Sometime back, I wrote a post called "Yoplait...You're Dead to Me" and even in my absences it has proven to be one of the more popular posts on my blog.  I saw a Yoplait commercial on TV the other day touting "NO ASPARTAME" and " NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP" in their Light yogurt line. Since these were my biggest gripes with the product, I figured now is a good time to give Yoplait another try.

While doing my weekly grocery shopping, I picked up a cup of Yoplait Light Orange Creme and a cup of Yoplait Greek 100 Orange Creme.  I've come to love my Chobani and Oikos Greek yogurts, so I wanted to see how the Yoplait compared.

The first thing I looked at, was the ingredients list.  Sure enough, there was no HFCS and no more aspartame.  However, the aspartame was replaced with sucralose. While sucralose may be an alternative, and is made from real sugar; it isn't exactly getting a lot of positive attention these days and may be questionable as to the long term effects to our health.  That aside, there is still a laundry list of other ingredients. Yoplait Light Orange Creme, originally had  15 ingredients (still too many for a yogurt, in my opinion) while their No Aspartame version has 16. They've added Lime Juice Concentrate in this particular flavor.  But still no mention of any live yogurt cultures.

I thought you had to have live and active cultures to call a product yogurt, but apparently not.  More on that here.

Old Yoplait Light Orange Creme Nutritional Info

Current Yoplait Light Orange Creme Nutritional Information from Yoplait.com (click to jump)

 

Food photographer, I am not.

 So, with that being said.  How does it taste? One of the things that put me off this product originally was the strong aspartame taste.  Granted I had never noticed it before I started eating more healthily but I think that was largely due to the fact that I was eating aspartame in so many other processed foods, I didn't recognize the flavor.

So I cracked up both the Yoplait Light and the Yoplait Greek this morning. First think I noticed was the difference in color. The Yoplait Light had a much brighter orange color than the Greek alternative which was more of a pastel orange. Difficult to tell by the picture here.

Texture of each is very different.  Yoplait Light is much more runny, like a melted milkshake. Where as the Greek  was a bit thicker as you would expect from a Greek yogurt, it was still on the thinner side of thick, if that makes sense. I'm not a fan of the mouth feel of either.

Only 6 natural ingredients!

As for taste... it certainly tastes like orange, but doesn't quite remind me of the Creamcicle like it once had.  I'm more distracted by the artificial taste. Not an aspartame taste, but definitely chemical.And the aftertaste lasted quite awhile.

Sorry Yoplait, you still haven't won me back.  I'm a Chobani/Oikos convert.  However, I've read good things about Simplait.  Bring that back and maybe I'll give you another shot.