> I can't stand sugar alcohols, and got a ton of crap full of sucralose

I don't think Sucralose is a sugar alchohol. You can spot those because they end with "ol" - Mannitol, Sorbitol etc. I find it pallatable myself.

Something I've noticed recently is they are getting quite fast and loose with the "natural flavoring" terminology. At first, I thought that something with Sucralose was considered to be naturally flavored because sweetener isn't a flavoring according to some legal definition. But then I saw something with artificial flavor listed in the ingredients, so my revised hypothesis is it must be legal now to say something contains natural flavoring even when it also contains artificial flavoring. If your reaction is "this is technically correct", my objection is that it's vacuous, since everything technically contains natural flavoring.

One of my points here is also that I don't blame the order picker if they got something with Sucralose by accident.

Sucralose is lab made, but stevia is not, so there’s that.

And is lab made vanilla or mint considered natural flavoring?

I've speculated that vanillin is the "artificial flavoring" on many ingredient lists, but I never see it specified explicitly.

Hot sauce: asked for Sriracha, was told it was out of stock. Asked for store brand sriracha as the replacement, got Franks.

It's fine on eggs I suppose.

I'm obviously just one data point, but my Instacart experience was pretty mediocre. Because of how the substitutions work (and there's no live inventory), you pretty much have to be alert and ready to context switch into "grocery substitution" mode the whole time the shopper is picking your food. I don't remember what the fee was, but in the end it wasn't "I absolutely prefer to go to the store myself!" but rather "That was a painful enough experience that next time I'll just go do it myself"

Not justifying it, but try dewatering the yogurt and see if that does anything for your savory dishes. I don't think I have the right gauge of strainer and end up using leftover coffee filters.

Dewatering won't take out the nasty vanilla flavor or the added 12 g of sugar. Moreover, some flavored types of yogurt contain cornstarch to add body, rather than the milk content one would like from a milk product. Plain yogurt truly is a different beast that American sugar-yogurt.

True enough, but at least in my shopping cart, the brands that have plain yogurt also have vanilla yogurt that.

When I think ‘American “yogurt”’ I think Dannon or Yoplait, and I can’t recall the last time I saw plain yogurt from them. Google tells me Dannon has plain yogurt in pint containers, but I’ve just never seen them on the West coast. It’s Nancy’s, Stonyfield, etc here. And the problem with those is because they have a small shelf presence, the vanilla and plain yogurt are invariably next to each other. I have brought the wrong thing home several times, and now double check. But I’ve been doing that since before Greek yogurt was a thing here (and only recently discovered the dewatering trick for making Indian food, which I only make a few times a year anyway) so I’ve not had the need to experiment.

I will note as an aside, neither Dannon nor Yoplait are strictly American companies. I don’t think “we” should get the blame for fucking up yogurt, when French and Spanish citizens were, at the very least, accessories to the murder. Thank you very much.

It's the sugar and vanilla flavoring that I find offensive -- are you suggesting that both would be addressed by dewatering? I can imagine it taking care of the sugar (with several washings, I suppose?) since it's water soluble, but I think that the vanilla would be irredeemably dissolved into the milkfat.

Alas, I've gone back to shopping due to these experiences, so I've got a tub of the good stuff already. So on one hand this is all academic, but you've caught my academic curiosity :)

My theory being that drained yogurt has a sharper flavor, it may or may not mask the unwelcome flavors.

I had to double-check. The carb content of the 'water' you drive off (whey) is pretty high. I couldn't say one way or the other how much of the added sugar comes out with the whey, but I suspect a taste test will tell you. If you're stuck at home anyway it's worth a go.

It's good to have an arsenal of substitutions for dishes.

For what it's worth, "hung" vanilla yogurt makes absolutely revolting chicken tikka.

Good to know. Patak’s has an impressive distribution chain out here and I like that it’s shelf stable so I tend to keep one jar of something (usually the tikka) around just in case I get a yearning and we already have rice.

I made some with hung soy yogurt recently, it was ok. Cumin and coriander can cover some tastes but I guess vanilla ain’t one of them.

Dewatering is not going to remove the flavor and sugar in vanilla yogurt.