Bought one pack of that stuff on sale at Carrefour - only to find out that their blueberry Joghurt contains large chunks of coconut jelly to extend the quantity (probably 10-20% of the weight is just jelly…). So disgusting, I just had to share somewhere… 
5 Likes
I think it’s supposed to be a feature not a bug, right? I assume some people like it.
(Not including me, and I’ve done exactly the same thing before. But then I usually only use yogurt for making smoothies, so I definitely don’t want chunks of jelly in it.)
The Carrefour house brand (cost: NT$99) is a decent alternative if it’s in store (often, in my experience, it’s not).
Guy
2 Likes
Be extra careful. One time I bought Carrefour yogurt that was labeled “plain” in English but was actually 香蕉, which was written in a fancy Chinese script along the side of the package, as opposed to just being in a basic Chinese font right above or below the English (which was wrong)
2 Likes
To be clear: it’s the plain one (no sugar or other additives) that I am recommending.
Guy
Some yogurt brands are just nasty. You need to find the good ones and hope they keep selling them. Or try to find a ‘life’ culture yogurt and start your own.
4 Likes
Costco yogurt is great but you need to buy too much at a time.
The Greek yogurt? No you don’t need to buy a lot, and anyways, yogurt stays fine quite long.
1 Like
Do they have another plain one except that „Non-fat Greek Yoghurt“?
Thats certainly what the marketing department is trying hard to make you think.
1 Like
Some of the smaller local brands are pretty good for live yoghurts.
This is one example. It has the usual live bacteria, and no artificial flavours or other crap added . It tastes pretty good.
It’s available in places like Pxmart and CitySuper.
They have some other products with some additional bacteria types available online (I’ve not seen these in supermarkets so far).
I like it, my Carrefour usually has it. Lately I’ve been getting the Yoiis one more though.
1 Like
Matthew’s was involved in some scandal a while back, removing or switching up expiring dates to move their product. This history is discussed here:
Since then: no thanks!
Guy
1 Like
I looked into this a bit because I wasn’t aware of this problem, and I wanted to understand what it was all about so I can decide whether or not to continue buying.
My conclusion is that I don’t think it’s comparable to the other food-scare cases which occurred around the time, such as Weiquan’s buying up of waste oil on a mass scale for use in their products. Matthew’s got caught up in the media storm and became (a little unfairly in my view) tarred with the same brush.
These articles from after the event give some more detailed background. From my understanding, this issue was with a new plum jam product which they didn’t have experience with and so initially gave it an expiry date of 6 months, but when they found that the taste improved the longer it was kept and it wouldn’t deteriorate, they increased the expiry date to a year.
Also, the supplier of the plum pulp used by Matthew’s gives an expiry date for the product of 2 years or longer, and they explained that it’s safe to keep for long periods because it’s been pickled/preserved.
On the whole, I’m inclined to give Matthew’s the benefit of the doubt on this. The principles behind the company seem good (wanting to produce natural products without loads of artificial additives). So in the absence of any other incidents or questions about the company, I will continue to buy their yoghurt.
3 Likes
Nice update. Thanks for digging into this matter. It’s much appreciated.
Guy
1 Like