I sat across from the dietitian, feeling pretty smug about my eating habits. Vegetarian for over a decade. Whole grains. Plenty of vegetables. I even make my own hummus, for goodness sake.

Then she looked at my food diary and pointed to something I ate almost every single day. “This needs to go,” she said. And honestly? I’m still a bit annoyed about it. Because the food in question wasn’t some guilty pleasure I was sneaking.

It was something I genuinely believed was a cornerstone of healthy eating. Turns out, the line between “nutritious” and “too much of a good thing” is thinner than I thought.

The culprit hiding in plain sight

It was flavoured yoghurt. Specifically, those little pots of fruit yoghurt I’d been grabbing as my virtuous mid-morning snack, my post-workout protein boost, my “I deserve something sweet but healthy” treat.

I genuinely thought I was nailing it. Calcium, protein, probiotics. What’s not to love?

Well, as it turns out, sugar. Loads of it. The dietitian pointed out that my daily yoghurt habit was adding roughly six teaspoons of added sugar to my diet before lunch even arrived.

As registered dietitian Nichola Ludlam-Raine has noted, many fruit yoghurts contain as much sugar as a small chocolate bar, which completely undermines their health halo.

Why I felt so defensive about it

Here’s the thing that really got under my skin. I’d been so careful about obvious sugar sources. No fizzy drinks. Rarely any biscuits. I’d even switched to dark chocolate because I read it was better for me.

But yoghurt? Yoghurt felt safe. It felt wholesome. It had pictures of strawberries on the packaging and words like “natural” and “live cultures.”

I think that’s why the advice stung so much. It wasn’t about being told to cut out something I knew was indulgent. It was about realising I’d been fooled by marketing, by packaging, by my own assumptions. And as someone who spent years in marketing, that felt like a personal failure.

What the science actually says

Once I got over my initial grumpiness, I did some digging. And the dietitian was absolutely right.

Research from the British Heart Foundation confirms that flavoured yoghurts are one of the sneakiest sources of added sugar in the average diet. We assume we’re making a healthy choice, so we don’t think to check the label. Meanwhile, some products contain upwards of 20 grams of sugar per serving.

Plain yoghurt, on the other hand, contains only naturally occurring lactose. The difference matters, especially when you’re eating it daily like I was. It’s the kind of thing that adds up quietly over months and years.

What I do now instead

I won’t pretend I made the switch gracefully. Plain yoghurt tasted like disappointment for the first week. But I’ve found my rhythm now.

A dollop of plain Greek yoghurt with fresh berries and a drizzle of honey gives me control over exactly how much sweetness goes in. Some mornings I add a handful of granola or a sprinkle of cinnamon. It takes about thirty seconds longer than peeling back a foil lid, and it tastes genuinely better.

The real win? I actually notice the sweetness of fruit now. When you’re not drowning everything in added sugar, a ripe strawberry tastes like a proper treat.

The bigger lesson here

This whole experience made me look more critically at other “healthy” foods in my kitchen. Granola bars that were basically biscuits in disguise. Smoothies with more sugar than a milkshake. Plant-based ready meals loaded with sodium.

I’m not saying we all need to become obsessive label-readers. But a quick glance at the sugar content of foods we eat regularly? That’s worth doing. As nutrition researcher Dr Sarah Berry has pointed out, it’s the everyday choices, not the occasional treats, that shape our long-term health.

The foods we never question are often the ones that deserve the most scrutiny.

Final thoughts

Am I still a tiny bit annoyed? Honestly, yes. I loved those little yoghurt pots. They were convenient and comforting and I felt good eating them.

But I’m also grateful someone told me the truth, even when I didn’t want to hear it. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is question our assumptions, especially about the foods we think are beyond reproach.

So if you’ve got a “healthy” food you eat without thinking, maybe take a peek at the label this week. You might be surprised. And yes, you’re allowed to be annoyed about it too.