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

[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.