Note the subtle differences in the packaging of the old "Cream Top" yogurt and the new "Smooth and Creamy yogurt

After finishing the last tub of Stonyfield Cream Top yogurt earlier this week, I opened the first tub of Stonyfield Whole Milk “smooth and creamy” yogurt.  I hadn’t noticed the subtle changes in the packaging when I was at the store earlier this week.  Just like no one expects the Spanish Inquisition, no one expected Stonyfield to change the wonderful yogurt they’d been making for the last 27 years.  The change dawned on me as I pulled off the plastic lid and saw the foil seal that said, “We’ve stirred in the cream ….to make our creamiest, smoothest whole milk yogurt ever.”  And then in big red letters:  “You’re  going to love it.”   Umm.  No.  I’m not.  The inside of the foil goes on with the hard sell of the new formula:   “Ever since we began making yogurts, the debate has raged:  should we let that creamy layer rise to the top or stir it in?  It was always a tossup, but after 27 years of cream on top, we and a bunch of customers tried it the other way.  We were all blown away by how delicious it is.  And you will be too.  Enjoy!”  This note is signed “Gary” [Hirshberg], the CEO of Stonyfield.   Nice sentence structure, by the way.   The changes on the actual tub are subtle:   big letters saying “Cream Top” were gone and replaced with bigger letters that say “Whole Milk”.  There is also a little blurb on the package  that says “tastes Creamier than ever”.    I didn’t notice this at the store.  If I had, I wouldn’t have purchased it.  I look carefully to make sure that I’m buying whole milk yogurt and to be sure that I’m not buying the cloyingly sweet vanilla flavor, but I didn’t think I’d have to watch out for this.  I’d written twice on this very blog last February here and here about my love for the cream top yogurt and my unhappiness on one occasion settling for low-fat when the store was out of whole milk cream top and on the other trying Whole Foods own yogurt when cream top was sold out.  In neither case did I find a winner.

So somehow Stonyfield has been making their yogurt wrong for the better part of three decades?  And they were SELLING it?  And they just realized this now?  Unlikely.  It’s also not so benign as that they are just “stirring in the cream”.  They’re using homogenized milk.  Which I do not want.  I’m guessing Gary saw a bunch of dollar signs either relating to changing suppliers or due to changing their manufacturing process.  However this went down, I’m sure it is more about money than it is about taste or producing a quality product.   Who knows if this taste test really ever took place?  Even if it did, were they really blown away by “how delicious it is”, or did they just figure they could pass off this slop and get by on their name?

Stonyfield’s website (I’m not linking on purpose as it’s easy enough to find) has more of the same hard-sell.  The website encouraged me to leave a comment about the new product.  I did, and this is the disingenuous response that I received:

Hello Ann ,

Thank you for taking the time to contact us. We’re always happy to get
comments and questions from our yogurt lovers and are grateful when someone
takes the time to let us know what they think of our Company and products.

We appreciate your passion for the cream on top and you’re not alone – ever
since we started, we’ve been hearing the debate: should we let that creamy
layer rise to the top or stir it in? It was always a tossup, and after 27
years of cream on top, we’ve decided to stir things up. The cream you love
is still there, only now the yogurt is smoother, creamier, and we think,
even more delicious. We appreciate what an amazingly loyal Stonyfield whole
milk yogurt buyer you are and we’re sorry our new cup disappoints you. We
sincerely hope you’ll continue to give us a try.

Sincerely,

The folks at Stonyfield

First of all, loyalty, my ass!  But I digress.  I’m sure that form letter was crafted before the smooth and creamy abomination ever hit the shelves.  I can’t imagine they didn’t think there would be a backlash.  I just don’t know how big it is, and whether or not they are managing to convince former cream top customers to continue to buy this homogenized and inferior product.  I know that if I hadn’t cared about buying something that was unhomogenized, I wouldn’t have been shelling out Stonyfield sized dollars for an average of a little over a tub of 32 ounce plain yogurt per week.  Do the math.  That adds up to real money if I stop buying their products and thousands of others do the same.   It also looks like they’re pushing coupons harder than ever as well as sponsoring giveaways such as the one on this blog where it isn’t even clear to me that the blogger loves the product and where her content is mostly cribbed from the Stonyfield site.   I don’t know that she was compensated, but this reeks of paid blogging to me.  And I see no disclosure notice.

I do not want this yogurt and I am not alone.  I found this anonymous comment #32 on a thread at wisegeek:

I asked Stonyfield why they discontinued their wonderful plain whole milk yogurt, that had the cream settled on the top. They said, it was debated, and was a toss-up, so they decided to change it. (Why, if it was a toss-up?) I asked how they kept the cream from rising to the top. They said they homogenized it. I will not buy their yogurt anymore.
– anon142926

I also found this thread started by a woman who goes by the screen name of “beaglemommy” over at Mothering.com.  No one who posted on that thread wrote anything like, “The new smooth and creamy yogurt is the most delicious yet!”  Or even expressed the thought that maybe it was o.k., acceptable.  Comments range between disappointment and outrage.  Which is really just angrier disappointment.   With permission, here is her original post:

posted 01/24/2011 

I recently purchased some Stonyfield plain, whole milk yogurt as I have done many times in the past. As I was opening it, I read the label on top (under the plastic lid), “We’ve stirred in the cream …to make our creamiest, smoothest whole-milk yogurt ever. You’re going to love it!”
Um, I’m NOT going to love the only consistently available non-homogenized dairy now homogenized! And in such a sneaky way. I could not read that portion of the label until after I purchased it. The rest of the packaging looks much the same as it always has. Now that I am studying the label, it does not say “cream top” as it used to. Is there any other explanation other than they are now homogenizing it? It doesn’t smell bad, but the top of the yogurt in the container looks bubbly and nasty.
This container will be going back to Kroger. 

