Moscow Food Co-op Food Review
Vanilla Yogurt
by Vicki Reich, from the July 2003 Newsletter
Procrastination makes strange bedfellows. Okay, I know that’s not how the saying goes, but in this instance it makes perfect sense. I had put off writing this column until the last moment and ran out of time before Kurt and I left for a weekend in Seattle. So, I took the taste test along and sat around one morning in Seattle with some strange bedfellows tasting yogurt. The strange bedfellows are my friends Kate and Devin, their 2 1/2-year-old daughter Hanna, and their roommate Jodi. Having never been subjected to the harsh rules I impose on my taste testers, I started slowly with some of my more important rules: they had to try everything; no one word comments are allowed; and they couldn’t all talk at once. After we covered the ground rules, the tasting began in earnest.
I chose 7 kinds of vanilla yogurt—some low-fat, some fat-free and a couple of soy to mix things up a bit. Horizon Organic Fat Free Yogurt was the first to be sampled. It is very sweet with a lot of vanilla flavor. It has a smooth but slightly gummy texture.
Wallaby Organic Low Fat Yogurt was a hit with the 2 year old. It has a very custardy flavor and texture, and is more of a European-style yogurt than any of the others.
Brown Cow Organic Low Fat Yogurt was the favorite of the whole group. (It also is the highest in calories and grams of sugar, go figure!) It has a great vanilla flavor with flecks of vanilla beans. It is creamy and rich-tasting, and several of us thought it would make a great dessert served over fresh fruit. It is the only yogurt we tested with the flavoring on the bottom, so make sure you mix it up good.
Next I snuck in Whole Soy Yogurt. It wasn’t much of a sneak. Everyone could tell it was soy right away. It has a definite beany aftertaste and a slightly gritty consistency, but a good vanilla flavor.
Stonyfield Organic Low Fat Yogurt was well-liked for its tangy and not-too-sweet flavor. It has a smooth but slightly gummy consistency, similar to the Horizon.
Nancy’s Organic Fat Free Yogurt tastes like yogurt should, according to Kate and Jodi. It has that tangy, ‘alive’ flavor that yogurt is known for. It’s not a yogurt for the faint of heart, or for kids accustomed to sweetened yogurt. It doesn’t have a very strong vanilla flavor.
The last yogurt was White Wave Soy Yogurt. This is a less-soy-tasting yogurt than the Whole Soy. It has a watery texture and tasted more like pears than vanilla, but it was the preferred soy yogurt of the two.
The tasting went well and all rules were followed except Jodi did said ‘yuck’ once and Hannah had trouble with the ‘No one word comment’ rule as well. With our intestinal flora thus enhanced, we went out on the town to shop and eat—the real reason we went to Seattle.
Read an additional Co-op yogurt review
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