Yogo-yogo: The Marketing Behind a Yogurt Drink That Isn’t Really Yogurt

Sometimes Samuel has Yogo-yogo for breakfast with cheese and fruit, or with a scrambled egg, when time is pressing and the school bus is at the door of his house at 5:30 in the morning. Samuel is four years old and loves fermented dairy products. “When I’m getting him ready for school, I turn on the TV or give him my cell phone to keep him quiet, because otherwise it takes longer and you know I’m in a hurry,” explains his mother, Sofia, 21. “I bathe him, I dress him, I comb his hair, I start preparing his breakfast and I have to do all of that in 20-25 minutes.” 

Then, once he’s off to school in the Olaya neighborhood of southern Bogotá, it’s time for her to get ready for her job at a university in the center of the capital, from where she’ll return at seven in the evening, exhausted. Sofia is a single mother in charge of both Sam and her mother, who is sick these days.

The problem, explains Colombian nutritionist and bacteriologist Juan Camilo Mesa, is that “parents think it’s yogurt when it is not.” Yogo-yogo is a more diluted fermented milk drink, he explains. Based on a review of the product’s latest ingredients, in 2023, Yogo-yogo contains reconstituted whey, water, cream, preservatives, stabilizers, sugar, and, most recently, non-caloric sweeteners such as acesulfame k sucralose, which the American Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend for children, because “based on what we know to date, especially in the adult population, non-caloric sweeteners are associated with increased risks of chronic diseases and weight gain”.However, most people who consume them don’t know all this.

On weekends, when he’s not in school, Sam will even serve himself Yogo-yogo with his favorite Froot Loops cereal while watching Paw Patrol or Spider-Man on television. “They all have a thousand warnings about the excess sugar and stuff like that, but hey, I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t have the time or creativity during the week to feed him other things,” Sofia justifies, somewhat sadly, because she believes that Yogo-yogo is a yogurt that meets his dairy needs, so that he grows big and strong.

Sofía, aware of the octagonal warnings labels placed on ultra-processed foods since 2023, says that if she fails to feed Samuel a full breakfast it’s not just because she’s short on time; she also knows that he’ll be given four meals a day at school. Fast food is convenient and cheap, admits this mother who does what she can to buy fruit and vegetables at the farmers’ market when she has time, and to save money.

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Sam’s case is not exceptional. The same applies to many children at his school and, in fact, of a good part of the Colombian population. Yogo-yogo is manufactured by Alpina, one of the most traditional dairy food producers in the country, that just this year launched its new advertising campaign, “UNIverso Mochis”, a world built around “the craziest, squishiest creatures in the universe”. The figurines come with Yogo Premio, the most expensive product in the line, or can be obtained by sending three Yogo-yogo labels to authorized service points where they can be redeemed.

For this campaign, Alpina gone all out. In addition to traditional advertising outlets that include both television and the brand’s own social media, the campaign has had the support of influencers such as alexcollection_and his 146,000 followers or valmekuppp, whose video about the unboxing of the Yogo-yogo that Samuel likes so much, has nearly 82,000 “likes”. A completely legal practice in Colombia, where regulation of the marketing of ultra-processed products and sugary drinks aimed at children and adolescents is practically non-existent, unlike in other countries in the region, such as Mexico, Brazil, or Peru.

Colombian children see these advertisements everywhere. On the packaging of the products they eat for breakfast, in commercials during their favorite TV shows, and in school snack shops that sell chips and sodas. Some of these junk foods have even been included in school meal programs, as was the case in Herveo, Tolima, where, according to the indignant parents who reported to the RedPapaz NGO in late September 2024, they served snacks that included gelatin and rosquitas, a cheese-flavored bread snack, marked with octagonal warning labels. Above all, and most perniciously, these advertisements appear on children’s cell phones, in the videos they watch on YouTube or TikTok, and as part of the video games that occupy their free time.

Some of the ingredients contained in Yogo-yogo, however, such as industrially synthesized additives, colorants, flavorings, or sweeteners, “make it an unhealthy product, void of the characteristics of natural yogurt, which is truly healthy,” says Gustavo Cediel, professor and researcher at the University of Antioquia’s School of Nutrition and Dietetics, to the extent that “the consumption of sugars” and “sweeteners has also been shown to be related to (…) obesity (…), which can later lead to diabetes and metabolic disorders”.

