Is your LIGHT yogurt packed full of HFCS nastiness?

I was in an airport last week, waiting for an early morning flight and needing coffee and breakfast to pull me through the long hours on the plane, my exhaustion...and hey, just help me pull along my over-stuffed carry-on bag.

Getting the giant cup of coffee was easy. Finding a relatively healthy, filling breakfast was more of a challenge. I snagged the last whole grain bagel from the coffee stand and then found a shop where I bought a surprisingly yellow banana and yogurt.

I barely sipped on the coffee before I opened the yogurt, that's how good it sounded. While I am pretty committed to the organic brand that I love from Whole Foods, I branched out because a little plastic container of creamy, strawberry goodness would surely soothe my travel-weary soul.

The yogurt was Yoplait Light, fat free and terribly appealing to those masses of us concerned about the mass of our bodies. Even the fancy cursive "LIGHT" scrawled out across the package says, "You've made the right choice! You are a healthy eater!" I felt healthy. I felt good. I felt hungry.

And then I took a bite. The creamy, strawberry goodness made me cringe with that fake sugar taste I have worked so hard to stop liking. After more than a year of (almost completely) abstaining from aspartame, the taste of it is like a shock to my system. Or at least to my tongue and particularly, apparently, mixed in with my yogurt.

It wasn't the aspartamey-ness that made me stop eating the Yoplait Light, though. The aspartamey-ness did make me look at the ingredients, which did make me stop eating the Yoplait Light. There it was, mocking my puffed-up healthy eating pride, even laughing back at the cursive LIGHT on the front of the label: High fructose corn syrup.

HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.

In the "LIGHT" yogurt. I was done. So done.

I know it is nearly impossible to avoid high fructose corn syrup completely (or, as aspartame, almost completely). I know this because I do avoid it, choosing organic ketchup and rifling through the bread at the grocery store like I am a granny in the nickel bin at a garage sale. I do this all because high fructose corn syrup does nasty things to the body, and just as frustrating, is slipped in to a disgusting number of food products many of us have stocked in our pantries, lined up in our refrigerators and use every morning when we make (or buy) our breakfasts.

But does it have to be in the supposedly healthy foods too? Does Yoplait Light have to have more high fructose corn syrup than strawberries? Really?

Clearly, I've kissed off the Yoplait Light. With the aspartamey-ness and high fructose corn syrup-ness, there's nothing lite or enticing left in the container for me. Even in a fit of breakfast desperation, even in an airport, even when that bagel probably had a healthy shot of high fructose surprise inside it, too.