Sunday, August 24, 2008

Why no individual sized plain yougurt?

I like yogurt. I like the way it tastes, I like the different flavors out there, I like the fact that it comes in nice individual sized cups for you to enjoy throughout the day with no mess. There is however one gaping hole in the typical yogurt lineup; it is almost impossible to find plain yogurt in a size less than 32ozs.

This has been a thorn in my side for a while for several reasons. Firstly, yogurt is very healthy in its plainest state; when you start adding sugar and flavorants, not so much. Recently I bought a bunch of individual sized cups of Lucerne brand yogurt at Safeway. The 8oz cup of pomegranate and raspberry weighed in at 250 calories, and tasted way too sweet. When you try to cut down on the calories on these yogurts you'll find out that almost all lower calorie yogurts are sweetened with Aspartame. Even if you don't believe the hype about Aspartame causing pretty much any and all health problems (look into it, there are some awesome crazy-person websites out there) I just don't like yogurt to have the Diet Coke aftertaste. Furthermore, I just like the taste of plain yogurt, perhaps with some granola, or even cornflakes, mixed in.

So what is one to do with no snack packs? Make your own damn snack packs! When I was in college I was making my own yogurt and needed ways of storing all that I made. i discovered that my grocery store carried these 8oz plastic "jars" near the canning supplies. They are designed for making "freezer jams", whatever those are. They are the perfect size for a serving of yogurt, and they're readily available for about 60 cents each. I now buy the 32oz containers of plain yogurt for about 50 cents/oz versus 70-80 cents/oz that the sickeningly sweet individual sized cups cost, and split it into 4 8oz jars. If I want something more, I can mix in some frozen blueberries, or fresh if someone else is paying...

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