Trader Joes used to have a house-brand cereal called Toasted Oatmeal Flakes. It was my favorite flavor. Unfortunately, they dropped it a while back. House brand cereals are often a copy of some other brand. The question is, was Toasted Oatmeal Flakes such a copy? In other words, can I find essentially the same product elsewhere?
I’m trying to reduce the amount of sugar in my diet. One thing I eat a lot of is vanilla yogurt. To give it a more interesting taste, I stir in some chia seeds. The vanilla yogurt has a fair amount of sugar added. Plain yogurt of the same brand has no sugar added, but I don’t like the taste. Chia seeds won’t be enough to disguise the plain yogurt taste. Is there some other thing I could add that will make it more palatable but that doesn’t have sugar?
Suggestion only, I don’t know the science-based answer: you could try sweetening your plain yogurt with flavors that almost certainly would add enough sweetness to be palatable while still containing far less sugar than commercial yogurt:
A spoonful of a jam or jelly that you like
Half (or whole) banana, quite ripe, mashed
dried cranberries, raisins, apricots, etc.
a little honey (which I’ve read delivers more sweetness than sugar for the same amount of calories
Some frozen strawberries, thawed and sliced
Another approach would be to start by sweetening the heck out of your plain yogurt, using 2 Tbs of maple syrup, honey, or other sweetener - then slowly decreasing the sweetening by 1/2 tsp every few days. In a very short period of time, your tastebuds would adjust.
Especially about weaning yourself off sweetness in steps. When I went diabetic a decade+ ago I went hard over zero sugar and zero artificial sweetness. Cold turkey zero. Even the small amount of fruit I ate was chosen to be the least possible sweet types.
A year later things like ice cream tasted flat disgusting. Thick and syrupy and cloying. Uggh. You don’t need to emulate my extremism to get a similar result. You’re habituated to X level of sweetness now. You can rehabituate to X/2 or X/10 if you want. For my personality, cold turkey was easier than incrementally cutting back. You may be the opposite. Either way you can get there from here if you are willing to control your spoon rather than have it control you.
In addition, not all plain yogurts are created equal. Some are much more tangy / yogurty / anti-sweet. Others are more neutral and taste more like thickened dairy cream. So you might shop around to find the one that’s best, or at least least objectionable, to however your taste is calibrated.
Even within a brand, there’s also a big difference between non-fat, low-fat, mid-fat, and full-fat. I find they use all sorts of weird science and, yes, sweeteners in the low-fat, and especially the non-fat, versions. IMO its far better to buy the full-fat version. You’re getting real flavor, and flavor is the thing you feel you’re missing when you first get off sugar.
When blueberries are abundant, we pick whatever the birds don’t get and end up with a gallon ziplock in the freezer. My gf tosses a few tablespoons of these into her Greek yogurt.
General Mills sells a product called Oatmeal Crisp. It has a similar ingredient list and nutritional profile, except Oatmeal Crisp contains almonds and Toasted Oatmeal Flakes did not. I really don’t know if they taste the same since I never tried the Trader Joe’s product.
Regarding #2, I think it is important to know why you want to reduce sugar in your diet. If it is to help lose weight, then changing to full fat yogurt may not be the answer. If you are concerned about your A1c score, then adding more fat may not be a problem.
A few other thoughts:
Dried fruit is just concentrated fruit sugar, compared to fresh fruit. For your yogurt, any fresh or frozen fruit is better than dried. And the protein in the yogurt helps prevent any sugar spike from the fruit (I learned this from a dietician just this week).
You haven’t said how you feel about the obvious replacement for sugar, non-nutritive sweeteners. I don’t want this to derail into that debate, so just a suggestion that if the added fruit is not sweet enough you could add a little non-nutritive sweetener to it. As for jam, there are sugar-free jams that still taste like fruit.
Also, thirding the suggestion that you can change how much sweetness you like gradually over time.
Thanks. I’ll give it a look, although I usually avoid almonds due to the California water problem.
As for why I’m reducing sugar, it’s the A1C† thing, not to lose weight. I had a high A1C reading last winter and immediately reduced much of the excess sugar in my diet. Also immediately began exercising every day and have lost about 30 pounds or so. But I want to reduce the sugar even more.
Thanks for all the other suggestions.
†Which means Airman First Class to me. But I’m an old Air Force weenie.
Strawberries taste a lot sweeter than they have any right to, given their relatively low carbohydrate content. When you smell their volatile compounds it tricks your body into thinking they’re sweet. Try eating a strawberry while you pinch your nose to taste how tart they really are.
Or the cheaper synthesized version, which is chemically almost identical. It’s called high-fructose corn syrup.
Seriously, though, sugar or HFCS isn’t inherently a problem. It’s just that there’s usually too much of it. An alternative to sugar with only half the Calories and carbs is sugar… but just use only half as much of it. Or a quarter, or a tenth. Plenty of foods are so insanely over-sugared that they can still taste just fine with only a fraction of the sugar.
Stating the obvious: you can add vanilla to plain yogurt. I do this sometimes, combined with some of the other suggestions. I use a vanilla paste you can buy in a tube, so I get little specks of vanilla, and some fruit or a teaspoon of jam. Also, if you like cinnamon, Saigon cinnamon is actually sweet. I also like adding raw steel cut oats, or, in a pinch, rolled oats.
You might try other brands of yogurt that don’t have as much sugar or artificial sweeteners. Two Good yogurt is a brand I’ve seen introduced recently, it’s produced by Danone.
I really like plain yogurt with Dutch processed dark cocoa. Mostly I have it unsweetened but mashed berries goes well in it or a little maple syrup. The Dutch processed cocoa has washed and Ph neutralized which takes off the bitterness of plain cocoa.
Those who are sensitive to fructose should avoid both honey and HFCS. HFCS causes GI issues for my husband, so we spend a lot of time reading labels when we’re in the US. Honey doesn’t bother him as much.