A yogurt drink is good for you when it is real fermented dairy carrying live cultures, and the added sugar is kept in check. Plenty of bottles sold as yogurt drinks in Nigeria are closer to sweetened flavoured milk. The label tells you which one you are holding. The Zayith drinks range for example, is the first kind, made in Lagos from real dairy and real fruit.
What separates a yogurt drink from flavoured milk
Two variables settle it: whether the drink is genuinely fermented dairy, and how much sugar was added on the way.
Get both right and a yogurt drink does the same work a bowl of yogurt does, in a format you can finish on the way to work.
A drink built on milk, sugar and fruit flavouring never fermented anything, so there were no live cultures in it to begin with. A properly fermented drink loaded with sugar still carries its cultures, and you take on the sugar along with them. The first is a soft drink wearing a dairy label.
The second is real yogurt you should drink less often. Neither is a disaster, and neither is what most people think they are buying.
The benefits of drinking yogurt
The benefits of drinking yogurt come down to four: live cultures, protein, calcium, and the plain fact that you will finish it. Three of those are what yogurt does in any form. The fourth belongs to the bottle.
Fermentation is what separates yogurt from milk, and the bacteria doing the fermenting are the ones that reach your gut. The US National Yogurt Association sets its live and active cultures seal at 100 million cultures per gram at manufacture, which is a US industry standard rather than a Nigerian labelling rule, so treat it as a yardstick for what the phrase should mean.
The two organisms behind it, Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, are the ones European regulators assessed for improved lactose digestion in people who struggle with milk sugar.
Protein decides whether you are hungry again in forty minutes. USDA data puts plain unstrained yogurt at roughly 10g per 200g, and a drinking yogurt sits lighter than a strained tub depending on how much liquid and sugar the maker adds back. The same record gives about 183mg of calcium per 100g, and dairy is the easiest way most people cover what they need.
The format is the one people underrate. A bottle gets finished, and a tub at the back of the fridge often does not. The difference between a drinking yogurt and a strained Greek tub is mostly how much whey was left in.
Can you drink yogurt every day
For most people a daily yogurt drink needs no managing at all. Fermented dairy is food.
Fermentation reduces lactose without removing it, so if milk sugar troubles you, test your own tolerance rather than assuming a yogurt drink will sit the way milk does. And if the bottle is a sweetened one, daily is where the sugar accumulates.
A sweetened drink every day is a different proposition from an unsweetened one. Keeping an unsweetened or lightly sweetened option in the rotation handles most of this.
Also, timing matters less than people expect. There is no hour at which yogurt starts working and no hour at which it stops. What changes is the job it does. In the morning the protein and the volume together take the edge off mid-morning hunger. In the evening it is a light option before bed. If you train, get protein in soon afterwards, and a drink is an easy way to manage that when you have no appetite for a meal yet.
Yogurt drinks and weight
A yogurt drink will not make you gain weight on its own. Nothing does on its own, because total intake decides that. A modest, protein-carrying serving swapped in for a soft drink or a pastry moves your day in the other direction.
The worry is real, though. Some sweetened drinking yogurts carry a great deal of added sugar, and two or three of those a day stops being modest. Which bottle you choose matters more than whether yogurt is on the menu at all.
For the longer version, including how a strained tub compares, read our guide to Greek yogurt for weight loss.
Yogurt drinks for children
Yogurt drinks work well for children, which is most of why parents buy them. A single bottle is easy for a child to carry and drink without a spoon, and a real yogurt drink is fermented dairy rather than a fruit-flavoured squash.
Sugar is the thing to watch, and the label reads the same way for a child as it does for you. Check where sugar sits in the ingredients, and whether the fruit is actually fruit.
For lunchboxes the 250ml bottles are the size that fits, and the mixed pack lets you keep more than one flavour in the fridge so nobody is stuck with the one they like least.
For babies and toddlers the guidance is different enough to be worth reading properly, and our guide to Greek yogurt for babies covers when to introduce it and what to avoid.
How to read a yogurt drink label
This is what decides whether any of the above applies to the bottle in your hand.
- Fermented or flavoured. Look for yogurt or cultured milk named in the ingredients, and live cultures mentioned somewhere. Codex Alimentarius, the FAO and WHO food standard for fermented milks, requires that a drink based on fermented milk contain at least 40% fermented milk. That is an international reference standard, not Nigerian law, but it tells you what the category is supposed to mean. If the front of the bottle says yogurt flavoured instead of yogurt, that word is doing a lot of work. Nigerian packs use both spellings, yogurt and yoghurt, so what matters is where the word sits, not how it is spelled.
- Real fruit or flavouring. Real fruit appears as fruit or fruit puree in the ingredient list. Flavouring does not. A mango drink that tastes more like a sweet than like fruit will show you why on the ingredients.
- Where the sugar sits. Ingredients run heaviest first, so sugar in second or third position tells you more than any claim on the front of the bottle.
- Dairy or thickeners. A long list of gums and stabilisers means the body of the drink had to be built. Properly fermented dairy already has it.
- Chilled or ambient. The same standard requires the starter cultures to stay viable and abundant to the end of shelf life, then drops that requirement for drinks heat-treated after fermentation. A bottle built to sit on a warm shelf for months has generally had that treatment, and little is left alive in it by the time you buy one. If the drink was never in a fridge, do not expect live cultures in it.
A drink that clears the first and last of those is real fermented dairy. One that fails both is a soft drink with dairy in it, which is a legitimate thing to want and a different purchase.
The Zayith yogurt drinks
Ours are made in Lagos from real dairy and real fruit, without thickeners standing in for body, and kept cold from production to your door.
Mango uses ripe fruit rather than mango flavouring, so it tastes the way mango season tastes.
Mixed Berries is built on mulberries and black currants, which is why it reads fruit-forward and a little tart instead of straightforwardly sweet. Vanilla is mild and smooth, the one to reach for alongside a meal. The range also includes Strawberry.
Sizes run from a 250ml bottle that fits a school bag through to 10L for households that go through it steadily.
Frequently asked questions
Is yogurt a drink or a food?
Both, depending on the type. Set yogurt and strained Greek yogurt are thick enough to need a spoon. Drinking yogurt is the same fermented dairy with more of its liquid left in, so it pours. The fermentation is identical.
Do yogurt drinks need to be refrigerated?
The ones with live cultures in them do. A drink that keeps on a warm shelf for months has usually been heat-treated after fermentation, which is the step that ends the live-culture requirement and most of the cultures with it.
Is a yogurt drink as good as a tub of yogurt?
For cultures, yes, assuming both were properly fermented and neither was heat-treated afterwards. For protein and thickness, no, because straining concentrates a tub while a drink has more of its liquid left in. If protein is what you are after, a strained Greek tub is the more efficient buy.
