Is Your Yogurt as Green as You Think?

Published on Thursday, March 19, 2009, by Deborah Lewis / Edit Post

I have been happily eating Brown Cow yogurt for years now, and thinking that, beyond how good it tastes, it’s a fairly responsible choice. But I was astonished to see that GoodGuide rated Yoplait and Dannon yogurts above Brown Cow.

Packaged foods are a new category on the rating site, which scores products on their potential health hazards, as well as a company’s environmental performance and social impact. For the new food items, GoodGuide offers some additional nutritional analysis. The site seems to draw its data from reliable sources, and could be helpful in guiding choices in the supermarket aisle.

Though in some ways it might drive me out of the grocery store entirely: The breakdown of info on Brown Cow revealed that the brand is manufactured by Stonyfield Farm (whose yogurt got the top rating), which is owned by Groupe Danone (or mostly owned anyway), maker of Dannon yogurt. Maybe I’ll just start making my own.

ALLGreen
POST A COMMENT |11 Comments

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  • Nancy's Yogurt on the West Coast has been making fine plain yogurts since the 70's. I like it best.

  • I always get unflavored yogurt. You don't have to flavor it with sweet stuff either: I really like it with Salsa mixed in.

  • Seven Stars Farm has national distribution & they're really green. Okay, well, greener for me since it's in my area, than for someone who has to have tit trucked to them. But still, delicious yogurt if you can't get it from a local dairy or farmer's market yourself. And if you're nearby, well, call'em up and ask when you can come by to pet the calves.

    http://www.sevenstarsfarm.com/

  • I know not everyone has this option, but here in DC we have great local yogurt straight from the dairy farmer at our Farmer's markets, and the containers it comes in are great for reusing to freeze stock and other such things. Try your farmer's markets, maybe you have a better option.
    Also, I wonder about the difference between plain and flavored yogurt, any flavored yogurt has sweeteners and...+READ

    I know not everyone has this option, but here in DC we have great local yogurt straight from the dairy farmer at our Farmer's markets, and the containers it comes in are great for reusing to freeze stock and other such things. Try your farmer's markets, maybe you have a better option.
    Also, I wonder about the difference between plain and flavored yogurt, any flavored yogurt has sweeteners and chemicals. Your always better off buying plain yogurt (that should have a VERY short ingredient list), and then adding your own fruit or honey if you want it flavored. Frozen mixed berries, zapped quickly in the microwave then stirred into plain yogurt is great.-COLLAPSE

  • If it helps any one Costco carries the Stonyfield yogurt at a great price. They come in mixed 12 packs (Blueberry and Strawberry) and they freeze well. :)

  • This is not even a proper comparison. They're lining up a full fat yogurt against many low fat and no fat yogurts and then penalizing the full fat yogurt in the presented score based on its sat fat contents. It would have been more appropriate and consistent to compare one of Brown Cow's low fat offerings.

  • Bottom line - we are all paying a helluva lot more for Stonyfield and its greek counterpart - oikos which are part of a megaconglomerate. Kinda makes me cringe. I had no idea. Thanks for the enlightenment.

  • If my yogurt was green I'd toss it. Even on St Paddy's day.

    Seriously, these ratings are subjective and pretty questionable.

  • You need to investigate some more, this is a terrible article. The "Danactive" has the exact same ratings as the Brown Cow, but yet the Brown Cow is less "healthy" because it's not supposed to be a health food. The Yoplait has a lower Environmental and Social score, so the Brown cow is "Greener" (Even though I cringe every time I hear this trend word) but is less healthy for YOU personally....+READ

    You need to investigate some more, this is a terrible article. The "Danactive" has the exact same ratings as the Brown Cow, but yet the Brown Cow is less "healthy" because it's not supposed to be a health food. The Yoplait has a lower Environmental and Social score, so the Brown cow is "Greener" (Even though I cringe every time I hear this trend word) but is less healthy for YOU personally. Stonyfield Farms makes some damn fine yogurt also, but the Yogurt is ranked higher because it is a nonfat yogurt, so it scores higher in the health rank.-COLLAPSE

  • If you want to make your own but don't have one of those yogurt makers that keeps it at the right temperature, they say you can use a thermos bottle to keep it warm.

  • Well, that's a silly rating system, since they aren't rating equivalent products. Brown Cow was actually the third-highest rated yogurt, and the highest-rated non-organic yogurt, and the highest-rated full-fat product. The yoplait and Dannon products were both yogurt smoothie products (the Dannon smoothie and the Brown Cow had the same rating anyway).