My New Fave Dairy Free Yogurt is Made from Mushrooms

March 10, 2024

The lineup of dairy free yogurt options at the grocery store is vast and varied. You can find creamy cups and tubs filled with everything from coconut to oats to soy. Now there’s a new line of yogurt cups popping up in the refrigerated section made from yet another surprising new ingredient: fungi.

Food brand Nature’s Fynd recently added the world’s first fungi-based yogurt to its line of packaged foods made with a proprietary fungi protein. Don’t worry – it doesn’t taste like mushrooms.

Fungi, really?

Nature’s Fynd developed its protein, known as Fy, as an environmentally friendly alternative to resource-intensive animal and plant-based proteins. The fungus requires significantly less land and water than livestock as well as soybeans, nuts, and other popular vegan ingredients.

Fy’s remarkable origin story begins with a NASA discovery. The space scientists found Fy while on a mission to collect organisms able to survive the most inhospitable environments, specifically in the hot springs of Yellowstone National Park.

The microbe NASA identified turned out to be an edible fungus (like baker’s yeast or the blue veins that make blue cheese so charmingly funky). When properly fed and fostered, the microbe ferments into a fungus that Nature’s Fynd has turned into breakfast sausages, cream cheese, and now, yogurt.

How it tastes

Though I don’t eat strictly plant-based, I’m open to any culinary innovation that’s doing good for the environment, so I had to give this new dairy free yogurt a try. Nature’s Fynd yogurt currently comes in three flavors: strawberry, peach, and vanilla.

I decided to sample the peach flavor. Pulling back the foil lid, I was surprised by how similar the yogurt looked to your typical dairy-based flavored yogurt cup. The peaches are pureed in, so this isn’t a fruit-on-the-bottom situation.

The yogurt has a smooth, fluffy texture that’s easily scoopable. And fear not, there’s no mushroomy taste here. The yogurt had a pleasant fresh peach flavor. It’s sweet (it contains 8 grams of added cane sugar) and reminded me of peach ice cream. Overall, I found Nature’s Fynd yogurt to be a nearly one-for-one replacement for a typical flavored yogurt cup.

Each 5.3-ounce serving contains 170 calories, 8 grams of fat, 17 grams of carbs, 4 grams of fiber, 9 grams of sugar, and 8 grams of protein. There are trace amounts of calcium, iron, and potassium as well, though less than what you’d get in a dairy-based cultured product. The protein comes from Fy as well as added chickpea protein.

The 5.3-ounce yogurt cups are available nationwide in Whole Foods Markets for $2.29 each.