Warning: Dannon 7 Benefits All Natural Coffee Yogurt

Posted by Mark | Filed under Food, Life, Noteworthy, Reviews

When I get up in the morn­ing, one of my first thoughts is usu­ally along the lines of how good that alarm clock would look when smashed into a mil­lion pieces. Given this is the case, I tend to sleep as late as I can and still get to work on time. Doing this does not give me a lot of time in the morn­ing for break­fast. I try to make up for this by eat­ing a cup of yogurt as my first break­fast and then later in the morn­ing I get a gra­nola bar as sec­ond breakfast.

Addi­tion­ally, I don’t like to waste money1 so I tend to buy what­ever yogurt is on sale. When I did this Tues­day, the gro­cery store had Dan­non yogurt on sale at 20 cups for $10 or 50¢ a cup. This makes them just barely cheaper than the store brand yogurt. I thought I’d give them a try and picked up 10 cups in a vari­ety of flavors.

Yes­ter­day, I cracked open my first cup of the Dan­non yogurt and had selected 7 Ben­e­fits All Nat­ural Cof­fee Yogurt. Once I had the foil cover off the cup of yogurt I knew this was not going to be good. The color of the yogurt reminded me of things I’d blown out of my nose, last time I had a bad sinus infec­tion. For extra unpleas­ant­ness, there was a thing layer of oil or maybe water on top. I mixed the yogurt up with my spoon, start­ing by smash­ing it straight down into the yogurt. To my mind some of the yogurt should have stuck to the spoon when I lifted it out of the cup. Also, the yogurt should have moved together to fill in the holes where I’d stabbed down into it with my spoon. Alas, nei­ther of these events tran­spired. Then I did a more tra­di­tional mix­ing2 and pre­pared to take my first bite.

*hor­ri­fied shudder*

Imag­ine if you will the worst office cof­fee you’ve ever had. With extra creamer. Gone all cold and solid­i­fied. Now add in an unhealthy dol­lop of chalk­i­ness and you’ll almost under­stand what it tasted like. Of course, that’s not the worst part of this story. The worst part is I have another cup of it in my fridge and I’ll be eat­ing it in the next week or so. Yes I know I will hate it, but if I just throw it away then it’s wast­ing money. *sigh*

1 Some peo­ple would say I’m cheap.
2 Swirling the yogurt around in a cir­cu­lar fash­ion using my spoon.

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About Mark McKibben

Mark is a data analyst for [REDACTED], currently residing in the Midwest. CoffeeBear is a place for him to spout off about whatever catches his fancy. In his spare time, Mark does a bit of webdev & design. To stalk him more effectively, try following him on Twitter.

28 July 2006 | 8:37AM | Comments (45)

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45 Comments

  1. ken says:
    July 28th, 2006 at 12:40 pm

    You young hip­sters with your new-fangled yogurts. Jebus Cripes, you don’t know good when you see it.

    When I was young, we *loved* Dan­non, and got unruly when our moms tried to feed us the pre-mixed generic stuff. Give me my Dan­non with six extra tea­spoons of sugar, or I’m skip­ping nap-time.

    As we grew up, we rioted in the isles when Dan­non prices rose, but stores offered Yoplait on sale. Too smooth by half. It had no grit, no soul.

    I per­son­ally love mix­ing my own slowly-seperating plain yogurt into my blueberries-at-the-bottom. And the berry bits were still good and large, thank you, because they haven’t been through an indus­trial mixer.

    That said, their yogurt may have gone to the dogs in the last ten years, who knows. Gimme a fruit cock­tail in a vis­cous sugar syrup, and I’ll be smil­ing in the corner.

    Reply to this Comment
  2. Michael P. Soulier says:
    July 28th, 2006 at 12:45 pm

    It couldn’t be worse than DQ’s moolatte. DQ knows how to make things sickly sweet, they don’t know a damn thing about cof­fee. I still have nightmares.

    Reply to this Comment
  3. Mark says:
    July 28th, 2006 at 3:56 pm

    @Ken: When we “young hip­sters” were young we ate cereal for break­fast because we had par­ents who would kick our butts out of bed in plenty of time for a proper break­fast. Of the yogurts at my local gro­cery store, the best yogurt is Yoplait hands-down, no con­test. With the wide vari­ety of flavours and types* any­one can find a Yoplait yogurt they would enjoy.

