Yogurt

[cjsmith]

What's your favorite no-sugar-added active culture yogurt?

Dannon Light & Fit has a bitter taste to it, although that might be just the one flavor I've tried so far. (I also seem to taste bitterness unusually strongly. I can't put broccoli stems in my mouth, and there's no way I'll ever like coffee.) But just about everything else in my local supermarket has so much sugar in it that I might as well eat a candy bar.

Recommendations?

[edit: Wow, you guys are great! I've got a big pile of good ideas already!]

Comments

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I actually just buy plain yogurt and put fruit in it. Seriously.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

It's a thought. Fruit goes bad a lot faster than premade yogurt cups, though, so I think I'll spend a little more time looking for premade. Hmm, unless frozen fruit would work...?

[kent4str.livejournal.com]

Or one of those all-fruit spreads with no sugar added.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I've never tried those. I bet they keep for a while. I'm always on the lookout for things that don't go bad in milliseconds. :-)

[katestine.livejournal.com]

Obvious comment: if you do, double-check that it doesn't have fake sweeteners though. I have a jar of orange marmalade I can't bring myself to throw out, even though the fake sweetener makes me gag just thinking about it. (coming from someone who drinks Diet Coke all day long)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh ugh, that's got to be pretty bad. Thanks for the reminder!

[mama-hogswatch.livejournal.com]

I was about to recommend frozen fruit.

Studies show that the nutritional values is on par with fresh -- unless you're picking it out of your own garden or going to a farmer's market.

Half-thawed blueberries in yogurt is actually pretty tasty.

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

I buy frozen mixed berries and put 'em in yogurt every morning. :-) Om nom nom!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Mmm, that sounds really good. Trader Joe's has a mixed berry bag I adore.

[brooksmoses]

Frozen fruit works fine -- it's how I usually do it -- but you get a coating of frozen yogurt around the berries which then very slowly thaw. I find this perfectly okay, but YMMV.

Alternately, I suppose you could microwave-thaw the frozen fruit. And kent4str's suggestion of using an all-fruit spread sounds reasonable; I'm guessing that's essentially what a no-sugar-added yogurt cup would have.

I'm also fond of using orange marmalade in yogurt, which has the advantage that while it is added sugar, it doesn't take very much of it to add a nice strong flavor. (The "King Kelly" brand is good for not being bitter, incidentally; a lot of marmalades have a bit of a bitter taste to the bits of peel that shows up strongly when the sugar is diluted away like this.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Hey, this would be a great way to get rid of jelly! I don't eat jelly, so if for any reason some of it shows up in the house, it stays until it grows a new civilization. A little bit at a time might be fine.

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

I like the Yoplait Light... my favorite is the white chocolate strawberry. Mmmmm

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I adore peach and just about any kind of berry. If they make those, I'm trying it!

[ohhjuliet.livejournal.com]

They do! They also have a lemon, which I loooooooove

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooo, lemon! That's not one of the usual run of standard yogurt cup flavors.

[ame-chan.livejournal.com]

I like Trader Joe's greek style yogurt.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ooo, I haven't looked at TJ's yet. I'll go do that next.

[eichin.livejournal.com]

A couple of the chains here started carrying Fage http://www.fageusa.com/ greek yogurt, and I like their "real" one (product name "Total") - at least in part because it's a very different texture - but it's also not pretending to be a diet food :-) Nothing added, it's sold with a "sidecar" of honey or strawberry jam. (Not that I think it's a *healthy* food per se, just that it isn't sweetened...)

[racerxmachina.livejournal.com]

Seconded.

[mithriltabby]

Wow; you must be even more sensitive to artificial sweeteners than I am. I find the Light&Fit works pretty well when poured over cereal in the morning, particularly with blueberries (so I’m more going for a tart than sweet flavor anyway).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Light & Fit has artificial sweeteners? That would explain everything!

[mithriltabby]

You are probably a supertaster like myself. The amount of artificial sweetener that will cause an ordinary person to register sweetness shows up as bitter to a supertaster. I’ve had aspartame-flavored beverages that seemed sweet— but they had much less than you normally get in a Diet Coke. Have you tried the Minute Maid Light Lemonade? I find it actually tastes pretty good.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yes, I definitely fit the supertaster pattern. I didn't know artificial sweeteners would do it! No wonder I keep detecting bitterness where it shouldn't be! (I admit I never understood how people could get used to Diet Coke. It didn't occur to me until right this moment that to other people, maybe it's not bitter.)

[mithriltabby]

The variations in human smell and taste are a lot higher than those in, say, vision; there are plenty of resources for design to deal with colorblindness, but very few cookbooks that acknowledge that some people have a radically different experience of some flavors. Grapefruit is very bitter to me, cantaloupe a mix of sour and bitter, and I can’t even be in the room with cooking broccoli or cauliflower. I keep an eye on molecular gastronomy blogs, but none of them have done serious research into this area.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to bring myself to eat grapefruit. (Lemon, on the other hand, is fine; I adore sour.) And like you, I don't like cantaloupe (though I can eat it) or cauliflower, either.

