Taking Fruit Yoghurt Down to Basics With Health in Mind

With their “Organic Only” product line, Danish company Arla Foods has stripped fruit yoghurt down to its core components: One part fruit, and three parts yoghurt – nothing else.

Sweetened food taste good. This is engrained in our palettes as sugar often leads to better tasting products. However, added sugar causes great health issues for an increasing number of people, so lowering the added sugar levels while keeping the flavour profile customers were accustomed to, was a challenge taken up by Arla Foods.

Lowering sugar but keeping the taste

Arla faced a fundamental issue. By nature a yoghurt is acidic, yet consumers want a sweet tasting yoghurt but at the same time want to lower their added sugar intake, as health authorities recommend. This fact made developing a yoghurt with no added sugar, while keeping a desired taste, a difficult prospect.

The lowers total amount of added sugars by 500 tons in Denmark

Arla’s response was the product line “Arla Organic Only” consisting of 75% yoghurt and 25% fruit with zero added sugar or additives. Removing sugar from their products has been a cornerstone of Arla’s product development, for example by lowering their total amount of added sugars with 500 tons by launching the Arla Yoggi line in Denmark. Arla Organic Only took this vision one step further as it contains just two basic ingredients.

Finding the right balance proved to be the greatest challenge for Arla, as they could not add sugar to balance the flavour. Howeverm by working systematically and testing over 180 combinations of fruits and yoghurt, they found the right balance.

Arla Organic Only encourages consumers to make a healthier choice, to reduce their added sugar intake and to enjoy trying something new. Arla first launched its new product on the German market, quickly proving that natural products without added sugars can thrive and sometimes replace its conventional counterparts.

No need for sugar

For Arla, the success of Organic Only shows that people can live without added sugar in many of their everyday products if they can become accustomed to them. Arla believes the movement toward less added sugar must come through product development, making sugar-reduced products a healthy alternative while striving to keep the original flavor profile. They have created a whole new type of yoghurt, that both challenges our taste buds and sets new standards for yoghurt.

Arla has taken a large step in the movement towards healthier products with less added sugar, matching the increased demand for healthy alternatives for products with less unnecessary additives.