    * They’ve got reg­u­lar, diet, cus­tard style, whipped and maybe a cou­ple of others.

    @Michael: *shud­der* That does sound rather nasty but I’m not sure it’s worse. Dannon’s crap­tas­tic yogurt advan­tage dis­ad­van­tage… err, I’m not quite sure what to call it but it’s tex­ture and color were quite pow­er­ful in their awfulness.

    Reply to this Comment
  4. mon­keymed says:
    April 1st, 2007 at 6:09 pm

    Dont eat yoplait—even though peo­ple and ani­mal activists have begged them for years, they still refuse to reshape the con­tain­ers that trap small ani­mals heads after shov­ing and strain­ing them in to get at the sweet on the bottom.…

    Reply to this Comment
  5. Mark says:
    April 1st, 2007 at 9:08 pm

    Or one can take respon­si­bil­ity into their own hands by either:

    • wash­ing it out so small ani­mals have no incen­tive to stick their heads into the container
    • break­ing the con­tainer so if a small ani­mal does stick its head in, it won’t get stuck
    Reply to this Comment
  6. Michelle says:
    April 7th, 2007 at 3:18 am

    I agree with the orig­i­nal warn­ing, the cof­fee fla­vored Dan­non All Nat­ural 7 Ben­e­fits tastes awful… unless you like the taste of slightly burnt wood. I do, how­ever, like the vanilla fla­vor, tex­ture and all. As for the sep­a­ra­tion on top, I assume it to be water, and I just pour it off because I like my yogurt thicker. My favorite thing about this yogurt is the short ingre­di­ent list. Only 4 items. Cul­tured reduced fat milk, sugar, nat­ural vanilla fla­vor and pectin. (For all you veg­e­tar­i­ans out there, no gelatin!!!) I suf­fer from hor­ri­ble food aller­gies and a few of those are to com­mon food addi­tives. Even if I am not aller­gic to cer­tain addi­tives I now think twice about eat­ing it, espe­cially if it is an unnec­ces­sary ingre­di­ent being used to cut pro­duc­tion costs.

    The other Dan­non Nat­u­rals that come in 4 packs have more than the 4 ingre­di­ents. If you con­sider high fruc­tose corn syrup a nat­ural ingre­di­ent, go for it. I’ll stick with the Vanilla fla­vored 7 ben­e­fits variety.

    FYI, “fla­vors” and “fla­vor­ings” are not always derived from the orig­i­nal item and are often by-products of other items and their processes. For exam­ple, cof­fee fla­vor­ing gen­er­ally is not made from cof­fee. Maybe this is the rea­son why this cof­fee fla­vored yogurt tastes like wood?

    Reply to this Comment
  7. Kap­rina says:
    September 13th, 2007 at 1:39 pm

    Myself, I choose the “All Nat­ural” Stony­field Farm brand.…EXCELLENT!! No additives/preservatives, no syn­thetic growth hor­mones, no arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers; just smooth & creamy SUPERB fla­vor. I buy the fat free plain ver­sion and add my own home­made straw­berry syrup to it for a bit more fla­vor or I add gra­nola or grape nut cereal to it for extra crunch and fiber! This can also be pur­chased in the “organic” vari­ety. Hands down, the BEST YOGURT ON THE MARKET!!

    Reply to this Comment
  8. Mark says:
    September 13th, 2007 at 3:38 pm

    I don’t think my local gro­cery store car­ries that brand, but I’ll keep an eye out for it. Thanks for the tip!

    Reply to this Comment
  9. Michelle says:
    September 13th, 2007 at 6:12 pm

    I checked out the Stoney­field Farm brand yogurt ingre­di­ents on the Pea­pod web­site. It looks like some­thing I would like to try, thanks for the infor­ma­tion Kaprina.

    I want to add a cor­rec­tion from my pre­vi­ous post, The Dan­non Nat­u­rals four pack doesn’t have the high fruc­tose corn syrup, it’s the Dan­non Friut on the Bot­tom varieties.

    Reply to this Comment
  10. ns says:
    October 16th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

    the “water” on top is whey–the most nutri­tious part of the yogurt. Sep­a­ra­tion is natural–stir it in, don’t pour it off.

