Product Review: Sola Greek Yogurt

This post is part of a mega-review of Sola’s full product collection. Click here to get back to the review home page. 

I feel obliged to say this whenever I talk about Greek yogurt. When I was a new post-op Greek yogurt was not a thing. In fact, you had to go to places like Whole Foods to even get it, and not all of them stocked it!

Look at how far we have come.

Now we have lots of varieties of Greek yogurt, including this here Sola yogurt. It does my heart good to see this. I hope newer post-ops appreciate the level of choice you have these days!

Ok, so I feel like we’ve been over what Sola is, so let’s just dive right into this yogurt review, shall we?

The Ingredients & Nutrition

Each of these yogurts comes in a 6 oz. container, which constitutes one serving. Here are the basic nutrition facts for each flavor. You can get the full details here.

• Peach: 100 calories, 3g fat, 20g carbs, 7g sugars, 9g sugar alcohols, 11g protein
• Vanilla: 100 calories, 3g fat, 20g carbs, 7g sugars, 9g sugar alcohols, 11g protein
• Blueberry: 100 calories, 3g fat, 20g carbs, 7g sugars, 9g sugar alcohols, 11g protein
• Unsweetened Plain: 110 calories, 3g fat, 20g carbs, 8g sugars, 10g sugar alcohols, 12g protein
• Strawberry: 100 calories, 2.5g fat, 20g carbs, 8g sugars, 9g sugar alcohols, 11g protein

Before you freak out, let’s talk about a few things.

To understand the nutrition in Sola products you have to understand a few things. First, they contain tagatose. That’s a derivative of milk which is technically a sugar but it does not raise your blood sugar or convert into carbohydrates in the body. However, the FDA requires that it be included in the total sugars. So it’s a sugar that doesn’t act like a sugar but looks like a sugar so it has to be called sugar. Got it? Good! Let’s move forward.

The next thing you might notice is the level of sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols provide sweetness to products but cannot be absorbed by the human body, which is why they are not in the total sugar count and can be subtracted from the total carb count. You pick sugar alcohols out of an ingredient line-up by it’s name. They almost always end in “-itol.” While many sugar alcohols can be upsetting to the digestive system, causing bloating and gas, Sola yogurt is made with erythritol, which tends to be mild on most human systems (yes, even WLS systems). However, if you are sensitive to all sugar alcohols or erythritol in particular, take note!

Sola uses a net carb count that subtracts out both the tagatose (since we don’t metabolize it) and the sugar alcohols. So the yogurts have between 6-7 net carbs per serving, depending on which flavor you choose.

The one thing you may pick up on that is a totally fair point of order is the fat. There is some in this yogurt! I personally am not opposed to Greek yogurt with fat in it (in the next section I say more about why) but if you are watching fat intake, know the yogurt is made with 2% milk and, therefore, has a little bit of fat in it. I’ll discuss the impact on flavor in a bit.

I feel like I said a lot there, but let’s keep moving forward!

The Aesthetics

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: American-made Greek yogurt is just a little bit different that Greek-made Greek yogurt. I know this because I have several Greek-American friends whose families resolutely refuse to buy American brands of Greek yogurt, so when I go to their homes, I am served what they call “the real stuff.” And, yes, it is different.

It’s thicker. And I’m pretty sure most old school Greek folks think it’s a sin to take the fat out of Greek yogurt. (I could be wrong but the look I got when inquiring if the yogurt was fat-free kinda gave me that impression.) I can say that once I accidentally bought a container of full-fat Greek yogurt and it took a lot of prayer and determination to get me to eat even low-fat again, the stuff was so good!

The most authentic version of Greek yogurt here in the states is called Fage (sorry, Chobani, but even you seem more like American yogurt…just keeping it real!) and when you open Fage, you can tell what it is because it has a little piece of paper on top of the yogurt and there’s clearly a good amount of liquid (whey) sitting on top of the yogurt. And the stuff is thick. Like “stick to the roof of your mouth” thick.

By contrast, American Greek yogurt is kinda the same but kinda not. It’s thicker than regular yogurt, and it does have some whey going on there, but it’s not quite as hardcore as Greek-Greek yogurt. But I don’t consider that a bad thing. Mixing Greek-Greek yogurt is not always easy, and sometimes seems like more effort than it’s worth to my non-Greek hands!

For the yogurts with fruit, there is discernible fruit in there, and those offerings smell very fresh. Especially the peach! I opened it up and immediately got hit with the aroma of fresh peaches, which was lovely!

