Fage Total Yogurt-Carbstarving Rating 8/10

Fage Single Serving

Oh Greece. How I longed to visit you in my 20’s, eat all the delicious food, drink the wine and do that crazy dancing as seen on tv..Well, here I am in my 30’s, looking as though I ate and drank the food, but paid no attention to the dancing. But dance I have since I found Fage (pronounced FA-YEAH) at a local Trader Joes store in California in 2006.

I have always preferred ‘fruit on the bottom”  Brown Cow types of yogurt, but settled on Yoplait as I thought ‘hmm fat free, must be better for me.’ WRONG. As opposed to its slimy, watery, Yoplaity counterparts, Fage 0% yogurt is somehow creamy, thick and rich YET has low calories, no fat, less than HALF the carbs of any other yogurt (9 per serving to be exact) and 20 grams of protein! Most ‘fat free’ yogurt has an insidious amount of sugar. You may think you are doing yourself a favor eating that delicious fat free Yoplait, but you are getting almost the same amount of sugar as if you just ate a Twix candybar!! (Yoplait-33 carbs, Twix, 38 carbs) Fage also comes in at a blazing 20 grams of protein vs 5gm in fat free Yoplait, and if you are on a high protein/low carb diet, getting high amounts of protein in small calorie count foods can be difficult unless you choke back tuna all day long. 

Now there is a downside to Fage-it’s unsweetened, so I use a hefty tbsp of splenda and a dash of vanilla extract, and I have played around with Hershey’s sugar free toppings and mixing it with fruit as well.  When I found it years ago, it only came in 0% fat or 2%, and could rarely be found outside Trader Joes, but now it comes with little ‘sidecars’ of all kinds of natural fruits like acai-cherry, honey (the best when not low carb dieting) blueberry, and others. Due to the popularity of Greek yogurt because of us ‘label readers’, there are other greek yogurt brands such as Chobani. I tried the plain, and a few of the flavored ones and YUCK. Tastes sour and is slimy. If you have tried others that ARE good, let me know your experiences!

So here is the Carbstarving Skinny:

Fage Total Yogurt 0% Carbstarving Rating 8/10

Available at Trader Joes, Safeway, Wholefoods and many Health Food stores

Good for: Low calorie diets, low fat diets, vegetarian diets, low glycemic diets, low carb diets

Pros-Delicious, high protein, creamy Cons-Unsweetened so you might want a splash of splenda

• 120 cals per serving
• 20 gms
• 9 carbs

Low cal/carb/fat “Ambrosia” Salad Recipe courtesy of Elena M.

1. 1 cup Fage 0% Yogurt
2. 1/4 c. fresh pineapple
3. 1 tbsp shredded coconut
4. 1 tbsp orange juice
5.  1 tbsp stevia or splenda

Directions: Mix and Serve!