Yazoo Flavoured Milk Drinks

I'm not a huge fan of plain milk - I still have cringeworthy memories of being sick at primary school, right in the plastic box full of animal shapes, after they gave out the little glass bottles of milk with the blue straws (remember them ? ) !! - but flavoured milk goes down better. I love McDonalds strawberry milkshakes, but I know they're full of fat and totally unhealthy (plus they're so thick, they make your cheeks hurt from sucking so hard !) and I love homemade smoothies, which are packed full of goodness but take a while to prepare (and wash up). So I jumped at the chance to try out Yazoo - "the nation’s favourite milk drink".

I always like to check the nutritional information before trying out new products or giving them to the girls, and I was pleasantly surprised when I researched Yazoo. The website tells us : "Yazoo is the nation’s favourite milkshake, and our healthy recipe makes Yazoo an ideal soft drink for all! In fact one 500g bottle of Yazoo gives you 70% of your recommended daily allowance (RDA) of calcium and 95% of your RDA for Vitamin B12!" Even more impressive : ""Yazoo milk drinks make a great idea for a low fat, healthy snack or lunchbox option. Many children's drinks have been banned from schools and lunchboxes but because Yazoo contains fruit juice, no artificial flavourings, sweeteners or preservatives and less than 5% added sugar, your school will be happy for you to pop one in your child's lunchbox and you'll be providing your child with a healthy calcium-kick at the same time."

Looking even more closely at the list of ingredients, there are no nasty surprises. "Yazoo is made with semi-skimmed milk (in fact over 90% of the content in Yazoo is milk!). To get those great Yazoo flavours we use very small amounts of the following ingredients: Chocolate flavour Yazoo gets its chocolatey taste from fat-reduced cocoa powder, plus a little vanilla flavour and caramel to give a rounded taste. Strawberry and banana Yazoo use a combination of fruit juice and natural flavours to make them taste great. Yazoo is a long life milk. This means the milk is heat treated to kill the bacteria that naturally exist in raw milk and keeps Yazoo safe to drink for up to 3 months, even when not stored in the fridge. So you can always keep a bottle of Yazoo handy in your cupboard. When you're ready to drink, simply chill and treat as fresh milk."

OK, so I'm convinced it's healthy but what does it actually taste like ? Well, there are three flavours available - Chocolate, Strawberry and Banana - and Juliette (4) and Sophie (8) helped me taste all of them. My favourite was the chocolate, which did actually taste of chocolate, unlike lots of supposedly chocolatey-flavoured milks that are so watery they just taste of something vaguely cocoa-related that could well be the milk left over in the cereal bowl after eating Cocoa Pops ! Strawberry also got a big thumbs up from us all - it tasted a bit like strawberry yoghurt to me, sweet but not too sickly sweet, very refreshing with a lovely fruity aftertaste. Banana is always a tricky one - I love bananas but I'm not keen on banana-flavoured things like banana yoghurts or sweets - so unsurprisingly, it was my least favourite. It smells and tastes a bit like the foam banana sweets you can buy, so if you like those, you'll love it. For all of us, it was our least favourite - I gave up after a sip, Juliette didn't like it, Sophie drank half and said it was OK but didn't taste as nice as the other ones, which really did taste of chocolate and strawberry whereas the banana one didn't taste like real banana. But when I said we could we could give them to the kids next door, she said no, it's OK, she'd drink them anyway, so they can't have been that bad ! It's all a matter of personal taste though so try them and see what you think !

Texture-wise, they remind me of Actimel, which the girls drink every day for breakfast - not too thick but not too watery either. They quench your thirst without leaving you feeling like you've just eaten a huge bowl of ice cream (like McDonalds milkshakes !) so they won't put you off your dinner if you drink one at morning break. It's a great way of getting calcium and vitamins into your children, and is a much healthier option than a lot of the other sugary options on the kids' drinks market.

I love the variety of packaging options : a value for money 1 litre bottle, 500g bottles, a 300ml ‘on the move’ bottle and now handy packs of 200ml single serve bottles for lunchboxes. So you can pick the best option for you, depending on when and where you want to drink it - that's one less headache for overstretched mums ! The single serve bottles are great - they have a screwtop lid so you don't have to drink it all in one go, there's a foil seal underneath the lid to prevent spillage (but if your child has difficulty removing the foil seal, you could always peel it off in advance and screw the cap back on carefully before putting it in their lunchbox) and, although you can quite easily drink straight from the bottle, they come with a straw attached. Absolutely ideal for popping in kids' lunchboxes.

star rating : 4.5/5

RRP : 74p for the 330ml, 85p for 500ml, £1.09 for a 1-litre bottle
4 x 200ml pack rrp £1.35, 6 x 200ml pack rrp £1.99