Having a 'je ne sais quoi' moment (Tesco Value Fromage Frais)

Member Name: Smokindave

Product:	Tesco Value Fromage Frais
Date:	15/10/09 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, my kids tolerated it for a while.

Disadvantages: My kids won't eat it anymore.

I am constantly on the look out for good value alternatives to the top brand offerings being pushed at us on a daily basis. Although I am not a fan of any sort of yogurts, my wife and kids are. So I thought why not drop down a level or two and try Tesco's own Value Fromage Frais. So after about a month of switching to this brand I was all set to announce it as resounding success; almost, but not quite.

So what do you get for your 45 pence? Well, to begin with you get 6 x 60g pots. There are three flavours; Strawberry, Apricot, and Raspberry; 2 of each flavour. As you would expect the packaging is pretty basic, although Tesco do manage to display pictures of each flavour on the lids, which is a step up from some of the basic range. I do wish that sometimes the basic range could push the boat out just a little more with the presentation, as we all know that especially when we are dealing with children, the look is very important. However I accept that they are limited somewhat when producing a 45 pence product.

So, my wife announces that she isn't eating that stuff and I am off to a flying start. However, undeterred I slip a couple of pots under the noses of my children, cleverly distracting them with a Shrek DVD for the ultimate blind taste test! After a few minutes the pots are empty and no one has spoken. That's a good result in my book. So that's the way it went for a few weeks at least. However the old saying 'all good things must come to an end', well it kind of ended it. Firstly my eldest started saying she would only eat the Strawberry flavour, but in the end my wife told me that they both had stopped eating them altogether.

Looking at the yogurts' and I can't really blame them I guess. They do look quite watery. I did try to interview them about what they didn't like about them, but a part from the odd grunt about not liking them I could not put any detail to the evaluation.

To be somewhat thorough I can tell you that although there are 3 flavours, each comes in virtually identical with the stats per pot:

Calories: 55Kcal 3% of GDA
Sugar: 7.3g 8% of GDA
Fat: 0.7g 1% of GDA
Saturates: 0.4g 2% of GDA
Salt: trace less than 1% of GDA

Allergy advice:

Tesco cannot guarantee that no nuts are present.

So I switched back this week to the next level up, not the top of the range but a mid level one. They seem happy with this one for the moment at least. There are some pretty Disney pictures on this one so I guess some of the extra 50 pence will be going to Disney. Even though it was not a success for us I still think that Tesco Value Fromage Frais deserve 3 stars for effort. The quest for good value continues!

Summary: Tolerated for a while, but it just didn't make the grade.