Hellish Yoghurt Diversification

i-25c1821dc9872d14f6a7fb0659559093-17440.jpgThere is a genre of complaints that I usually find a little silly: the Starbucks breakdown, which occurs when somebody's offered too many options. But now I've run into the problem myself. Yoghurt diversification.

I buy most of our milk & yoghurt to save my wife some carrying. And the damn yoghurt, that was a single product when I was a kid, now presents me with a four-parameter choice! I need to make sure I get:

  • Non-light
  • Enviro-friendly
  • Mild acidity
  • Unflavoured
Tags

More like this

I have nothing against Chobani Yoghurt. In fact, I like it. Even more importantly, Huxley likes it. But the image above annoys me. It says "Nature got us to 100 calories, not scientists. #howmatters" This is in accord with their latest ad, here: OK, I have three challenges for Chobani Yoghurt.…
As I've mentioned, we raise our own dairy goats and milk them, and we drink the milk raw, or rather, unpasteurized. Since I wrote my last piece about the goats, I've had several people email me asking for advice about their dairy choices - one person living locally wanted me to sell her raw milk,…
Chores sounds like such a dreary word, and until I moved to a farm, I would never have believed that I'd have anything positive to say about it. As a kid, I did chores around the house, and while I may have groused less about the dishes and cleaning gutters as an adult, I certainly didn't (and don…
(Just in case you didn't grow up in the 1980s and need the reference.) Two years ago, we bought Jessie the goat from our friends Jamey and Carol. We wanted Jessie because of her great genetics - she's a milk machine, and a sturdy, healthy goat who makes stunning babies. Zahra, her first daughter…

And that's before you get into the stuff like ymer (do you have that in Sweden?). I could never work out what the difference was, and why one was called A38.

If it gets too confusing, buy some milk and leave it outside for a couple of days.

then you have the newest rage her in NA - probiotic (wth does probiotic even mean?) or not, sweetened with sugar, aspartame or sucralose, fruit on the bottom or stirred, It's crazy :)

LOL.

Up in the mountains I used to drop by a little country store. It was a general store/grocery/post office and one of three major structures that made up the 'downtown', such as it was. There was the store, a small church, and a phone booth.

The owner of the store, and postmaster, was quite proud of his selection. He only stocked things he would use and he always gave you a choice. So he had two different toothpastes. Two brands of soap. Two flavors of milk.

I got a chuckle at the time but increasingly I see the deep wisdom in this. I go to the store to pick up toothpaste and there are scores of different ones. Many variations or sub-variations on a theme. All of them touting their superiority.

This is needlessly stressful. Having to decide to try to sort through all the choices or just pick one and hope it isn't the "Spring Surprise or Crunchy Frog" (Monty Python) of toothpastes. And what does this or that choice say about my lifestyle or personality. Will I lose my job it I chose the one representing a lifestyle incompatible with my bosses and his wife sees me in the checkout line or he spots it when he visits my house?

If I shopped at the country store I would grab one of two, both have been found acceptable by the owner and if I grab the one with evil lifestyle mojo I can say I didn't have much of a choice. I just want a something that works reasonably well. Preferably a product presented in a situation which won't demand detailed analysis or induce undue anxiety. Less is more in this case.

A choice between two, perhaps three, options is sufficient.

Just be thankful you have yet to delve into ALLERGY analysis, in which the wrong choice sends someone near and dear into anaphylactic shock or, in a less catastophic option, becomes covered in itchy hives. That's when choice becomes REALLY exciting.

By DianaGainer (not verified) on 14 Apr 2009 #permalink

when we first arrived in the US, and went grocery shopping: my wife burst into tears in the spaghetti aisle, confronted with 50 different kinds of sphag.
now we've developed selective vision so we can only see the brands we usually buy.

for yogurt (see I'm American now), luckily there is a Greek variety available - full or low fat; absolutely no sugar, crystallized cane juice, aspartame, sucralose, stevia, high or low fructose corn syrup, gelatin, pigs' trotters, etc added; all the good bugs. Makes it easy..
A lot of US yogurt is just a kind of candy.