanted to make it available to everyone.