Activia Lactose Free Yogurt

If you're a lactose intolerant yogurt lover, this one's for you. Made with lactase, an enzyme essential for milk digestion, Activia Lactose Free Yogurt is a smooth and tangy yogurt that's fortified with calcium and vitamin D. It's sold in multipacks of 12 single-serving containers, and there are several flavour options, from classics like strawberry and vanilla, to the more exotic mango and raspberry-lychee. In our lab testing, we really enjoyed the creamy texture and balanced flavour of this yogurt, which is both sweet and tangy, and it was also a hit with both our parent testers and their kids.

To properly evaluate each yogurt, we had registered dietician Cara Rosenbloom conduct a blind nutritional analysis (no brands or labels, just the nutritional information and ingredients list). Single-serving yogurt portions vary from brand to brand, so to make sure that we levelled the playing field, she analyzed 100-gram servings of each yogurt, focusing on the quality of the ingredients, as well as the sugar, protein, calcium and vitamin D content. Activia Lactose Free Yogurt happens to come in 100-gram cups, and the strawberry yogurt contains 10 grams of sugar (that's 2½ teaspoons), four grams of protein and 15 percent of recommended daily vitamin D intake. It's worth noting that plain regular yogurt contains about six grams of naturally occurring sugars in a 100-gram serving, so this means Activia Lactose Free Yogurt, strawberry flavour, has four grams of added sugar—or one teaspoon—which is quite low compared to a lot of the yogurts we tested. Rosenbloom rated this among her best bets among the non-Greek yogurts.

Single-serving yogurts are all about convenience, and the container design can make for a simple snack...or a bit of a mess. Small and sturdy, the Activia Lactose Free Yogurt containers are a good size for little hands, but a small tab makes it slightly tricky for kids to grip and peel back the top. If your kiddo is a spiller, you'll might want to keep an eye on them while they snack since this yogurt has a relatively thin consistency. It's also worth noting that in our lab tests, we found the containers snapped apart a bit unevenly, forming some rough, and even sharp, edges, so you'll want to take a little care when you're grabbing a cup to pop in a lunch bag. And when it's time to toss the container, conscious parents will be glad to know that this one is recyclable (surprisingly not so for all single-serving yogurt containers).

Price is another concern for a lot of parents, and if you've ever bought other lactose-free dairy products, you'll know that you often pay a premium. Not so with the Activia Lactose Free Yogurt. At a cost per serving of $0.42, it's priced the same as other Activia yogurts, and falls in the low end of the price range for single-serving yogurts. Overall, our parent testers felt that Activia Lactose Free Yogurt provided good to very good value.

FINAL WORD

Our parent testers unanimously agreed Activia Lactose Free Yogurt is worthy of the Today's Parent Approved seal. The majority said they felt good about giving this yogurt to their kids, and all would recommend it to other parents. Nutritionally, it's one of the best regular strawberry yogurts we tested thanks to it's low sugar and higher vitamin D content—a real plus for people who have trouble digesting dairy.