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I always hated the texture of soft-serve frozen yogurt. It wasn't creamy like ice cream, but it left a waxy coating on one's spoon and tongue. Very unappealing.

Frozen yogurt in all its forms is a throwback to the high-carb, low-fat craze of the '80s and '90s. Who in their right mind wants to go back to that?

If you want toppings that badly, go to Coldstone.

not a fan of creamy ice cream, I screamed with delight when yogurtland opened this summer, even tolerating long lines to enjoy the smooth sweet-tart treat. I loves me some plain, coconut, pistachio, or chocolate. no toppings!

These places represent the most delusional of post-consumerism consumerism. Just like hybrid cars or green packaging, they sell a seductive myth. Yogurt is good for you, better than ice cream anyway. So people buy it and buy a lot of it. If a little is good isn't a lot great? No, it's just a lot of calories, and driving your prius doesn't save the planet - it just kills it oh so slightly slower. Salvation doesn't come in a spoon - it comes from putting the spoon down.

I love these new places, but I only eat the plain tart yogurt and put blueberries on it. It's not so bad if you only put a 2/3 c. or so of yogurt in your giant cup. Most of the time my purchase costs around $3.

I once went on a date with a guy who inherited a lot of money and ran a fro-yo shop in the Bay Area--"upscale" complete with white baby grand piano. He said he picked fro-yo because the margins were insanely high. The food inputs to that $5 cup probably cost $0.40.

FWIW, I'm horribly lactose intolerant, and the better 2nd/3rd-wave fro-yo places (read: not Pinkberry) really do contain plentiful enough and live enough cultures so as not to "set me off."

That's not exactly a health benefit, but it's a damned tangible benefit to the preponderance Asians, Africans, Jews, and nearly every other non-Nordic-American adult.

Non-Nordic, specifically? Are we Nordies so full of lactose that we beat everyone else? I'd've thunk the Anglos had us beat.

wow, my comment got fucked.

I meant to say:

Pretty sure that (Asian) Indians win this odd contest.

You're right. I should have gone with "Germanic peoples," which would have covered the Anglos and the Scandanavians too.

Short version: Loss of some degree of lactose tolerance is the human default; full adult lactose tolerance is the mutation. Lactose tolerance is only widespread among populations that have been using lactose-rich foods as cuisine staples for millenia.

It just so happens that the mutated population constitutes a big chunk of the all-American "white bread and a glass of milk" demographic.

As for the Indian sub-continent: paneer and creamy sauces do not appear in the cuisines of all regions and, as a result, lactose tolerance around the sub-continent varies greatly.

The ability of the lactose intolerant to digest yogurt helps to explain the prominence of yogurt and similar cultured dairy items in many cuisines worldwide.

Jen, Pinkberry is a Howard Schultz venture. Has been for four years. http://www.cornichon.org/2007/10/king-of…

Alas; Cool Whirled in Fremont is no more.