The Netherlands - Fig Activia Yogurt

I love Activia because it makes you deliver chocolate cake in the toilet smoothly. In particular, I love Activia yogurts with fruits inside because I like having an idea that eating it helps me increase fruit intake (which also means fiber intake - and perhaps some vitamins and other beneficial nutrients naturally present in fruits although some of them might have been destroyed during processing). Actually, all of them don't really matter unless the food tastes good. And of course, when I say I love Activia, I really mean it from the bottom of my heart: Activia yogurt tastes really good. 

As far as I remember I haven't seen figs incorporated in yogurt in the United States. Well, I'm stupid enough not to take a picture of the fig inside. I think I know why. The fruit has lost most of its structure, and since it's covered in yogurt, I would just end up taking picture of some soft looking brown/purplish fruit covered in thick, creamy, white liquid. It doesn't look gross, but it's just that even if I take a picture of it, you won't recognize what it is.

The first fig product I had ever tasted was actually fig jam, when I was invited to present in American Chemical Society Annual Meeting conference in Anaheim, California for an undergraduate research award competition. Fig jam tasted really good with aged cheese and nuts. I've never had fresh figs before and I don't grow up eating figs so I'm not really familiar with the flavor.

Fig tastes good with yogurt in this case. I still like Activia's strawberry yogurt the best, though :)

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The Netherlands - Soy Yogurt

Call me crazy but I love spending more time at groceries than at clothes shops, like most normal girls do. Part of it is because I love food and I love trying new things, and the other part is because I enjoy seeing what I learnt in class comes to life. It's a great feeling, I feel that I am not wasting my time.

Anyways, 2 days ago I went to Albert Heijn supermarket to grab some food and my friend recommended me this soy yogurt.

I wasn't too interested in soy yogurt, but I was kind of curious of the texture and the flavor. My friend said that this yogurt gives you a great aftertaste, so all the more the reason I should try it.

From nutrient label perspective, this yogurt sounds awesome. 50 kcal per 100 g (1/5 of the whole product), low sugar, low fat, no cholesterol, and 120 mg calcium? Looks pretty awesome to me!

When I opened it, the yogurt kind of curdled a little bit. You have to stir it a little bit to make it smooth, but it's not a big problem for me.

The thickness and creaminess of the soy yogurt resembled normal-fat cow milk yogurt, which is great. I think it's not as sour as a normal yogurt, too, so you don't really need a lot of sugar if you can't handle sourness. It has a really strong soy aftertaste, and as a soy milk lover, I really love this yogurt. It gives you a clean finish as well.

Maybe if they enhance this with prebiotic/probiotic or fiber, this product would be even more attractive.

Verdict: I will buy this again :)

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International Yogurt Part II

Well... I'm not sure if I should call it "international" but yeah they are different yogurt styles from different countries. Or maybe not; maybe it's just a new name that a company came up with and then the rest just follows. But anyways, in my previous post I covered French yogurt. And as I promised, we'll touch on Greek yogurt.

I started with Dannon just because I'm a big fan of Dannon's Activia and I have seen my coworkers enjoying it.

It certainly looks a little thicker than normal yogurt.

But what's so different about Greek yogurt? I had a chat with other food technologists at work and it seems that currently there is no standard of identity established. Most "new trend" foods don't have standards of identity. A good example to illustrate this is frozen yogurt. There is no definition of how much yogurt it should contain, how much fat, how much milk particles, etc. to make it definable as "frozen yogurt". Another example is smoothie. When you ask people, "what is a smoothie?", they will give you different answers. Fruit puree? Fruit juice? Fruit with ice? With yogurt? Certainly it's a cold beverage, but there is no standard as to what kind of ingredients and at what level they should be, should not be, or must be included.

Greek yogurt is basically concentrated yogurt. The whey protein is removed from the yogurt, making it close to the consistency of a cheese.

