#ThirstyThursday: yobick SAKURA Review: Our Writer Read a 61-Page Market Report For This Yogurt Drink

And I didn’t learn much except Dydo, the Japanese company that produced yobick is doing well in the Turkish market.

Why did I read it? Well…let’s go back in time a little.

Let’s first talk about the drink since it’s #ThirstyThirsday: yobick Sakura, a yogurt flavoured drink, is going for S$2 each. If you didn’t know that you can eat/drink Sakura or cherry blossoms, now you know.

Straight off, the packaging screams Japanese, but at this point I’m typically skeptical. Just because something looks Japanese doesn’t mean it’s Japanese. Feels strange that they put both “Brand from Japan” and “Inspired by Japanese” here.

I have people telling me I look Korean all the time. Same shit here.

The reason this is important is that in my opinion the Japanese on average the best-packaged food. But if anything, the packaging shows that the Japanese are really good at copywriting.

Nutritional Information

Doesn’t look very impressive. That this is labeled “Product of Thailand” also made me extra skeptical.

Calories are high, ingredients are numerous. But we’ll get into that a bit later.

Sakura in name, Yakult in taste

The smell of the drink isn’t Sakura like at all. In fact, it’s more like artificial peach or a similar fruit.

And in taste… it doesn’t taste like Sakura at all. If given blind, I’d have probably just assumed this was Yakult in a bottle, but somehow a little sweeter.

If you like Yakult, I would say that this is a pretty decent product taste-wise. Otherwise, it might taste like cough medicine.

In fact, there isn’t much to be talking about this product taste-wise at all. Either you like it or you don’t.

People don’t drink Yakult for the taste, but rather for its health benefits.

The difference here is that Yakult calls itself a probiotic drink, while yobick calls itself a yogurt flavoured drink, which gives off a different impression.

Analysing probiotic capabilities

So, the question is, is this actually useful as a health drink? This is when I found Dydo’s Q1 2018 financial highlights showing yobick is from them, an actual Japanese company.

I don’t really know why I read through the thing, since it didn’t give any information on the actual drink. Maybe I just want to look busy in the office.

Here’s a random graph from Minimeinsights, comparing the nutritional information with other similar drinks Nutrigen and Calpis. As far as I can tell, it’s really not too much difference. Comparing to Yakult also doesn’t differ too much.

But the difference is that Yakult uses Lactobacillus Casei Shirota which is specially patented, while yobick’s Pasteurised Yogurt Powder contains Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, which is more common in the use of yogurt.

On the other hand, Vitagen uses Lactobacillus acidophilus and Lactobacillus casei.

At this point you’re probably thinking that there’s too much science.

Don’t worry. Me too! This is when I realised:

To do a proper review I needed to do a food science degree, so naturally the next stage is to ask my boss if he can sponsor me a scholarship for the sake of our dear readers.

*Bursts into boss’s office without knocking*

Me: Boss! I need a food science degree to do this review!

He sighed without saying anything, before pushing me out of the doorway.

So, I guess, we have to make do with what we have now.

Rating: 3/5