Have you ever had the inclination to try baby food, but couldn’t be seen eating baby food? Well check this out – it’s virtually the same ingredients, in the same container, but with a mature, sophisticated label design...
Have you ever had the inclination to try baby food, but couldn’t be seen eating baby food? Well check this out – it’s virtually the same ingredients, in the same container, but with a mature, sophisticated label design.
I’m talking about Health Valley “On the Go” Fruit Yogurt Smoothies. You can get them in a box of four and no one will know you’re buying mashed fruit in baby food containers! I found them on sale for $2.50 per box, but I guess the typical retail price at Wal-Mart is still only $2.98 per box.
These ready-to-drink smoothies are a blend of real fruit and yogurt with no added sugar, and you don’t have to refrigerate them (until after opening… but that would be like refrigerating an energy gel packet after opening.)
Speaking of which, could these be a more natural alternative to an energy gel? Let’s see…
Health and Nutrition Inspection
Starting with the ingredients list…
Ingredients: Pears, mangoes, water, yogurt (milk, nonfat dry milk, yogurt cultures), calcium citrate malate, citric acid, ascorbic acid (vitamin c), vitamin d.
Seems like a healthy list – it really is fruit and yogurt. Obviously both those ingredients are naturally full of sugar, but there’s no added sugar (or worse, corn syrup.)
It also looks like these have the upper hand over comparable bottled smoothies, like Yoplait or even Stonyfield Farms Organic Super Smoothies, which contain added sugar (yep, “organic sugar” is Stonyfield’s #2 ingredient.)
Nutrition Facts
Calories 90
Total Fat 0.5g
Total Carb. 20g
Dietary Fiber 2g
Sugars 15g
Protein 1g
Running the numbers, these Health Valley smoothies contain nearly as many grams of sugar per ounce as the Stonyfield ones, but here, the sugar is from the fruit. Stonyfield’s smoothies are based on yogurt and added sugar, with fruit coming in third place.
That makes these Health Valley Fruit Yogurt Smoothies a good sugary snack that could probably function as an energy gel substitute! There’s dairy in them, but they’re mostly just fruit puree, so you’d get a good shot of fructose.
Taste Testing The Smoothies
I purchased all three flavors, and they all taste like real fruit!
Strawberry Banana: This one is “pretty good.” It tastes like real fruit; we’re not talking fresh cut fruit, but real fruit nonetheless. You can taste strawberries and bananas separately, like fruit on the bottom yogurt. Sometimes the bananas tasted like they were a little too ripe, but not bad. The strawberry half was just right.
Pear Mango: OH MY GOSH! Now this is amazing! Again, it tastes like real fruit, but this time the pear and mango flavors are perfect! Perfect ripeness, completely natural and real, and they taste like fresh picked fruit!! I’ve never had a pear mango flavor combo before, but now I want to mix pear and mango all the time! These are at least as good as, but probably better than, a Naked fruit drink! (Green Machine would be the one exception.)
Just wait, the next Cooking With Coach Levi segment this summer will be a pear mango protein smoothie!
Apple Blueberry: This was really really good!! The blueberries taste amazing and it tastes like they’re mixed with apple butter! (That’s right, apple butter!) Right now I think I like it better than the pear mango, but they’re two completely different, complementary flavors, so you should get a box of each.
One thing that was odd was that every single package, even of the same flavor, was slightly different. Some had more of one fruit than the other, and sometimes the fruit was just right, while others it was overripe (specifically the banana.)
That would explain why sometimes the mango ones were awesome and sometimes lackluster. (Not unlike buying fresh mangoes – you never know if you’ll get a good one.) And a few tasted like pears, with just a hint of mango. It wasn’t a
score: 1
about 1 hour ago