    (From Stony­field):
    Why is there liq­uid (some­times) on the top of my yogurt?
    This liq­uid, called whey is a nat­ural com­po­nent in cul­tured yogurt. Whey con­tains many of the most impor­tant vit­a­mins and nutri­ents in yogurt. Sim­ply stir it back in to take advan­tage of its nutri­tional ben­e­fits. It occurs when­ever there has been any type of pres­sure on the curd, or also from tem­per­a­ture change. A lit­tle bit whey is nor­mal. The appear­ance of whey is actu­ally a good sign, indi­cat­ing that the ben­e­fi­cial cul­tures are alive and active.

    Reply to this Comment
  11. Mark says:
    October 16th, 2007 at 4:35 pm

    Good to know, I’ll keep it in mind for any other yogurts I eat.

    Reply to this Comment
  12. Krissy says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 9:47 am

    I just had a cup of blue­berry 7 ben­e­fits Dan­non yogurt and it was fine. Almost delight­ful. It was gross look­ing but not to the extent that it had gone bad, but all fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt looks gross if you really want my opin­ion( I try to stir it up as fast as pos­si­ble!) Try the mixed Dan­non yogurt and see if you still have that yuck fac­tor. Maybe you just got a bad batch, or maybe Dan­non has gone down hill, you may want to exper­i­ment.
    I’m like you, I buy what is on sale, but Yoplait really is my favorite despite all the sac­ri­ficed animals.

    Reply to this Comment
  13. Mark says:
    October 18th, 2007 at 3:38 pm

    @Krissy: Dannon’s fruit-on-the-bottom has always been tasty when I’ve had it. In fact, the only one of their yogurts I can recall dis­lik­ing is this All Nat­ural Cof­fee. This par­tic­u­lar yogurt was just so tremen­dously nasty that I felt the need to warn oth­ers away from it.

    Reply to this Comment
  14. Betsy says:
    December 30th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Dan­non cof­fee yogurt is the only yogurt I eat. I love the fla­vor and the tex­ture. The tex­ture equals that of nor­mal cul­tured yogurt. I admit I may be addicted to the 45 mg of caf­feine it con­tains. If I skip the Dan­non cof­fee yogurt and do not drink a cup of cof­fee, I will get a headache.

    Dan­non cof­fee yogurt is my favorite food. I can hap­pily con­sume 4 to 5 six ounce cups a day. I buy it in bulk when it goes on sale. I was dis­mayed sev­eral years ago when Dan­non dis­con­tin­ued the 16 ounce cof­fee yogurt containers.

    I would like to find other Dan­non cof­fee yogurt affi­ciona­dos. Maybe after con­sum­ing sev­eral you may become addicted too.

    Reply to this Comment
  15. Mark says:
    December 31st, 2007 at 12:12 pm

    @Betsy: I doubt I will ever get addicted to these as the one I tried was so entirely hor­ri­ble I won’t ever be eat­ing one of them again.

    Reply to this Comment
  16. Michelle says:
    December 31st, 2007 at 5:03 pm

    I agree with Mark, I will never get addicted to the cof­fee fla­vored yogurt either. The one I tried went in the trash after one spoon­ful. It tasted like a mouth­ful of burnt wood and sour milk puree to me. I’ll stick to the vanilla.

    Reply to this Comment
  17. stacey says:
    January 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    Here I am Betsy! I Love Dan­non cof­fee yogurt!!! The fla­vor and tex­ture to me are superb. I could eat it by the gal­lon. I drink black cof­fee all day too, I don’t know if that has some­thing to do with it?

    Does it really have 45 mg of caffeine?

    Reply to this Comment
  18. Betsy says:
    January 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Stacey, you are my yogurt soul mate. I am so happy I found you.

    You must get a lot of caf­feine. One web site said the caf­feine con­tent in 6 oz of Dan­non cof­fee yogurt was 38 mg.

    I guess we are lucky that there are peo­ple like Mark who do not like the prod­uct. I hate walk­ing into a super­mar­ket to find that all of the cof­fee yogurts have been sold.

