General Mills is launching a new yogurt product for consumers who want certain health benefits from their morning meal.
YQ by Yoplait is General Mills' answer to a number of U.S. nutrition trends from low-sugar to high-protein to lactose-sensitive diets.
It's the packaged-food company's most significant new yogurt product since launching its French-style Oui by Yoplait a year ago. The company hopes YQ helps continue the turnaround of its beleaguered yogurt business.
With 15 to 17 grams of protein and 1 to 9 grams of sugar per 5.3-ounce container, YQ rivals many of the nutritional claims made by Greek yogurt, which gained popularity years ago for its purported healthfulness. General Mills was late to the Greek yogurt craze, but consumer enthusiasm for Greek is waning, creating an opportunity to catch up.
"Greek is no longer growing," Doug Martin, Yoplait's vice president of marketing, "It's in the second month of double-digit declines."
The yogurt marketers at General Mills last year started noticing consumers growing restless and bypassing the Greek category, Martin said. "When you look at health trends, the obvious thing that jumps out is people looking to avoid sugar" while seeking more protein to feel full longer.
General Mills sought ways to attract those consumers, and YQ is the result. The new yogurt's texture is smoother than Greek but thicker than regular yogurt. It's made from "ultra filtered milk" — a type of liquid milk gaining popularity through specialty brands like Fairlife. Ultrafiltered milk is cow's milk that has been sent through a series of filters, removing more than 99 percent of the lactose. Since lactose is a sugar that lacks sweetness, it wasn't helping from a flavor standpoint.
This filtration process allowed General Mills to make a product that might appeal to people trying to reduce their sugar intake or those with a sensitivity to lactose.
