Well, shake it up baby now! (Yazoo Banana Flavour Milkshake)

Member Name: bondgirlk8

Product:	Yazoo Banana Flavour Milkshake
Date:	20/11/08 (428 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Amazing sports and recovery drink, Wonderful when you are unable to eat

Disadvantages: None for me - might be a bit sugar and calorie rich if you just fancy a drink

Yazoo Banana Milk is one of my core survival products. Without it, I could not live my life in the way I choose and may just cease to function entirely.

I appreciate this may sound a teeny bit dramatic.

That's because you think it is milk.

It isn't!

It is the finest energy drink ever made! Without it, I couldn't dance or run to the extent I do. If that happens I'd get sad. If I get sad enough I can no longer function, hence, I NEED IT SIMPLY TO SURVIVE.

Here is a bit more about what it is, and how it changed my life.

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What is it?
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Yazoo is a flavoured milk drink made by Dutch dairy company Campina. It is available in three flavours: banana, strawberry and chocolate. This review is specifically about the banana variety (its the only one I drink), however, some elements of my review could apply to the other flavours if they appeal to you more.

Yazoo is made with semi-skimmed and skimmed sterilised milk. Like other long-life milk, it can be stored in a cupboard until opening and has a best before date long into the future. Once open, however, it should be treated as fresh milk i.e. stored in a refrigerator and consumed within a day or two.

It is described on the bottle as being "The healthier milkshake that's packed full of flavour".

Yazoo is suitable for vegetarians.

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Packaging
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Yazoo is available in three different sizes: 1ltr, 475mls and 200mls. The 200mls bottles are sold in multipacks of four. These small bottles also have a small transparent straw stuck to the side.

The bottle itself is white plastic covered in a bright yellow plastic label and topped with a sunshine yellow plastic lid. The yellow label contains different shades of yellow and white along with a picture of some pieces of sliced banana. The word Yazoo is written in bright blue fun-style happy lettering, under which it is described as 'milk shaken up with banana'. The front of the bottle also informs us that the product is low in fat and contains no artificial colours or sweeteners and displays the green Campina logo.

As well as advising that it is best to 'shake well & drink cold' the back of the bottle contains details of ingredients and nutritional content of the drink. I will not cover this here, however, I will touch on the key elements from this throughout my review.

Under the main lid, there is a small silver foil lid which must be peeled off (or pierced with a straw) prior to consuming the drink. Once this is removed the bottle should remain upright. With only the yellow lid in place, the bottle will withstand some shaking and moving, however, tipping it upside down and shaking like crazy might cause it to leak everywhere.

The bottle itself is made of recyclable plastic.

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Taste
*****
The smell of banana flavoured Yazoo will hit you as soon as you peel back that label. It is very sweet, more sugar than banana, but not really sickly. I think it is a nice smell that is powerful enough that you know exactly what the milk will taste like just from inhaling the fumes.

Banana Yazoo has a very milky taste, which is very sweet. It tastes banana-y in the way that foamy bananas taste of banana i.e. not really, but yummy all the same. It has quite a smooth texture and a good level in thickness. It is fairly similar to regular milk but with a bit of a softer feel to it. Of all the banana milkshakes I have tried that can be bought in this format, I find Yazoo to be the nicest both in terms of taste and in texture. The drink itself is a vivid yellow colour, in fact surprisingly vivid given the lack of artificial colours.

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As an energy drink
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This is quite a long section - if you are interested in Yazoo purely as a drink (I've used some big examples with a fair bit of background) then I'll forgive you if you skip to the end. On the other hand, it might change your life...

So, I use Yazoo to fuel two activities, dancing and running. Its place in both is a bit different. Here is how it helps me:

Activity 1: Dancing

Primary Yazoo Use: Meal Substitute

I dance an awful lot. Often, this can take up most of the day, or be bolted on to the end of a day at work where it will then take up most of the evening. In either case, this presents the difficult situation of needing to "eat" something to keep me going until I get home which will not affect my ability to dance. The item I choose will have to provide sufficient energy to fuel my dancing, yet be gentle and calm enough on my stomach to not reappear at the first pirouette or result in painful stomach cramps. For this reason, "real" food is not really an option for me.

In this situation, I would use Yazoo as a light meal which can be easily digested. I have found it to be extremely effective for this purpose, finding that it successfully takes away hunger without making me feel sick, and is easy enough to digest that is has never caused me pain, heart-burn or any other nasty side-effect that can arise when combining food with activity. I don't often get a break for lunch, and would not generally drink the whole lot in one go (best not to risk it) and would be more likely to drink around a quarter to a third of the bottle in one go, this minimising 'slushing' in my stomach.

