Ricera Rice Yogurt

One-word verdict: Barf. (Trust me, it accurately describes the color and the textures of this stuff, and the taste is not far behind.)

The backstory: I noticed a new brand on the Whole Foods yogurt shelves recently--Ricera, a yogurt made from rice. Interesting! I thought. A quick look at the long ingredients list and high sugar and calorie count, however, told me that this was probably not the yogurt for me. But when it went on sale this week, I picked up a cup of the peach flavor in the name of research.

Nutrition: For a yogurt that's so low in fat, the calorie count is pretty high, thanks to a lot of carbohydrates (42 grams total carbs in a 6-ounce cup). Per 6 ounces of the peach flavor, you get 190 calories, 25 grams sugar, and 0 grams saturated fat (1 gram total fat). This also includes 3 grams fiber, which is nice, but only 3 grams protein, which is significantly less than you'll find in most dairy and soy yogurts.

The cup proudly announces that it's nondairy, and a tiny icon communicates that it's kosher, but I had to go to the company's website for confirmation that it's gluten-free (it is). That a rice-based product clearly geared toward the allergy market wouldn't make sure to put this information on the cup baffled me, but soon I realized it's the least of their problems...

Well, how is it? I needn't have worried about the calories, because I couldn't bring myself to finish it.

Upon removing the foil lid, I was accosted by a substance of a pukey brown color that smelled mildly fermented. The texture was slightly thicker than applesauce and gritty, interspersed with chunks of rice and maybe small pieces of peach (it was hard to tell).

The taste could also only be described as "fermented," with a bitter aftertaste and, at times, a hint of generic peach flavor. This, combined with the muddy color and gloppy, baby-food-like texture, made for a pretty disgusting "yogurt"-eating experience.

Where's it made? The product is "Distributed" by Ricer Foods in Middletown, California--2,907 miles from NYC.

Ingredient notes: To complement its nasty taste and uninspiring nutritional profile, Ricera has the longest ingredients list I've ever seen on a yogurt-like product. We start with "Organic Oryzalife," a patented blend of water, organic brown rice, and rice protein, followed by organic evaporated cane juice (sweetener) and organic peaches. After that starts the slew of (organic!) thickeners, flavorants, and preservatives, including tapioca starch, tapioca syrup, inulin, locust bean gum, natural flavors, agar, citric acid, pectin, and annatto. Yeesh! Also in the mix are salt, several vitamins and minerals, and four yogurt cultures.

I've said before that alternative yogurts usually need some extra ingredients to help them attain the texture of dairy yogurt, and I stand by that...but this seems excessive.

Processing/Earth-/Animal-friendliness: The container is your standard #5 plastic with a foil lid. To Ricera's credit, most of their ingredients are organic (where did they find that organic locust bean gum?), though with such a long ingredients list you have to assume that components of this yogurt are being trucked in from far and wide.

Price: I picked a 6-ounce cup up at Whole Foods on sale for $1 today, and I have to say I don't remember what the regular price is. I'll assume about $1.20. But trust me, even if it cost 20 cents you wouldn't catch me eating another cup of this dreck.

The bottom line: It tastes gross, it's high in sugar, and it doesn't exactly pass the "eat only food with a short list of ingredients you can pronounce" test. I commend the company for apparently being one of the only ones out there trying to cater to those hard-up yogurt lovers who are intolerant of both dairy and soy, but I think this product is going to need some serious rejiggering of its formula if it's going to score any repeat customers.

SCORING:

Ricera Rice Yogurt, Organic Peach:
taste: 0; texture: 0; sat fat: 2; naturally sweetened: 1; processing/earth-/animal-friendliness: 1

TOTAL = 4

Link: Ricera Rice Yogurt.

Trader Joe's Soy Yogurt

One-word verdict: Varies.

The backstory: It’s hard to judge soy yogurt by the same standards as dairy yogurt. Add enough thickeners and colorants and you may get it to look like the real thing, but I think that—as is the case with soy milk—you just can’t expect it to taste much like a dairy product or you will be disappointed. However, once you get past that, I think it is possible to accept soy yogurt on its own terms. And if you have a need for a dairy-free yogurt alternative (whether for kosher, vegan, lactose, or other reasons), the good news is that there are definitely some soy yogurts out there that are worth accepting. (There are also some that are vile.)

So which category does TJ’s house brand fall into? I sampled the peach and raspberry flavors to find out.