    Reply to this Comment
  19. Doris says:
    January 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm

    Does any­one know if Dan­non is dis­con­tin­u­ing their “All Nat­ural” yogurt line? I went into both of the Vons that I usu­ally go to and they weren’t on the shelves any­more. When I asked one of the employ­ees that was stock­ing the yogurt sec­tion what hap­pened to it, he told me it was prob­a­bly dis­con­tin­ued. That was the only brand that I bought since it doesn’t have the high fruc­tose corn syrup in it! Boo hoo.……

    Reply to this Comment
  20. Mark says:
    January 6th, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    Dan­non still lists the All Nat­ural yogurt line on their web­site in both blended and plain/flavored styles. So it doesn’t look like they dis­con­tin­ued it; maybe it wasn’t sell­ing well enough at your gro­cery store.

    Reply to this Comment
  21. Ben says:
    January 11th, 2008 at 12:46 pm

    @Stacey&Betsy — Dan­non Cof­fee Yogurt is my favorite yogurt as well, and favorite food as well. Most of my friends have tried it and hated it, though a few liked it. I only found this blog entry because a friend who finds my addic­tion revolt­ing pointed me to it.

    Reply to this Comment
  22. Betsy says:
    January 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am

    Wel­come to the club, Ben! Let’s all get together and have a yogurt.

    Reply to this Comment
  23. Luke says:
    February 14th, 2008 at 6:31 am

    I love Dan­non Cof­fee Yogurt as well! But HyVee only had 3 last night, and I didn’t notice until I got home that they all expired last week! >:O

    Wish I could buy direct.

    Reply to this Comment
  24. J Sharp says:
    March 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    I love Dan­non Au Nat­ural Cof­fee fla­vored yogurt. It is my favorite food in the world. I pan­icked when I could only find one car­ton at Tar­get yes­ter­day. My sis­ter, mom, and I all love the fla­vor and con­sis­tency. Please keep it available!

    Reply to this Comment
  25. Meg says:
    March 5th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    Dan­non Cof­fee Yogurt is absolutely my favorite food. Have been eat­ing it 2x day since the late 1970’s. Now and then I get a odd blueberry-type taste which irks me, espe­cially when I’ve bought about a dozen of them. Glad to see there are some other cof­fee yogurt lovers out there. I do at times think I’m addicted to it. Oh well, things could be worse.

    Reply to this Comment
  26. Dolores Beck says:
    March 17th, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    Dan­non Cof­fee Yogurt is what I live on. I will buy 36 at one time. I add chunky peanut but­ter, or nuts and mix it in. It makes me feel
    so good. I eat it about 3 or 4 times a day. I am so sorry that they
    dis­con­tin­ued the larger size. Also in my area, NY, the prices have gone way up. They are charg­ing up to $1.19 for one 6 oz. cup. I am
    still able to get it for 99 cents.
    Dolores

    Reply to this Comment
  27. Betsy says:
    April 6th, 2008 at 11:13 am

    Note to Meg: You are cor­rect! That is a blue­berry taste from some bad batches. You helped me char­ac­ter­ize why some don’t taste quite right.

    Reply to this Comment
  28. noë says:
    April 25th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

    I agree with so many of the com­menters … it’s the only yogurt I like. I absolutely love it! When­ever I find it, I stock up, but I do try to limit myself to one cup a day because of the sugar and caf­feine content.

    Reply to this Comment
  29. Dolores Beck says:
    April 28th, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    When I am not feel­ing full of energy (age 70) I know that
    it is time for me to eat another Danon Cof­fee yogurt with
    peanuts or chunky peanut but­ter. This, my favorite food,
    makes me feel so good after eat­ing it. I am a nation­ally
    ranked senior ten­nis com­peti­tor and I travel all over the
    U.S. I am about to leave for Cal­i­for­nia next week and I
    always make sure that I find the cof­fee yogurt where I
    go.
    Dolores

    Reply to this Comment
  30. Eliz­a­beth says:
    June 1st, 2008 at 8:28 am

    Finally ive found other cof­fee yogurt lovers! I dont even drink cof­fee but ive been eat­ing at least one a day since the sec­ond grade n im afraid ive passed my obses­sion onto future gen­er­a­tions as both my chil­dren are equally obsessed. When theres only one left in the fridge its war!

