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Coyo Vanilla Coconut Yoghurt | Chewsday Review

Another week another coconut yoghurt. Today’s Chewsday Review features Coyo yoghurt pouches in a vanilla flavour.

Ingredients

Positives

Negatives

Overall fat content is double that of the healthy guidelines and double that of the Cocobella yoghurt.
The saturated fat (bad fat) content is SEVEN times the upper recommended limit. It also makes up 90% of the total fat content meaning there’s very little good fat in this product. Coconuts are actually a significant source of saturated fat. Interestingly, this is one of the only plant sources of saturated fat- most comes from animal products like butter, meat and lard. Regardless, this saturated fat content is an issue. Lately there’s been a lot of hoo-ha about saturated fat being ‘good for you’ but this is very unfounded.
There is no calcium in this product. This is a big concern for me if children are eating this in replacement of dairy or fortified soy yoghurts.
The protein content is about 30% of other dairy yoghurts. Protein can be a concern on some allergy or vegan diets and I’d be most conscious of this in toddlers.
At $2.50 for a squeeze pack or $10 for a 500g tub, this is seriously expensive sweetened coconut milk (and more than double the price of most other yoghurts!)
Squeezie packs are convenient and less messy than spoons BUT they really don’t help children to develop biting and chewing skills that they need for other foods. They also contribute significantly to plastic waste. I’d prefer this yoghurt scooped out of a bigger tub.

Marketing

“Refined sugar free.” This irks me. There is added sugar in this yoghurt. The refined or unrefined nature of the sugar makes zero difference. It’s still sugar.
”Simple food for healthy people.” Bleurgh. I’d prefer my yoghurt without a side of moral judgement.
“Dairy free.” This is important for children with a confirmed dairy allergy, but if your child is lactose intolerant (actually very rare) choose a lactose free yoghurt instead. I also wouldn’t use this as a replacement for yoghurt because it doesn’t have enough protein or calcium.

Alternatives

This isn’t yoghurt, it’s pretty much cream. Use it sparingly like you would cream.
If your child has to avoid cow’s milk for allergy reasons, then I know how hard it is to find a suitable replacement. This is ok from a taste point of view or being used as part of a meal, but on it’s own it isn’t particularly nutritious.
If your child can tolerate soy, then Soy Life yoghurt or soy milk (with a calcium content of at least 120mg per 100g) is a better calcium option.
Other foods such as sardines, broccoli and almonds contain calcium, but you often have to eat a lot to get the amount of calcium the body needs. You can check out a ‘dairy free’ blog post I wrote for Annabel Karmel here where I discuss the different calcium containing foods compared to fortified soy products.