Yesterday, I found a brand new yogurt at my local grocery store – Yoplait’s newest entry into the Greek yogurt races; 100 Calorie cups.
Of course, given Yoplait’s spectacularly poor track record of wholesome ingredients in their yogurts, I was dubious. A quick glance at the ingredients confirmed my suspicions; Yoplait has failed yet again.
Ingredients: Cultured Pasturized Grade A Nonfat milk, water, sugar. Contains less than 2% of the following ingredients: Corn starch, natural flavor, lemon juice concentrate, Sucralose, Acesulfame Potassium, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.
UNCLEAN! 2 sources of outright sugar ( sugar and sucralose ) with the added milk sugar inherent in milk? I predicted a sickeningly sweet mouth-feel. What did I get? Bingo, sparky: an overly sweet gloppy mess of a yogurt that I didn’t even finish.
And what is Acesulfame potassium? GLAD you asked. I had to look that one up – and it makes perfect sense. “Acesulfame K is 200 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), as sweet as aspartame, about 2/3 as sweet as saccharin, and 1/3 as sweet as sucralose.”
What do they say? “Well, THERE’S your problem…”
Avoid Yoplait 100 Calorie yogurt. Unless they do a drastic reformulation, this isn’t Greek yogurt. It’s what Yoplait thinks simpleton Americans want. It’s another dietary disaster masquerading as health food. You know better than that.
Funny – while I was looking online for a picture of the yogurt cup ( too lazy to take my own pic! ), I came across the following link:
Yoplait Sued Over Greek Yogurt Ingredients Not Meeting the Federal Definition of Greek Yogurt
Compared with mainstream U.S. yogurt, Greek-style is a thicker, richer yogurt with at least twice as much protein. Most Greek yogurts have these characteristics because they are strained to remove liquid whey, the watery portion of milk.
General Mills, however, makes its Greek-style yogurt with a thickener called "milk protein concentrate," which comes from filtering skim milk to remove non-protein elements.
Plaintiffs' argument
Chicagoan Martin Taradejna and other "similarily situated" consumers claim in a suit filed this spring that General Mills, by using milk protein concentrate, has misbranded and misrepresented its Greek product as yogurt.
Consumers were harmed because they were paying a premium for General Mills Greek yogurt compared with regular yogurt, the plaintiffs argue. Greek yogurt usually costs about 75 cents more per 6-ounce container than traditional yogurt.
Many foods have a federal "standard of identity," and the one for yogurt does not include milk protein concentrates, the plaintiffs argue.
Yoplait is getting sued.
$10 says you’ll see the yogurt repackaged as “Greek Style” yogurt so they don’t have to reformulate.