Perhaps one of the greatest benefits to making your own healthy yogurt, buttermilk, kefir, etc. is the ability to control the ingredients you use.

Use a natural/traditional starter culture: Using a traditional (non-manufactured) starter culture is one of the easiest and most cost effective ways to culture your own healthy yogurt, buttermilk and kefir.  Traditional starter cultures (such as those available on our website) not only contain live active bacteria, they can be serial-cultured, that is used repeatedly to create cultured dairy products.  With care, traditional starter cultures will keep making healthy yogurt, buttermilk or kefir for many years to come without having to buy more starter culture.  Also, you get the benefit of knowing you are using a truly natural culture versus one created in a laboratory.

Use high quality milk: Culturing your own dairy products makes is much more affordable to use high quality milk.  For example, organic yogurt in the grocery store generally costs $.09-$.19 oz. but when you only need to buy the milk (once you have the starter culture), you can take the cost of organic yogurt down to $.04 oz.  A huge savings! It only takes a few batches of yogurt to completely recoup the cost of the starter culture.  The savings for buttermilk and kefir can be even more dramatic!  In addition, it can be difficult, if not impossible, to find healthy yogurt, buttermilk and kefir made with the type of milk you might prefer (non-homogenized, locally sourced, raw, etc.) so making your own dairy products allows you much more freedom to choose the quality of your milk across several dimensions.

Leave out the additives and stabilizers: Most commercial dairy products contain additives and stabilizers to thicken the product, change the texture or sweeten the product.  Most of these additives and stabilizers are chemical based and even those that are not (sugar and powdered milk) aren’t particularly good for you.  Making truly natural and healthy yogurt, buttermilk and kefir allows you to consume these products without all the unhealthy extras.