This weekend, my parents helped me out with the yogurt tasting! We went to Trader Joe’s and bought a bunch of yogurt!
For those of you not familiar with Trader Joe’s, Trader Joe’s is an American discount grocery chain that tends more toward “gourmet” type foods. They have a lot of their own house brands of foods…including yogurt. FOUR varieties of yogurt, plus a soy yogurt.
I didn’t buy the soy yogurt because the only flavor they had in the store was something I thought sounded kind of gross, but I got the four dairy yogurts that Trader Joe’s makes. They varied in price from the plain old nonfat vanilla, which cost $0.79, putting it on the cheaper end of the yogurt spectrum, to $1.69 for organic Greek style.
The four yogurts are:
“French Village” Nonfat Vanilla Yogurt. This one is $0.79. It has 130 calories, is nonfat, but has 25 grams of sugar, which is really high. However, that is all cane juice and not corn syrup.
Trader Joe's French Village Vanilla
Organic Vanilla Yogurt. $0.89 It has 130 calories, 15 of which are from fat. It has 21 grams of sugar, so significantly less than the non-organic version. It is sweetened with cane sugar.
Trader Joe's Organic Vanilla
Greek Style Honey $1.19. 120 calories, no fat. It also only has 13 grams of sugar, which is very low. Milk and honey are pretty much the only ingredients in it.
Trader Joe's Greek Style Honey
Organic Greek Style Honey $1.69 130 calories, no fat. 17 grams of sugar. It has no corn syrup but it does have corn starch in it. It surprised me that the organic kind had more ingredients than the “regular” kind.
Trader Joe's Organic Greek Style Vanilla
French Village looks custardy when you open it, with a little water on the top. It’s very solid but very smooth and creamy with a very strong vanilla flavor. It was a little too sweet and the vanilla tasted kind of funny to me.
Trader Joe's French Village Vanilla Opened
My mother said it was too “gelatinous” and lumped together when you swallow it. She also said that it tasted like the vanilla flavoring was cheap.
My father, on the other hand, said it had the perfect sweetness that he is always used to.
The organic vanilla looks similar and has a similar but lighter texture to the French Village. Has a funny cheesy flavor I don’t like at all, but it was less vanilla-y than the regular.
Trader Joe's Organic Vanilla Opened
My mother said she liked it better because it wasn’t as sweet.
My father didn’t like it as much as the French Village style. He said it tasted like they want to make you healthy, but he would eat it anyway.
The Greek Yogurt looks cratery when you open it. The cream top is thick, the yogurt underneath is very liquidy and sort of foamy. It tastes very, very sweet for only have 13 g of sugar, and sort of floral along with the honey. It has a dry, powdery aftertaste.
Trader Joe's Greek Style Honey Opened
My mother didn’t like this one, either, she said that it was much too sweet– cloyingly sweet to her.
My father said it was very souple, and a little tart on the tongue. He said it was definitely not the yogurt he grew up with. He did say he liked the texture, but he said the taste was “funky.”
The Organic Greek yogurt looks very puddingy and has a cream top, and is dotted with vanilla dots. Much better texture than the non-organic, but still very sweet, and it has a weird chalky undertaste (which always makes me think of Rosemary’s Baby.)
Trader Joe's Organic Greek Style Vanilla Opened
This one was also too sweet for my mother.
My father, on the other hand, said this will make you healthy and you have no dietary problems, but you will never want to eat it.
My dad finished off by saying, “Trader Joes are my heroes. The French Village is the one I would buy.”
I, however, wouldn’t buy any of them. There are a lot of other Trader Joe’s products I enjoy, but not the yogurt!