Average Cost:
Official URL: http://www.yobabyyogurt.com
Ideal For: 6mos-2 years
Rating:

My son loves yogurt and will easily down a whole 32oz container of it in one sitting if we allow him to. We naturally prefer that he refrain from doing this. We also prefer slightly more portable containers to send him to daycare with, or to pop into the diaper bag quickly before an outing. Most adult-centric single-serve yogurts contain 18 or more grams of sugar per serving, and is often fat-free or low-fat. Low fat and high sugar are two things you do NOT want your toddler to have.

YoBaby comes in simple plain or fruit flavors with less sugar, is organic, and is made with whole milk which makes it suitable for younger children and toddlers.

FLAVORS

Each six pack of the original yogurt cups comes with three containers of two different flavors. The 6-packs are sold in the following flavors: Banana & Vanilla, Peach & Pear, and Blueberry & Apple. YoBaby also has a plain version, which is the favorite of my son and I who don’t care much for sweet stuff. The flavored yogurts have very natural tastes and the fruit is puree and not chunky so your child can eat it as soon as you have determined that they are not sensitive to any of the ingredients.

All of their yogurts have a wonderfully fresh fruit flavor, unlike many adult-centric yogurts which taste like fruit preserves, or child-centric yogurts which taste candy-flavored.

NUTRITION

Stonyfield Farms “YoBaby” yogurt is one of the few few single-serving yogurts geared toward young children that uses whole milk instead of low-fat or fat-free milk. Children under two years of age require more fat for brain development, so feeding them low fat yogurts is not recommended. YoBaby yogurts have a thin layer of cream across the top when you open them up, so make sure you mix them thoroughly. It’s nice to see cream instead whey (the clear liquid that floats to the top of low fat yogurts).

Stonyfield Farms uses organic milk, organic naturally milled sugar, and organic fruits and flavorings which again puts it ahead of the curve as organic milk is free of hormones and antibiotics, and organic fruits are free of pesticides.

SUGAR CONTENT

With the exception of the plain yogurt, these yogurts all have sugar in them but far less sugar than in adult fruit-yogurts. A four oz cup has 12-13g of sugars which includes the natural fruit sugars and the lactose in the milk. (The plain yogurt is unsweetened and has 6g of sugars from lactose. You can assume that the fruit yogurts can attribute at least 6-8 grams of their sugar content to lactose and fruit sugar.)

PLASTIC SAFETY

The good news is that YoBaby containers are free of BPA. The bad news is that they are made of polystyrene which has its own set of problems. While styrene is unlikely to leech into yogurt which is non-acidic and not heated, we do wish that Stonyfield would change the material they use for their yogurt cups.

COUPONS

YoBaby has printable e-coupons on their website that allow you to save a dollar off of the 6-pack of yobaby cups and 4 pack of Yo-mommy cups or 50 cents off of a pack of drinkable yogurt. Requires Internet Explorer to download your coupons. http://www.yobabyyogurt.com/YBcoupons

BOTTOM LINE

This yogurt is an excellent whole-milk yogurt that has a pleasant mild tartness to it. The fruits have a great fresh taste, and the quality of ingredients is obviously very high. Most of the sweetness of these yogurts comes from natural milk and fruit sugars that are present in the ingredients, and where additional sweetness is needed, organic naturally milled cane sugar is used instead of over-processed commercial white sugar.  My son and I both love this yogurt.

The only downside to this yogurt is the polystyrene cups. While we don’t typically deduct points for this alone, we would expect a company as health-conscious as Stonyfield to use a more health-friendly plastic packaging.