I love yogurt. It’s a staple food for my vegetarian diet, and I’m always on the lookout for new brands and flavors to mix it up. So when I found out about vegetable yogurt, I was both excited and intrigued, if not a little concerned. I’d heard of greek yogurt being substituted as sour cream or mayo in certain recipes for health purposes, but just how versatile is yogurt as a savory food?
Companies like Blue Hill are creating new veggie-infused savory yogurts in flavors like parsnip, beet and sweet potato. Fage recently released a few other varieties like carrot ginger with pistachios and olive thyme with almonds.
As far as 2016 food trends go, vegetable yogurts fall in line nicely with the ongoing health trend, as an interesting way to ramp up the veggies in your diet. But beware–even though vegetable yogurt may sound great in principle, many varieties are still high in sugar, likely to mask some of the vegetable flavor.
When you think about it, adding veggies to yogurt isn’t too far off from adding ingredients like spinach to smoothies, carrots to bread or zucchini to ice cream. So, I started off my yogurt taste-test journey feeling optimistic.
The Taste Test
I bought three fruit- and vegetable-flavored Kroger brand yogurts: pineapple spinach kiwi, blueberry cucumber, and spiced apricot butternut squash. I have to give the company credit for choosing either sweet-tasting vegetables or, in the case of the spinach, vegetables with unassuming flavors that can easily be masked by the fruit.
The yogurts were flip and mix-in style, so I mixed the fruit and vegetable blend into the yogurt before tasting. I also tasted the add-ins on their own to get a better sense of the initial fruit or vegetable flavor, minus the yogurt.
1. Pineapple Spinach Kiwi
This yogurt tasted like over-cooked or canned pineapple, but the kiwi made it slightly sour. The color of the fruit and veggie mixture was an unappetizing shade of green with small spinach flecks, which made the yogurt slimy after it was all mixed together.
Unfortunately (or luckily for me), I couldn’t really taste the spinach because the pineapple flavor was just too strong. But, at the same time, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of overwhelmingly pineapple yogurt either, so this flavor ended up being a lose-lose overall.
2. Spiced Apricot Butternut Squash
If fall was a yogurt flavor, this would almost be it (if it wasn’t for the strong apricot aftertaste). The fruit and veggie mixture was a dark orange color and had an extremely thick consistency, which made it somewhat unappetizing and difficult to mix in with the yogurt.
The squash taste was noticeable, but it was mostly overpowered by strong spice flavors. So maybe if you are obsessed with all things pumpkin spice, this has some potential to become a new seasonal favorite.
3. Blueberry Cucumber
This yogurt tasted a lot like the cucumber (maybe even more so like cucumber hand soap), with a slight blueberry aftertaste. The mixture was a deep purple color, but it had small chunks of cucumber skin that were tough to chew and felt out of place in the yogurt.
Even though this one wasn’t the worst thing ever, you probably shouldn’t run to the nearest store to pick it up right now. Unless, that is, you have a particular affinity for artificial cucumber flavoring.
The Verdict
It’s great that companies are making an effort to incorporate veggies into new products because sometimes it’s difficult to eat the recommended daily allowance. But for now, I’ll stick to keeping my vegetables and yogurt separate.