M&S vanilla high protein yogurt

(eat well - but not too well)

The local M&S was out of 0% greek yogurt so I picked up a couple of tubs of this product as an alternative.

At 12.5g of protein per 100g it certainly lives up to the title, which is a nice change from others that claim to be high protein for anything above 4g per 100g.

The ingredients list ground spent vanilla pods as the vanilla flavouring which is an interesting and dare I say welcome addition as a means of recycling/reducing waste in the food industry, even if it is probably just for optics. However, that is where my positivity towards this product ends.

It is even more dense than a typical greek yogurt as evidenced by the higher protein content and there is also added cornflour, so the texture is incredibly thick to the point of being offputting.

I don’t know who at M&S decided they needed cornflour in all their flavoured products but I wish they’d stop. It obviously adds nothing to the flavour, and gives the impression that they’re trying to hide something - possibly overly separated whey in this instance.

There is sucralose as a sweetener so it is surprisingly sweet for something that doesn’t have much carbs or sugars (5.5g/3.9g).

Recently I have been eating my breakfast yogurt with some defrosted berries, ground flaxseed and pecans, which I find to be a quick, balanced and enjoyable meal. This yogurt was so dry however, that even stirring through the berries wasn’t enough to loosen it significantly.

Perhaps the flaxseed counteracted the liquid from the berries but it remained extremely stiff after a thorough mixing.

In this context the artificial sweetener is still very pronounced and cloying at the back of the throat, although it is mercifully less offputting than when eaten on its own.

I’m not someone who prefers a particular sweetener or worries about the effects of some over others, but I really feel the selected sweetener doesn’t work in this context.

If I had used two or three times the amount of berries then perhaps we could have gotten close to a flavour and texture profile that I would have found enjoyable, as some spoonfuls that contained more berries were more flavourful and balanced.

By the end, the combination of the texture and sweetener was so offputting that I found it increasingly difficult to finish, as it was beginning to make me feel incredibly full and the food settled in the pit of my stomach like a rock.

As it stands, the most positive thing I can say about this yogurt is that it forces you to eat slowly for fear of choking.