Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Fiber One Yogurt - plus Giveaway

I'm always looking for good diet-friendly snack foods, so when MyBlogSpark asked me to review Yoplait's new Fiber One yogurt, I happily agreed.

Now, I'm a bit of a yogurt junkie, but I've been in an "eat as little corn syrup and high fructose corn syrup as possible" phase for the past few months so I regretfully phased "regular" Yoplait yogurt out of my diet. For a while I substituted Chobani greek yogurt, which is all natural and very good, but I can't eat it by itself. I have to mix cereal or dried fruit into the yogurt which takes time and adds a lot of extra calories.

I was happy to see that Fiber One yogurt does not contain the dreaded high fructose corn syrup, though it does contain aspartame. Plus, each container is 50 calories! I picked up a four-pack of vanilla yogurt to try.

Now, the first thing I'll say -- these containers are 50 calories because they're significantly smaller than the average yogurt you'd buy in the grocery store. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but one Fiber One yogurt is NOT going to be enough for breakfast by itself. Overall, it tasted pretty good - very similar to Yoplait, which I expected. If you like the taste of Yoplait Light yogurt, you'll probably like the taste of their Fiber One yogurt, and vice versa.

I've found that their vanilla yogurt makes a very good breakfast when mixed with approximately 1 cup of fresh mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries and raspberries) and that lasted me most of the morning. But going forward, I'd probably keep them around as a quick snack before running to the gym for a cardio workout - it's just enough to take the edge off your appetite but not too heavy to eat before an intense workout.

Still, I'd be thrilled to take just a few extra calories instead of the aspartame. :-)

With that said: I have three, yes, three Fiber One gift packs to give away from MyBlogSpark and Fiber One. You'll get a "Healthy and Fit Weight Management Kit" containing everything in the picture to the left (and a very nice cooler pack), and a coupon for a free four-pack of Fiber One yogurt at the grocery store.

How to enter:
Leave a comment on my blog with:
- an e-mail address (fool spam bots with username at address dot com format) where I can contact you
- your favorite diet-friendly snack food. Preferably something gluten free or something that can be made gluten free (e.g. chocolate chip cookies can be made with or without gluten).

All entries must be in by Tuesday, September 1st. The winners will be chosen randomly. Only one entry per e-mail address, please!

Finally, the gluten free information and disclaimer: while I couldn't find the words "gluten free" on the yogurt packages like Yoplait displays, Yoplait and Fiber One are owned by General Mills. They have a good labelling policy for gluten and we haven't had a problem to date with products we've purchased from the company, but I e-mailed the company just to make sure. Their response:

"For products not labeled gluten free, we will always declare gluten containing ingredients if they are added to the product. If the ingredient declaration lists wheat, oats, barley, rye, or derivatives of these grains, then the product contains gluten. Examples of derivative ingredients include: malt, barley malt, organic malt, semolina, Durham, triticale, and spelt. We do not include gluten containing ingredients in the ′Natural Flavors′ or ′Spices′ on the product ingredient list. If there are gluten ingredients in our products, those ingredients are always clearly listed. If there are no gluten- containing ingredients listed in the product ingredient label, but the product does not make a gluten free claim, it is because we cannot fully assure that this product is gluten free."

If you're gluten free and not comfortable without a gluten free label on their product, stick with regular Yoplait yogurt.