Rafferty’s Garden Strawberry Yoghurt Buttons | Chewsday Review

This week I reviews Rafferty's Garden Strawberry Yoghurt Buttons. They're a freeze-dried yoghurt and fruit snack, so let's see if these are a hit or leave me feeling frosty.

Ingredients

Positives

Bit of a no brainer, but these are a low salt snack.
These buttons are just on the edge of the recommendations for saturated fat (3g per 100g), but this is coming from dairy which research now considers neutral for health so is not something that concerns me greatly. They compare favourably to Baby Bellies Yoghurt Drops which contain coconut milk making their saturated fat content about 3 times higher.
They’re small so could be helpful for practising pincer grip.

Negatives

The yoghurt used is mostly milk but sugar is the second ingredient so I wasn’t surprised by the nutrition information. The sugar content is more than 4 times our recommendations (62.3g of sugar per 100g). For context plain yoghurt usually contains about 5-6g of sugar per 100g, but it’s tricky to compare as this product has been freeze-dried which concentrates it. It is worth mentioning that per serve (7g) this works out to be roughly a teaspoon of sugar, some of which will be coming from the milk.
These only contain 2% strawberry puree so it’s barely even strawberry flavoured at this amount. I suspect the beet juice has been added to help the colour look more strawberry-like.
A 28g packet costs $6!! You can buy a kilo of yoghurt for that price.
These are made in the USA so have high food miles.

Marketing

“99% fruit and yoghurt”. Sure, but the yoghurt component isn’t just plain yoghurt.
“Made with probiotic cultures”. All yoghurt will contain some good bacteria (probiotics) but I’d be really curious to know turning that yoghurt into a freeze-dried button effects them. Maybe that’s why this says “Made with probiotic cultures” and not “contains probiotic cultures”…
“Real food tastes best”. These kind of statements really annoy me. All food is real food. The only “fake” food is toy food. And if they’re trying to go down the “wholefoods” rabbit hole, I’d argue that these yoghurt drops are a fair way from yoghurt and strawberries.

Alternatives

It seems I don’t have a huge amount of positive praise for these yoghurt drops. They’re expensive and contain added sugar so are not something I would recommend for babies. If your young child enjoys these I’d suggest serving them alongside another preferred food to make a more substantial snack.
They do seem to contain more milk than the Baby Bellies version, but neither is really superior nutritionally.
You could make your own frozen yoghurt drops. Just be sure to allow them to soften slightly before serving to a young baby.

The composition of food products changes regularly. The nutritional values of the products in this Chewsday Review were correct at the time of publishing.