The Yogurt Diaries #12: My Big Fat Greek Yogurt Showdown

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At work on Friday, I went for two honey-flavored “Greek” style yogurts. And, doing this at work, I have a guest taster today, my coworker, Karen!

The first is a popular grocery store brand that, if you are in the US, you can probably find in a major chain near you. This one is Fage Total, which Jamie asked me to include.

Fage Total with Honey

The Fage container is a little smaller than most, at 5.3 oz, and it costs $1.79. However, it comes with a separate little side-compartment full of honey to mix in. The yogurt is much, much more caloric than any other one I’ve written about, at 250 calories (most have been between 100-170 calories for six ounces). And 110 of those calories are from fat. That’s twice as much as Brown Cow, which was the fattiest one I’d tried to date. On the other hand, there are only four ingredients in the whole damn thing: Milk, cream, cultures, and honey. There are 28 g of sugar but this is all from honey, so you can add less of the honey to the yogurt if you want to cut down the sugar.

When you open this, it looks like opening a container of sour cream or goat cheese. It looks very solid with no water to speak of.

Fage Total with Honey Opened

I thought this one was very rich and creamy– The whole thing is kind of like eating cream top. It is kind of ridiculously rich and thick, but not cheesy like the Siggi’s was. The flavor is very mild and has almost none of the usual dairy acidity, and the honey is wonderful.

Karen said that it’s not overly sweet, and you can really taste the flavor of the honey it it. She said the texture is fine, but it tasted very fatty to her– she felt like she was just eating the top of a Brown Cow yogurt (funny, that’s what I said, too!).

The second we tried is Voskos Honey Vanilla flavor. This one was $1.69 for a 5.3 oz container (also not a full 6 oz)

Voskos Greek Yogurt Honey Vanilla

Voskos is much more in line with the other yogurts I’ve tried, with 130 calories and 17 g of sugar. It’s also a non-fat yogurt, which is a bit of a relief after the Fage.

Voskos Greek Yogurt Honey Vanilla Opened

When you open it, it looks pretty gloppy, kind of like the Rachel’s. It also has brown specks in it, which, reading the back of the container, appear to be actual pieces of vanilla bean. This is the first yogurt I’ve tried that has the vanilla bean specks in it.

I thought this one was still very creamy. Less creamy than the Fage, of course, but impressively creamy for a non-fat yogurt. It didn’t really taste of honey, though, the flavor was almost herbal. Might be a honey made with different flowers. Has more cane juice than honey, which I think must explain why I didn’t think the honey flavor was very strong.

Karen said this one has and interesting texture, but she could tell it was low fat. She said it seemed very consistent in flavor and texture, and she liked the flavor. She said she liked the Fage a little better but she thought she would not buy it because of the high fat content. However, luckily, Fage does make two lower-fat versions of their yogurt.

I enjoyed these both. The Fage was incredibly decadent while I didn’t feel that way about the Voskos, but the Voskos had a pleasant and unique flavor.

Then, today, I got two more Greek-style yogurts, this time just plain vanilla. My mom tasted them with me!

The first is Oikos from Stonyfield Farm, which is a major yogurt brand. I’ve got a container of their regular yogurt in the fridge that I haven’t tried yet. This is a more “premium” style offering that I understand is more recent to their line of yogurts. It was $1.99 which is sort of tipping the price point that I would find reasonable.

Oikos Vanilla

Oikos has 110 calories and no fat. It is low on the sugar with 11 g sugar and entirely organic. It’s another one with very few ingredients:just milk, sugar, and vanilla

Oikos Vanilla Opened

Opening it, it looks a bit lumpy on top but there isn’t a lot of liquid. But when you spoon into it, it is very smooth and creamy without being rich like the Fage yogurt. It is a little sweet but I thought it was a bit too sour. My mother liked the sour aftertaste because she said it tasted like natural dairy.

We also tried Chobani, which comes in a container than looks a lot like Fage, but is a full 6 oz of yogurt. It was much cheaper than the Oikos yogurt, at $1.39.

Chobani Vanilla

Choboni is also just milk, sugar, and vanilla, and it is 120 calories a serving with 12 grams of sugar. Like Oikos, it is fat-free.

Chobani Vanilla Opened

The Chobani looks really smooth and creamy when you open it– and has very little water. I really liked the texture of the Chobani, and I think it is one of my favorites texture-wise so far. It is incredibly creamy and rich for a fat-free yogurt. It is also not very sweet at all–it has a very strong vanilla flavor, more vanilla than sugar, which I really liked. It had a little bit of a sour aftertaste which I didn’t mind, but my mom did. She said the taste was “medicinal” but she liked the teture because it tasted more fatty than a fat-free yogurt, and she thought it was creamy without being “puddingy.”

Out of all of these, I would totally eat any of them again! This was like a win weekend for yogurt. I think the Oikos was my least favorite, and since it had the highest price point, I would probably give it a miss, but my mom liked the Oikos better than Chobani, so I think it is a personal preference thing. The Fage Total is like the most decadent yogurt ever and probably not something you want to eat all the time, but man, it is delicious.

Mirrored from Antagonia.net.