    Reply to this Comment
  31. Dolores Beck says:
    June 2nd, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Cof­fee Yogurt from Dan­non is some­thing spe­cial. I also never drink cof­fee. I used to eat a lot of cof­fee ice cream,
    but now I use Dan­non Cof­fee Yogurt as a sub­sti­tute.
    Sin­cerely,
    Dolores

    Reply to this Comment
  32. Rachel says:
    July 25th, 2008 at 6:25 pm

    Doris,
    I had the same prob­lem! I absolutely loved the Dan­non Nat­u­rals four pack in straw­berry — deli­cious and no fake sweet­ener or high fruc­tose corn syrup. I refuse to eat fruit on the bot­tom yogurt as it always ends up a bit chunky no mat­ter how much I stir. Some stores do still carry the Dan­non Nat­u­rals, check their web­site, you can also get it with your sand­wich at Sub­way but it’s rather expen­sive that way.

    Reply to this Comment
  33. Laura says:
    August 8th, 2008 at 1:43 am

    I absolutely love cof­fee yogurt. I am addicted, I have been eat­ing it since like 3rd grade. I too, have passed on the lik­ing to my kids. Only a cou­ple of stores even carry it any­more. When I see them in the store, I stock up. They are get­ting so dang expen­sive though!

    Reply to this Comment
  34. Fine­Texan says:
    August 21st, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    I love Dan­non cof­fee yogurt! My favorite way to eat it is with Tom Stur­gis lit­tle pret­zels which I sink into it whole and then fish out with my spoon…GREAT!!

    Reply to this Comment
  35. rebecca says:
    November 8th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    I’m try­ing not buy Yoplait or Dan­non because of growth hor­mones, but I love cof­fee yogurt. Does any one know of a cof­fee yogurt that is not one of these brand? Thanks!

    Reply to this Comment
  36. Dolores Beck says:
    November 10th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    In answer to Rebecca’s ques­tion of another brand of cof­fee
    yogurt. Absolutely. Try Brown Cow Creamy Cof­fee. It is found in most health stores. It is very good and not as sweet
    as Dan­non.
    Dolores B.

    Reply to this Comment
  37. Julie says:
    June 17th, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    I like a lot of yogurt, though I do pre­fer greek yogurt (esp. Trader Joe’s brand) mixed with honey and fresh fruit. I found this blog because I was try­ing to fig­ure out whether or not Dan­non had gelatin in it, b/c I read the Yoplait label after I ate it and almost vom­ited my strangely too pink yogurt. Ew! Gelatin :( Any­way, had fun read­ing this blog while pre­tend­ing to work. I def­i­nitely don’t eat gelatin if at all pos­si­ble, as I am a veg­e­tar­ian, and I just think it’s gross to eat any­thing made from bones, skin & “other” (accord­ing to wikipedia, which knows every­thing!) Any­way, Dan­non does con­tain gelatin, and per­haps this is why it revolted Mark so much!

    Reply to this Comment
  38. Johnna says:
    August 2nd, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    I love the nat­ural cof­fee yogurt…I think it’s a love or hate kind of thing.

    Reply to this Comment
  39. Julia says:
    August 21st, 2009 at 12:49 pm

    I too am Dan­non cof­fee yogurt-aholic! I was recently diag­nosed with dia­betes and had to change my diet to avoid insulin shots. As I became more aware of unhealthy sug­ars and their amounts in foods I eat, I real­ized the reg­u­lar Dan­non All Nat­ural cof­fee yogurt is loaded with refined sugar at 25grams/6 oz. I now mix (half and half) with plain yogurt and I add instant cof­fee to it as the cof­fee taste was not strong enough. Its really good, and much health­ier that way to con­sume it!

    Reply to this Comment
  40. Joy Hilscher says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 11:30 am

    I love Dan­non cof­fee yogurt. It’s the only yogurt I and my 5 kids will eat! Our store has a hard time keep­ing it in stock because it is so pop­u­lar in our area.

    Reply to this Comment
  41. Mark says:
    November 16th, 2009 at 1:53 pm

    Another quick update for you coffee-flavored yogurt lovers, one of the writ­ers for Boing­Bo­ing just posted this review of Yoplait’s Cof­fee Yogurt. It was an… unfa­vor­able review, would any of you wish to try defend­ing your pref­er­ence? Or is this sim­ply a case of Yoplait vs. Dannon?

    Reply to this Comment

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