Could Your Yoghurt Be Sending Your Sugar Levels Soaring?

I've been doing these sugar content posts for the last few months, and it's always the everyday food items that shock people the most, like the breakfast cereal. I decided to do one on yoghurt as it's a food product that most people eat every day either for breakfast or as a snack. While some yoghurts are unsurprisingly high in sugar, some seemingly 'healthy' yoghurts have a huge amount of sugar in them.

I've said it before but I am not claiming to be a nutritionist, or anything of the sort for that matter, all I am doing here is comparing the amount of sugar per 100g of each type of yoghurt above. The nutritional information is provided by each yoghurt company so all is fact. It's only really when you see the different yoghurts weighed up next to one another that you appreciated truly how much sugar is in some of these yoghurts. Yoghurts are sold to us as a healthy choice, and natural and greek yoghurts are certainly a healthy choice. However, the amounts of sugar that some food manufacturers pump their food with is quite shocking.

The guideline daily amounts of sugar consumption are 85g for a child, 90g for a woman and 120g for a man. Now for some of my findings...

• Unsurprisingly the Muller Corner Banana Chocolate Flakes has 16.8g sugar. It's a glorified dessert, so I don't think anyone will be shocked to hear it had the highest amount of sugar in it.
• What was sinister is how the 'diet' yoghurts were so high in sugar. Weight Watchers greek style yoghurt was the second highest (tied with Yoplait) for highest amount of sugar with 12.6g sugar per pot. I think it's pretty scandalous that a diet company can sell yoghurts so high in sugar when people are trusting their brand to be a healthy choice.
• Activia's strawberry yoghurt has 8.8g sugar per pot which is still high, though not as bad as Weight Watchers. Both of those yoghurts are 0% fat free yet contain high amounts of sugar, conversely the Glenisk full fat greek yoghurt contained only 5.3g sugar, none of which was added sugar.
• Petit Filous were also really high in sugar with 11.9g per 100g, probably not something you want to be snacking on (or worse feeding your toddler if you have one), on a regular basis.

Glenisk Organic Full Fat Greek Style (per 100g):

127 kcal

4g protein

sugar 5.3g (not added)

10g fat

Petit Filous Strawberry (per 100g):

95 Kcal

5.3g protein

11.9g sugar

2.3g fat

Weight Watchers Greek Style (per 100g):

79 Kcal

6.0g protein

12.6g sugar

0.1g fat

Activia Strawberry 0% fat (per 100g):

57 Kcal

4.8g protein

8.8g sugar

0.1g fat

Yoplait Strawberry (per 100g):

92 Kcal

3.2g protein

12.6g sugar

2.6g fat

Vitalinea 0% fat Raspberry (per 100g):

43 Kcal

4g protein

5.4g sugar

0.1g fat

Killowen Natural (per 100g):

101 Kcal

2.5g protein

3.8g sugar

3.1g fat

Muller Corner Banana Chocolate Flakes (per 100g):

143 Kcal

4.3g protein

16.8g sugar

5.1g fat

From a sugar point of view is fair to say if you're eating plain natural or greek style yoghurt you're making a safe choice. It's the flavoured yoghurts that jack up the sugar content, and it seems the fat free yoghurts often compensate for lack of flavour with sugar. I'm not saying to forgo yoghurt going forward, just keep an eye out that your usual one is pumped with sugar that you're not aware of.