The Pitfalls of Food Shopping: Chobani Champions

Posted on | September 15, 2010 | 6 Comments

Now that I have an actual kitchen, I actually have to do my own food shopping, something that rarely happened before now. Let’s just say, I’m a rookie, but I’ve learned a couple of things through my shopping experience. It’s important to think rationally when you’re shopping. What will I eat this week? How much can I afford? How long will it take to prepare this? Will I really want that? Do I really need that? Since the semester has begun, between my internship, classes and my job over at the Department of Graduate Education, cooking hasn’t been much of an option, except on my days off. So I need quick and sometimes easy grab’n'go solutions for my hunger. Being gluten-free sometimes makes this difficult, but one solution I’ve found is yogurt. Greek yogurt specifically.

Next time I go food shopping, remind me to eat beforehand. It’s a problem when you’re so hungry and surrounded by food. Why? It’s not like you’re some rabid animal that can’t wait until you get home to nom on something. No, that’s not the issue here. The issue is your ability to rationalize every minuscule purchase you make at the food store under the influence of hunger. Sure, you may not need that bag of Reese’s or that tub of ice cream, but you’ll find some reason to throw them into your cart and carry on. You even buy things that you’re not even sure you’ll like.

This is how I got to this blog post. It was a lovely day to do some shopping with the roomies in preparation for the dinner I wrote about last weekend and the pancakes I made the next morning. But there was a problem. We were all starving and knew we would be having a later dinner. So we didn’t take carts. That way we could only buy what we could carry, which would probably just be what we needed for our dinner and breakfast. That didn’t stop us. There were products tucked under my arms, shelved on my chest and resting in the crooks of my elbows.

Then, Laura caught sight of it. Chobani’s Champions 4-pack of yogurts. As artistic-minded people, we see pretty packaging and instantly gratify ourselves by purchasing whatever it might be. The Certified Gluten-Free label on the colorful cardboard didn’t hurt either. Greek yogurt is something that I’ve been enjoying quite frequently lately. It was introduced to me by my good friends, Kat and Keri. Never really liking the regular yogurt I’d experienced before Greek yogurt, I wasn’t very eager to try it. But this past summer, my mom took to eating Chobani Greek Yogurt. Swiping one of her’s, I found that Greek yogurt is thick and creamy and much more filling than your average yogurt. So when Laura spotted this beautifully packaged parcel of yogurt, I had to have it.

(It was so beautiful that I’ve kept the top of the package and will soon hang it up in my room.)

What a nice little package! I thought this would be perfect to pack into school lunches. In each of these there’s 9 grams of protein, which is 18 percent of our daily value. Not bad for a little snack. I was extremely eager to try the honeynana flavor because even with nutritional value, it has to taste good for it to be a reasonable purchase. And it does. The honeynana yogurt is tart but with the subtle sweetness of honey and bananas. However, I noticed that it isn’t as thick and creamy as regular Chobani Greek Yogurt, which was a bit of a disappointment since it is one of the key features of Greek yogurt that I love so much. But the taste is good and I could see any kid looking with hope-filled eyes until they triumphantly find this yogurt at the bottom of their brown paper lunch bag.

You all know about my sweet tooth, no? I was the kid who wanted nothing but candy. We had a drawer in our kitchen that was filled with snacks, some healthy, others not so much. Now it’s a drawer full of those 100 calorie snacks, so I don’t go in there so much anymore. But every night my mother would allow us one snack. I always went for the stickiest, unnaturally colored, gummy snack that stained my mouth red for the next week or so. Either that or I would stuff my face with as many M&M’s as I could possibly fit in my mouth. Obviously, I’ve grown out of that need for candy, though every once in a while (or once a month if you get what I mean), I have to grab for the bar of chocolate. So when I saw the chocolate flavored yogurt, I thought it would be a brilliant way to get in that fix and be a tiny bit healthy at the same time.

Nope.

I could barely stomach it. The yogurt is, again, very tart and the chocolate flavor tasted chalky, as if I had eaten that Hershey chocolate powder used to make chocolate milk. It was loose like the honeynana, but was without the pleasing taste that came with the other flavor. If I were a kid and I tasted this, I would be put off of Greek yogurt for the rest of my life (perhaps this is a bit hyperbolic). I was so disappointed. So while I would recommend the honeynana, I would stay away from the chocolate. Hopefully Chobani will sell them separately.

Of course, this won’t stop me from loving Chobani’s other Greek yogurt products that I eat almost every day. And I’m sure I’ll try other products they decide to come out with. I love them because their products are all natural and their website makes it easy to find allergy and nutritional information and most of all because besides this chocolate mess, their products taste good and are healthy simultaneously, something that is sadly rare when it comes to these simple grab’n'go options.

That being said, when it is time to go food shopping, well, lunch has to come first so I can make sure this won’t happen again. If you do, by any chance, go food shopping while you’re hungry, make sure to stay away from anything with appealing packaging. Lack of nourishment will lead you to picking up anything that employs a talented graphic designer.

Nomming on Chobani Greek Yogurt with Peaches,
Miel

Category: celiac disease, chobani, chobani champions, college, dorm, gf, gluten, gluten free, greek yogurt, rider university, School, snacks

Comments

6 Responses to “The Pitfalls of Food Shopping: Chobani Champions”

Cait
September 15th, 2010 @ 5:28 pm

You are cute

PS I added a section to my blog JUST FOR YOU

miss you terribly <3

[Reply]
GFree_Miel Reply:
September 15th, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Aw thanks.

I’ve always linked to you in the sidebar.

Visit soon if you can make time. We’ll cook.

[Reply]
cait Reply:
September 15th, 2010 at 5:58 pm
I know i kept meaning to add you but clearly i am terrible at updating things. AND YES

[Reply]
GFree_Miel Reply:
September 15th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
I’m coming home this weekend, so you’ll see me then.
Theresa
September 19th, 2010 @ 8:55 pm

I can see why you bought them, they’re so pretty! I love yogurt so much, but it doesn’t last long in my house coz everyone else loves it too

[Reply]
GFree_Miel Reply:
September 19th, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Haha, I’m always stealing my mom’s chobani. So good!

[Reply]