Flash in the Pan

We were recently in a newly-opened coop grocery, River Valley Market, in Northampton, MA. Among other things, we were looking through yogurts, as I had just written about the "Greek-style" offering from Stonyfield Farm, and I started reading through all the labels. Do you have any idea how many yogurt brands use some kind of added thickener? Even the heavy majority of the organic ones we saw had either tapioca or pectin, in which case why don't they call it yogurt jelly? That explains a lot about the firm-unto-self-standing consistency that has made me scratch my head at times in the past. My wife gave yogurt makers the benefit of the doubt: so many people like having flavoring suspended and not stirring it up from the bottom (enormous exertion, that) that she thinks the manufacturers add the thickeners to keep everything in place. She might be right, but I'm less generous in my guessing. One of the touted differences in Greek-style yogurt is that it's strained, which lets the whey (read that as liquid) run off. However, if you add thickener, you can charge for all that water weight. Think of what it does for the profits. Maybe the split in yogurt types is Greek-style and Greed-style.

Labels: dairy, opinion, yogurt

Organic yogurt maker Stonyfield Farm has come up with a Greek-style that they've branded Oikos. This is probably in reaction to those great imported Greek yogurts you can now find in grocery stores that tend to be creamier than U.S. styles because they strain the liquid (whey) that results from the yogurt-making process of heating milk, adding starter bacteria, and letting things congeal. (The single servings, like those of Fage, tend to have little containers of honey attached - a great way to eat yogurt.) The Stonyfield entry is alright, but I found less tang and flavor depth than with the imported goods. The body also seemed looser and less creamy. That may be because the Stonyfield products have 0 percent fat. I looked at the appropriate Fage page and found that they have different versions: 0 percent, 2 percent, a 5 percent that has "half the fat" of the regular version, and, therefore, a 10 percent. Whoa! I'm not saying that the Oikos was bad - it wasn't at all, and if you want real organic dairy products, Stonyfield's is the only variant I know of. Otherwise, if you're going to look for a Greek yogurt, might as well have Greek yogurt.

Labels: dairy, opinion, product, review