“So I would really advise against consuming these types of products. A child can be given just plain milk or yogurt with no sugar or sweeteners, which are healthy alternatives in this case,” adds Juan Camilo Mesa, known on social media as El Nutri, although he understands that some parents would prefer their child eat these products to not eating at all. VORÁGINE contacted the Alpina press office to address the issue of marketing and Yogo-yogo, but we got no response.

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Juan Camilo and Gustavo are not the only ones to warn about the dangers of ultra-processed products and sugary drinks, as the industrially produced products that incorporate numerous additives are known. These categories include cookies, snacks, cereals, energy drinks, instant soups, sausages, and nuggets, among others. The World Health Organization (WHO) told VORÁGINE that they believe [these products] “cause obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and some cancers”, as does the Pan American Health Organization.

They should even be treated as products harmful to people’s health, like tobacco, because “they use the same molecules tested in laboratories for cigarettes, such as flavorings, in food. They use the same marketing techniques and distribution networks to sell addictive and harmful foods,” warned Dr. Chris van Tulleken of the BBC, author of renowned books on the subject, denouncing that “many scientists in the food industry admit that they design foods so that we cannot stop eating them.”

In Colombia, the Ministry of Health indicates that in 2015, 24.5% of children between the ages of 5 and 12 in the country were overweight. This is almost a quarter of the population and an increase of more than 10 points compared to 2005, consistent in all categories of those under 18, with a high cost for the health system of around 2.4 billion pesos annually. This figure could continue to increase, according to projections made while waiting for the new global survey.

Lina Zapata, health and nutrition officer of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Colombia, stated in a video call that the figure justifies addressing the situation as “an epidemic, in order to guide public health actions that will also impact environments where the child population is present and can promote behavioral changes”.

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After years of fighting and reporting on the risks of these products, Colombian civil society—driven by organizations such as FIAN Colombia, which defends the right to food; the non-profit corporation RedPapaz; and the José Alvear Restrepo lawyers’ collective (CAJAR)—has managed to get these health issues on the public agenda, while several restrictions such as octagonal seals warning of excess trans and saturated fats, calories, and added sugars have been adopted and “healthy taxes” have been levied on products that exceed the recommended amounts of sugar and trans fats.

But “the largest battle we have left to face is that of marketing, which will be very complicated given that these companies have invested for years in the building of their brands and mascots and appealing to emotions, because they know that is where their sales are,” warns Carolina Piñeros, executive director of Red PaPaz.

On November 5, Red PaPaz and other civil society organizations presented a bill to the Colombian Congress that would restrict advertising of ultra-processed food and beverage products in order to limit the exposure, of children and adolescents especially, to this type of advertising. They also plan to propose further legislation regarding healthy school food environments (AEAS) on November 12, which would seek to ensure adequate nutrition in educational and penal institutions.

This will be the second attempt after an initial proposal failed in 2018, rejected en bloc by the unhealthy food industry, which includes the mega-corporations McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Postobón, Nutresa, and Riopaila, as well as communication and marketing sectors. As an alternative to the legislation proposed in 2018, companies promised to self-regulate, but the experts interviewed agree that this alternative failed.

“Here in Colombia, we experience strong interference from the industry”, which finances electoral campaigns with large donations” and then expects congressmen to legislate in their favor,” laments Yessika Hoyos, director of CAJAR.

Under the current legislature, Cambio Radical congressmen such as David Luna and Carlos Abraham Jiménez, who are completely opposed to restrictions on junk food, received 207 and 201 million pesos, respectively, in campaign funding from companies in the sector, according to a report published in 2022 by the Liga Contra el Silencio (League Against Silence).

In addition, Senator Richard Fuelantala, who holds an indigenous seat in the Congress, has submitted a proposal on behalf of the union to remove the “healthy tax” on dairy products due to “the decline in consumption of milk and its derivatives,” an increase in contraband, and the importation of powdered milk, among other reasons.

But “what this project conceals is that natural dairy products that retain the nutrients of milk are not taxed and do not have labels,” warns RedPapaz. While it “greatly benefits ultra-processed foods that contain some milk powder or so-called whey,” a dairy by-product with very little nutritional value.

Several lawsuits against the “healthy taxes” have also been overturned in the Constitutional Court by spokesmen from an industry that refuses to capitulate and has doubled its investment in digital marketing, to which it will dedicate 60% of its advertising investment by 2026, according to IAB Colombia, an association that represents the communications, marketing, and digital advertising industry.

