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Rafferty’s Garden Yoghurt Buttons | Chewsday Review

Today's Chewsday Review product is a bit mysterious. No one quite knows whether it's a nutritious choice. It's made of 97% real fruit and yoghurt (thank goodness they don't use that fake fruit and yoghurt!). Kids seem to love them, which always makes parents suspicious! So, I present to you, Rafferty's Garden Yoghurt Buttons.

Ingredients

Positives

Negatives

Almost 2/3 of this product comes from sugar, 62.3% to be exact. That’s well above healthy guidelines of 15%. And I can’t seem to work out from the ingredients list as to why this number is so high. Due to the processing, and extraction of water, I can understand that the proportion of nutrients will be concentrated. But that would still mean that the yoghurt they use, which conveniently doesn’t have a nutritional breakdown, must be pretty high in sugar to start with.
The sodium content is also relatively high for a non-savoury product. It still fits healthy guidelines at 213mg but surprised me.
$143 a kilo. Veeeeeery expensive.
Once the buttons dissolve in the mouth, they get super stuck in little teeth. Given the high sugar content, consider offering something else at the same time to help dislodge them or brush teeth afterwards!

Marketing

97% real fruit and yoghurt. Technically true, despite only 2% coming from real fruit. But, if you look on the Rafferty’s Garden website, you’ll see some other figures that are clearly incorrect. The website claims the strawberry product is 99% fruit and yoghurt, which is completely wrong. It also claims that the mixed berry buttons have no sugar. Labelling errors all over the page. Don’t worry, I’ve donned my detective hat and let them know about what I’ve uncovered!
Probiotic cultures. Now, these aren’t listed on the nutrition panel, as they usually would be on yoghurt products. They may have been in the initial yoghurt, but I’d want to know how well the probiotics survive in the production and storage processes. I’m not sure this is a legitimate claim either.
No artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. True.

Alternatives