Eating humble pie

• Music: British Lily Allen‘s “Smile” – very singable. You can hear other songs from her album on the site. A better use of pop reggae than that blond heiress.
• Really interesting graph about McDonald’s and Starbuck’s world diffusion and domination – Notice the lack of Starbucks in Italy

I wrote in a previous blog post about combinations mother nature never intended, and I even went so far as to accuse the Italians of being afraid of variety in their food.

Well, now I have to eat my words. Literally.

When I took public transportation every day, I picked up the daily free paper to see what was new. I also liked to check them because many times my company’s ads were in there. This time, I saw an advertisement for a set of products, something that so challenged everything that I believed about the Italians, that I thought it was a Pesce d’Aprile, an April Fool’s Joke. I rushed immediately out to buy them if only to prove that they existed and it wasn’t a cruel joke.

Some background: Italy is a country that loves its yogurt. Creamy, lowfat, fruit in pieces, plain unsweetened, plain sweetened, natural, artificial, with whole grains, liquid or whipped. And don’t get me started on the multitude of probiotic drinks.

Naturally the manufacturers are trying to outdo each other in order to get their products noticed in the dairy aisle. But I thought these were too outlandish even for us Americans, the “great bastardizers of all things food.”

WARNING: Look away from the screen if you have any delicate sensibilities.

As you can see, there is a strawberry pictured on the left, and it is clearly a tomato on the right. Yes, a tomato. You are not hallucinating. Tomato and strawberry yogurt. Frutta e verdura – fruit and vegatables. And hey, it’s low fat!

There were other flavors – finocchio e ananas (fennel and pineapple), mela e spinaci (apple and spinach), and mango e zucca (mango and pumpkin), which I didn’t pick up. I noticed they picked fruit and veggies with compatible color combinations, so there wouldn’t be any weird-colored yogurt. One thing I noticed that was weird was that the nutritional information was almost identical for each of the flavors, which is strange because the one with spinach should have more protein, etc.

So you want to know how it tasted. Of course, I didn’t buy them just for the photo.

I think my favorite (if I have to choose one) is the spinach and apple. You could definitely taste the spinach but the rather tart apple flavor overrode it, even if it was a bit artifical. Fennel and ananas wasn’t bad but I can usually only take fennel in small doses and is best fresh for me. Tomato and strawberry also tasted of mainly strawberry. I haven’t gotten up the courage to try the mango and pumpkin one, though mango yogurt appeals to me on its own.

The company’s site doesn’t even mention these products, though it does mention the site is under construction (which, by the way, is so 1996).I’m not sure their new product introduction is working as they planned. So far, the only person I know who has bought and tried these yogurts is me, an American and self-proclaimed bastardizer of food.

When I brought them home to try and showed them to S, he was immediately disgusted and told me I was crazy. My reasoning that it was an Italian company offering them didn’t sway him.

When I saw the advertisement at work, I immediately showed it to my colleagues who all couldn’t believe it as well.

So, the question is, who else is pushing the bastardizing limit of food where you are? Does anyone know an Italian that a) has tried these, and b) likes them?