In recent years, brands have developed an online user profiling strategy that allows them to harvest tastes and routines in detail and place users into groups to be targeted by their advertising, explains Marina Meira, a Brazilian researcher specializing in the protection of children in digital environments. Because “everythingyou do online becomes data, not only the information you actively put into the digital environment, such as a comment or the information you leave when you create a profile on a social network, but also your behavior and other things you have no idea will become data,” says Meira. Companies can now track the path of their customers’ mouse on the screen when browsing a page, the time taken to view a particular photo or video, your  geolocation, and so on, and sell these data to the highest bidder.

And this isn’t just metaphorical; the Biggest Data Breach report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL) warns that companies like Google and Microsoft have developed a “multi-billion dollar industry” that “works behind the scenes on websites and apps to track what you look at, no matter how private or sensitive, and record where you go” in order to conduct real-time auctions of online advertising space called Real Time Bidding (RTB). This procedure is being questioned in lawsuits in Europe and the United States.

And, once again, Latin America is more unprotected, given the profound differences in the measures taken to protect minors implemented by large content platform companies and social networks —depending on how lax the local legislation is in the countries in which they operate—, according to the Global platforms, partial protections and discrimination by design in social media platforms  report issued by the American coalition, Fairplay.

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The thing is, no one wants to give up the juvenile market, explains Lina María Echeverri, a marketing expert at Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario. “I think resistance is due to two reasons,” says Echeverri: “it’s an extremely attractive market (…) because children are highly impressionable” and because “there is a limited supply of food for children, so it is seen as a growing market” which deserves investment. “Unfortunately, in Colombia, the media and language employed by advertisers are used to distract from and not face reality,” she adds, when asked if ultra-processed food and sugary drink companies are redoubling their investments in marketing to avoid having to completely change their food lines and make them healthier. Echeverri went on to specify that marketing is a complex, expensive job on which numerous other jobs often depend.

In this regard, her colleague Germán Molano, a specialist in branding at Colombia’s Universidad de los Andes and founder of LabMark, is even more direct. “There are many products that, because they didn’t meet certain nutritional quality requirements, were actually disguised in order to present them in a different way,” he says. They did this to create “future consumers” who will be subjected to a “constant bombardment” of advertising that can be measured in 2-3,000 daily impacts from 200 different brands.

“I think that at this point we have to be honest, hold up our hands, and say: yes, we were wrong,” he added, pointing out that certain businessmen have already decided to take this route and change their products regardless of the significant expense. This is the case of McDonald’s, which claims to have modified the ingredients in its Happy Meal, which now “contains no artificial colors or flavors”, has adjusted portions, and limited sodium, fat, sugar, and calorie content.” Although, according to the experts interviewed for this report, this claim is impossible to verify since conducting a study of the product would be too expensive and the recipe is secret.

For now, says Diana Guarnizo, a researcher at the DeJusticia legal research center, “after the labeling law and legislation taxing sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods, companies are betting everything on two things: reformulating their products, meaning, lowering fat, sodium, or sugar indicators, but also increasing advertising because that is the way to maintain sales levels.”

However, according to figures from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), sales of non-alcoholic beverages have not decreased following implementation of the “healthy” taxes, but rather increased by 4.6% between July 2023 and the same month in 2024.

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For the moment, Colombia’s digital ecosystem remains a jungle that depends largely on the good will of business owners to self-regulate.

Added to influencers’ videos is the phenomenon of “advergaming” by which products are discreetly incorporated into the environment of a video game, or well-known brands even finance the design of mini-games, along with other strategies focused on convincing children, who, according to UNICEF, are highly influenced by messages focused on emotions, real or imaginary characters, and prizes.

The problem lies in the fact that “when a product is promoted in electronic media, it is essential to determine whether the advertiser is Colombian” or has a representation in the country, “because only in these cases is Colombian legislation on consumer protection applicable,” acknowledged the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce in its response to a questionnaire. This greatly limits the ability of Colombian and other regulators to sanction companies based in other countries.

In any case, regulating advertising at the internal level “is one of the most cost-effective measures to reduce the demand for ultra-processed and processed products with excess sugars, fats, saturated fats, trans fats and sodium,” warns the Pan American Health Organization. Meanwhile, civil society in different countries is organizing a push for global changes to a way of life that is becoming increasingly unsustainable.

* This content is funded by support provided, in part, by Vital Strategies. Content is editorially independent and its purpose is to shine a light on both the food and beverage industry illegal or unethical practices and the Colombian most vulnerable populations, who disproportionately bear the brunt of the global health crisis resulting from the unhealthy food and beverages consumption. Unless otherwise stated, all statements and materials posted on this article, including any statements regarding specific legislation, reflect the views of the individual contributors and not those of Vital Strategies.