My Yazoo size of choice will be a 475ml bottle if used before classes after work, or to get me through a whole day of dance. If I am performing (can't eat and perform - have never been able to do it) I'd select either the 1ltr bottle or a whole pack of snack sized bottles depending on whether or not the theatre has fridge facilities, how much I trust the rest of the cast, and how many performances are scheduled in that particular day.


Activity 2: Long Distance Running

Primary Yazoo Use: Classic Energy Drink

In my mid-20's I suddenly took up running, and am now a (very slow) distance runner. I "race" when I can, my favourite distance being half marathon, closely followed by marathon. I learnt quite early on that when running these distances (especially for tortoises like me) you are out and on the go for a long time. You need to literally 'eat on the run'. You are at risk of doing yourself harm if you don't and your energy levels get too low.

The common runner's solution is to use some form of energy drink with fancy things like electrolytes in them, such as those make by Lucozade or Powerade for instance. I have used these before for other sports (yup, dancing again!) but this would generally be afterwards. The whole thing you put your body through when you dance is very different to the stress you put in through running a marathon. As are the situation and surroundings you are in.

Having used them before, I didn't expect to have a problem with energy drinks. How wrong I was. They are extremely harsh on your stomach, and my mouth gets a bit fuzzy and thick when I run which made the drinks taste a bit gross. I tried pretty much every energy drink on the market. This caused the following results:

Robin Hood Half Marathon 2006: Sick at mile 10
Turkey Trot Half Marathon 2006: Sick at mile 12
Blackpool Half Marathon 2006: Survived, but felt 'dodgy'
Silverstone F1 Circuit Half Marathon 2006: Stomach 'turned' at mile 3, had to make a 'pit stop' every mile from 7 to 13, then sick on the finish line - nice! This was a particularly charming race experience.
Flora London Marathon 2006: Sick at miles 15 and 18

I tried sweeties after this - although finding nice easy to eat vegetarian jelly style sweeties is not so easy. I ran a few 'half's on these (don't think they'd see me through a whole marathon) and they were ok, but made my mouth feel weird. Other than that I stuck to middle distance for a bit so I could run without needing to re-fuel and ran mainly 5k and 10k instead.

It wasn't long though before I started to feel the pull. Anyone who has ever done a marathon will understand this. You tell yourself it is your big once in a lifetime challenge, but once it's over you unexpectedly long to do it again - do it faster, do it better, do it AGAIN. I'd abandoned energy drinks by now and needed an alternative.

The obvious hit me - why not chance it with Yazoo? I have now used it in two big races - the first of which represented an important psychological challenge for me. Here are the results:

Silverstone F1 Circuit Half Marathon 2008: Wooohoooo! Amazing! Had a lot of energy, stomach behaved, no sickness or indeed any problems at all. A very happy race which secured me a personal best time on my half marathon distance. An experience far removed from my last 'trot' around this course. Yazoo appeared to work.

Edinburgh Marathon 2008: YES!! It worked, even for a whole marathon! Results were as above - no problems, high energy, and now a personal best time at marathon distance as well. The next day I marched around Edinburgh as if nothing had happened, so I like to thank Yazoo for helping my speedy recovery as well.

Clearly Yazoo works for me. I will continue to use it as an energy drink as long as I continue to run.

For these purposes I would use:

Half Marathon:
Before - 1 x 475ml
During - 1 x 475ml
After - 1 x 200mls as soon as crossing line, plus would have lots more of these stashed in my kit bag for the journey home and to drink until my stomach will take real food.

Full Marathon:
As above, but will carry 2 x 475ml for during, along with an emergency 200mls


I would massively recommend Yazoo to ANYONE who suffers any kind of intolerance to energy drinks whilst carrying out their sport, and would definitely recommend new runners to give it a go whilst they are working out which fuels suit them.


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Additional Benefits
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Contains LOTS of calcium. This is important for strong bones - I think strong bones are very important if you want to spend your life dancing and running marathons!

It is a good source of protein. Protein is extremely important to allow muscles to rebuild and repair. This makes Yazoo an excellent recovery drink, as the sooner the body takes on protein after a physically stressful event such as a long race, the more likely your body is to recover quickly.

According to the bottle it contains no artificial colours, flavours or sweeteners - it does have quite a bit of sugar though - for my purposes this is fine, but beware of this if you are consuming it simply as a drink.

The calorific content is relatively high - as would be expected if to be used for energy purposes, however, it is also low in fat making it an ideal choice.

Yazoo changed my life - hope it can do the same for you.


Thank you for reading.

© Bondgirlk8 - November 2008

Summary: Highly recommended for anyone with an active lifestyle.