But hey, beware: apparently there is a difference between Greek yogurt and Greek-style yogurt.

What is the difference between Real Greek yoghurt and Greek "style" yoghurt?
Real Greek yoghurt is made using natural ingredients (milk and honey) and has a thick, creamy consistency due to the traditional techniques applied to make Greek yoghurt. Greek "style" yoghurt contains one or more of the following ingredients; cream, gelatine, gum blends, stabilizers, preservatives, non-fat milk solids and milk solids. Greek "style" yoghurt is thick because of these thickening agents. Greek "style" yoghurt is not Real Greek yoghurt

(Obtained from http://www.greekyoghurt.com.au/component/option,com_page/id,3/Itemid,27/)

And if you look closely at the ingredients statement on Dannon's Greek yogurt displayed on the website (note: on the package it says "Greek Yogurt" and not "Greek Style Yogurt")

it contains carrageenan. It's a gum used to thicken a system. They did strain the whey out using traditional methods (or so the website says) but what's this carrageenan doing here? I guess it makes more sense if you remember that this Dannon Greek yogurt is non-fat. Without the use of gums, it would have a "dry", non-creamy texture. Forgivable? Yes, I'd consider that forgivable. 

And I guess instead of honey, they use sugar (sucrose) and fructose (the main sugar in honey and plant-based ingredients). Probably cheaper and easier to use than honey when you think about large scale productions. Forgivable.

Overall I prefer Greek yogurt than French yogurt. 

Next on international yogurt: Icelandic skyr (yogurt)

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French Yogurt, sil vous plait!

Well well... what did I discover on the yogurt aisle last Thursday?

French yogurt! I've never heard or seen it before. Maybe because I'm not really a yogurt person in the first place. The only time I was crazy about yogurt was last year, and that craze didn't even last that long.

Many eat yogurt for its taste and texture, including me. Of course, yogurt consumption also has an added benefit: it helps you grow the bacteria in your gut so you can poo-poo easily- hold on, GROW BACTERIA IN YOUR STOMACH?? ISN'T BACTERIA DANGEROUS!?

No, not all bacteria are dangerous. In fact, without the nice bacteria in your guts, you won't feel good. Ever experienced riding an overcrowded train and felt like a sardine packed in a can, and you can't breathe because there is just no space for you? The same concept goes to our good stomach bacteria: they prevent the bad bacteria from invading your stomach by competing against them for survival.

If you've bought something that says pro-biotic or pre-biotic, then you've unknowingly supported the growth of good bacteria in your stomach. So what do pro- and pre-biotic mean? Pro-biotic means that the contents of the food help the good stomach bacteria grow healthier, while pre-biotic means that the contents of the food contain live, active bacteria good for your stomach. Dead cells don't count as pre-biotics.

Now, don't start thinking "Eeew I've been eating live bacteria all the time!?". Microbes float around you all the time. Millions or billions of them. You've been inhaling them as you breathe. It's okay, you're not gonna die.

Back to the French yogurt. This French yogurt didn't look anything too different from the other Activia yogurts that I've had tasted before. There are chunks of mango, but growing up eating fresh mango grown in my house's backyard, this mango tasted weird. Like unripe mango. It's not the creamy mango I had expected. But the yogurt itself not too bad!

Calories.. not too bad. I mean, it's yogurt. It's bound to have some fats and proteins. And sugar, if it's flavored. Yogurt without sugar is just too tart for me.

Saturated fat.. I'm a little worried but hey it's not like I can eat 5 cups of yogurt in a day.

So if you notice on the ingredients list, there is modified corn starch. What the hell is that? Some corn starch mutant? I don't know either, but from my experience attending food suppliers expo, my guess is that it provides dietary fiber. If I have the chance, I'll talk more about dietary fiber and how it's actually not coming from sources you think they would come from. 

Next to explore: Greek yogurt. It's been invading the yogurt aisle on groceries store to the point that it has its own section.

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