Yoplait has a new Greek style yogurt out. There’s a massive marketing campaign tie in to the new Clash of the Titans movie and Athena portraying actress Izabella Miko. Strong woman eats good yogurt. Greek gods, Greek Yogurt, Yadda yadda…

The yogurt pack prominently displays “2X Protein..of the leading yogurt”. Wonder what that means. We decided to take a look inside the nutrition label and ingredient list to see if this yogurt is really healthy or just some more mythology…

What you need to know:

A serving is 6 ounces (170 grams) and will set you back 130 calories, none from fat. The sugar count is 18 grams, much lower than a standard Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt (27 grams). Of the 18 grams, 9 are naturally present in yogurt in the form of lactose. So the added sugar count is 9 grams or just over 2 teaspoons.

There’s no fiber, though you’d expect some from the fruit. There’s 12 grams of protein here, much more than in the standard Yoplait (5 grams). But protein is not an ingredient most people lack in the US. We get plenty of protein from other sources during the day. And the claim that it’s twice the protein as other leading brands is misleading, because Chobani Greek yogurt has 14g.

Here’s the ingredient list:

CULTURED PASTEURIZED GRADE A NONFAT MILK, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SUGAR, STRAWBERRY PUREE, KOSHER GELATIN, LEMON JUICE CONCENTRATE, COLORED WITH BEET JUICE CONCENTRATE, CALCIUM CHLORIDE, , VITAMIN A ACETATE, VITAMIN D₃.

The first and obvious ingredient is milk. Non-fat milk in this case. The second is an ingredient called milk protein concentrate, made by ultra filtering milk to take out the lactose and then dry it up into a powder. There’s a lot of controversy around this ingredient as it is mostly imported from countries with dubious food safety records, and may not even be from cows (think yak and water buffalo). So why add protein in this manner to the yogurt, when in any case it’s not something consumers really need?

Ingredient number 3 and 4 are sugar. Well actually number 4 is strawberry puree, but it’s lost all its fiber and vitamin C, so all you’re getting is a bit of strawberry flavor and a lot of sugar. By the way, the strawberry puree is not red enough, so there is added coloring from the beet juice concentrate. That’s fine, at least it is a natural colorant, and not some artificial dye or bug juice.

The gelatin adds a thickness or consistency that would not have been required from a full fat yogurt. It’s kosher, which means it was not derived from animal sources.[UPDATE: see comment below]

The last three ingredients are fortifications of calcium, vitamin A, and vitamin D. Always better to get them directly from food in which they are naturally present, not from add-on.

Summary: This yogurt is a better choice than the standard Yoplait option.

What to do at the supermarket:

As far as yogurts go, choose plain. It has less ingredients and less sugar. It lets you add fresh nutrient rich fruit of your choice giving you the added benefit of fiber and vitamins directly from the source, no fortifications.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

New! Choose a better breakfast with CerealScan™ by Fooducate

On Friday, Dannon Company announced it had settled a class action suit to the tune of $35 Million. The lawsuit was filed in early 2008, alleging that Dannon knowingly misled consumers in its marketing activities around its Activia yogurt line. The massive false advertising campaign convinced shoppers to pay 30% more for yogurt containing “probiotic” bacteria because of the products’ supposed health benefits.

While no nutritionist doubts the health benefit of yogurt, the question asked is what’s so special about Activia’s probiotics compared to other brands, and in and of themselves. Seems like a judge was going to provide the answer, but executives at Dannon decided to fog things up by dishing out millions of dollars AND not admitting to any wrongdoing.

In case you are wondering, here’s what you’ll find inside Activia Strawberry Yogurt. Read more…

Image by University of Turin, Italy

A) moldy jelly beans

B) microscopic view of sugar powder

C) Bugs

D) None of the above

Answer below Read more…

Dannon Activia

More good news for consumers. Dannon, manufacturer of 100 dairy products such as Activia, Light & Fit, DanActive and Danimals, will stop using milk from cows injected with bovine growth hormones (rBST / rGBH). The plan is to be 100% hormone free by the end of 2009.

From DairyReporter.com:

[Dannon] said the move is a result of consumer feedback. “This is a response to our market evaluation and consumer preference,” Dannon’s senior director of public relations Michael Neuwirth told DairyReporter.com.

