Review: Starburst Yogurt

The Shameless Consumer told himself he wouldn’t be doing anymore yogurt reviews but here I am. Doing yogurt reviews.

I picked up the Starburst yogurt because on first glance it felt like one of those mashups that are so stupid that there’s no way I wasn’t stroking out in the grocery store. Frankly after a week I’m still not confident that my body isn’t lying in a coma somewhere near the Toaster Strudel while some janitor kicks me in the head and is explaining that I now need to buy those Hungry Man meals because I let them spoil in my cart.

If anyone can pull me out of this nightmare I would be most thankful. You can have my sixteen year old packet of Kraft Easy Mac as a reward. The kind before they came in cups.

But Starburst yogurt despite making the other people in the office gag at the thought of it didn’t strike me as that weird. Yogurt is fruit and Starburst is fruit, you don’t really have to change the formula that much. Just add in some Starburst flavoring and make it look like Starburst with the same food coloring. Voila. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

So I picked up all three flavors: Strawberry, cherry, and orange. Each one has 22g sugar which is godawful but not exceedingly terrible by Yoplait standards. It’s still a ton of sugar but nobody is buying this thinking it’s one of the healthy yogurts. The colors look like Starburst and they smell like Starburst. But do they taste like Starburst?

Yes and no. It’s like consuming a muted, creamy version of Starburst candies. Like if you ate a package of Starburst candies, drooled it into a cup of milk, and then drank the milk. Someone will understand what I’m saying. The taste of Starburst does get lost pretty quickly under the tongue-coating yogurt and ultimately it tastes like I thought it would: Like fruit yogurt.

Yoplait could easily take the formula for the Orange Starburst yogurt and use it as an orange creamsicle yogurt. In fact I’m pretty sure they’ve done just that. One moment please. Let’s look at the ingredients for the orange Starburst yogurt:

Cultured Grade A Reduced Fat Milk, Sugar, Water, Modified Corn Starch, Orange Juice Concentrate, Kosher Gelatin, Natural Flavor, Yellow #6, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.

Now let’s look at the Orange Creme yogurt.

Cultured Grade A Reduced Fat Milk, Sugar, Water, Modified Corn Starch, Kosher Gelatin, Orange Juice Concentrate, Lime Juice Concentrate, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Natural Flavor, Colored With Annatto Extract, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3.

Well I’ll be a monkey’s butthole. Pretty much the same except the orange creme has lime/lemon juice and the Starburst has Yellow #6. In fact that sums up the line of Starburst yogurts; like the normal yogurt but with dye and artificial flavor.

Unlike actual Starburst these yogurts have real fruit in them. They are also much healthier for you in comparison what with the drastically less sugar (.12g sugar per gram of food vs. .5g sugar per gram of food) and whatever gut health the yogurt will offer. I had my fears that this would be very syrupy but the flavor ends up being quite muted.

It isn’t often that I end up being the voice of optimism and hope regarding Shameless Consumer reviews.

Verdict: 4/5 – Antithetical to the concept of yogurt but otherwise not nearly as bad as you might think. Don’t judge a yogurt by its cover.