Nutrition: Pretty much all the soy yogurts I’ve ever seen are saturated-fat free, which is great, but they are also often very high in sugar, as if trying to mask the taste (or lack thereof) of soy. Both TJ’s flavors contain 0 grams saturated fat per 6-ounce cup and don’t go too crazy with the sugar—18 grams sugar for the peach, 19 grams for the raspberry. As a bonus, each flavor also contains 2 grams fiber (thanks, soy!), but the variety of starches added to help the texture approximate that of dairy yogurt bumps the total carb counts up quite a bit (27 grams carb for the peach, 32 for the raspberry), resulting in 160 calories for the peach and 170 calories for the raspberry. And both have 6 grams protein, though how much of that is true soy protein isn't specified.

Both yogurts are kosher, pareve, vegan, and gluten-free.

Well, how is it? The thing that surprised me most about this tasting experience was how much it differed between the two flavors I tried.

I started with the peach flavor. Upon opening the container I was greeted with a fairly gloppy-looking yogurt (“American-style,” I call it), but it was a nice orange color and smelled appetizing. The taste was pretty sweet with a bit of a soy undertone (this wasn’t bad, however—like I said, you just have to accept that soy yogurt has a taste all its own). There were little peach chunks throughout the yogurt, though not that many, and I’m sad to say that they were kind of tasteless.

Still, the product was all right, innocuous. Not the best soy yogurt I’ve ever tasted, but perfectly edible. The next time I go vegan for a week, I would put it on the menu.

The raspberry, on the other hand, was distinctively grayish in color. (In fact, I’d call it a barely pink shade of gray.) It had the worst part of the raspberries—the seeds—distributed throughout without any good fruity chunks. And, I shit you not, it tasted like tartar sauce.

Tartar sauce, you ask? Yes, tartar sauce. I actually ate my way through the whole the cup because with every bite I thought “Nah…that can’t be right. The next bite has to taste different.” But alas, no, tartary all the way. So congratulations, Trader Joe, on discovering the strange alchemy that can apparently turn soy, starch, fruit, sugar, and cultures into such a close approximation of everyone’s favorite pickly mayonnaise condiment.

Blech.

Where's it made? Where are any store’s private-label goods made? It’s so hard to tell. These yogurts were, however, “Distributed & Sold Exclusively” from Trader Joe’s Monrovia, CA, address, 2,759 miles from NYC.

Ingredient notes: Both flavors consist of pasteurized and cultured organic soymilk (filtered water and ground organic soybeans), organic evaporated cane juice, fruit (peaches or raspberries), cornstarch, organic rice starch, natural flavors, lactic acid (from vegetable source), tricalcium phosphate, and four live active cultures. The peach also has “annatto (for color),” listed before the tricalcium phosphate, while the raspberry has no color additives listed (mystery of the gray color solved!).

So, more sugar than fruit…a couple of thickening starches…an acid to help ferment said starches...color in the peach flavor…and an added source of calcium (which may not be as bioavailable as calcium carbonate). That’s a fair amount of “stuff” added, though most commercial soy yogurts tend to be fairly processed food products in their quest to look similar to dairy yogurts (which are often pretty processed themselves). And at least some of the stuff is organic and all of it is fairly natural.

Processing/Earth-/Animal-friendliness: Clearly these yogurts are pretty animal-friendly, since they’re animal-product-free! Some of the ingredients are organic (the soymilk, evap. cane juice, and rice starch; not the fruit or cornstarch, though). The containers are your standard #5 plastic with a plastic lid.

Price: Not bad—a 6-ounce cup costs 99 cents at, you guessed it, Trader Joe’s. (But the question with any TJ’s product always is: Will it actually be on the shelf when I get there? And will it be discontinued next week? Hoard’em if you like ’em, I guess, because ya never know.)

The bottom line: The peach tastes all right, is at least partly organic, and doesn’t cost too much, so I think it’s a decent option if you’re doing the soy yogurt thing. The raspberry is flat-out nasty. There’s also a strawberry flavor, but I don’t eat strawberry yogurt (sorry), so if you try it, please post a comment and let us know how it is.

SCORING:

Peach flavor:
taste: 3; texture: 1; sugar: 1; sat fat: 2; price: 2; naturally sweetened: 1; animal/earth friendliness: 0.5

TOTAL = 10.5

Raspberry flavor:
taste: 1; texture: 1; sugar: 1; sat fat: 2; price: 2; naturally sweetened: 1; animal/earth friendliness: 0.5

TOTAL = 8.5

Link: Trader Joe’s.

Ronnybrook Drinkable Yogurt

One-word verdict: Divine.

The backstory: I love drinkable yogurt, but I eyed Ronnybrook’s colorful bottles at the Greenmarket, moseyed past them at the little shop at Chelsea Market, and spied them on the shelves of Whole Foods many times before I took the plunge. What kept me away? Maybe it was the brazen listing of “whole milk” as the first ingredient in the yogurt. Maybe it was the lack of Nutrition Facts printed on the label (how do they get away with that?). Plus, it cost $2.50 a bottle. I guess I assumed that, fatwise and pricewise, it was out of my league.

