When Yogurt Is Not Really Yogurt: Buyer Beware

I love Greek yogurt.  Since its wide availability on the market in recent years, it's become a staple of my diet: I eat it almost every day.  (Sometimes plain, though admittedly, most often in some fancy flavour with the added sugar.)  I just made an interesting discovery, though: some of my Greek Yogurt is apparently not yogurt anymore.  Keep this in mind next time you are at the store.

A few weeks ago I stocked up on my weekly grocery run.  As I was grabbing a container out of the fridge to take to work and eat as part of my lunch, something caught my eye.   This container didn't actually have the word "yogurt" on it.  I found that I had purchased two containers- from the same stack at the store- of Oikos Greek Key Lime flavour.   Turns out one was labelled "Greek Yogurt" in all the usual places, as always, but the other  one was labelled "Greek Recipe," and in fine print on the side was named "Dairy Snack" instead of yogurt.  Dairy Snack?  What the sneck is that?  

I did a little poking around, and it appears (by my interpretation of the regulations) that if water is added (or added back) to a yogurt product, it can't legally be called "yogurt" anymore in the USA.  Aha!  Perhaps they are diluting and thinning the yogurt by adding extra water- and helping the profit margin.  

I then compared the ingredients and nutrition information carefully.  The nutrition info on the labels are exactly the same- no difference in calories, fat, protein, calcium, etc. In the ingredient list, voila!, there was slightly more water in the Dairy Snack (water comes right before cream on the ingredient list) than the Greek Yogurt (water comes right after cream on the ingredient list).   So the additional water may indeed be the explanation of why the in the Dairy Snack is not a lot.   

BUT! here's the big deal- there is no mention anywhere on the label or ingredient list of the Dairy Snack of specific bacterial cultures, no strains of bacteria are listed on the ingredients, and the phrase "contains live and active cultures" is not on the label of the Dairy Snack (while they're still on the Greek Yogurt container).  If one reason you eat yogurt is for the probiotic effects, you won't get it from a "Dairy Snack."   I will watch very carefully from now on. Buyer beware...