Frozen Kefir vs Frozen Yogurt

The base is different

The simplest way to tell frozen kefir and frozen yogurt apart is to look at what each one is made from. Frozen yogurt starts with ordinary yogurt — milk set with a small, fixed pair of bacterial cultures. Frozen kefir starts with kefir, a fermented dairy cultured with a far broader community of bacteria and yeasts. Both are cultured dairy; only one is kefir.

That difference in the base carries all the way through to the spoon. Kefir ferments more actively and more completely than yogurt, and that fuller fermentation is where frozen kefir gets its brighter, cleaner tang and its lighter body. Read what kefir actually is →

The cultures

Yogurt is traditionally made with two live cultures. Kefir is made with many more — a diverse mix of live cultures that work together during fermentation. That broader range is the defining feature of kefir, and it's why frozen kefir is made with a wider spectrum of live cultures than a typical frozen yogurt.

We describe this as a factual property of the food, not a benefit: kefir simply contains a broader range of live cultures than yogurt. More on the live cultures in kefir →

Sugar

Here's where the two really diverge on the label. Frozen yogurt is often sweetened with sugar — sometimes a great deal of it — though some tart styles use less. Snowfall's frozen kefir takes sugar off the table entirely: it has no added sugar, and its sweetness comes from stevia and erythritol instead. You still get a rounded, satisfying finish; it just doesn't come from added sugar. Why we make it with no added sugar →

Frozen kefir is a dairy product and naturally contains a small amount of milk sugars. “No added sugar” means no sugars or sweetening foods are added; sweetness comes from stevia and erythritol.

Which should you choose?

If you want the familiar, milder sweetness of a classic frozen yogurt, that's exactly what frozen yogurt does well. If you'd rather have a fresher, cleaner tang, a broader range of live cultures, dairy that's naturally lower in lactose than milk, and no added sugar, that's frozen kefir. Snowfall makes it fresh every day in Marylebone, London — and the easiest way to decide is to taste it.

Prefer the yoghurt spelling? Frozen kefir vs frozen yoghurt is the very same comparison — the spelling changes, the differences don't.

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