But I was wrong.

As I became interested eating more local foods, I found myself checking out the Ronnybrook website (the family dairy farm is located in upstate New York and serves the tristate area). There I found the Nutrition Facts for the drinkable yogurt line and learned that the stuff wasn’t nearly as dastardly as I thought. Then I discovered that, if you buy the yogurt directly from Ronnybrook either at their stall or at their shop, it only costs $2 for a 12-ounce bottle (that’s $1 per 6 ounces). I was sold—or, I should say, the yogurt was, to me: a bottle each of the blackberry, mango, and peach flavors.


Nutrition: Well, the bottles are 12 ounces and the info listed on the Ronnybrook site is for 8 ounces, but since 6 ounces is the standard size for a cup of yogurt these days, I rejiggered the Nutrition Facts (and price) so that I could compare the product ounce-for-ounce with other yogurts. It works out to about 135 calories, 3 grams saturated fat, and 19 grams sugar per 6 ounces for the mango and peach flavors (145 calories and 20 grams sugar for the blackberry). Not bad! A little high on the sugar side, perhaps, but I’m assuming that—for the blackberry and peach flavors, at least—a little of that must come from the chunks of fresh fruit floating appealingly in the bottle. And the featured fruit always comes before the (organic) sugar on the ingredients list, another plus.

Well, how is it? I have to admit that I could barely contain my enthusiasm after my first sip of the blackberry yogurt. I immediately sent my boyfriend an embarassingly ecstatic e-mail, laced with exclamation points and maybe a few expletives. What can I say? I felt like a hole in my yogurt-loving life had finally been filled.

The flavor was divine. Sweet, but not so sweet that the yogurty flavor was masked. The consistency was quite creamy, but interspersed with chewable chunks of blackberry pulp and seeds. And amazingly, even though the taste was so delicious, I found the stuff filling enough that I could actually stop drinking after 6 ounces and save the other half of the bottle for the next day. Well, maybe after 7 ounces.


To my delight, I found the peach flavor to be just as high-quality and subsequently crave-worthy as the blackberry. I was a tiny bit disappointed in the mango—perhaps because it’s blended smooth instead of having the little chunks. Or maybe I just set my expectations too high with the mango yogurt, a flavor I had never seen before (point for novelty!). In the end, I think that the peach and blackberry flavors were just a bit more perfectly carried off, but overall all of the flavors I tried tasted both fresh and decadent.

Where's it made? Ancramdale, NY (108 miles from NYC).

Ingredient notes: In addition to the (pasteurized) whole milk, fruit, and organic sugar that I mentioned earlier, these yogurts also consist of skim milk, pectin (a thickener derived from fruit), natural flavors, citric acid (natural preservative or flavorant), and eight “imported live cultures”—four of which are buttermilk cultures, which Ronnybrook claims “makes the difference” (dunno about that, but I think they’ve got a pretty good formula down, whatever they’re using). Anyway, not quite preservative and thickener-free, but still a pretty short and natural list.


Processing/Earth-friendliness: According their website, Ronnybrook's milk comes from hormone- and antibiotic-free cattle who eat grass in the summer and corn and hay silage in the winter. Milk is pasteurized, but not homogenized. Also, the drinkable yogurt bottles are #1 plastic—easily recyclable! (And if you consider them two servings apiece like I do, that means even less waste overall since you'll only be discarding every other day.)

Price: Drinkable bottles cost $2 apiece at the Ronnybrook Store in Chelsea Market and at Ronnybrook’s Greenmarket stalls. That works out to $1 per 6 ounces—a very good price for such a quality product. (You can also find the stuff around New York City at places like Whole Foods, Garden of Eden, and Dean & Deluca, and it’s delivered by FreshDirect, but expect to pay extra at all those places.)

The bottom line: This is the best-tasting drinkable yogurt I've had in the United States. It appears to come from well-treated animals, doesn’t have a ton of additives, doesn’t break the bank on sat fat or sugar, and has a terrific creamy consistency with real chunks of fruit. Plus, the price is fair, and for my fellow tristaters, it has the added benefit of being a local product. Drink up.

SCORING (see sidebar for criteria):

Blackberry and peach flavors:
taste: 5; texture: 3; sugar: 1; sat fat: 1; price: 2; naturally sweetened: 1; animal friendliness: 1; recyclable: 1
TOTAL = 15/20

Mango flavor:
taste: 4; texture: 2.5; novelty: 1; sugar: 1; sat fat: 1; price: 2; naturally sweetened: 1; animal friendliness: 1; recyclable: 1
TOTAL = 14.5/20

Link: Ronnybrook Farm Dairy.