In the past years, the milk product area at groceries has seen some new plant-based food innovations, using oats instead of milk for making yoghurt. While they advertise themselves as a snack substitute for yoghurt, let’s see how their fine print compares beyond marketing slogans.
This time I have used products from Valio's portfolio, which are available in Finland and the Baltics.
Let’s take Oddlygood oat snack raspberry. Officially this product is classified as a snack. Still, on the packaging there is written “oat gurt” as part of the design, suggesting that we mentally create an association as oat-based yoghurt. What’s inside this snack? As ingredients in fine print, we find:
water, gluten-free OAT flour (8%), sugar, raspberry purée, raspberry, rapeseed oil, modified starch, pea protein, black carrot juice concentrate, calcium, flavourings, salt, acidity regulator (citric acid), vitamins (riboflavin (B2), B12, D2), iodine, starter culture, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium sp. Contains raspberries 3,1% (purée 2,2% and berries 0,9%).
and on the nutritional label, it says:
Why would we consider it a snack? Because it is more like a watery cake: it contains flour, sugar, (highly processed) rapeseed oil, (highly processed) modified starch, (highly processed) pea protein, and unspecified flavourings.
On the positive side, there is a tiny bit (3.1%) of raspberries. Per 1kg package, this makes just 31 g of berries.
Comparing that carbs (mostly sugars) are at 150g per kg, if we deduct the berries, we get 119g, which makes 28 teaspoons of additional sugars (1 teaspoon of sugar is 4.2g). To counter this sweetness they have added a bit of salt. Is it oddly good or are you being just fooled? Let’s see what could be alternatives.
Among yoghurts from the same producer, a comparable alternative would be Alma yoghurt raspberry-rhubarb, which has the following ingredients in the fine print:
milk, sugar, raspberry 2,1%, rhubarb juice concentrate 1,4%, modified starch, colour (beetroot red), acidity regulator (sodium citrate), flavours, starter culture.
The nutritional label says the following:
In this yoghurt, we can see the source of fat is from milk, instead of (inflammatory) rapeseed oil. Baseline milk sugars have been boosted with additional sugar and (highly processed, most likely GMO corn) starch. Per 1kg package, 110g of sugars means 26 teaspoons (of which 10 are natural sugars found in milk and 16 additional ones added in production). Berry content is 2.1+1.4= 3.5%, which is higher than in Oddly Good. Still, 35g of berries per 1kg package is very little and most of the flavour is boosted with unspecified flavouring agents and “emotional flavour” is added by that beetroot red colour (source unspecified).
While the added starch and sugars are not good for you, the overall impact is healthier as you are getting more natural protein and fats, avoiding inflammatory rapeseed oil and overall carbs content is lower as well.
What if you would just eat/drink natural yoghurt?
Let’s see what is inside Alma unflavored yoghurt:
milk, yeast
This is as barebones as you can get. For nutrition details, it says:
Compared to previous flavoured yoghurt, we see that in unflavored yoghurt the calories are 30% less, also there are significantly fewer carbs. Here they are in the form of natural sugars found in milk. Both fat and protein levels are boosted.
From a fine print perspective, it makes a much healthier alternative to opt for this unflavored yoghurt and add some of your own flavours - may it be real fruits, fruit powders or perhaps some spices (I often add cinnamon and cardamom).
Besides yoghurt, what could be a better alternative? I like kefir. For example, non-flavoured and simple Alma Kefir, made just from:
milk and starter culture.
This kefir has the following nutritional values:
This is identical to unflavored yoghurt. If the macro nutritional aspects are the same, what is their difference? Probiotic content. Quoting Healthline:
“Kefir contains three times more probiotics than yoghurt. It has around 12 live and active cultures and 15 to 20 billion colony-forming units (CFUs). Yoghurt has one to five active cultures and six billion CFUs.”
While we do not have details on the probiotic content of Oddly Good products apart from the ingredient list (“starter culture, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium sp. “), considering that the macronutrient content on yoghurt was better than on oat-gurt, most likely you would much improve your odds for healthier diet by avoiding oat-gurt and yoghurt altogether and opt for kefir instead.
Considering that kefir is often priced the same, if not cheaper than yoghurt, there might be an extra win for your wallet as well.