“When General Mills make their announcement, we naturally got many questions. This is something we’ve been working on for some time but because there is no real safety issue here we’ve been quite low-key about it,” said Neuwirth.

Read the entire article…

What you need to know:

BST (bovine somatotropin) is a hormone cows naturally produce and found in their bodies. The more of this hormone a cow has, the more milk it produces. In the early 1990’s, an artificial growth hormone, rBST (a.ka. rBGH), was developed by agriculture giant Monsanto. While this seems like good news, when you mess with nature, there are always consequences.

The rBST hormone itself has no effect on humans, but the “consequences” do:
1. Cows injected with the hormone tend to be sicker due to inflammations of their much larger udders, and therefore receive more antibiotics. The antibiotics then find their way into your milk and your body.
2. rBST additionally increases the level of an insulin type growth factor in the milk (IGF-1). This, again, finds its way into the human body. Though in most cases our stomach acids digest it, sometimes IGF-1 gets into the bloodstream, and for some people this raises the risk of cancer.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the EU banned rBGH.

Dannon is an international dairy powerhouse, and owns about one third of the US yogurt market, tied with General Mill’s Yoplait. Having these two giants make the move will probably line up all of the smaller manufacturers as well.

What to do at the supermarket:

Until the end of 2009, buying organic is the sure way to avoid milk products from rBGH-free cows, albeit at a higher price.

On conventional products, you will not find a label mentioning the presence or absence of growth hormones or antibiotics.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

flickr photo: cloverity

We wrote yesterday about Yoplait’s encouraging announcement, promising to use milk for yogurt only from cows not treated with growth hormones.

Today we’ll take a look inside Yoplait Strawberry Yogurt, a stalwart, and see what else is going on… Read more…

General Mills, parent company of Yoplait brand yogurts, announced this week that it will stop using milk from cows treated with rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). The announcement covers the entire product line and will be fully implemented by August:

General Mills announced today that it has made the commitment to eliminate by August 2009 milk sourced from cows treated with rBST (recombinant bovine somatotropin), a synthetic hormone also referred to as rBGH, in the production of its category-leading Yoplait® yogurts.

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Institutes of Health remain fully confident in the safety of products made from milk sourced from cows treated with rBST in accordance with current guidelines, Yoplait is taking the initiative to change its dairy sourcing strategy to provide consumers with the option to choose a category-leading yogurt with milk produced by cows not treated with rBST.

Read the full press release…

There are already smaller yogurt manufacturers that are rBGH free, such as Stonyfield, Nancy’s, and Cascade Fresh, but Yoplait is a much bigger and powerful brand to take this step.

What you need to know:

BST (bovine somatotropin) is a hormone cows naturally produce and found in their bodies. The more of this hormone a cow has, the more milk it produces. In the early 1990’s, an artificial growth hormone, rBST (a.ka. rBGH), was developed by agriculture giant Monsanto. While this seems like good news, when you mess with nature, there are always consequences.

The rBST hormone itself has no effect on humans, but the “consequences” do:
1. Cows injected with the hormone tend to be sicker due to inflammations of their much larger udders, and therefore receive more antibiotics. The antibiotics then find their way into your milk and your body.
2. rBST additionally increases the level of an insulin type growth factor in the milk (IGF-1). This, again, finds its way into the human body. Though in most cases our stomach acids digest it, sometimes IGF-1 gets into the bloodstream, and for some people this raises the risk of cancer.

Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the EU banned rBGH. The UN’s food safety body, Codex Alimentarius, has also opted not to endorse rBGH.

In the US, many smaller dairies decided not to use rBST. They also thought it would be a good idea to let consumers know about their decision.

In 1993, after heavy pressure from Monsanto, the FDA did 2 things:
1. approve the use of rBGH
2. disallow labeling of milks stating they are from cows free of rBST.

Despite this, organic milk and yogurt manufacturers have been stating more broadly that their products are hormone and antibiotic free, so the FDA cannot chew them out.

So Yoplait’s move, in response to consumer wishes, is a refreshingly good piece of news, even though it is most probably a marketing play rather than true concern for our health. Hopefully more manufacturers and grocers will follow Yoplait’s lead.

What to do at the supermarket:

Buying organic is a sure way to avoid milk products from rBGH-free cows, albeit at a higher price.

On conventional products, you will not find a label mentioning the presence or absence of growth hormones or antibiotics.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com