The Taste

Ok I want to zero in on one particular flavor to start to talk about taste, because it’s one of those ideas that’s so good you wonder why nobody else is doing it. (Or if  maybe they are and you just don’t know about it.)

Unsweetened plain.

Like…hello? Where have you been all my life?!?! I usually buy plain Greek yogurt and sweeten it myself because flavored ones contain legit sugar. While it’s not hard to flavor my own yogurt, the thought that I didn’t have to flavor this yogurt just took one more mental step away and that was kind of a relief, to tell you the truth.

So how’d it taste? Well, let’s run them down by flavor:

• Peach: There were good sized chunks of peaches in there, it smelled fresh, and it had a nice, lightly sweetened peach flavor. I like it when yogurts aren’t mega-sweet, so this was right up my alley and I think this flavor was my favorite.
• Vanilla: It has a slightly “cake batter” smell to it (which is a bit different from just straight-up vanilla) and a good, solid vanilla flavor. Again, not overly sweet.
• Blueberry: I don’t know that I know what a blueberry should smell like, but the aroma was pleasant enough. Again, lightly sweetened and the flavor of the blueberry does come through, which is impressive since blueberries don’t have a particularly strong flavor.
• Unsweetened: I expected this one to be sort of like the vanilla, but it wasn’t. There was no vanilla aroma (it just smelled like yogurt) and a light sweetness. It was also the “thinnest” of all the yogurts, which I found interesting. It still wasn’t as thin as traditional yogurt but of the set, it was the thinnest.
• Strawberry: Yummo! I really like strawberry yogurt, so I was hoping this was good, and it delivered! Just like the rest, a nice fruity flavor, bits of fruit in there and a good texture.

I should also note that because of the bit of fat included, the mouthfeel on this yogurt is pretty nice. Fat free yogurts, in particular, have a very dry finish. This one did slightly (it comes mostly from the whey) but the fat sort of counterbalances it. That was very nice.

The Cost & Availability

This was important for me to talk about because I want to give you a heads up about something.

On the Sola website, there’s a product locator. On the locator it says my local Harris Teeter should have the yogurt. But let’s just take a sneaky-peek of what happened when I went to look for the perishable products:

Yeah. Mission failure! And I’m not exactly sure what I could have done to prevent that. I guess I could have called but…who calls a grocery store?

Now what I could have done was gone to customer service to inquire about it and ask that they special order it for me. (Most grocery stores will do that with almost any product but beware: if you order it, you darn well better go back and buy it or they may not extend the courtesy again!)

There were a few other Sola products that the store locator said should be there, but weren’t: namely the bread and the nut bars. Those were ok because if I really wanted them I could order them on Amazon and have them shipped straight to my door. But the yogurt is a perishable so that’s not possible.

My best advice is if you’re thinking of trying Sola yogurt (or the ice cream, for that matter), check their product locator to see if it’s supposed to be in your store, then casually go check on your next shopping trip. If it is, hooray! If it’s not, you can request it if you want to try it.

Anyhoo…all that is to say I wasn’t quite sure how much it costs in stores so I had to Google that part. It looks like the regular price is about $1.49 each in most stores I got in search. I am not sure if stores run sales or give coupons for this product though. I’d be interested in knowing how much it costs if it’s sold near you. Leave a message in the comments!

Now…that’s a bit pricier than, say, generic Greek yogurt, but I would argue it’s worthy of consideration because of the fact that it sports a good level of net carbs, it has less net carbs than protein, and that it’s an all-natural product so folks who aren’t into artificial sweeteners? This is an option for you!

The Verdict

Would I buy Sola yogurt? Well if I actually did get it in my local store, I would certainly consider it! I am sort of a “go with what’s on sale this week” kinda gal (single motherhood does that to you) but when I have extra funds I indulge in brand name stuff that I want, and this would definitely go onto that list.

I like the fact that it’s not overly sweet. I didn’t pick up an aftertaste. The mouthfeel on this was luscious. And it was thick enough for me to make this smoothie bowl with it without all the things sinking!

So yeah…me likey!

To find out if Sola Granola is offered in a store near you, be sure to visit the Sola website!

Oh…before you leave…have you checked out the 2018 Bariatric Foodie No-Flour, Sugar-Free Cookie Collection? If not, here’s the complete rundown on this year’s cookies, all made with Sola sweetener! Or, if you’re more of a “cut straight to the chase” kind of person, you can fill out the form below to download the recipes into a FREE ebook!