Yo, this is cool!
MILLIE: One of my Why Not groupmates, whom I will call “Amazing,” adores fish and veggies. Like the rest of the group, Amazing loves to eat but has to work out double-time to get into shape. The trouble is, after walking through 18 holes at Wack Wack Golf and Country Club or an hour of badminton, we always end up eating, drinking and engaging in hilarious laughter. We tried eating healthy stuff for a change and went for salads. But our other friend Luscious had a bad bout of arthritis, which she diagnosed came from an overdose of leafy greens. Amazing has been hounding me to write about yogurt for our readers to learn to enjoy eating healthy.
We noticed there has been a proliferation of soft-serve frozen yogurt in recent months, and we have tried all of them, even braving the long queues. A few weeks ago, after a light lunch with dear friend Beth de la Fuente, who is Karla’s godmother, Beth took us to the fifth floor of Shangri-La Mall to have dessert at Yo Swirls. Since then, we’ve been hooked.
KARLA: Yo Swirls, often overlooked by shoppers, is conveniently located in front of Naf Naf and People are People. Just like any normal foodie, even before the yogurt craze started, Mom, Lolo Joe and I already started looking for our favorite as early as 2007. And believe me, we’ve had favorites for brief periods in the past year or so. But the recent introduction to Yo Swirls has had us craving the most. You see, yogurt is more than just, well, frozen yogurt. One must understand the true concept of yogurt to enjoy this treat. Pie Bonoan-Cabigas, general manager and owner of BTIC and Yo Swirls, explains how to analyze your yogurt.
As people know, yogurt has a lot of health benefits. It improves the digestive tract and immune system, helps prevent osteoporosis, and can help reduce cancer and keep your bones stronger. But for one to truly maximize these benefits, one must make sure that there are enough live pro-biotic cultures. Among other standards stated by the US Food and Drug Administration and the National Yogurt Association (NYA), for a product to be called “yogurt,” the standard requires a minimum level of active cultures of 107 colony-forming units (CFU) per gram. In other words, there should be at least 100 million live cultures per gram of yogurt to be able to maximize the health benefits of the product. And this is a very important standard and fact because some products out on the market today only use a dry mix for frozen yogurt, mix it up with a little water or milk plus some pre-packed yogurt readily available in the supermarket and voila! They pass it off as so-called “frozen yogurt,” which does not do anything for your body or health. Instead, the good bacteria supposed to be giving you these awesome benefits die one by one because of their low count.
Live cultures need at least 100 million to be able to survive in our system and fight the bad stuff. On the other hand, Yo Swirls contains more than one billion live active pro-biotic cultures per serving, plus they make the yogurt themselves to ensure the quality and ensure the culture count in each batch produced. Now, that’s real frozen yogurt! And for those who are interested, these live cultures I keep talking about are called Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium.
The reason Pie Bonoan-Cabigas knows so much about this is because she’s been handling yogurts since 1990 and, well, she’s a chemist. She was a chemistry major who graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii. The last time I saw her and her family was way back in 1990s when I was about four or five years old. I was invited to their residence, which I remember to be an ice cream factory. I remember it vividly. I was brought to a room with huge machines all around, which I soon figured out were all ice cream makers! I was asked to be their taste tester for their then, soon-to-launch product, BTIC or Better Than Ice Cream, which I absolutely love. And pretty soon, I was doing cartwheels in the middle of the room. It was, like, a kid’s dream! Try all the ice cream you want, all the flavors available and all I had to do was say why I liked this or that. Soon after the ice-cream escapade, they came up with new flavors, including the blue bubblegum, and sent me over half-gallons to try. And that’s how I developed my palate at a young age, by working as a taste tester.
MILLIE: Yo Swirls offers simple flavors: Original, Berry Basket, Vanilla and Chocolate. I like the original flavor, plain with no topping at all. For me it’s the best way to savor and enjoy the yogurt. Occasionally I add strawberry topping. Dad likes it with fruits bits — either strawberries or mangoes in fruit coulis. Karla, as you might guess, experiments with all the possible topping combinations offered.
We bring home at least two pints every week for us to enjoy at home, but nothing beats eating it right then and there. It has become our favorite meeting place at Shang Mall with its homey ambiance and orange couches. The swirls in the logo naturally caught Karla’s eye.
Pie’s parents, Butch and Connie Bonoan, whom I’ve known since the late ’80s as they were both active with Father Adorable and the Bukas Loob sa Diyos Community, excitedly told us that they now have franchise outlets at Venice Mall Piazza, McKinley Hill, Fort Bonifacio, and will soon open in Burgos Circle, also at the Fort.
For inquiries, call 725-4313, 724-5978, or 799-5365, e-mail pcabigas@ bticfrozenyogurt.com or visit the website at www.bticfrozenyogurt.com.
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