Anyone else noticed this?

The observation about the top of the yogurt in the container looking bubbly and nasty is right on.  I’ve already mentioned the VERY subtle differences in the old and new packaging for the old and new products.   While I’m not going to take my yogurt back to Woodman’s as she was going to return hers to Kroger, I will absolutely not be buying any more Stonyfield products.  Stonyfield also has a canned response for those who complain that the yogurt is now homogenized:
“Thanks for contacting us with your concerns about the homogenized milk in
our whole-milk yogurts. Scientific research tells us homogenized milk is no
less healthy than unhomogenized milk. 

In the 1970s, a researcher named Kurt Oster theorized that an increase in
coronary heart disease was caused by homogenized milk, which was introduced
in the 1930s and 1940s. Research done in the 1980s, however, refuted
Oster’s theory. If you’d like to read more about the topic, check out the
American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Journal of Dairy Science.

Thanks again for contacting us, and please don’t hesitate to drop us
another line. We’d love to hear from you again.

Sincerely,

The folks at Stonyfield

Get free yogurt and green goods. Sign up at MyStonyfieldRewards.com

Clifford AJ, et al: Homogenized bovine milk xanthine oxidase: a critique of
the hypothesis relating to plasmalogen depletion and cardiovascular
disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 1983 Aug;38(2):327-32.

Deeth HC: Homogenized milk and atherosclerotic disease: a review. J Dairy
Sci. 1983 Jul;66(7):1419-35.”

Wow!  Citations!  Both from 1983 and narrowly focused on cardiovascular disease.  Like there isn’t any other reason to choose a product that is not homogenized over one that is. Color me impressed.  Connecting another couple of dots, 1983 is 28 years ago, so this information was available before Stonyfield even started making yogurt and still they didn’t choose to use homogenized milk until now?  And we’re supposed to believe that this just the result of a coin toss?  That just lacks credibility.   I suppose whether or not homogenized milk is unhealthy is open to debate, but I guess I’d look a little more widely for information than the references to the Clifford and Deeth papers that Stonyfield provided.  To me, it may be a matter of health, but it is also certainly a matter of texture and taste.  As they point out, homogenization has only been with us since the 1930′s or 1940′s.  I believe in eating  foods as close to their natural state as possible and to me homogenization is an unnecessary and therefore undesirable step.
At first I ranted about this on my Facebook wall.  This resulted in a long and entertaining thread that actually mentioned Oreos and Fruity Pebbles more than yogurt.  I figured I might be in for making my own yogurt since I can and do buy unhomogenized milk.  I wasn’t really looking forward to that, but one of my friends also posted this awesome device for controlling the temperature of a slow cooker in order to use it to make yogurt.  I’d do that if I had too.  I almost want to just for the tinkering challenge.  I probably won’t though because on my weekly trip to buy dairy and produce at Willy West I found that they carry two kinds of cream top yogurt:  Brown Cow and Sugar River Dairy.  Neither of these are organic, but neither are the cows treated with hormones.  Someone on the thread at Mothering pointed out that Brown Cow is owned by Stonyfield.  Sugar River’s website says that they use “single source milk”.   They are also local.  While I will finish the Stonyfield that I have,  I will then try Sugar River’s yogurt.  I expect it will be good.  I’m lucky here in Madison.  Beaglemommy says she can’t get any other cream top yogurt locally.  She’s considering planning monthly trips to Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s which are 100 miles away from her.  It’s either that or resorting to making her own yogurt.
Back to the original Stonyfield problem, I’m sure anyone who writes to them to complain can look forward to receiving one of the patronizing responses above.  Apparently the only thing they understand is money.  So vote with yours.  Let their products spoil on the shelves.  Maybe then they will “hear” their (possibly former) customers.
****Recently I wondered why so many people are still reading this post even though it is so old.  I note today (March 30, 2011) that some time between the date of my original post and now, that Stonyfield appears to have removed all mention of Cream Top Yogurt from their website.  It appears to me that their P.R. Campaign to sell this yucky, new homogenized product to former Cream Top customers may not be going so well.  I have no idea if they may be motivated to bring Cream Top back or whether they’ll just drop whole milk yogurts altogether in favor of highly sweetened, higher profit margin products.  If you want Cream Top back, keep writing to them.  At this time, the only mention of the Smooth and Creamy [Homogenized] Yogurt being a new product is this press release dated January 20, 2011.  It’s almost like we live in a world where Stonyfield Cream Top Whole Milk Yogurt never existed.****