I'm doomed to eat unhealthy junk food ;-)

[just-cyd.livejournal.com]

too much artificial sweetener, and i'll get the bitter aftertaste, but it's a bit later. diet coke tastes "really sweet w/o the syrup-y-ness of sugar". (this from the girl that has a poor sense of taste and almost no sense of smell)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

I don't *think* I'm a supertaster... but all artificial sweeteners taste gross to me. It's not even bitter exactly... just WRONG. I don't really know how to explain the wrongness.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

They're nasty. Now I understand a little of why I find them so nasty!

Most artificial and artificially-concentrated smells are WRONG to me, too, and I would describe the WRONG just like you have described artificial sweeteners here. There's a point behind my nose and just under my eyes that aches when I smell most perfumes and stuff. I call this component of scent "the Smell smell", and it's why I am very fond of unscented just-about-everything. Actual flowers, though, and fruit, and eucalyptus trees, and the like, smell lovely to me. See how wordy I am? I can't explain this at all! :-)

[ladyqkat.livejournal.com]

If you are trying to cut down on sugar and don't like the aftertaste of artificial sweetners - try stevia (http://www.stevia.net/index.htm). I know Trader Joe's used to carry a brand of stevia, so you might want to check there first.

The nice thing about stevia is that, even though it is a powder like the artificial sweetners, it is all natural and zero calories. The downside is that, since it doesn't have the bulk of sugar, cooking with it is problematical. I also like the fact that it dissolves in cold drinks (iced tea) much easier than sugar and even artificial sweetners. Although I did try one brand once that used talc or corn starch as a carrier and made the tea cloudy.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

If I find some yogurt sweetened with stevia, I'll give it a shot. Heck, I'd rather not have it sweetened at all -- this whole artificial sweetener thing says a lot about addiction in our culture, I tend to think -- but at least stevia wouldn't be offensive.

[evelynne.livejournal.com]

The problem with this suggestion is that I have no idea how much sugar is actually in it, BUT:

I get the fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, and DO NOT MIX IT. I just eat the yogurt off the top. Enough of the sugary stuff leaks in to give it some flavor without it being overwhelmingly sweet like when it's mixed.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh interesting. I haven't seen fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt for a while; I figured they stopped selling it. Cool idea!

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

Both Stonyfield Farm and Brown Cow yogurts are fruit-on-bottom. Those are the brands I grew up with. I've had this little ritual since I was about 5 where I scoop the cream off the top and set it aside, eat the yogurt, then mix the cream into the fruit and eat that as "dessert" :)

[plymouth.livejournal.com]

http://stbenoit.com/

You can find it at whole foods in little ceramic returnable containers. This yogurt is so totally awesome. My favorite is the honey flavor. Of course if you're trying to avoid ALL sweeteners (not just sugar) that doesn't help you.

One note of caution: I have had some of the fruit flavored ones go bad on me before the expiration date. I've never had this problem with the honey or plain ones though (I've had them still be fine even after the expiration date), so I think it has something to do with how they cook their jams - I even wrote to them to tell them about the problem and they confirmed that they make the jam at low temperature to preserve the fresh fruity flavor. They told me they would look into it. I think they've gotten somewhat better since then but I still never buy a fruit one unless the expiration is at least a week and a half away and I plan to eat it immediately.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

I use Safeway brand. But then again, I'm not as sensitive as you are to the artificial sweetener.
I liked Trader Joe's as well. Not as sweet as the Safeway brand, so that might work for you.
Though lately, I've been eating cottage cheese (Safeway 2 percent with extra calcium), throwing some of that mixable fiber in, and just putting canned peaches on top.
So you know a canned fruit you like you could add that to yogurt too.
And if you are doing it for the live cultures, you could get some of the powdered kind of cultures and put them into cottage cheese. I take a live cultures pill with my cottage cheese when the tummy is off.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm definitely doing it for the live cultures. (How the heck do the intestinal bugs survive a trip through the stomach, anyway? This boggles me.)

I'm glad people mentioned artificial sweetener. I had no idea. Durrrrrrr. I'll look for that next time I'm shopping!

[zarex.livejournal.com]

I like Colombo Light. Pretty tasty, and much less sugar than normal stuff. (comparable to Danon)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I don't know if I've seen that brand; I'll keep an eye out.

[weirdodragoncat.livejournal.com]

Continental brand. None of the varieties have sugar *or* artificial sweeteners that I know of.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That's good to know! Another brand I haven't seen. I'll look. Thanks.

[theoctothorpe.livejournal.com]

It's all about Fage for me... Greek Yoghurt. Personally, I get the 2%. It's also goat's milk, so that may have a positive impact for those who are lactose intolerant.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

This is at least the third vote for Greek. I better go get me some of that!

(If I'm lactose intolerant, I'm finding, it's not by much. I have no problem with a cup of yogurt or a whale of a lot of cheese. Two full glasses of milk in a morning, though, will get me.)

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

Mountain High normal (neither low fat nor flavoured) yoghurt is excellent. There's something with a Russian name that's not too bad either. Plus Trader Joe's normal is very nice too, but you need to go to Trader Joe's to get it, so I usually don't bother (Mountain High works well for me).

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

oh, and sweeten it yourself :) that way you'll know just what went into it