Deadly Yogurt From Costco

August 5, 2008 – 10:12 am

If you're a "generation X" member, you probably remember the 1970s Dannon Yogurt commercial about the people in Soviet Georgia who ate lots of yogurt and lived into their hundreds. For decades, we've been told that yogurt is healthy and good for you. Unfortunately, not all yogurts are created equal.

This morning, I got up early and had breakfast with my son before he went to day care.  He likes to have yogurt for breakfast, so I had some with him.

They had Brown Cow yogurt on sale at our local supermarket, and he and my wife loooove it. When I told him he could have some Brown Cow this morning, he did a happy dance (he's 3). I decided to eat a cup of the Kirkland brand (Costco's house brand) yogurt we had in the fridge so that I wouldn't depelete the stash of Brown Cow for my wife and son.

All I can say after eating that cup of Costco yogurt is... what the bloody hell? It was so sweet it was almost disgusting, and when I looked at the nutritional information, I was shocked. In one 8 oz. cup of Costco's Kirkland brand yogurt there are 48 grams of carbs, 42 of them sugars. That's over 1.3 teaspoons of sugar per ounce, nearly 1.5 ounces by weight of sugar in a single cup of yogurt.

In a Milky Way candy bar, which has 20 more calories overall than this cup of Costco yogurt, there are only 41 grams of carbs and 35 grams of sugars. That's 1.75 teaspoons less sugar in a candy bar than in a cup of Costco yogurt. Now the Milky Way bar has 8 more grams of fat, so I'm not suggesting the candy bar is healthier than yogurt. I'm just using this comparison to show that this cup of yogurt has more sugar than a candy bar.

And it's not "good" sugar. The list of ingredients reads: "Cultured Grade A Pasteurized Milk, Strawberries, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Sugar, Nonfat Milk, Corn Syrup..." Three of the top six ingredients are sweeteners that have no other nutritional value than empty sugar calories.

Recent studies have linked High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) with a number of negative health effects. In a study where half the participants got more calories from fructose and half got more calories from glucose, the fructose-heavy participants showed increased levels of triglycerides, cholesterol, increased insulin resistance (a pre-cursor for diabetes), and the worse kind of belly fat. And while early theories about it having some special obesity-causing mechanism have been mostly debunked (calories are still calories), the increased use of it in foods marketed to children is still seen as developing a more aggressive sweet tooth at a younger age, which may contribute to childhood obesity.

But back to the sugar content of this yogurt. This 8 ounce (by volume) cup of Costco yogurt has more sugar than:

• A 2 ounce Milky Way candy bar
• A 12-ounce can of Coca Cola
• 6 tablespoons (3 servings) of Smuckers® squeezable grape jelly
• 5.4 ounces by weight (1.8 servings) of Kraft® Chocolate Dream - Cheesecake Filling
• 1/4 cup of Mrs. Butterworth's pancake syrup

Now, I've held up Brown Cow as an alternative, so it's only fair that I give some of its nutritional info. It's a whole milk yogurt with a creamy, fatty top. So, while lower in sugar, it's higher in fat. It comes in 6 ounce cups, but if we extrapolated the numbers to 8 ounce cups, it would have about the fat and sugar content of a Milky Way bar. Of course, the primary sweeteners for Brown Cow, rather than being high fructose corn syrup, sugar, and more corn syrup, are honey, pure maple syrup, and evaporated cane juice.

So, in some ways it's better for you, some ways not. But Brown Cow, because of its price, is a once-in-a-while treat in our house, while Costco was a candidate for our everyday yogurt. But after reading the ingredients and nutritional info, Costco yogurt is forever banned from our house. We'll stick with the moderate cost Darigold and Cascade Fresh yogurts that tend to be within our budget at our regular supermarket. They have less sugar than either Brown Cow or Costco yogurt and no high fructose corn syrup.

Furthermore, this is going to make me take a new look at all of Costco's Kirkland brand products before I buy them. If Costco will sell this oversweetened, nutritionally questionable yogurt with a straight face, the quality and value of all of its house brand products are now suspect as far as I'm concerned.