Yogurt For Kids with Sugar?
We are a yogurt household. Even with our tiny refrigerator our top shelf is full of yogurt: soy yogurt for Papa Tree, Stonyfield Fat Free for me, Ronnybrook drinkable yogurt for Birch and sometimes YoBaby too. The drinkable yogurts are fast, easy and portable. What I didn’t realize is that these prepackaged baby yogurts are hopped up on sugar.
I am reading the book, "What To Eat" by Marion Nestle. Nestle has received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the James Beard Foundation (the food world’s highest honor) and she teaches nutrition at NYU. Seems to me she is a reliable source. Here is what she says on the subject:
"Sugars constitute 55 percent of the 80 calories in Go-Gurt (Yoplait’s "kid-friendly slurpable yogurt in a tube"), 67 percent of the 90 calories in Danimals Drinkable (Danon’s version of kid yogurt) and 68 percent of the 170 calories in Danimals XL. Even in Stonyfield’s YoBaby organic yogurts, marketed for infants and toddlers, 53 percent of the 120 calories come from added sugars. Some of Stonyfield’s yogurts for older kids appear berry-flavored, but they have no fruit at all; their sweetness comes from juice concentrate and sugars, of course, and their color comes from beet juice. Stonyfield may be organic, but it is Big Yogurt: Group Danone (Danon Yogurt) owns 85 percent of the company.
I favor the plain, unadorned kind (of yogurt), especially when it is made from organic milk. I choose the level of fat depending on how I intend to eat the yogurt. The nonfat version, for example, tastes just fine when mixed with foods of other flavors, raw or cooked. If I want fruit, I’ll add my own, fresh or frozen, and avoid the heavy sugars, fruitless juice concentrates….If I want it sweeter, I’ll toss in my own teaspoonful or two of sugar. No matter how much I add, it will be a lot less than what is added commercially."
I had to look at a comparison of YoBaby and Ronnybrook as these are the two brands we buy. I just assumed that Ronnybrook wouldn’t use as much sugar and relied on the quality of their buttermilk to make the yogurt for their great taste. Not a chance. When I compared the two: Ronnybrook at 8 oz has 25 grams of sugar, YoBaby at 8 oz has 32 grams of sugar. Yes, Ronnybrook has less….but not much less. How disappointing.
Peach Yogurt Drink
Related Posts:
- Lead in Kids Drinks? (June 13th, 2010)
- Incorrect Calorie Counts on menus? (January 20th, 2010)
- How To Teach Your Kids About Sugar (May 1st, 2009)
- Some Nutrition Thoughts (March 11th, 2008)
- Sugar Substitute (October 21st, 2007)
my boy loves the ronnybrook drinks too.
You might try what we do: I fill up half a straw cup with the ronnybrook, then add plain stonyfield whole milk yogurt & shake to creamy perfection. He seems plenty happy with the combo.
Ronnybrook, say it ain’t so!
In their defense, about half of those 25 sugar grams are from the milk itself, and some smaller percentage can be linked to the fruit (leaving probably only a handful of actual added-sugar grams): If you look at the nutritionals for the plain yogurt drink, you see that there are 12 grams of sugar. At first I wondered if they somehow sneaked sugar into the plain one as well (why on earth…?), but when I look at the carton of whole milk in my fridge, I see that it lists 11 grams of sugar per cup.
Hopefully you can let Birch enjoy his beloved drinkables with a clearer conscience!